Make Magic Make Sense (And Why Sometimes It Shouldn't) | Worldbuilding

in this video we'll discuss World building magic looking at the types of magic systems that work for different worlds and how you can Implement a magic system of your own Into Your World building projects hey everyone my name is Matthew at least according to the summoning ritual you've used to bring me here and this video is part of a series where I've been going through a science adjacent World building process step by step for today's video we'll be taking a quick side step away from science to talk about World building magic however while magic sits firmly in the realm of fiction that doesn't mean we can't have structure for its World building process and use logical principles in its creation here we'll be looking at Concepts like hard and soft magic high and low magic before building our own magic system that we can use moving forward so without further Ado welcome to the world building Corner alright let's do this magic broadly speaking refers to the invocation manipulation or manifestation of Supernatural forces beings or entities brought into the physical Natural World Magic can either occur organically or be conducted deliberately through ritual but in either case for something to be considered magic it must break or appear to break the otherwise established rules of our universe by very definition of magic being law breaking there are no rules for which types of magic you'd like to include in your world magic defies out real world scientific reasoning and understanding so when it comes to designing magic the question is not whether you can deviate from reality but rather when you should deviate from reality let's look at a couple of examples in Harry Potter the rules of our real life world are deviated from almost immediately and regularly from the stairs of Hogwarts moving with the mind of their own to brooms and cars that can fly with no explanation given Beyond it's just magic in contrast Fullmetal alchemist's magic system called Alchemy allows for the alteration of matter through energy which is called transmutation while Alchemy still breaks out real life universal laws by deviating from reality further down the scientific line Fullmetal Alchemist provides a magic system that makes more sense to many viewers and many of the alchemical actions within the series can be reasonably explained within Universe logic this premise of things plausibly making sense in universe is called verisimilitude however you're under no obligation to provide explanation for how your magic works and to refer back to Harry Potter as an example any inconsistencies in Universe are explained away with because magic very similitude in Harry Potter is maintained so long as a reader or viewer accepts that anything that doesn't make sense isn't going to be explained if you're creating a system like this you can Implement effectively any magic you want and simply say well it's magic to anyone who questions your creation but if you've clicked on this video and are still watching you're probably looking for something more structured and tangible for the World building process this is where the concepts of soft and hard magic come in what I've described in Harry Potter is a soft magic system where concept it's like why some individuals can or can't use magic where the magic itself comes from and perhaps most importantly what the limitations of magics are for each individual aren't explained this doesn't necessarily mean that these rules aren't present behind the scenes but rather they're not overtly shown or described and are therefore mysterious and unpredictable by providing minimal or no explanation your explanation can't be wrong at the other end of the spectrum we have hard magic where the system the magic comes from has clear rules and constraints that are outlined to the viewer reader or player making things predictable the audience of a hard magic system should understand what the rules and limits of magic are and if there are any exceptions to the rules they should be outlined early one of the most well-known known hard magic systems is bending in avatar The Last Airbender a water bender can manipulate water and ice but not fire and the only exception is the Avatar who can bend all four elements the rules and limitations here are clear and when a water bender manipulates blood the progression doesn't break very similitude but if a water bender suddenly moved metal this defies what would be predictable based on the rules and the entire system falls apart now that we've differentiated between hard and soft magic the other important feature to determine before we can make our magic system is prevalence which refers very simply to how much magic is present in your world separated into the categories of low magic middle magic and high magic in low magic Worlds the supernatural tends to not play a huge role in shaping in the World At Large with worlds designed using scientific forces like geology and climatology rather than something Supernatural like a deity being involved once low magic worlds reached the point of Designing cultures magic and Magic users tend to be rare often viewed with apprehension or even hostility with powers that usually only influence things locally middle magic worlds are the next stage up and while magic might still be rare it's more pervasive both in the natural world and in culture the world may follow a path that mimics natural selection but a supernatural Force might be responsible for creating the world itself and be influencing things from behind the scenes steering the world in a particular direction unnatural biomes might be present such as a Grove infused with natural magic that allows it to grow Lush even in Arctic environments and once cultures are established magic and its uses tend to be known about by most people even if they can't use it themselves in these settings both heroes and villains can become quite powerful able to affect things on a global scale finally High magic worlds have magic almost everywhere and the use of magic is involved in most facets of the World building process it is likely that the world and its inhabitants were designed or at least influenced by something Supernatural and that scientific laws have taken a back seat to allow magic to work in the highest magic worlds just about everyone can use at least some magic and the levels that magic can reach are cosmic in scope with the actions of heroes and villains able to threaten reality itself importantly these three levels of prevalence don't have to be ubiquitous in all elements of Your World building and you might mix and match them to best suit your project one of my favorite combinations is in the Call of Cthulhu Universe where there are some high magic entities that are cosmic Level Threats sleeping in the dark corners of the universe with magic tomes and world-ending Cults but the average person is exceptionally mundane and very much low Magic on the other end of the spectrum superheroes exist in Worlds where they themselves are exceptionally High magic but the world around them is low magic you can play with these settings to see what works for you and your world Low Middle and High magic also tend to determine the cost of magic in many settings magic is not free but rather has a cost that the magic user pays in order to use magic in some settings this is clearly defined such as magic in Aragon draining the energy from the Caster that would take them to achieve their magical fate through mundane means though in other settings the cost of magic is less defined even a hard magic setting like avatar The Last Airbender only vaguely references the cost of bending as a combination of willpower talent and raw physical exertion generally speaking low magic settings tend to have higher or stricter costs for using magic while higher magic settings allow individuals to