Promise you won’t be mad, but we’re not going to talk about magic systems today.
Don’t hurts us!
There’s a good reason, I promise. A lot of things have been going on in my life the past several months (including a literal natural disaster in the form of earthquakes), and I’ve kept up with the content. But something big enough has come along that I couldn’t bring you your regularly scheduled magical goodness.
I am writing a workbook to help you with your magic systems.
More specifically, it’s a workbook to help you develop rules and limitations for your magic system. This is by far the most common problem magic builders seem to face, and it’s about time you got a resource or two to help you on your path.
Things still aren’t lined up as nicely as I’d like, hence the unceremonious pause in the natural flow of posts, but screw it. This workbook will help people like you, and I’m tired of waiting.
As with everything in life, the workbook is taking longer to put together than I would like, but I promise you won’t have to wait too long. I don’t care what it takes, this sucker will be available for purchase by no later than November 1st.
Don’t panic though. The blog isn’t going to be on pause that long or anything. I’ve already got some old content I want to revisit so you’re primed and ready to get the most from this workbook when it comes out.
To bait the hook and get you excited for what’s coming, here’s a quick preview of some exercises you’ll find in the workbook.
Exercise #?) Laws, Theories, or Patterns
There are lots of places you can turn to find these laws, theories, or patterns. You can take my most common approach and turn to the natural sciences, exploiting the Newtonian laws of motion, conservation of energy, or incorporate principles of basic chemistry. If that’s not your speed, there are all kinds of societal contracts civilizations have followed through history, city laws, and regulations, theories of human behavior and psychology, or even guidelines and concepts from a specific style of art.
Examples
- Reaction Kinetics: Adding heat increases the rate of a reaction and decreasing heat slows it down
- Sin-Eaters: in some cultures, people hired to come to funerals and consume a ritual meal to devour and take on the sin of the deceased.
- Potential Energy: The higher an object is raised from a surface, the greater its potential energy
Exercise #?+1) Tie It Together
Now it’s time to take the five different laws, theories, or patterns you selected in the last exercise and tie them into your magic system. For now, we want to explore how we can fuse the magic and the theory together as one.
As you’re going through this, don’t just look for magical rules. Keep your mind sharp and on the lookout for interesting costs, consequences, themes, weaknesses, and potential boundaries or limits on what the magic can do.
Examples
- Reaction Kinetics: The magic works best on stable material; anything undergoing a chemical reaction is interrupts or eludes magical influence.
- Sin-Eaters: The ritual meal does transfer not only the sins of the deceased but their latent magical power as well. Most people have limited power, but over time that adds up for Sin-Eaters.
- Potential Energy: An individual’s magic power increases the further they are from the surface of the earth
And there you have it. Hopefully, now you are as excited about this workbook as I am. That’s really all I have time for right now; I need to get back to planning exercises for you.
That’s all for now. Rowenson, out.