"Fantasy does not include impossibility" is one of my favorite videos! I've always hated the notion that "anything can happen in the story because it's fantasy" which is silly. It'd ruin all the stakes if anything could happen for any reason.
I love seeing different unique magic systems, it’s like all the different fight mechanics in manga. There’s a manga called “Undead Unluck” and the powers are that you will negate something, so the fights are really cool as when fighting a new person they have to figure out what their power is actually doing and what they’re negating.
I think "RPG Magic" is a great term because, history of "hard" magic aside, it more precisely expresses what a "Hard" magic system is. I think the history is accurate, which is *why* the term is useful. But even if not. So, yeah, I'm stealing it.
Some great food for thought as I work on the revisions to my first Necrolopolis novel. With thirteen published short stories in the universe, you'd think I'd have a firm handle on exactly what kind of magic system is in it, but I'm still figuring it out. It definitely has RPG-like elements to it, but I think it falls more under sorcery. There are rules, but not to the level of Sanderson's allomancy.
I haven't read as much as I might have, but I have played a lot of D&D. After years of playing 1st. edition, I remade the arcane magic system. Casting spells is exhausting, the higher level caster you are, the more spells you can cast before becoming exhausted. Having an explanation for limitations in magic is important, but it's got to be more than just a notion of "balance."
What do you (David) think of a "tricks" form of magic ? One where misdirection, gadgets, chemicals and/or technology are used to mimic the supernatural presences of magic. The most obvious version of this that comes to mind would be with the Techno-mage of the Babylon 5 setting.
Only about halfway through, but how about the Force in Star Wars? The Force in the original movie vs the prequels vs the sequels vs the Legend EU books?
The Harry potter style magic system is unsatisfying in certain ways because there is no cost to it but on the other hand that doesn't have 'real world ' consequences. One obvious example is the Weasleys who are poor - why? If there is no cost to magic no magical user should be poor. In contrast Gandalf is constrained by the Valar (?) in what he can do and casting spells makes him tired as with locking the door of Mazarbul against the Balrog
I like the idea of magic terroirs (to borrow a wine term), that certain environs exude a magic of their own. "Thomas Covenant" makes use of this. "LotR" is loaded with lands that subtly ooze magic, whether Mirkwood, Mithrim, Ithilien or even the Shire. Nature kamis in Shinto might also be interpreted as an expression of place based magic. Best of all, this is a form of magic still found in our mundane world.
These are expressions of the fae, which Tolkien wrote stories explicitly about. You can find some in "Tales from the Perilous Realm." It's a really important element in his work.
Yeah. I don't know that he said it explicitly, but a feature of fairytale magic is that it's primary purpose is to set up the story/conflict/setting. How it works or where it comes from is not really important; we're here to see how characters respond to the situation. A good example would be an old short horror story the Monkey's Fist or stories about magical lamps. Character can make a wish; what do they wish for and what happens next?
I'm reading 'Alshafaltha', and I'm enjoying it. I like the notion of a wise elf king being very unwise and falling for a short-lived human woman. But while reading chapter IX. The Wasteland, I had to shake my head in confusion a couple times - Nomundal is referred to as 'Nomethues' and then a couple pages later as 'Nomteheus.' I enjoy the imagery and I do indeed feel as if I am in a magical world - it's just a bit jarring to the immersion factor with editorial errors snapping you out of the story. I hope you receive this bit of constructive criticism in good stride. Oh, 'and a single, loan great boar', I think is meant to be "lone."
I wonder if there are stories that treated their magic systems as religions/philosophies. Star Wars only got there superficially, as the only force "believer" that wasn't a Jedi was the blind guy from Rogue One (afaik). Avatar TLA got a lot more closer.
@@DVSPress But we don't get much about the cultural part of that magic. Were there any glimpses of people practicing rituals to these gods? (I only read Elric..., Pearl Fortress and Sailor... a couple of years ago)
@@ulaznar The cosmology of Moorcock's multiverse is based around a conflict between the gods of order and chaos, they are named, some cultures worship them. More rituals in things like Hawkmoon, but Elric is still fairly heavy on the gods.
