The dreaded "Magic System".

[Gospodin]

If you still clicked the thread after reading the title, I thank you in advance for taking the time to help me with what I am sure is an insufferably perennial question. I'm a noob to magic and all that...

Ok, it goes like this:

Urban Fantasy
Berlin, Germany
Just at and right after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

My story revolves around two MC's who were stationed at Tempelhof AFB in those days. There are otherworldly beings living in Berlin (and everywhere) who are the source for most of human myth and legend. They live, they are real, and like all myth and legend, they are somewhat smaller than the tales and stories that come to enshroud them over millennia. My two MC's are drawn into this "other world" that happens and is lived in plain sight. I believe the technical term for this dynamic of story-telling is a "masquerade".

The magic I'm feeling for this story is what I think of as jeans and tee shirt magic. It's not "big". It's not Hogwarts-ie. Most of it can happen in plain site of normals without raising a mortal eyebrow.

But, when needed, some "big" magic can happen.

The constraints... Here's where it goes fuzzy for me.

I don't want to use aging or advancing decrepitude as a restraint. No. I don't like that at all. One thing I am using is that each of the beings we meet is a particular kind of being, and each particular kind only has {finite set} of abilities. There's no school or class or potion you can take to get more "aps", so to speak. What you can do is what you can do and that's that.

My worry is that this makes them feel a bit X-Men-esque, and I don't want to write a comic book superhero story. I want a natural feel, and a sense of these beings having been here since the dawn of writing.

Do I have a question? I'm not sure... Come ponder with me, yes?

 

[Fluffypoodel]

I have faced similar dilemmas over the years, for this reason I have tried to stay away form magic systems, but every once in a while I find myself lured back. When I do delve into that world I try to do so with some restraint. Magic breaks the rules that we live everyday but it must have rules itself to be consistent. I suggest that whatever you decide on make sure you have a firm set of rules that allows for casual magic as well as some kind of loop hole for the big events. Brandon Sanderson gets praised a lot for his magic systems so you might want to do a little research there. Hope this helped!

 

[trentonian7]

If you still clicked the thread after reading the title, I thank you in advance for taking the time to help me with what I am sure is an insufferably perennial question. I'm a noob to magic and all that...

Ok, it goes like this:

Urban Fantasy
Berlin, Germany
Just at and right after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

My story revolves around two MC's who were stationed at Tempelhof AFB in those days. There are otherworldly beings living in Berlin (and everywhere) who are the source for most of human myth and legend. They live, they are real, and like all myth and legend, they are somewhat smaller than the tales and stories that come to enshroud them over millennia. My two MC's are drawn into this "other world" that happens and is lived in plain sight. I believe the technical term for this dynamic of story-telling is a "masquerade".

The magic I'm feeling for this story is what I think of as jeans and tee shirt magic. It's not "big". It's not Hogwarts-ie. Most of it can happen in plain site of normals without raising a mortal eyebrow.

But, when needed, some "big" magic can happen.

The constraints... Here's where it goes fuzzy for me.

I don't want to use aging or advancing decrepitude as a restraint. No. I don't like that at all. One thing I am using is that each of the beings we meet is a particular kind of being, and each particular kind only has {finite set} of abilities. There's no school or class or potion you can take to get more "aps", so to speak. What you can do is what you can do and that's that.

My worry is that this makes them feel a bit X-Men-esque, and I don't want to write a comic book superhero story. I want a natural feel, and a sense of these beings having been here since the dawn of writing.

Do I have a question? I'm not sure... Come ponder with me, yes?

I've encountered a similar problem. I want inborn and a "finite" set of abilities in my magic users; no spells or potions as you said. However, I encountered a few issues.

1. I also worried it sounded too much like x-men

2. I do want some reoccurring magic among my mages, ie; I don't want everyone to have extremely unique and bizarre abilities, though this is easily remedied by giving some magic users similar powers.

