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Notable Fantasy Magic Systems?


aimlessgun

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I was going to make a new thread but apparently decorum suggests trying to fit posts into existing threads? :dunno:

I appreciate the article :D

The connections are pretty sketchily drawn though. There aren't even anecdotes backing up the conclusions he draws.

And he seems pretty fixated on attitudes to and comparisons with science. While those are connected to attitudes about religion and the paranormal, it doesn't mean you can't go and barely mention them when talking about historical conditions.

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I appreciate the article :D

The connections are pretty sketchily drawn though. There aren't even anecdotes backing up the conclusions he draws.

And he seems pretty fixated on attitudes to and comparisons with science. While those are connected to attitudes about the religion and the paranormal, it doesn't mean you can't go and not mention them when talking about historical conditions.

Can you clarify that bit? Not sure I understand.

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I was thinking of what goes into public reception and perception of a magic system, and while attitudes towards science do seem pretty important, especially with how sciency magic systems can get, attitudes towards mysticism, religion and the paranormal are just as applicable, and the article doesn't mention them (save in passing wrt Tolkien). I don't have a specific example like "The New Age movement affected magic systems in the 70's in this and this manner" or "the recent decline of the History Channel into paranormal bullshit is reflected in contemporary magic systems", but it feels like it should have had some effect.

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  • 5 months later...

So reading this Luke Scull thread made me think about this thread. Just read some books by a guy named Clemens called the Godslayer chronicles (I know, I know, cheesy), but the magic system was pretty neat. Power was based on the collected excretions of the 'gods', shit, blood, and all. Pretty neat.

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  • 1 month later...

So reading this Luke Scull thread made me think about this thread. Just read some books by a guy named Clemens called the Godslayer chronicles (I know, I know, cheesy), but the magic system was pretty neat. Power was based on the collected excretions of the 'gods', shit, blood, and all. Pretty neat.

Can you elaborate on this?

=-=-=

Was thinking about magic systems while reading about a setting where magic works via AIs manipulating quantum probabilities or some such. It wasn't well explained but it did get me thinking:

Also, I know Warren Ellis has called magic the cheat codes of the universe and attempted to relate it to information theory. This sort of does make sense to me, and supports the "laws of magic" such as part effects whole and like effects like.

Basically there would be common "bits" between certain objects/concepts/etc. Assume a sort of "conservation of information" so these bits that describe the universe minimize duplication. So the concept of, say, love is encoded once. All things in the universe that relate to love share at least some of the same love bits.

(For an example of how this works in programming, here's a piece on minimizing data duplication in functional programming languages.)

So somewhere in total sum of information about a feather is information about flight. The magician then follows the links of the underlying data structures of the universe, and gets to the platonic concept of Flight. From this root, the magician can then add to the information in the universe by combining information about himself with the concept of Flight.

Later, other magicians will access the human flying bits, with the only edit being the edit/replace of themselves instead of the original magician or the info of themselves in a new space/time position.

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Glenda Larke - Stormlord

Some people posess the ability to sense and manipulate water (takes place in a desert like landscape)

I am not quite sure if it was relevant to the plot and how it was introduced but there is also another form of magic:

Waterpaint: You paint a picture and thereby pinpoint a event in the future (your painting tries to fullfill itself)

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