Long ago, one of my friends (I forgot who) who explicitly told me that he hates fantasy and fantasy games. Where? Magic is often used as a crutch. Magic can be used for deus ex machina, to explain strange weathers – anything! Be it gods, unspeakable horror, faerie creatures and so on, they have been used to, sometimes carelessly, just to explain everything. “A wizard did it!” “An imp ate my homework”
The line between using magic effectively or carelessly is something that I have been thinking about. On one hand, it is good to use magic to preserve the mystery of a setting and the Meta Plot, but it get tiring when it’s always evil sorcerers, unhinged druids, mentioned unspeakable horrors, infernal demons and unexplained psionic manifestations behind the scene. So for this week, the usual daily adventure hooks would have no magic as its explanation whatsoever. That also includes faerie creatures and monsters which have magical abilities.
Consistent Magic or Mysterious Mysticism?
One of the thing I have been pondering over why D&D and Dragon Warriors are different in term of magic and the supernatural is because in D&D magic is fleshed out entirely. Schools of magic, meta-magic feats, what can be done, what not and so on. It’s limiting at first, and I find all the explanations suffocating, but on thinking through it, some people do like it. Magic cannot be used carelessly. It is possible to build a challenge revolving around the schools of Magic in D&D (or just see the speculation of who actually saved V and O-chul in the latest Order of the Stick comic).
I can now understand why some people prefer magic to have rules and to be a closed system, rather than an open system where are lots of unknown. I guess it’s no a matter of “this way is better”. In Dragon Warriors, the school of Sorcery and Elementalism are not the only form of magic there is. There are faeries, not documented and not detailed, and what they can do is entirely up to the GM’s imagination. Those holes allow the GM to challenge the magic-using players.
Yet this could get annoying when the GM keeps springing up “this is a new form of ancient magic which you have never encounterd before”. I have been guility of that. So how to you retain mystery and but not carelessly? I like to think of magic, like cooking and other disciplines, have basic fundamental. Work out the fundamental of magic for your setting and let the players know, but allow for variants and differences for different cultures, different ages and so on. For example, a very good fundamental would be the classic Five Elements, or Ars Magica’s arts and forms. Using those as fundamentals, even when a magic user comes across a mysterious form of magic, he would have some clue to proceed. The clues could either grant specific formal bonuses (which you need rules for) or a bargaining chip for certain rolls (agreed between the player and the GM).
Though said, I am intrigue now by how D&D handles magic. The game is not my cup of tea, but having a ‘science of magic’ defined would help to remove the accusation that GMs and fantasy authors use magic as a crutch as an explanation for everything.