Huh. My magic is a lot of type 1, though I'm not sure how to classify the stuff my main characters tend to use. They tend to have more superpower style magic, where they have (for reasons of type one magic rituals) the ability to use certain abilities as natural parts of themselves. It's not knowledge based and it doesn't have a 'mana pool' or stamina limit. I guess you could say that physical fatigue could be considered their cost, but (coughs) so far all of them have 'don't get tired (easily)' as part of the power set. I guess I'd have to posit a Type Four- innate abilities without a resources system maybe? They're effectively muscles, just supernatural/ unnatural. Now that I think of it, one of my (failed project) protagonists had a sort of resources system for his innate magic. Every other bit of magic I have is type 1, though.
I think part of the failure of the later Harry Potter books in the eyes of a lot of fans is that as the kids grew older and the story started to focus more on Voldemorts particular actions in the world Rowling tried to transition the story away from sourcery/fairy tale magic as a background to kids mystery/drama towards RPG in order to give the conflicts between magical characters more understandable stakes. Good example of this is her walking back the killing curse. In the first few books the killing curse is described as unblockable and impossible to survive with the only exception being Harry. While this functions in the first books to make the audience fear Voldemort and establish how powerful and scary dark wizards are it, however, creates a massive problem four books later when you actually have to show grown wizards who can use the unforgivable curses dueling in an RPG type way. Why don't the death eaters just only use the killing curse and invalidate all defensive magic instantly? Why bother learning shield charms if they're useless against your enemies main weapon? Horcruxes are another example. Instead of Voldemort having mysterious and unexplained powers that give him the sauronesque ability to survive as a spirit despite his body being destroyed, Rowling explains his invulnerability using horcruxes as a sort of videogame fetch quest plot vehicle for the last books in order to make him surmountable by Harry given the shift towards more RPG magic and grittier realism in the later books. The tone of the series totally shifted and the magic system had to shift with it.
Thank you for the video, it was really great! I am currently struggling with coming up with sources of conflict in extremely high magic settings (which incidentally is one of my main criticisms of Harry Potter, but I digress), like a typical D&D setting full of arcane and divine spellcasters. If characters can have all their needs, such as nutrition, met through magic, if every chapel has a cleric who can cure wounds and even diseases/plagues (which was a huge problem in medieval or even early modern era) then what is realistically there to fight for? Initially I thought space, as humans have been duking it out for space since the birth of mankind, but even space can be fixed with magical portable holes/pocket planes etc. Nowadays the only thing I am coming up with is a really dystopian and depressing rat utopia experiment scenario, where the populations of high magic worlds grow increasingly decadent bordering on insane (addicted to conjured food for instance), but that is starting to feel too much like commentary on modernity.
People can also fight over ideology. It fits below resources and space, but we do see it in our world today. It's also interesting to note at what Voldemort's end goal even is, and it can all be boiled down to him being the one to kill Harry, and maybe also making Slytherin the only house at Hogwarts. But other than that, we are never really told Voldemort's wants and needs.
I've actually learned something new with your storycraft videos. BTW have you read Terry Pratchett's *A slip of the keyboard* book? It collects Pratchett's essays and letters into one book. In one of his essays he stated that there were many tolkienistas (authors who wrote Tolkien-inspired fantasy stories) who didn't understand J.R.R.Tolkien works because they wrote about quests to get power, in opposite to Tolkien's quest to destroy the power. Pratchett also mentioned about the abundance of fantasy in 1980s and 1990s where authors would bring big, heavy chests full of hundreds of pages worth of manuscript, runic languages, maps and other stuff to the publisher as well as the stagnation of fantasy in 1990s. He wrote that in 1990s the fantasy boom reached the peak where every convention had fantasy and in one do the fantasy magazine "Locus" he saw that in top 10 best fantasy books, three of them had "Lords of Darkness" or something like that. Which brings me to the question, what do you think of it as a fantasy consumer, writer and self-publisher?
