The price of using magic in a conworld

[Ilasir Maroa]

I don't like the idea of magic having a "cost," when it pops up in fantasy literature. It implies (like the example of Harry Potter, above) that magic is an extra thing laid over top of an already plausible world.

Couldn't agree more. There's this random blogger who has written about magic systems, and in her post on the cost of magic she makes the distinction that really captures the problem for me, namely that between internal and external costs. Internal costs are things intrinsic to the magic itself, such as draining life force, sacrificing small children, blah blah blah. As you said, the problem with these is that they seem to just be overlaid on top of the rest of the world and they make magic feel like something separate and different. Now, for many people that's exactly what they want magic to be—mysterious and different—and if that's their preference, then all the power to them. But I prefer magic systems where the magic comes across as a natural part of the character's world. It's magic to us, because it breaks the pesky laws that are killing me in my thermodynamics course right now, but to the characters the "magic" is the pesky laws that they fail courses over, the physics of their universe, so to speak, although I like to avoid the term "alternate physics" because it suggests realism and deep analysis which is more than necessary. To use TVTropes terminology, I find something appealing in functional magic: it doesn't matter how plausible the rules are—you can build me an enjoyable story over "clap your hands and time will stop, allowing you to move even though the frozen air molecules have nowhere to be displaced to and should hold you in place, and what's more how are you breathing anyways?—no, it doesn't matter to me, as long as your magic is consistent and fits in with the other elements of the story, and with the storyworld as a whole.

This is where those external costs come in. Internal costs make it difficult for the magic to fit in because the consequences seem so arbitrary. Why does the magic require you to sacrifice that small child? Why do you need the blood of the fourth son of the fifth house of Doo-Wap? Sure, all magic rules are arbitrary, but some of them just seem to be arbitrary chosen to cause the protagonist pain. Well, of course the protagonists have to face consequences for their actions—that's what makes the story interesting, after all—but that's where external costs come in. As random blogger asks: What about the villagers in the town that you just blocked off with a landslide? What about everybody else in the city that your calling heaven's fire upon? Needed to bend some water on the fly and grabbed it from the nearby plant life? Congrats, you just destroyed the livelihood of the man you were sent to befriend. Nice job breaking it, hero!

Focusing on external rather than internal costs makes the magic fit in more elegantly because, if magic is how your characters manipulate the world around them, external costs better mimic the challenges that we face in real life. The laws of thermodynamics are fundamentally simple. Heat flows from hot to cold. The universe becomes more disordered. Well, work with me here: though these assumptions are still of some debate, particularly the latter, let's assume that we're responsible for global warming, and that global warming is responsible for all sorts of environmental ills. Did thermodynamics declare that the price of our teleportation would be starvation from more severe droughts, billions of dollars in property damage from more severe wildfires, tornadoes, and hurricanes, or immeasurable loss in human life?

It would be impossible for any storyteller to match the complex interactions that underlie the real world. But the base concept is not: instead of having the All-Truth amulet simply require the sacrifice of a loved one in order to unleash its power, work your plot to be a series of unhappy coincidences, or, better yet, a thirty gambit pileup, which leads the hero to such an unwelcome choice. A cost as simple as having to rest and recuperate for a day, dismissed by random blogger as too temporary, more closely mimics the result of real-world exertion and, through clever plotting, can be just as devastating and much more satisfying then a more direct but less natural cost. Is it, for example, the magic itself which turns you insane in some mysterious and dangerous way, or the social ostracization that comes with being known and talked to only for what your magic can do, and then, by poor allocation of your limited resources, failing to use that magic effectively when it counted the most? I myself empathize more with the latter.

A mediocre fantasy author wrote:
A slightly better fantasy author wrote:

Couldn't agree less, because

This reduces "magic" to a pseudo-science, and its practitioners to technicians. Give CERN a few years and a hundred billion dollars and they'll tell you everything you ever wanted to know about Gi.

What, exactly, is wrong with this. I mean, of course it's a matter of personal preference, and I for one want to know as much about Gi as I can. Well, not really, actually, but this is where I think Sanderson's First Law really comes into play: an author's ability to solve conflict satisfactorily with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic. Your "slightly better" fantasy author has definitely captured the sense of wonder and mystery that many fantasy readers love, but Melishanda better not start praying to the gods during the climax. That scene would be great for establishing the feel of the world or developing Mel's character, but for "Would they listen to her pleading this time?" to be the resolution of any major plotline would be the definition of deus ex machina.

On the other hand, the "mediocre" fantasy writer has laid the foundations for Mel to use her magic at the moment of truth: we can hinge the resolution on how she manages to sneak the required metallic ore into the villain's all-wood headquarters, and thus give the reader the understanding they need to appreciate your conclusion.

I was thinking implications for culture, for production, for economics - even at the most obvious level. Why is there no ice cream in the Forgotten Realms? Why has nobody created a police state with divination? Why do conventional armies even exist? Why is political organisation and technology approximately the same as a generic medieval country?