3. If there are no spells and a mage's magic is specific to him, can he ever be taught new ways to use his magic? Will he ever fully develop or understand the extent of his abilities? This is the point I've struggled the most with, though, to be fair, my magic tends to be more potent than the subtler magic of yours

 

[K.S. Crooks]

I think your confusion/uncertainty starts with whether something is magic vs superpowers. For me magic is taught and learned. It may be that only those with a certain quality can do so but it is still not a given that they can wield the power or have any skill in doing so. Powers on the other hand are not learned. They can be born with, bestowed, happen by accident or by design.
For what you want you should consider how your characters gain their powers/abilities, how they learn to control them, can these powers be taken away/nullified, what are the limitations of the power? I see the limitations as the most crucial aspect since this will determine the level of struggle your characters may face.

I like the idea of subtle magic/powers and that the people are discrete in their actions. However, people being the imperfect creatures we are, mistakes will happen. You may want to have some type of contingency plans that are followed when a breech of etiquette happens. I'm not sure if this is what mean by your post. Let me know what you think. Cheers.

 

[Heliotrope]

Can you give some examples of what you might mean by your 'jeans and t-shirt' type magic? Are you thinking x-men style abilities (creating fire, creating ice, reading minds, controlling weather etc.) Or, are you thinking of more traditional spell craft? When I think of magic that has a 'natural' feel, and magic that has been around since the dawn of time, then I typically think of what may have been considered magic in history, but science has proven otherwise:
Tarot card reading/fortune telling
astrology/star reading
sword swallowing/fire breathing
slight of hand tricks/pick pocketing


etc. The list is endless.

I'm wondering, if you want a more 'natural' feel that maybe you want to consider that tone? I also wonder if perhaps you want to look into the style of Magical Realism? I'm not sure if that is the style you are going for, but that is what I think of when I think of 'natural' and not X-men.

 

[Gospodin]

Firstly, thanks to everyone for your time, suggestions, and mostly for your questions. Questions are very profitable, I find. As I answer, I am answering to myself as much as to each of you who has been so kind as to help me.

... Brandon Sanderson gets praised a lot for his magic systems so you might want to do a little research there. Hope this helped!

Thank you much for the suggested reading, both for this project and for reading in general. I want to remember Steerpike also mentioning this writer in a different haunt he and I inhabit.

3. If there are no spells and a mage's magic is specific to him, can he ever be taught new ways to use his magic? Will he ever fully develop or understand the extent of his abilities? This is the point I've struggled the most with, though, to be fair, my magic tends to be more potent than the subtler magic of yours

And here is where I am too. The story is still very nascent. A scene and some people and a thing happening came to mind, which is always the way with me, and I just went with it as it presented itself. In its current, fetal incarnation there is little explanation for how the magic that does get worked comes about. It was as I started to backtrack and think about how each can do what he or she does that my feet got stuck in the mud.

I think your confusion/uncertainty starts with whether something is magic vs superpowers. For me magic is taught and learned. It may be that only those with a certain quality can do so but it is still not a given that they can wield the power or have any skill in doing so. Powers on the other hand are not learned. They can be born with, bestowed, happen by accident or by design.
For what you want you should consider how your characters gain their powers/abilities, how they learn to control them, can these powers be taken away/nullified, what are the limitations of the power? I see the limitations as the most crucial aspect since this will determine the level of struggle your characters may face.

I like the idea of subtle magic/powers and that the people are discrete in their actions. However, people being the imperfect creatures we are, mistakes will happen. You may want to have some type of contingency plans that are followed when a breech of etiquette happens. I'm not sure if this is what mean by your post. Let me know what you think. Cheers.