Most of the Tolkien rip-off stuff was copying the surface level stuff, copying his mannerisms without understanding what underpinned the stories at all. Fantasy is also a very, very broad category, so it's hard to have a single opinion on it. I've more a fan of older and mid 20th century stories than the fantasy that happened after 1980, as the tone started to shift toward very decompressed storytelling styles. Wheel of Time is a great example, a story the old masters would never have bothered with because it's too unfocused, too long, with far too many superfluous characters and events. But that is what "epic" meant in the 2000s - BIGGER THAN TOLKIEN!!! After WoT everyone was rushing to make either "Sandersonian" epics or doing thinly veiled social allegories that were all too long for the stories within them. And since we're on magic, the "magic" of fantasy was lost at some point because the writers became secularists who viewed the genre as a style with conventions rather than something more substantial.
@@DVSPress I agree. The best parts of tolkien have been ignored. People also don't read mythology much anymore. Fantasy is downstream of mythology. Very few secularists can write good fantasy. Fantasy writing has become too much of a science. Too much systemization, no soul behind it.
So I have two worlds that I built that included magic systems. One is absolutely one hundred percent a sorcery system. Those who have a connection to the life force of the world or the magic users because it is the source of magic. The other one though, I'm not too sure about. So maybe you can help me out. No one cast spells, is not actually considered magic, per se. Instead they come back with nearly unparalleled skill in the thing that the god represents, for example if a blacksmith were to be chosen by the god of the forwards he would become a nearly unmatched expert blacksmith. Or, they may be granted influence over one of the elements. It's not magic, they can't shoot Fireballs out of their hand. But if they have a torch they can use it as a fucking flamethrower. There's also No Limit, they don't get tired because they're not actually using magic, they're just influencing the element. The main character is one of these and has influence over the wind
You’re one of my favorite educators on UA-cam, you condense and transmit info very effectively.
Thank you!
"Fantasy does not include impossibility" is one of my favorite videos! I've always hated the notion that "anything can happen in the story because it's fantasy" which is silly. It'd ruin all the stakes if anything could happen for any reason.
I love seeing different unique magic systems, it’s like all the different fight mechanics in manga. There’s a manga called “Undead Unluck” and the powers are that you will negate something, so the fights are really cool as when fighting a new person they have to figure out what their power is actually doing and what they’re negating.
I think "RPG Magic" is a great term because, history of "hard" magic aside, it more precisely expresses what a "Hard" magic system is.
I think the history is accurate, which is *why* the term is useful. But even if not.
So, yeah, I'm stealing it.
I love when magic and science exist in the same world. Secret of NIMH and The Matrix trilogy are some of my favourite fictional things.
Some great food for thought as I work on the revisions to my first Necrolopolis novel. With thirteen published short stories in the universe, you'd think I'd have a firm handle on exactly what kind of magic system is in it, but I'm still figuring it out. It definitely has RPG-like elements to it, but I think it falls more under sorcery. There are rules, but not to the level of Sanderson's allomancy.
Great video David! I am in the middle of writing my fantasy book and this was immensely helpful.
Would love to see more vids on magic systems.
Man you're a life saver. I've been having trouble trying to figure out a proper magic system. This video definitely helped giving me a heads start.
I haven't read as much as I might have, but I have played a lot of D&D. After years of playing 1st. edition, I remade the arcane magic system. Casting spells is exhausting, the higher level caster you are, the more spells you can cast before becoming exhausted. Having an explanation for limitations in magic is important, but it's got to be more than just a notion of "balance."
Very cool, got some ideas for a story.
What do you (David) think of a "tricks" form of magic ? One where misdirection, gadgets, chemicals and/or technology are used to mimic the supernatural presences of magic. The most obvious version of this that comes to mind would be with the Techno-mage of the Babylon 5 setting.
I think it's great.
Technology is also another kind of magic though I don't cover that in this video. In science fiction it functions the same way.
Dan Koboldt has a series where a Las Vegas magician goes through a gate to a Fantasy world with that premise.
@@Br1cht Basically the Wizard of Oz xD
It's the idea that underpins "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court."
Only about halfway through, but how about the Force in Star Wars? The Force in the original movie vs the prequels vs the sequels vs the Legend EU books?
The Harry potter style magic system is unsatisfying in certain ways because there is no cost to it but on the other hand that doesn't have 'real world ' consequences. One obvious example is the Weasleys who are poor - why? If there is no cost to magic no magical user should be poor. In contrast Gandalf is constrained by the Valar (?) in what he can do and casting spells makes him tired as with locking the door of Mazarbul against the Balrog
A lot of what people mistakenly call "Isekai" is actually something call "LitRPG".
