CWBP 2: Magic in our world

[Falconius]

We can also decide that the rules differ for different peoples or races etc. More than just in the sense that supernatural creatures have use of magic.

The ideas Azelor and Ghostman express closely parallel those that can be found in Patrick Rothfuss' Kingslayer Chronicles series. Which I'd recommend to read anyways.

Personally I'm always a big fan of making mages and such suffer and bleed. Preferably as a result of plying their craft. Quite frankly the idea of mages hurling fireballs and lighting around a battlefield totally turns me off. It's far to overt and flashy for me to accept in a mid magic world. At least in any serious quantity. I think magic at that kind of level should cause enough of the mage to cause them to explode in a mist of blood.

Taking the principles of Azelor and Ghostman up there this could reasonably be expected. AzelorNewton's fourth law of magic works wonderfully at this. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. It keeps magic subtle, but present.

I'm with Azelor for a more fixed understanding of how magic works, not that I don't appreciate the mystery of leaving it undefined would give it. The problem I think with that is that this project is being developed by many hands, if we don't have a clear understanding its going to lead to a lot of crossed wires. Defining it more would also assist users of the CWBP 2 to better plan and develop their plots.

I can't for instance see magic having nothing to do with the node tunnels. Clearly there is an interaction there. What is it? What does it mean? Does it feed on magic? Is it where magic comes from? Or is it a symptom of something in the world the same as magic? For instance the reality of the world is just unstable enough for souls to take and manipulate how reality is?

Actually having the worlds reality just slightly unstable would tie in nicely with all the elements we have so far, from the second star, the second moon, the tunnels, to the GTH, to magic. The reality is warbling, and just loose enough so that those who know can effect it. The tunnels are a manifestation of this. Maybe when that first star came apart it also tore the fabric of the dimension enough to cause some sort of dimension convergence that then somehow stabilized....

[Scoopz]

Well I was raised off of R.A. Salvatorian ideas of high magic (i'm aware we're at mid magic, I just lowered it from high fantasy levels... at least my interpretations of them), so i'm admittedly a fan of that kind of thing. Don't get in your mind however that just because mages are powerful on the battlefield doesn't mean they're "hurling fireballs and lighting around". There are certainly other, less "flashy" ways of killing people with magic.

What i'm not a fan of is making mages bleed for magic. I can only really associate it with blood magic and again that's really only one side of magic in my mind. Now i'm quite familiar with the concept of blood for magic (going so far as to have a read a book by Orson Scott Card on using similar rules for fantasy novel writing) and to me, it really drains the humanity from mages. That's just my opinion though.

EDIT:

I should say that in my mind, I imagined a world where the restrictions placed on mages by society made it very difficult to prepare spells, having to store them on parchment or some other means of enchantment before discharging them. It would also be very grueling to create spells. They would require extensive knowledge and lots of time. I also like to imagine that this evolved from a time of wilder magic. Where there weren't these restrictions and magic came more easily to mages.

[Azélor]

I agree that we need to define some guidelines about how magic works.

We can also decide that the rules differ for different peoples or races etc. More than just in the sense that supernatural creatures have use of magic.

The ideas Azelor and Ghostman express closely parallel those that can be found in Patrick Rothfuss' Kingslayer Chronicles series. Which I'd recommend to read anyways.

Personally I'm always a big fan of making mages and such suffer and bleed. Preferably as a result of plying their craft. Quite frankly the idea of mages hurling fireballs and lighting around a battlefield totally turns me off. It's far to overt and flashy for me to accept in a mid magic world. At least in any serious quantity. I think magic at that kind of level should cause enough of the mage to cause them to explode in a mist of blood.

Taking the principles of Azelor and Ghostman up there this could reasonably be expected. AzelorNewton's fourth law of magic works wonderfully at this. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. It keeps magic subtle, but present.

I'm with Azelor for a more fixed understanding of how magic works, not that I don't appreciate the mystery of leaving it undefined would give it. The problem I think with that is that this project is being developed by many hands, if we don't have a clear understanding its going to lead to a lot of crossed wires. Defining it more would also assist users of the CWBP 2 to better plan and develop their plots.

I can't for instance see magic having nothing to do with the node tunnels. Clearly there is an interaction there. What is it? What does it mean? Does it feed on magic? Is it where magic comes from? Or is it a symptom of something in the world the same as magic? For instance the reality of the world is just unstable enough for souls to take and manipulate how reality is?

Actually having the worlds reality just slightly unstable would tie in nicely with all the elements we have so far, from the second star, the second moon, the tunnels, to the GTH, to magic. The reality is warbling, and just loose enough so that those who know can effect it. The tunnels are a manifestation of this. Maybe when that first star came apart it also tore the fabric of the dimension enough to cause some sort of dimension convergence that then somehow stabilized....

Your are talking just as if the world was going to get torn apart

Finger of death is a pretty subtle way of killing people. But mages don't need to kill themselves to do their tricks. Blood magic is a possibility but I expect that it is even less well accepted than necromancy.