You have struck the nail squarely on the head. Without going into too much detail, save for a few crucial characters, everyone in this story was born a simple, mortal human. Their status as members of "the other world" is bestowed upon them (to answer part of your above question) in a ceremony that includes the eating of a leaf from a tree that appears to be just an ornamental bonsai, but is in fact a sort of flipped inside-out representation of Yggdrasil. One of the characters who was not born a mortal is charged with the care of the tree and she is the leader of those magic beings who live in West Berlin. So, using your parameters, what my characters have are powers bestowed unto them. The powers cannot be taken away except through death, and though denizens of "the other world" are immortal in the sense that they do not age, they are quite killable. As mentioned earlier, I am playing with the idea of mythologizing, but in reverse. The myth always being so much bigger and more potent than the real thing. They all practice a sort of "never in front of muggles" golden rule, or at least a "nothing that muggles would notice" rule because of their fragile, exposable, non-bullet-proof nature. You bring up the question of how they learn to deploy the powers they posses and this is a very good question. It requires rumination on my part because I hadn't given it thought. I am minded of the manner in which denizens of the Avatar world (element benders, not smexy blue aliens) have to learn to use their powers regardless of their status as a bender or non-bender.

Can you give some examples of what you might mean by your 'jeans and t-shirt' type magic? Are you thinking x-men style abilities (creating fire, creating ice, reading minds, controlling weather etc.) Or, are you thinking of more traditional spell craft? When I think of magic that has a 'natural' feel, and magic that has been around since the dawn of time, then I typically think of what may have been considered magic in history, but science has proven otherwise:
Tarot card reading/fortune telling
astrology/star reading
sword swallowing/fire breathing
slight of hand tricks/pick pocketing


etc. The list is endless.

I'm wondering, if you want a more 'natural' feel that maybe you want to consider that tone? I also wonder if perhaps you want to look into the style of Magical Realism? I'm not sure if that is the style you are going for, but that is what I think of when I think of 'natural' and not X-men.

Not like Magic Realism. No. I'm familiar with and well read in that subgenre, and I love it, but that serves a different purpose that I don't think I want to wield in this story. Also, not magic in the sense of carnival magic / slight of hand either. More a cross between traditional spell craft and (ugh...) X-men style powers. To give example, one of the characters can alter emotional states with her breath, another is a shape-shifter of sorts, but nothing so dramatic as human-to-horse, simply the ability alter her form to please the eye and thus manipulate the subject. My MC whispers a spell of forgetfulness at the back of someone they encounter and have to deal with so that he remembers nothing of what he has seen. There is a group of characters who are a sort of living mandala who frequent a club that I myself frequented in Berlin when I lived there, their dancing to old-school industrial music, in learned patterns on the dance-floor, opening doorways and shortcuts across the city and to the other side (the East) when needed.

 

[Steerpike]

Gospodin:

I'm going to think on this and provide, hopefully, a helpful answer when I have more time to type. Have you ever read Charles de Lint? I ask not because he writers the sort of thing you're talking about, but he's a prominent figure in urban fantasy is you want something more like a real world where magic is mostly understated (as opposed to, for example, Jim Butcher). His Newford books, like The Onion Girl, are particularly in this vein, though most of his work is. As I said, he doesn't write the story of thing you're talking about - you've got more magic going on with your characters than typical of de Lint - but he does a nice job of creating an organic, balanced state of magic in the real world with real characters.

 

[FifthView]

One thing I am using is that each of the beings we meet is a particular kind of being, and each particular kind only has {finite set} of abilities. There's no school or class or potion you can take to get more "aps", so to speak. What you can do is what you can do and that's that.

My worry is that this makes them feel a bit X-Men-esque, and I don't want to write a comic book superhero story. I want a natural feel, and a sense of these beings having been here since the dawn of writing.

One thing you can look at: How do external factors modify or limit their abilities or offer new potential.

For instance, a magical being able to manipulate electrical energy might have, in years past, used it to fish (a little shock on the water, the dead fish float up) or to stun or kill a foe or to start a forest fire; but in our modern world, he might learn how to manipulate electronics or indeed to feed false data into a computer system (to break encryption, for instance.)