I like the idea of magic terroirs (to borrow a wine term), that certain environs exude a magic of their own. "Thomas Covenant" makes use of this. "LotR" is loaded with lands that subtly ooze magic, whether Mirkwood, Mithrim, Ithilien or even the Shire.
Nature kamis in Shinto might also be interpreted as an expression of place based magic. Best of all, this is a form of magic still found in our mundane world.
These are expressions of the fae, which Tolkien wrote stories explicitly about. You can find some in "Tales from the Perilous Realm." It's a really important element in his work.
I'm more into science fiction but great points! Also, excellent thumbnail.
So what kind of magic system would a movie like Groundhog Day, with Bill Murray, be using? Would that fall under fairytale magic?
Sounds like.
Yeah. I don't know that he said it explicitly, but a feature of fairytale magic is that it's primary purpose is to set up the story/conflict/setting. How it works or where it comes from is not really important; we're here to see how characters respond to the situation. A good example would be an old short horror story the Monkey's Fist or stories about magical lamps. Character can make a wish; what do they wish for and what happens next?
Groundhog Day is definitely a fairy tail!
I'm reading 'Alshafaltha', and I'm enjoying it. I like the notion of a wise elf king being very unwise and falling for a short-lived human woman. But while reading chapter IX. The Wasteland, I had to shake my head in confusion a couple times - Nomundal is referred to as 'Nomethues' and then a couple pages later as 'Nomteheus.' I enjoy the imagery and I do indeed feel as if I am in a magical world - it's just a bit jarring to the immersion factor with editorial errors snapping you out of the story. I hope you receive this bit of constructive criticism in good stride. Oh, 'and a single, loan great boar', I think is meant to be "lone."
I wonder if there are stories that treated their magic systems as religions/philosophies. Star Wars only got there superficially, as the only force "believer" that wasn't a Jedi was the blind guy from Rogue One (afaik). Avatar TLA got a lot more closer.
Most sorcery is at least somewhat religious. Elric's sorcery involves calling upon the gods, a religious act.
@@DVSPress But we don't get much about the cultural part of that magic. Were there any glimpses of people practicing rituals to these gods? (I only read Elric..., Pearl Fortress and Sailor... a couple of years ago)
@@ulaznar The cosmology of Moorcock's multiverse is based around a conflict between the gods of order and chaos, they are named, some cultures worship them. More rituals in things like Hawkmoon, but Elric is still fairly heavy on the gods.
Huh. My magic is a lot of type 1, though I'm not sure how to classify the stuff my main characters tend to use. They tend to have more superpower style magic, where they have (for reasons of type one magic rituals) the ability to use certain abilities as natural parts of themselves. It's not knowledge based and it doesn't have a 'mana pool' or stamina limit. I guess you could say that physical fatigue could be considered their cost, but (coughs) so far all of them have 'don't get tired (easily)' as part of the power set. I guess I'd have to posit a Type Four- innate abilities without a resources system maybe? They're effectively muscles, just supernatural/ unnatural.
Now that I think of it, one of my (failed project) protagonists had a sort of resources system for his innate magic.
Every other bit of magic I have is type 1, though.
I think part of the failure of the later Harry Potter books in the eyes of a lot of fans is that as the kids grew older and the story started to focus more on Voldemorts particular actions in the world Rowling tried to transition the story away from sourcery/fairy tale magic as a background to kids mystery/drama towards RPG in order to give the conflicts between magical characters more understandable stakes.
Good example of this is her walking back the killing curse. In the first few books the killing curse is described as unblockable and impossible to survive with the only exception being Harry. While this functions in the first books to make the audience fear Voldemort and establish how powerful and scary dark wizards are it, however, creates a massive problem four books later when you actually have to show grown wizards who can use the unforgivable curses dueling in an RPG type way. Why don't the death eaters just only use the killing curse and invalidate all defensive magic instantly? Why bother learning shield charms if they're useless against your enemies main weapon? Horcruxes are another example. Instead of Voldemort having mysterious and unexplained powers that give him the sauronesque ability to survive as a spirit despite his body being destroyed, Rowling explains his invulnerability using horcruxes as a sort of videogame fetch quest plot vehicle for the last books in order to make him surmountable by Harry given the shift towards more RPG magic and grittier realism in the later books.