Yes, indeed. These are things which are fun to explore, and I'd love to see more works do so.

One way to go would be to have a world where magic does the job of modern technology, with people commuting to work on flying carpets and watching news and soap operas on crystal balls.

Ooh, magitek! I like. I love how, in The Last Airbender, the trains in Ba Sing Se are moved through earth bending, and how earth bending is used for the mail in Oma Shu, and how they propel submarines with water bending. I even love the mundane utilities, like how Katara using waterbending to stir soup while cooking. And then Korra started off like it might also look into the social effects of bending but then veered off into a much more boring story. Korra also has the lightningbenders producing electricity, which is great and all, but brings up another one of these "basic societal impact" questions: why are magicians always just throwing fireballs at each other instead of using them to boil water to turn turbines to move electrons?


The blogger you link to is actually a friend of mine. (Also, he's a guy, not a girl.) I pointed him to this discussion, and he thought it was really cool. Ignoring the goofy jokes and references, he did a few posts on the issue of scientific versus wonder-based magic systems that I think [urlhttp://atsiko.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/meeting-your-goals-for-magic/]ties in here[/url] really well.



Basically, when you're trying to avoid a deus ex machina, mysterious magic can be a dangerous choice, which is why most novels/stories use const-based magic instead.



Personally, I love a good cost-based magic system. They're interesting and fun to analyze. To me, "magic" encompasses both those tings impossible in our world, and also the sense of mystery that some magic has associated with it. You can have either or both in a given magic, and it's down to personal preference whether you like them or not.


I would also suggest possibly looking at limyaael's fantasy rants for some good discussion on how magic might actually be fully integrated into a conworld.

[Pole, the]

The blogger you link to is actually a friend of mine. (Also, he's a guy, not a girl.) I pointed him to this discussion, and he thought it was really cool. Ignoring the goofy jokes and references, he did a few posts on the issue of scientific versus wonder-based magic systems that I think ties in here really well.

Ok, I started reading this blog and at the beginning I saw one serious flaw.

„System? What System? I Don’t Need No Freakin’ System!”

Hmm.
Here the author argues that magic systems are actually no systems at all.
What's wrong?

System is a composite object, i.e. a whole composed of parts. But the set of the relationships between the whole and the parts — when viewed as one — is a system as well. It's just another meaning of the word — and the author confuses the two. (And please note that the word has a very general usage!)
Secondly, the author recalls the theory about the system viewed as a set of processes. This point of view is right, of course, but it is not the only one. It does in no way exclude other sets of parts — what the author seems not to notice. Then the blogger does openly redefine some terms that will be used later — it is not wrong, either, for the sake of a newly developed theory. But the redefinition cannot be used as an argument against the thesis stated earlier. It does not follow.
Ok, not all the assumptions are wrong. I'd even say that many points are correct, even if slightly misaimed.
And I mean not that all the magic rulesets are systems. I just show that some of them can be viewed as such.

On the other hand, there is another conclusion that could — and should — be brought:

Whereas real life systems have to be both consistent and coherent, a believable magic ruleset should at least be consistent.

But that's actually off-topic, so sorry for that.

[Ilasir Maroa]

The blogger you link to is actually a friend of mine. (Also, he's a guy, not a girl.) I pointed him to this discussion, and he thought it was really cool. Ignoring the goofy jokes and references, he did a few posts on the issue of scientific versus wonder-based magic systems that I think ties in here really well.

Ok, I started reading this blog and at the beginning I saw one serious flaw.

„System? What System? I Don’t Need No Freakin’ System!”

Hmm.
Here the author argues that magic systems are actually no systems at all.
What's wrong?

System is a composite object, i.e. a whole composed of parts. But the set of the relationships between the whole and the parts — when viewed as one — is a system as well. It's just another meaning of the word — and the author confuses the two. (And please note that the word has a very general usage!)
Secondly, the author recalls the theory about the system viewed as a set of processes. This point of view is right, of course, but it is not the only one. It does in no way exclude other sets of parts — what the author seems not to notice. Then the blogger does openly redefine some terms that will be used later — it is not wrong, either, for the sake of a newly developed theory. But the redefinition cannot be used as an argument against the thesis stated earlier. It does not follow.
Ok, not all the assumptions are wrong. I'd even say that many points are correct, even if slightly misaimed.
And I mean not that all the magic rulesets are systems. I just show that some of them can be viewed as such.

On the other hand, there is another conclusion that could — and should — be brought:

Whereas real life systems have to be both consistent and coherent, a believable magic ruleset should at least be consistent.

But that's actually off-topic, so sorry for that.

I think he was just getting overly nit-picky about definitions.
But you make some good points in regards to how that nit-picking was flawed.

[Pole, the]

I am overly nitpicky about being overly nitpicky.
--

Also, getting slightly closer to the topic.

Give your system more than the old foursome. Wood and metal are both elements from the Chinese version of the system. I’d think rock and ice and sand could be culturally important to many peoples. Widen your scope. Be creative.

