The Magic of Magicbuilding: Work in Progress

Welcome to the Magic of Magicbuilding, our little spinoff feature that focuses specifically on building a magical system for a fantasy setting.  This week, we're going to review what we have so far and decide what we need to focus on before wrapping up our first magical system.

Why Review?

Some may ask why we've decided to review our work in progress now, rather than at the end of the magical system's development.  That's for a very important reason:

We're trying to teach you how to make your own system, remember?

If you were following along with us diligently, doing all the things that we've done, you'd end up with a system that looks remarkably similar to ours, and you'd likely have little problem doing so.  However, one thing we haven't really done is give you a clear list of instructions- instead, we've demonstrated how to take initial thoughts and turn them into interesting consequences.  That means that, for example, if you decided to make a considerably softer system, based on ownership of rings and the power of friendship, you may have some of the same parts as our example system, but you've no clue if you have all the parts you need.  And to be fair, you may well need far fewer moving parts than our system has.

You may also need far more moving parts.  We haven't exactly been making the most intricate system.

So how do you know when you're done?  Unless your system is exactly as complicated as ours is, just having the same steps won't tell you.  You need to be able to stop, take a look at what you have, and see if you've met your goals.  You know, the goals you had when you set up your system.  You... you did have goals, right?  ...Right?

Oh dear.

Current Goal:  Setting Goals

When we first started talking about building a magical system back in January, we didn't discuss our goals for a very good reason: we didn't need to.  If you'll recall, this is a spinoff feature of our worldbuilding.  We discussed our goals for worldbuilding in general at the start of the worldbuilding series, and part of that included what we wanted to have happen with our magical system.  Specifically, we wanted a magical system that would make sense for our inspirational image of driving down the road with a dragon trussed up on a trailer.

If you've been blindly following along rather than either reading everything we've written (in which case, thanks!) or approaching with intent, you may not have gotten around to actually having a design goal in mind when making your magical system.  On the bright side, it's never too late to establish what your goals are.  As an example, let's work through the goals of our example system.

We wanted a system that would explain cars, roads, and dragons.  We wanted magic and technology to be advanced enough that it would be difficult, bordering on impossible, for a layman to explain the difference between the two.  We wanted a system that had a real cost built in, but not one so heavy that magic wasn't considered the best option at least half the time, and we wanted magic to be something that anyone could use but not everyone could use well.  Beyond that, our biggest goal was probably that whatever system we developed also had its consequences explained thoroughly enough that we never had to work out what happened when magic was used; the answer would simply drop out of our system.

You'll note that, removed of context, most of our goals are shockingly generic.  That's on purpose.  Remember, this is an example system.  While we've done quite a lot of work building out the details, all those details follow from the basic goals of the system, our initial inspiration, and the world that our system is being used in.  Your mileage, even if you've been following along, should vary... but beyond a few specifics, your goals will probably be similar.  Regardless of your system, for example, you will likely want a system where magic has some kind of cost that prevents it from being used for every problem; you'll want to explain why it isn't used by everyone; and you'll want to explore the consequences of magic's existence and use.

We suppose that it's possible even those generic goals might differ for you.  For example, in a sufficiently high-fantasy setting, maybe everyone does use magic, for everything.  A well-written system, however, will still have consequences, even if magic is essentially free energy forever.

Progress Checklist

Thus far in this feature, we've built a system that uses extra-dimensional energy as its source.  We've explained how people have access to that energy, as well as looking at the consequences of that energy being available.  We've explained why people use our particular magical system over other methods (people use sigils because if you don't you eventually, literally, become a monster).  We've explained the costs of our magical system: there is a physical and mental drain involved, people begin exhibiting sympathetic behaviors related to the magic used, and sigils can't be changed on the fly, meaning that magic users can't be spontaneous.  We've noted that sigils work similarly to programs, so that sufficiently advanced sigils will work similarly to the computerized devices that your typical layman can't explain.  We've examined, in quite some detail, the consequences of our setting having access to this magical system, and the way the setting itself has adapted to the presence of magic, in the form of dungeons.

Seems pretty comprehensive, doesn't it?  So, what's missing?

Well, for starters, we still haven't developed our system to the point that it's indistinguishable from modern technology.  We're getting there, but as of right now, we're still mostly looking at its impacts on pre-Industrial tech.

For seconds, and this is much larger, we've only examined the effect of magic on people.  Yeah, remember how we mentioned monsters?  We don't have any of those.  The closest we've got are other-dimensional beings, which, granted, have monstrous qualities, but aren't quite the same thing.

Similarly, we haven't considered what magic does to the environment in general.  Magical energy leaks from other dimensions into our world, and we've talked about what the environment looks like next to those leaks, but what effect, if any, is there on the world if there's a spring that never stops flowing with water?  Sure, there isn't enough water to worry about... in the short term.  But a single river made the Grand Canyon, and did so in "only" a few million years.  On a world where magic may have existed for billions of years, much more drastic consequences may have occurred.

When you review your work, you'll look for similar holes.  They don't have to be big holes, and you don't have to find all of them.  Your goal is to find the holes that matter; the holes that you need filled in order to have those answers drop out of your system when you have a question.  That, by the end of your project, will be your main task:  filling holes.  And you can't fill them unless you stop some point before the end and review.

Conclusion

We're definitely almost done with our example magical system.  Broadly speaking, we still need to finish the techno-magical development of our setting; we need to figure out monsters; and we need to work out the environmental consequences of "free" energy on our world.

Of those, monsters are the easiest to consider, so that's what we'll be doing next week- making some monsters.