The tone of the series totally shifted and the magic system had to shift with it.
Thank you for the video, it was really great! I am currently struggling with coming up with sources of conflict in extremely high magic settings (which incidentally is one of my main criticisms of Harry Potter, but I digress), like a typical D&D setting full of arcane and divine spellcasters.
If characters can have all their needs, such as nutrition, met through magic, if every chapel has a cleric who can cure wounds and even diseases/plagues (which was a huge problem in medieval or even early modern era) then what is realistically there to fight for? Initially I thought space, as humans have been duking it out for space since the birth of mankind, but even space can be fixed with magical portable holes/pocket planes etc.
Nowadays the only thing I am coming up with is a really dystopian and depressing rat utopia experiment scenario, where the populations of high magic worlds grow increasingly decadent bordering on insane (addicted to conjured food for instance), but that is starting to feel too much like commentary on modernity.
People can also fight over ideology. It fits below resources and space, but we do see it in our world today. It's also interesting to note at what Voldemort's end goal even is, and it can all be boiled down to him being the one to kill Harry, and maybe also making Slytherin the only house at Hogwarts. But other than that, we are never really told Voldemort's wants and needs.
I've actually learned something new with your storycraft videos. BTW have you read Terry Pratchett's *A slip of the keyboard* book? It collects Pratchett's essays and letters into one book. In one of his essays he stated that there were many tolkienistas (authors who wrote Tolkien-inspired fantasy stories) who didn't understand J.R.R.Tolkien works because they wrote about quests to get power, in opposite to Tolkien's quest to destroy the power. Pratchett also mentioned about the abundance of fantasy in 1980s and 1990s where authors would bring big, heavy chests full of hundreds of pages worth of manuscript, runic languages, maps and other stuff to the publisher as well as the stagnation of fantasy in 1990s. He wrote that in 1990s the fantasy boom reached the peak where every convention had fantasy and in one do the fantasy magazine "Locus" he saw that in top 10 best fantasy books, three of them had "Lords of Darkness" or something like that. Which brings me to the question, what do you think of it as a fantasy consumer, writer and self-publisher?
Most of the Tolkien rip-off stuff was copying the surface level stuff, copying his mannerisms without understanding what underpinned the stories at all.
Fantasy is also a very, very broad category, so it's hard to have a single opinion on it. I've more a fan of older and mid 20th century stories than the fantasy that happened after 1980, as the tone started to shift toward very decompressed storytelling styles. Wheel of Time is a great example, a story the old masters would never have bothered with because it's too unfocused, too long, with far too many superfluous characters and events. But that is what "epic" meant in the 2000s - BIGGER THAN TOLKIEN!!! After WoT everyone was rushing to make either "Sandersonian" epics or doing thinly veiled social allegories that were all too long for the stories within them.
And since we're on magic, the "magic" of fantasy was lost at some point because the writers became secularists who viewed the genre as a style with conventions rather than something more substantial.
@@DVSPress I agree. The best parts of tolkien have been ignored. People also don't read mythology much anymore. Fantasy is downstream of mythology. Very few secularists can write good fantasy. Fantasy writing has become too much of a science. Too much systemization, no soul behind it.
So I have two worlds that I built that included magic systems. One is absolutely one hundred percent a sorcery system. Those who have a connection to the life force of the world or the magic users because it is the source of magic.
The other one though, I'm not too sure about. So maybe you can help me out. No one cast spells, is not actually considered magic, per se. Instead they come back with nearly unparalleled skill in the thing that the god represents, for example if a blacksmith were to be chosen by the god of the forwards he would become a nearly unmatched expert blacksmith. Or, they may be granted influence over one of the elements. It's not magic, they can't shoot Fireballs out of their hand. But if they have a torch they can use it as a fucking flamethrower. There's also No Limit, they don't get tired because they're not actually using magic, they're just influencing the element. The main character is one of these and has influence over the wind
We could use more descriptive terms rather than interpreting. External, internal, predictable, unpredictable.