I have been thinking for some time about a magic system idea consisting of only three elements: Wood, Stone and Metal.
The powers are mutually exclusive. Each of them enables you control things made of that material, change their shapes and form. You can't turn, for example, an 0.1 kg stone into a 1000 kg boulder, but you can summon more stones from inside the earth. Their mass has to be conserved.

Wood power is the control of plants, wooden items and paper. Wood magic needs time to take effect and much patience is required from its users. However, you can easily build wooden houses, pieces of furniture, get food (i.e. fruits and vegetables, grains &c), produce drugs and drugs, create wonderful gardens and, importantly, disrupt Stone magic.

Person having the power of Stone gives you control over rocks, sand and glass. Because of its brittleness and inflexibility, you must be very careful when changing its shape — it breaks easily. Used properly, it enables you to build strong, high walls, create containers made of glass or clay, secure a hearth or a campfire &c. It also blocks the magic of Metal.

If you are a Metal mage, you can change the shape of metal pieces, separate it from the ore and prevent it from corrosion. You can change it into tools, wires, flat sheets, hollow containers, solid blocks and many other forms. When you use it, the metal resists you with some counterforce, though, and you must be endowed with a lot of resoluteness and willpower. It defeats the Wood power.

[KathTheDragon]

Stone-wood-metal = rock-paper-scissors. Even the rules are the same!

[WeepingElf]

Stone-wood-metal = rock-paper-scissors. Even the rules are the same!

Yes. Metal cuts wood; wood breaks stone; stone blunts metal. I can see how Pole arrived at this.

[Pole, the]

Stone-wood-metal = rock-paper-scissors. Even the rules are the same!

Ha! You saw through me!

[KathTheDragon]

It defeats the Wood power.

C'mon, it wasn't hard.

[ol bofosh]

I started relating the magic of my conworld (the first part of five) but in the end I'm gona start a new thread.

[Pole, the]

BTW, for reference, I'm 1/3 through reading the „Codex Alera” hexalogy by Jim Butcher (the Dresden guy).
He used a system of six elements, combining both the western Fire-Water-Wind-Earth and the eastern Fire-Water-Wind/Wood-Earth-Metal into three pairs: Fire vs Water, Wind vs Earth and Wood vs Metal.
The closest thing to an internal cost, I think, in the series is that each element can be countered by the opposite one (and the other ones, as well). You also get tired when using too much of your power, and what you can do is limited by your own skills and capabilities.
There are also the furies – elemental spirits enabling you to control the magic. They are however closer to Pokemon than genii loci, you don't trade with them, you just tell them what to do (unless you can't contact them) and each person has their own fury/furies.

[Ilasir Maroa]

BTW, for reference, I'm 1/3 through reading the „Codex Alera” hexalogy by Jim Butcher (the Dresden guy).
He used a system of six elements, combining both the western Fire-Water-Wind-Earth and the eastern Fire-Water-Wind/Wood-Earth-Metal into three pairs: Fire vs Water, Wind vs Earth and Wood vs Metal.
The closest thing to an internal cost, I think, in the series is that each element can be countered by the opposite one (and the other ones, as well). You also get tired when using too much of your power, and what you can do is limited by your own skills and capabilities.
There are also the furies – elemental spirits enabling you to control the magic. They are however closer to Pokemon than genii loci, you don't trade with them, you just tell them what to do (unless you can't contact them) and each person has their own fury/furies.

The whole pokemon aspect to elemental magic systems with spirits has always irritated me. It was one of the problems I had with codex alera.

I would love to see an elemental spirit system more like Rachel Aaron's Legend of Eli Monpress, except agan, without the whole spirit on your person system. Where, for example, what makes you powerful is knowledge of and relations with the local elemental spirits. Which is sort of how Monpress does it in his series. I love elemental magic systems, but it seems like they always go the pokemon route or the raw control the very essence of the elements route.


That way, rather than a D&D cost, you have a cost in time, energy, and knowledge, and also it naturally limits the use of magic because it would take forever to learn enough spirits to do crazy shit everywhere. Plus, then you have plotpoints about life-long sorcerers, education, sorcerer guilds to produce bigger spells, competition for the time and energy of useful or popular spirits. Etc.

[Sevly]

Where, for example, what makes you powerful is knowledge of and relations with the local elemental spirits.

The Iron Druid Chronicles, by Kevin Hearne, is an urban fantasy series which has this as a key factor. Druids like Atticus, the protogonist, can draw energy from the earth directly to supplement their physical strength, and do things like running for miles without tiring, but only elementals (or Gaia herself) can manipulate an environment on a larger scale by, say, burying something quickly or moving gold deposits to a convenient location, and so druids can only accomplish these actions by befriending the local elemental. For example, in Tricked, Atticus is arm-twisted into moving gold deposits for Coyote, and the elemental he asks, Colorado, first demands that he shut down a local coal mine which is hurting the earth. And this is only after Atticus has worked with Colorado times before to establish a relationship. To walk up to an elemental and asks for anything right off the bat will only get you told to get the hell out.