Magic! There’s nothing quite like it. That’s because it doesn’t exist.
In the real world, “magic” is the word we sometimes use to describe things we don’t yet understand. How can that mentalist know what card I was thinking of? Magic! Where is that strange noise coming from? Magic! I mean, ghosts, but “supernatural” is just another word for magic. Our use of the word usually refers to our explanation of the fact, not for the facts themselves: We don’t know how it’s done, so it’s magic. Magic is the name we give to the absence of understanding.
In the fictional worlds that we invent, however, magic can also refer to an actual, existing aspect of reality, usually one that allows practitioners—intelligent beings who study or otherwise “harness” some supernatural power—to influence the world in ways that contradict the physical laws of the real world.
Inventing a magical system can be a lot of fun, but if we’re not careful we might include in its design various destabilising elements, which might then factor into the rest of the fiction. Because there’s no equivalent to magic in the real world, we’re at risk of just coming up with whatever we’d like—the lack of comparison grants too much freedom, and no perspective. It’s too easy to invent concepts simply on the basis of how cool or promising they seem.
To have a strong magical system, we should try to hunt down as many possible repercussions as we can, based on the elements we introduced, and then go back and rework these elements in order to avoid any undesired repercussions—those that are revealed to make no sense or even harm the rest of the fictional creation.
Getting Started
In this article I present some of the main points one should consider when coming to create their own magical systems, the rules that convey how magic works, what magic is, and how it integrates with your worldbuilding design goals.
For a system of magic to be able to serve our purposes, we need to understand what it can do, what it can’t do, and how it does it. We don’t need definite answers—see Firmness, below—but we need to have at least a vague idea of the system’s limits. This will allow us to know how magic interacts with other elements of the world, such as people, society, wild creatures, pantheons of gods, and even itself, if the world includes several kinds of magic.
Understanding your magic also helps the consumers of your content understand what to expect. It allows them to realise what’s possible (“Ah, you can’t create rocks”), and gives them scale (“Ah, creating a small flame is easy, but a large flame is hard”).
Meta Source
All magic of a single type should come from a single source. It could be symbolic energy created by the presence of life (the Dresden Files series, by Jim Butcher); a sophisticated metaphysical construct that allows cognitive and physical concepts to manifest through metals (the Mistborn series, by Brendon Sanderson) or ancient crystals that replace your heart and give you superpowers (our Crystal Heart webcomic and RPG).
Having a single source helps you understand how your magic interacts with your world, since there’s only one main thing to consider. It also helps the consumer of your content, by giving them context. Once they see that magic works through metals, they start looking for metals, and stop looking for other stuff. Context leads to perspective, which leads to appreciation: In the Mistborn series, the readers understand that if someone isn’t using metal, they’re not using magic, so when a character manages a difficult feat and there’s no metal involved, the reader becomes impressed.
If it’s crucial to have several sources—for example, you want divine power to be essentially distinct from arcane learning, like in many F20 games (“Fantasy d20”, mainly D&D and its offshoots)—then there should only be a handful of such sources, and they should be distinct both in effect and in aesthetic. Godly blessings should require a different kind of effort, and give a different kind of result, from recited arcane spells, and the use of them in the world should look and feel different. I mean, you can just have them all behave the same, but, then, what’s the point?
Sometimes, during a story or a game, magic suddenly “breaks”, and something happens that we deem to be impossible, going against the consistent rules we’ve seen so far. Such an event signals to the reader that what seemed like a single source might in fact be several, or the other way around, or maybe there’s a “real” source beneath the one we were shown so far, with “meta” rules. This happens a lot in Amber, for example. And that’s cool, but as the creator of the fiction, this reveal shouldn’t surprise you; you should have prepared the system to be this way from the beginning. See Opacity, below.
Firmness
Generally speaking, magic systems are either hard or soft, depending on your authorial consideration: what you need magic for in the first place. If it’s there for the show, you should use a soft system; if it’s there to give meaning, to be figured out, you should use a hard system.
Soft magic is mysterious, unreliable, unexplained. It’s Lord of the Rings or the Force in the first trilogy of Star Wars movies. Soft magic is when you say “magic” and mean “wondrous”, “eerie” or, well, “magical”. You’re talking about the emotion that the magic evokes. It’s about the atmosphere, the feelings, but not the plot.
The One Ring must be destroyed by throwing it into Mount Doom, that’s the main motivator of the plot in the Lord of the Rings, but we’re only vaguely aware of what the One Ring even does, we never get to learn why it can only be destroyed in the place in which it was forged (that’s not true for other magical items, for example, and we’re not told why), and why this will destroy Sauron. We’re told his spirit is bound to it, but we’re never told what’s a spirit, why binding it to a ring makes it destructible, etc.. Any attempt to examine any of these details with a critical eye ends with a blank. Crucially, however, is the fact that even if we were given all the answers, they wouldn’t have mattered—the Ring serves mostly as a MacGuffin, and the magic is an excuse to make the plot happen.
