On Designing Magic Systems
I’ve been creating a new magic system for GURPS¹ from the ground up, and as a result I’ve been thinking a lot about magic itself, how people design magic systems, and watching a lot of videos²³⁴ about designing magic systems.
The first game magic system I was introduced to was D&D magic in the 3rd Edition. And I spent years not playing spellcasters because of it. D&D utilizes a system known as Vancian Magic⁵, devised by Jack Vance for his novels. It took me almost ten years to understand why I just hate it. It treats magic like grenades. It’s very inflexible and wasteful. If you guess wrong about what spells you need that day, you just lose out. That went against my intuitive understanding of magic.
I found that through many games and many stories I always liked the idea of magic but I often took issue with just how it worked in many games. And I think I have finally realized why.
Almost everyone is designing magic systems wrong. Or at least coming at the problem sideways.
Magic systems are often devised by game developers, it seems to me, from a rules-oriented perspective. Which means magic tends to have fairly fixed effects and predictable costs and benefits. Basically, magic systems are designed not to be magical, but simply as alternate science. Which should be expected given our modern scientific outlook.
And here was my revelation tonight. Game systems should not come with a magic system. Because magic isn’t rules-design, it’s world building. Where does your magic come from? What effect does it have in your world? What does it do to the story and how do people use it?
As a GM, you need to understand how magic feels in your world, then devise whatever rules are necessary to capture that feel, not try to awkwardly cram whatever system you’re handed into the slot labeled “magic”.
Maybe magic comes from the gods, and the only way to utilize it is to pray. In such a world, spellcasting is a test of faith. You pray to your gods, roll your faith, and based on how well you roll the GM determines exactly what happens.
Maybe magic really is just alternate science. In which case Vancian magic may be just the ticket.
Maybe words themselves are magic.
Maybe magic comes from the primordial forces of the universe and a wizard must wrestle with them, literally making his will manifest upon the world. In which case he channels power, tests his skill, and the better he does the closer the spell effect is to what he intended.
Maybe magic is sympathetic, and in order to hunt a deer you must use an arrow carved from deer bone. Because arrows only find their like.
Maybe magic is literally light⁶ and darkness, and without enough light people become twisted corruptions of their former selves.
Beyond that, you have to decide what impact you want magic to have on your world. Is it common and everyday, being used for everything like in a Miyazaki film?
Or is magic rare and precious, used sparingly? Do heroes go on great quests to find just one magic sword?
Is magic reasonably safe, like baking? So long as you follow the instructions everything is fine.
Or is magic always always always risky, ranging from simply burning your bear off again to literally world-ending calamity?
“I was just trying to light a candle!”
These are all world-building questions, not rule-building questions.
In my own GURPS homebrew system, which I’ve nearly completed, I’ve come to realize that what I like in magic is a very free-form system limited by risk, not arbitrary rules. Your mana pool is not a hard limit, I’m using it as the limit at which you can, probably, cast magic safely. There’s literally no power cap, you can keep slinging fireballs until the cows come home. Or until they grow tentacles and start eating the sheep. I want the players fear of consequences to be what limits their spellcasting. I intend to use that as my default model because I like how that sort of magic feels. I just beat on the rules until they produced the effect I wanted.
To me this is the most intuitively correct way to craft a magic system based on how I want magic to feel in my games. And now that I’ve come to understand that magic is world-building first, if I run a game where I want a different feel, I’ll just chuck my system aside and build whatever I need for that world.
Now I realize that this approach requires a lot more GM creativity, skill, and experience. If you don’t feel up to it yet, don’t worry about it. Just as people have lots of fun playing games in pre-made worlds, there’s nothing at all wrong with using a pre-made magic system.
Homebrew magic is even going to be harder than homebrew worlds. But once you find yourself at the point where you’re comfortable making homebrew rules, consider homebrew magic. The next time you make a world, consider if peasants will keep their homes safe by lighting candles and praying to gods, by leaving gifts for domovoi or other house spirits, or by etching magic sigils into door and window frames. And the build a magic system around that.
So remember next time you build a homebrew game world, think of magic as an exercise in world-building first. Then just make up whatever rules you need so that magic works the way you want it to in that world.
And please feel free to share your own favorite magic systems, rules, quirks, and what have you in the comments to inspire others.
Footnotes
[1] Murphy Barrett’s post in The Dungeon Deep
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUU81xm1oqg&t=301s
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAWuthZjpBY
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RV_RwUFETdI
[6] Shadow of the Conqueror (Chronicles of Everfall): Brooks, Shad M.: 9780648572916: Amazon.com: Books
This post is copied from https://www.quora.com/q/thedungeondeep/On-Designing-Magic-Systems-1
