So even if your magic system doesn’t fail catastrophically you can still get some nice pointers on how your protagonists/villains in the story could exploit magic to give them an edge.

As mentioned in episode 14 – this is actually the most fun part: Establishing a ruleset the reader can relate to and then surprise him by an application he hadn’t considered yet.

For example, Heroes shows a lot of magic without cost. What does it cost Hiro to time travel? Nothing. It’s free. What about the painter? He can do it at will. The guy who goes invisible. The cheerleader who regenerates. Same with all the other characters there. What about the magic in Elantris? It costs nothing to draw the runes. What was consumed? Nothing. What about Orson Card’s Hatrack world? Alvin can doodlebug until doomsday. There’s no fuel required.

Some may say it’s semantics, but it’s not. It affects the paths taken in the invention of the magic. Don’t trust me, do a group magic brainstorm session where you ask this question and then another where you ask about limitations instead.

I’ve found that it’s more helpful to ask these questions.

–What is a cool power?
–What are the limitations to it? (Here we can use costs or MANY other types of limitations like genetics/bloodlines, intelligence, sources, morals, geography, times, etc.)
–What are the ramifications and conflicts of using it?

Nah, that’ll never work…

Don’t just apply the “donkey rule” to check if your magic system breaks the non-magic aspects of the world. Make certain your magic system doesn’t break itself. For example: If you have shapeshifting, spells or powers that allow people to change their eyecolor, sex, whatever… when would they need a healer? Losing an arm or a leg might be one case, but what would stop a shapeshifter from using his powers to replace burned flesh with perfectly good new skin, or turn cancerous cells into non-cancerous ones? And that’s just one possible example.

Consequences don’t have to stem from casting a spell, they can also come from how you acquire your spellcasting abilities. Suppose there’s a character who strikes a bargain with demonic powers to become a spellcaster, someone who sells his soul to the devil. Casting spells may be something he does at the drop of the proverbial hat, but now the demon hunters are after him, he runs into the father of the virgin he sacrificed to the devil, and so on. There can be direct rammifications of magic, and indirect ones – storytelling consequences. And I think the latter are much more interesting to explore, even if there is no “direct cost” to spellcasting.

*koff*

More seriously, while I’m all for originality, I think that worrying about it -too- much can be paralyzing. ‘Cause honestly, your original idea probably HAS been done before. That, and it’s possible to use an old idea without being derivative, I think.

The memory thing: Very cool. Actually, I think they had something similiar in Final Fantasy VIII. They failed to make anything of it, which is unfortunate, but it still has the potential to be cool.

Someone suggested a podcast on book contracts/rights etcetera. If we’re taking a vote, I second the motion.

Been done, with twists and stories.

A second series which I found fascinating was Lawrence Watt-Evans’s Ethshar series, particularly the warlocks. Tremendous power and the warlocks actually grow stronger the more they use their power, but the more they use their power, the sooner they go insane and fly off on a journey towards the source of their power from which they never return. It’s also impossible to become a warlock in any other way than having been one of the people who was given the ability during the Night of Madness, so its power is limited that way.

Lastly, a frightening cost I found was in the second Neverending Story. The one character had unlimited wishes, but lost a memory every time he used one. Could you imagine being able to use magic but never knowing what you might lose, and worse, never knowing what you lost? ^_^ I could just see such a system, complete with wizards who live lives of excess, trying to pack in as many memories as possible, apparently senile elder wizards who’ve bartered away all of their memories, and tales of some wizard who accomplished a great magic, “but the poor fellow lost a very important memory, how to breathe… I think he was almost figuring it out near the end, but he was a little too late.”

Your podcasts are just as entertaining in person as they are while listening to them on iPod. Keep up the great casts.

On a side note, I was wondering if you guys had plans for a podcast on contracts/royalties/world rights/etc.

Kirk Shaw

@Howard Tayler

Quite the opposite, really. I refer you to the American Revolution and ethnic cleansings in Africa and the Middle East today-massive wars between different groups of “bullet-wizards.” Really, any “government” today could be considered a massive group of “bullet-wizards” who’ve banded together.

Plus, we don’t have people who are tough enough to take baths in lava and survive.

@joe

A Continuous Magic Item of Light is only 1,500gp-less than 10% of a 7th-level character’s Wealth by Level (DMG P.135).

Thinking about permanent magic vs. what cost could balance it out has made me realize that I would love to read a story where the cost of the magic IS that its effects -never- go away. In the same example of a permanent light spell, you would get light building up, if you cast it, to get back a peaceful darkness you would have to hide it or bury it, and others casting it would eventually cause light pollution. More powerful magic effects, if irreversible, would cause even worse problems (magical fire that once created, would be unable to be extinguished,

So I kinda think that there are two approaches to magic: Constrain the magic to keep it from breaking reality, or USE the magic as the vehicle that is inevitably breaking reality. After all, maybe that is why magic doesn’t correspond to the physical laws, because it is actually breaking those laws down.

I don’t think that’s pessimism. Just realism. Oh, wait a minute. Are they different?

I mean, if more than one person has access to it, believe me, they are going to work out some rules for using it amongst themselves (or kill each other until only one remains).

If only one person has access to it, well that is a limitation right there (as well as the foundation of a ‘kill the dark lord’ story…)

I wonder what the ramifications of a magic system without costs or limitations would be. Probably something extremely jacked up.