Soft magic helps the consumer understand that they shouldn’t be looking for magical answers—magical answers can just come up suddenly. They‘re brought on by “destiny” or “willpower”, or they require a sacrifice, or they show how cool someone is, or whatever other character element that actually matters. In the Death Star trench run, Luke finally trusted the Force, proving he is a Jedi, he is someone important, finishing the arc he started as a nobody farm boy. In Lord of the Rings, Elrond’s first appearance is when he makes the water of the river wash away the Ringwraiths, to show us how powerful this new character is, and that we should respect him.
Hard magic is, on the other hand, a form of detailed fictional physics. It’s the natural laws of the fictional world, they’re just different from our own. It’s just how things are, and they always stay the same.
From a design perspective, it has clear costs and limitations, even if the practitioners aren’t aware of them all—just like we’re not fully aware of all physical laws in the real world. The reader can eventually understand how the magic works, which is why the mechanics of hard magic, unlike soft magic, can be core to the plot. Usually, the reader comes to see the magical system as a riddle to be solved, a mystery that will eventually be fully revealed, they might even become disappointed if the story doesn’t go there, or if there is a reveal but it’s not essential to the plot’s resolution.
Roleplaying games are capable of addressing soft and hard magic in much more nuanced ways, because they invite the player to handle the system themselves. Just as important, the game itself is a system, with varying levels of granularity. It’s possible, for example, to have a “hard” system in which magic is soft, such as City of Mist: The game has lots of rules and options, but what actually happens in-world is very soft. It’s trickier to create a soft system in which magic is hard, because the latter enjoys bathing in a kind of deep sophistication while the former prefers to stay dry.
Cost
Everything must cost something for it to be worth something. While designing your system, use a thought experiment to try and judge what parts of your system should have a cost. If it’s easy to cast a spell that creates an eternal light source, why would anyone ever use torches? So maybe it shouldn’t be easy. Or maybe the ability to cast the spell is very rare, or limited in some other way. Maybe the light is not eternal and actually consumes fuel, it’s just a strange kind of fuel. Or maybe you’re fine with having no price, and these spells have indeed replaced torches completely.
By default, magical effects should cost something—it’s good for drama, but it’s also good for the economy, because it lets you have one. A world in which people can just create food every morning for free is vastly different from our own, purely for economic reasons, and the further away you get from our own, well-established historical understanding of economy and culture, the harder it is to maintain the seemingness of a coherent, convincing society.
In soft magic systems the price is vague, but that doesn’t mean it’s negligible. Gandalf was able to stop the Balrog using powerful, eldritch incantations and his magical force of personality, but there’s a reason he didn’t use that trick before, for example on the tentacle creature that forced the Company to flee into Moria: powerful stunts like this seem to draw the attention of the Enemy. We’re not sure what that actually means, and how it happens, but it’s obviously sinister and dangerous.
Mastering the magic is a form of a cost, as well. In both types of systems, magic usually needs to be mastered as a skill, with the right knowledge and practice. Perhaps not everyone is capable of it (maybe you need genetics, or to have the “correct” type of “spirit”), and the process can be more or less vague (running in a swamp while repeating koans seems to work well for soft systems), but in all cases it serves to limit the character’s capability of magic, so it will slowly evolve along with the reader’s understanding of either it, the character, or both.
In RPGs, cost almost always translates to mechanics, and mastering the magic translates to character advancement. This makes sense, as the reasons are the same as with fictional writing: Costs create meaning, and we want the rules to allow the players to gain meaning.
Opacity
Your magic system might allow for amazing feats and interesting effects—and good for you!—but it’s important to realise that the people of the fictional world might not be aware of any of this.
There’s a huge difference between what you, the creator, knows; what the protagonists in the fiction know; what is “common knowledge” in the fictional world; and what the reader knows. Maintaining the balance between all of these is tricky and can easily ruin a good surprise or a masterful plot, which is exactly why having a meta source and a good understanding of your magical system can help you.
In the Dresden Files, the world at large is unaware of magic, but magic exists and it’s powerful and has pretty standard rules. Harry Dresden is an experienced practitioner, and every book he pulls out a new trick or some obscure understanding that the reader was unaware of. That’s (usually) okay, since the new trick fits our understanding of the system (most of the time). Jim Butcher himself is developing these tricks as he goes along. He started with some basic, consistent rules, and was careful as he developed the world, both in what he added and in what he revealed to the readers.
In RPG design we usually can’t afford to develop just the basics and do the rest “later”, because the system we provide should be complete, or at least satisfyingly so. It can also be difficult to maintain the differences mentioned above; for example, in Unknown Armies, much of the supernatural foundations of the world should remain hidden from the players for their own benefit, yet experienced players should have access to some of these elements when they create or develop a character, and that should be a layout consideration. In Earthdawn they solve the issue by elegantly merging game rules with in-world rules, so that what the players know is almost the same as what the characters know, and can even use the same terms.
Go Forth And Mage
In the real world, magic is the absence of understanding, but in your fiction, you must understand your magic for it to have any value at all. If you’re designing an RPG, you have even more work to do, so be careful, playtest, and then playtest some more. If you’re ever in doubt, recall that your goal is to stray away as much as possible from the least satisfying answer of all:
shrug
“It’s magic.”