A magical being able to turn invisible and entirely silent might find in our modern world that thermal imaging devices render his ability less useful in some situations than in previous centuries. He might also be balked by automatic doors that don't register him, thus presenting him with the situation of not being able to enter some buildings without being seen. (Although...such doors didn't come out until later, so this might not fit your particular milieu.)

A magical being with great speed might be perturbed by the fact that normal humans can use automobiles; and, one with flight might be irritated by airplanes. Either could occasionally have collisions with trains, planes, and automobiles.

Plus if you approach things like this, maybe that will help to give a sense that these beings have been around for a long time.

 

[FifthView]

To give example, one of the characters can alter emotional states with her breath, another is a shape-shifter of sorts, but nothing so dramatic as human-to-horse, simply the ability alter her form to please the eye and thus manipulate the subject. My MC whispers a spell of forgetfulness at the back of someone they encounter and have to deal with so that he remembers nothing of what he has seen.

I was finishing up my last comment when you posted your reply above. So, using this example...psychotherapy and hypnosis might upset the plans of some of these. And the "shape-shifter" might find that electronic recording devices either don't capture the same effect (photos, television) or else have become a new way to manipulate large numbers, if they do.

 

[valiant12]

When I think of magic that has a 'natural' feel, and magic that has been around since the dawn of time, then I typically think of what may have been considered magic in history, but science has proven otherwise:
Tarot card reading/fortune telling
astrology/star reading
sword swallowing/fire breathing
slight of hand tricks/pick pocketing

Who exactly will describe pickpocketing as a aniting difrent from a crime.
Sword swallowing/fire breathing
slight of hand tricks are party even kids know that (at lest I know it )

There's no school or class or potion you can take to get more "aps", so to speak. What you can do is what you can do and that's that.

People actually believed in healing/love/lukc/etc potions ,before science prove that they don't work. And if I remember corecly in some socitys believed that supernatural powers cold be taught. And the believe in curses was also widespread.
For me personally potions and curses can be described t shirts and jeans magik.

 

[Baerdling]

Magic in my world has more of a scientific background than a good old bit of handwavium. Set in a Quasi 17th Century France, their understanding of science is increasing yet they still have superstitions. The concept of the magic in my world is that it is seen as past, present or future magic as well as the ability to create, mimic or destroy.

Past Magic/Create: Heliomancy: The ability to bring metallic objects to life using solar rays to give an appearance of life.
Selenemancy: The ability to use Lunar rays to mutate flesh, the output is equal to the input.

Present Magic/Mimic: Mirror Magic is the ability to disperse object's essence in order to allow them to pass into reflective objects such as mirrors. Mages are commonly used as assassins.

Future Magic/Destroy: Igniters have the ability to flare up flammable oils in order to fire muskets or to create a flaming swords. Commonly used by 'Igniters' in the Bellacian army regiment known as the Flash Core.

 

[Vaporo]

Do your characters choose what their powers are, or are they essentially bestowed at random?

I think that the trick here would be to find some deep, otherworldly power that grants all these powers. For example, an idea for a magic system that I have is that magic is summoned by playing music, but that music is part of a larger all-encompassing universal song that has been lost. You could do something like this here, where each incantation, and its resultant power, is part of a greater incantation that could access higher powers that are inaccessible to mortals.

Perhaps pieces of this "great incantation" have been assembled by people with similar/related powers. Or maybe that's impossible, because only the lowest levels of the "great incantation" actually require spoken words, and higher-level/more complicated powers (things like weather control) don't require any spoken words, but users have to put their minds into a very specifically focused state. That could explain why each person can only have a few powers. When your characters gain their powers, they see the "great incantation" for only a moment in their mind's eye, and can only remember a few "mind-states" before it is gone.

 

[MiguelDHorcrux]

To be honest, I don't see it as X-Men-ish at all, at least not yet. If by big you mean a wave of the hand can twist a bridge like a ribbon then that will indeed be X-Men-ish.