cast magic more freely limited only by their knowledge or Talent so without distinctions between hard and soft magic as well as low medium and high Magics we can start to make a magic system of our own to begin with it's important to establish where the magic is naturally occurring or brought into the world through ritual as well as deciding where am magic is coming from its source which as we determined earlier will be a supernatural Force being or entity or combination thereof you might have your magic be naturally occurring because of a supernatural Force like the weave in Dungeons and Dragons or have it come into your world exclusively through ritual such as through the worship of something specific like a deity in the world of locusts that we've been creating across this series the universe has for the most part followed the same metaphysical laws we have in real life so introducing anything that would have already been present for what we've created so far like a powerful deity would mean we'd have to go back and adjust things of course never be afraid to retroactively add something to your world building but that isn't what I'm going to do here instead when we determined the physics of this universe way back at the beginning of the World building Pro process we established precedence for energy transference in and out of a parallel universe through a process called synthesis for incoming energy and Severance for outgoing energy in addition we've already designed some plants utilizing synthesis and Severance so we can say that for Locus synthesis and Severance occur naturally let's expand on this to say that a creature that consumes these magical Flora can invoke their effects and that creatures that are exposed in this way for many generations absorb some of their magical properties able to use basic invocations at will for example creatures that consume plants that magically self-combust may be able to utilize the same effect to breathe fire and by extension a culture that is developed around that plant may have some individuals who can invoke fire Sapient creatures will also be able to use rituals to expand the prevalence of magic and allow for more varied effects the source of this magic is a supernatural Force specifically the incoming and outgoing energy transfer between universes and for our in-universe magic users this force will be channeled either organically through traits that exist for that species or deliberately through either consuming magical Flora using them as ritual reagents or a combination thereof next we need to determine whether our magic system is going to be hard or soft seeing as we're designing Locus with sides in mind creating a logical hard magic system makes more sense so with a hard magic system we need to create limitations and rules that are clear and predictable to do this let's outline the plants we've created so far that utilize synthesis and Severance to keep things logical we want to start to categorize and keeping in theme with our science adjacent world we can place our magical effects into five categories those that affect thermodynamics Mass photonics electromagnetism and biology we can then split our five categories in half with synthesis increasing their effects while Severance decreases their effects importantly we can see from our table that we have some gaps but this is perfectly okay even though we haven't made something that fits the slot for increasing gravitational energy it's not super difficult to predict what it will do which is the exact point of a hard system that it is predictable now we need to determine whether our world will be a low middle or high magic setting Locus easily fits the mold for a low magic setting as so far we've created everything through science rather than magic with this in mind we can come to a couple of expectations firstly that magical Flora will be uncommon and special and secondly that magic users will be rare while we determined earlier that a culture may have innate magic users after having been exposed to magical Flora for many generations the number of magic users is likely to be limited require training or perhaps both I particularly like the idea of a greater number of people being able to use very basic magic with Advanced use requiring training so let's say that roughly one out of a hundred individuals within a magic exposed culture can use magic innately but that to cast more than very basic invocations requires dedicated training innate magical ability won't be required to learn how to use magic but it'd certainly help finally we need to establish a limitation on how much magic an individual can use as Locus is a mostly low magic setting the cost is likely to be higher and more severe rather than placing a hard limitation on Magic Use though I prefer the more middle magic idea of magic users able to use Magic based on their levels of knowledge and expertise with the amount of incoming or outgoing energy scaling with the level of complexity of an invocation basic innate magic will be straightforward but not able to manipulate much while Advanced ritual magic will be complicated and manipulate far higher amounts of energy rather than an explicit cost for magic let's establish a consequence instead when we created synthesis and Severance way back when we determined the physics of this world we stipulated that the two universes flow of energy back and forth was related to their space-time and we can think of magic as the ties between the universes with higher levels of synthesis and Severance drawing the two universes closer together let's say that if too much magic is used at a point in space-time The Divide between the two universes becomes too thin which causes otherworldly beings called breaches to come forth into the Physical Realm breaches manifest as forces of pure synthesis or Severance of of creation or entropy depending on how the balance has been affected in an area and are likely to be unfeeling vessels of extreme Behavior akin to what we'd consider a demon or even a Biblical Angel to be like we'll design breaches more thoroughly down the line but for now they provide an effective cost for our magic users on Locus how much magic is required to bring about a breacher is going to be fluid based on factors such as how thin the veil was in the first place or the skill or sloppiness of the magic user and while skilled magic users would be able to roughly determine how safe a casting will be the risk should always be there to keep the hubris of Mages on Locus in check so to recap magic refers to happenings that break or appear to break the rules of the universe magic can be separated into soft and hard magic where soft magic refers to unexplained and mysterious magic while hard magic refers to more clearly defined and predictable magic settings tend to fall into low middle or high magic referring to the prevalence of the supernatural though there are no rules for how magic should or should not be implemented and you can mix and match these settings to produce a magic system that best fits your world join me next time when we'll return back to a more realism-based approach to World building and look at religion discussing how religions are founded evolve over time and the cultural impacts that they have you can find all the information in this video as well as other resources for well building in general over at worldbuilding corner.com and if you've enjoyed this video don't forget to like And subscribe to follow the World building journey and until next time stay awesome foreign

Channel: Worldbuilding Corner

Views: 93,301

Keywords: worldbuilding, storytelling, how to worldbuild, writing, fantasy, fantasy creatures, fantasy races, intelligent life, cultures, magic, magic systems, hard magic, soft magic, low magic, high magic

Id: -be8tHP4Zok

Length: 18min 39sec (1119 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 06 2023