Ice and fire. Thunder, water and wind. Elemental magic is the most cliche of all types of magic system, but for good reason! I bet you already caught yourself imagining lightning bolts bursting out of your fingertips or conjuring flames out of thin air. We know that elemental magic resonates, readers love it as much as writers do, but we also know it's been done over and over and over again, to exhaustion. So it came as a surprise to me when I found a game that seems to actively use all the cliches it possibly can, but nonetheless found a way to incorporate an elemental magic system in a way that avoids most overused tropes. Let's explore what they did right and how we can learn from it, but first- let's just name why elementalists are so often boring. If we love them, how can they be boring? How? It comes down to three points that are really hard to escape, so let me point them out to you and let's talk about how to avoid each of them. Number one. In a society ruled by engineering, a band of engineers get together to engineer a way out of an oppressive regime. Gaia, the mechanical engineer, Alan , the electrical engineer, Jade, the chemical engineer, and Spike, the aerospace engineer. Together they'll solve engineering challenges that no single engineer could ever engineer their way out of. You get what I'm trying to say, right? In a society where magic is the most important, the most powerful factor, we're suddenly following groups that are basically people from the same métier, from the same professional background. They all went to magic school, they all read big leather-bound books with complicated words on them, they all talk about their job all day long. Okay, fine, maybe in your world wizards don't read books but they're kung fu fighters or maybe they have magical rings given by the goddess of nature so that they can protect the environment. But no matter how interesting it is, if they all do the same thing, you know, we have all sorts of interesting engineers, farmers, managers, drivers, cooks, with all sorts of interesting lives and personalities. But nobody wants to read the story where 95% of the characters just do the same job. Okay, let's go to point number two. Aha! I'm writing the next Lord of the Rings, the next Dungeons and Dragons. None shall escape the allure of my magic system with its wide range of personalities. Let's see, let's see. The fire mages are hot-headed and extroverted. The ice mages are cold and calculating. The wind mages are aloof and diplomatic. Oh yes, everyone will bow down to my incredibly well-crafted metaphors. The first person who came up with those pairings was a genius. The thousandth is just a thousandth. Don't be the thousandth first. We've all seen the water mage being kind and the fire mage being feisty. You gotta have to do more or better or different than that. Right, let's go to point number three. Yes, we get it. Water is strong against fire. Okay, we get it. This third point here is more important to games than novels or other forms of media. But I thought it was interesting to mention anyway. Especially because the game we're about to analyze solved this conundrum in a really interesting way. But since this is a channel focused on narrative rather than game design, we're gonna give this third point a bit less priority, okay? Right, so how do we create a magic system where we just don't activate any of those trap cards? Where personalities, crafts, and interactions are truly diverse. Even though most of the characters, or even all of the characters, are elemental mages. Surely there are many answers to this question, not just one right answer. But here's one that worked for me and one that I think it's worth exploring. Hence, today's case study, Genshin Impact. A game that found a brilliant way to escape all of those pitfalls. Before we get started, I have my problems with Genshin's writing, okay? This is a weird little game with phenomenal worldbuilding and often bad writing. Stiff dialogue, overexposition, and nonsensical plot lines. Really amateurish mistakes. You folks made a billion dollars in revenue last year. Could you please hire 30 writers? Come on! But the world is full of wonder and adventure and a sense of freshness that just makes me want to explore, to lose myself there. Anyway, just wanted to clear that out. Genshin opted for a hybrid magic system. One that's part hard magic system for the gameplay and another part soft magic system for the worldbuilding. If you never heard those terms before, hard means that the rules of magic are established and well known both by the characters and the audience. Soft relies on mystique, mystery, and surprises. So characters and audience only understand a fragment of how magic works. Hybrid systems are notoriously harder to design because you're not hard, but you're also not soft, so you sort of dilute the advantages of both sides. You understand how it works, but you don't understand every aspect, so you never feel like an expert. Sure, there's mystery there, but there's also areas that are completely comprehensive, killing this aura of mystique. I have a whole video on good hybrid systems analyzing Hunter x Hunter, so if you want to check that out, click on the card here or in the description below. So how does the Genshin system work and how did it solve the three points I mentioned earlier? In the world of Teyvat, magic users channel their elemental powers through something called a vision, a physical object that looks like a little jewel they carry around, a trope that seems to be quite popular these days. There are seven different types of vision, each corresponding to a different element. So far, nothing impressive, but this naming, a vision, is not by chance. These people who obtain elemental powers, they have a vision, a passion, an aspiration, an obsession. This is how and why they obtain their magic. They're chosen by the gods of this place to carry this power because they already had a vision, a strong ambition, a big desire, and nobody but the gods understands how the choosing process works. Some of them are exactly what you'd expect from a Dungeons & Dragons inspired magic system, like this fire mage who makes the city's fireworks. That makes sense, right? But how about this other girl who's the most skilled lawyer in town? She's also a fire mage based on her vision, her professionalism, and relentless work ethic. Okay, that might have been just a coincidence. Let's try another element. This guy is the most recent incarnation of the god of earth, trying to live peacefully among mortals. Something quite cliche. But this girl also has earth powers by dedicating body and soul to the art of singing traditional Chinese opera. What in the world? Still not convinced? Oh, I got more. I got plenty. This bloke has plant powers because he's a doctor. He even made a contract with the demon to be the absolute most magical healer. That's very expected from plant based magic, right? But how about this cat girl who's literally a magical Uber