Helbrecht
Minstrel
I wasn't sure whether to put this in Writing Questions or World Building, but as you can see, I eventually went with the latter. I figure this is a question about world building, so yeah. Excuse the appalling pun in the title.
We've all seen them, haven't we? Maybe the fact that they independently sprouted up in the mythologies of about five separate ancient civilisations had something to do with it. Or maybe it's because that as a theory of what constitutes the universe, they weren't credibly disproven until the discovery of the atom barely a century ago. Whichever way you spin it, the idea of an "elemental" system - that is, fire, earth, water, air (maybe metal, wood, aether or whatever if you're so inclined) - is well-ingrained in popular culture.
It's natural that such an important part of mythology and metaphysics would be co-opted by the fantasy genre at some point. Using these elements as the basis of a setting's magic system is rife in the genre and has also seemingly been adopted by RPGs and anime.
However, it's such an old idea and it's so frequently used by so many authors that I fear it has become something of a cliché. Have any of you written anything with such a system before? Did you go the traditional route with it or did you attempt something ambitious and inventive with this tried-and-tested tool? Do you think there is still room to do something interesting and original with it? Do we need to, or does it work fine as it is?
I ask these things because I've realised that the setting I'm working on, which already has mages called Pyremasters and Windspeakers, might logically include such a system. In truth, I'm already in the process of writing it up. But I'm being a little self-conscious about it, and I'm wondering what my fellow Scribes have to say on the subject.
We've all seen them, haven't we? Maybe the fact that they independently sprouted up in the mythologies of about five separate ancient civilisations had something to do with it. Or maybe it's because that as a theory of what constitutes the universe, they weren't credibly disproven until the discovery of the atom barely a century ago. Whichever way you spin it, the idea of an "elemental" system - that is, fire, earth, water, air (maybe metal, wood, aether or whatever if you're so inclined) - is well-ingrained in popular culture.
It's natural that such an important part of mythology and metaphysics would be co-opted by the fantasy genre at some point. Using these elements as the basis of a setting's magic system is rife in the genre and has also seemingly been adopted by RPGs and anime.
However, it's such an old idea and it's so frequently used by so many authors that I fear it has become something of a cliché. Have any of you written anything with such a system before? Did you go the traditional route with it or did you attempt something ambitious and inventive with this tried-and-tested tool? Do you think there is still room to do something interesting and original with it? Do we need to, or does it work fine as it is?
I ask these things because I've realised that the setting I'm working on, which already has mages called Pyremasters and Windspeakers, might logically include such a system. In truth, I'm already in the process of writing it up. But I'm being a little self-conscious about it, and I'm wondering what my fellow Scribes have to say on the subject.