Sorry to go on so. Anyway, another good SF/Fantasy author that represents the ramifications side of magic and technology (the magic side of his writing was mentioned in the podcast) is Larry Niven. Niven wrote “The Magic Goes Away,” and “The Magic May Return,” and “More Magic,” and with Jerry Pournelle “The Burning City,” and “Burning Tower.”

On the SF side, Niven has written bunches of short stories, etc. that look at technological ramifications on society. He wrote about what would happen if society became dependent (and obsessive) about organ transplanting as a way to live longer/forever. This leads, of course, to a huge black market for all organs, including skin, bones, etc. He called it organlegging and explored it quite a bit. Consequently, he then examined the ramifications of what would happen when that society suddenly had machines that could fix/heal you of most anything. Along the way he touches on “corpsicles,” people that freeze themselves to be healed later, only to find out…. Just look up Larry Niven on wikipedia, and you’ll find his bibliography, or look up organlegging and skip the text (SPOILER WARNING) and look for the story references at the bottom.

@Lauren B:
I hope you don’t mean you won’t be posting here in the future? It’s great to get a wide range of insights, so I hope you continue posting.

http://mbarker.livejournal.com/71079.html

(About the only coherent thing I got out of Heretics of Dune. It might make more sense on acid, but I haven’t tried that).

My sincerest apologies. I’ll be keeping my mouth shut in the future. Thanks for editing that Dan.

I have to call Howard on something though. Although the Donkey Rule is an excellent one to keep in mind while designing a magic system your example of the Light spell from D&D putting candle makers out of business is questionable.

Light only lasts 10 min/level. A standard candle in D&D burns for an hour. It would take a 6th level wizard to equal the duration of a candle. Most of the casters in the world will be lower than that. And of course Bob & Marry Peasant can’t cast a lick of magic. Now continual flame will give you a light forever but it’s a 2nd level spell at minimum and requires 50gp worth of ruby dust putting it far out of reach of an average citizen in D&D.
Not to mention candles can supply heat and flame which can be useful in many ways.

So, even with magical means of light in a world there can still be a need for candles.

Although this brings up a point; even if you can do something with magic in a setting, it may just make more sense to do it the mundane way.

What does everyone think about having the limits of magic be primarily societal as opposed to inherent?

In the real world that seems to have worked. We haven’t annihilated ourselves with nuclear weapons yet, and we seem to be curbing some of our other self-destructive tendencies. “Checks and Balances” has served American Government well, though sometimes the pendulum swings back and forth across generations. States like mine (Utah) allow just about anybody to carry a handgun, and yet we don’t have bullet-wizards forcing their will upon society at large.

These sorts of examples will serve a writer well.

That being said, I think that – if I may make some sweeping generalizations here – most of the time, a magic system is most interesting if it has limitations, costs, etcetera associated with it. As pointed out in the ‘cast, a magic system that can just do ANYTHING is going to sap tension from a story pretty quickly, and once that’s gone so’s your audience. And although the wonderful thing about fantasy is supposedly that anything is possible, a world where anything is possible is horribly implausible. I think that suspension of belief is pivotal to that sense of wonder that’s so important in fantasy – and if I can’t get past the implausibility of a world and its magic system, I’m sure as heck not going to feel much wonderment at the system. Again, though, if you can make it work somehow within a narrative… *shrug*

Alternatively you can get pretty creative with the kinds of “costs” involved, if having people falling over from exhaustion or whatever after destroying massive amounts of matter doesn’t work for you. There are a lot of subtle physical or pyschological things that could affect a character casting said magic; or adverse affects could be inflicted on the world around the character. It could be as simple as: People have the ability to go around destroying massive amounts of matter with little-to-no effort. Problem? I think so! (See, I actually think that something like that would be a lot of fun to play with, but then I’m twisted like that.)

So I guess the short version of all this is “meh, whatever works”. Sorry for rambling. My excuse is that I’ve been attempting (unsuccessfully) to teach myself javascript all day; I’m pretty sure it’s melted my brain. Seriously, I can feel grey matter trickling out my ears.

a) Certain spells are known only to certain groups. Said groups don’t generally mix (and are often in conflict with each other), so it is impossible for any given mage to cast every spell in the book. Thus you may not have both the power to destroy the world and the power to defend yourself while you cast your world destroying spell.

b) Other wizards would prefer not to have the world destroyed right now and they can do something about it. There are also lots more of them than you.

What does everyone think about having the limits of magic be primarily societal as opposed to inherent?

Yes, editing posts would be nice.

Bravo on Tayler’s First Law aka the Donkey Rule. Dune is a spot on example on examining ramifications. I’ve not read much Charles Stross yet, but from what I understand from reading interviews with him, he thinks a lot about the economies of the technologies in his SF.

It occurred to me during the podcast why a lot of vampire/werewolf/etc. type of stuff turns me off, particularly as presented perhaps in movies. Those characters are inherently so powerful, and often their limitations/costs are worked around too easily by plot writers. I became a vampire in the game Oblivion. It was a pain trying to get anything done! Sunlight *hurts*. Not to mention the facts that the gods didn’t like you anymore….

Costs, limitations and ramifications really are an important key to both magic, and to technology in SF. Look at what Howard did with the teraport tech in Schlock’s Mercenary. Great stuff, fun stuff, and again, spot on example of the interesting things you can do when you stop and think about a particular technology’s or magic system’s impact.

Whoops, I plugged Howard twice in one post. Does someone keep score?

There’s more I thought of, but it’s after midnight, and my mana bar is down.