Eats? She's so happy being the delivery driver of the elemental world, and that's her source of plant powers. And I really hope that was the inspiration for the character. Not only that, but those characters just don't fling elements at one another. The abilities they have are inherently tied to that aspect of their lives that gives them a vision. The firework girl has firework powers. Excellent. That looks very flammable from the get go. The lawyer girl powers look like a seal of authentication. She stamps her enemies like a document, and I love it. The god of earth has skills that could fit in a thousand different worlds and games. They look very Final Fantasy magic. But the opera singer performs her earth magic like a traditional dance. Her artistic training is the conduit to her magic. The doctor could be a druid in any RPG campaign, drawing on the powers of forest creatures. But the delivery cat girl has plant powers that are all about delivering packages efficiently, and I've never seen anything like that. In this world building, wizards don't have to study wizardry. They can dedicate themselves to whatever they want, and that dedication, that vision will make them wizards. So they will have completely different crafts, even though they're all elemental wizards. And we've seen that the manifestation of those elements is also varied and interesting. This system is not in opposition to more cliche elemental magic. This healer is nose deep into big tomes of magic literature. He could be a character in so many other worlds. But it also allows for other types of characters to be equally effective in magic, even if they have other interests and life stories. And because magic sprouts from this vision and not from any particular personality trait, characters are free to have any personality they want. Some are exactly what you'd expect from the element, like extroversion and rebellion for fire. But I promise, this lawyer is not rebellious. She's defined by her sense of justice and relentlessness. Sure, this earth guy is a traditionalist stoic. Very fitting. But this earth girl is all about artistic expression and collaboration. The soft element of this system is in how people obtain magic in the first place. And because it was so well crafted, just that, just the acquisition of magic, allows Genshin to escape from most of the cliches we talked about. Sure, the writing also needs to be good. The character team in Genshin might want to give two electric characters the exact same personality, or give all ice characters those same archetypical personalities from all other stories. Yeah, sure, that's a possibility. But at least the system allows variation. You can still do the cliche, as I've pointed out in a couple of characters, but we've seen that's not a rule. Some of those characters, I find them different, unique, unheard of. I find this inspiring. But I also mentioned there is the hard part of the system, right? And this has to do with point number three. Because honestly, despite it all, if water just gave double damage to fire, eh. The way Genshin worked around this problem was, there are certain elemental reactions that will happen every time specific elements meet. Every time water meets fire, they'll provoke vaporize. Every time water meets ice, they'll provoke freeze. Every time water meets plant, they'll provoke bloom. I know this is not writing, but allow me to nerd out about game design for one minute. Just one minute. I own a small game company. I'm really into this. It's a small rabbit hole. In a game like Persona 5, for example, you're mostly thinking: this enemy is weak against fire. Do I have a fire attack? In Genshin, on the other hand, you're thinking more in terms of, how can I chain my team's abilities so that I can create powerful elemental reactions? Something called the rotation. Oh, I'm going to deploy this floating jellyfish that's going to make the floor wet. Then I'm going to use an ice shield to protect myself and freeze enemies around me. When they're frozen, I'm going to stamp them like documents so they melt. It's a dance you perform between your characters, their elements, and their timings. Instead of just, oh, he's fire, I'm going to use water gun. Right. Game design tangent is over. But you get how they escape the cliches here by introducing interactions that are collaborations between elements instead of just, oh, weakness, resistance. Great. We had our case study. So now, as world builders, what can we take away from this lesson? I think Genshin's bullseye was coming up with a very free, unobstructed way for wizards to obtain magic. This vision, this big desire or ambition is not an emotion in itself, but it is associated with a lot of different emotions by different characters. So can we experiment with other non-emotional but emotion-inducing mental states? What if magic comes from vivid imagination or from fame or from receiving gratitude? Do you see how receiving gratitude, for example, could look so different from one character to another and even from one cultural bubble to another? And variations might point at different elements. What if a visual imagination means earth, a storytelling narrative brain means water, and out-of-the-box solutions means wind? If well-crafted, just this one factor, the acquisition of magic, can solve both the same job and the personality pairing traps. And for the third point, interesting interactions between elements where they change each other in some way is a great solution, and we don't have to do anything remotely similar to what Genshin did. What if when two elements meet, there's a huge, catastrophic explosion, so elemental tribes need to live separately but maintain peace at all costs? What if when two elements meet, the two wizards will automatically exchange a little bit of their personalities with one another, so that touching magic could be this moment of deep intimacy or could be a huge blow to your sense of self? Flinging fire and ice at each other is fun. I have fun reading it. But I think there's a lot of good story potential in exploring novel interactions. Hello, I'm Joriam. I'm a Brazilian writer, and this is my artistic research. This is me trying to get better at telling stories, trying to understand what makes the core of a story so delightful, and bringing this to you. I hope that today I have bewildered, enchanted, and entertained you. This is also me trying to become a professional. I want to do this every day, all day. I want to help people. I want to write good stories. I want to learn more and more and more and bring you with me in my learning. Thank you so much for following this journey. Here's another video on magic systems. If you like this one here, you're probably gonna like that. Probably gonna like that. And a special thank you to my patrons. Thank you so much for your generosity. You humble me. Truly, thank you. And I would love to read your magic system ideas in the comments below. It really makes my day. Ok! See you next time! Bye!
