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[GoombaGeek]

The magic suggestion that nobody was waiting for!

Magic is hard and also nobody likes planning it. You can only go on for so long about why it needs rules and linking to TVtropes pages, but eventually you have to actually plan the rules and that usually ends with less mirth and more tears. This is my suggestion. It is all very vague and is intended for the future.

Introduction: Belief-based Magic
While magic should probably have real rules, it should also be magic, i.e. contrived. In this case, everyone's magic will differ in preparation and form depending on their culture but follow the same basic rules.

Racial Magic
Difference races have different collective beliefs and different preferences (in weapons, sites, jobs and more). This should also apply to magic (and hopefully also make you pick something other than a dwarf adventurer for the steel or a human adventurer for the fitting gear).

Dwarves:
Dwarves are ground and rock-loving creatures who have a high technology level. Since we play as them in Fortress Mode, they'll need an overseer-friendly method. Let's assign them the ritual-and-circle method of magic: every spell needs a specific magic circle drawn, and the right candles lit, and the correct arrangement of stones nearby (but they will not get too flaky about the stones, so they will possibly be selected for real factors like density, or just personal preference...) or else it "will not work" in the minds of the dwarves. They could be randomly generated during worldgen and run on random reactions, with a "focus".

The focus would be a totem or containing object to hold the spell within and trigger the effects when ready. The effects will be mostly battle or industry-related, and we'll be invoking conservation of mass: a "trap rune" can be drawn on a stone after it is "infused" with magma, but the stone will be very heavy because of the magma magically contained within, and triggering the stone will result in a high-pressure magma bath. Or, for another example, a spell can be prepared to create bars of soap magically, but the ingredients must be contained within a very dense totem (totems should predominantly be tools; artifacts will be especially good foci for spells but the player shouldn't choose the exact totems either) containing buckets of lye and coal and fuel. Once it's activated, the fuel is consumed and the totem gets very hot, eventually extruding bars of soap but also boiling away the wine reserves of the fortress which were in the same room.

Another example:
- A skilled mason (who moonlights as a maceman) makes a spell to throw stones everywhere when triggered. He gathers the stones and binds them to a gold scepter, expecting to use the scepter in battle. Hearing the goblin alarm, he wheelbarrows the immensely heavy scepter to the battlefield, straining to lift it while activating the spell. There is a tremendous noise, and when the dust clears, it is found that while the stones did shatter some goblin skulls and have the desired effect, many of them landed on the wielder and the sudden recoil from the blast sent the scepter straight through its unfortunate operator, now deceased.

This suggestion is UNFINISHED because I have to get a lot of sleep now since I was up all last night trying to dodge Nibiru, but it got me in the end and now I have a nasty bruise. It will also include Industrial Magic as mentioned somewhere else.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Belief-based magic is a pretty good system to have, or at least better than arbitrary magic, but it's a pretty poor fit for DF. Videogames don't fit it very well due to how deeply the player affects the plot. This is increasingly so the more wide-open and sandboxey the game is. You have chosen almost the worst game for belief magic.
I'll read the rest of the suggestion when I'm not so tired.

[Di]

Isn't this all along the lines Toady is already considering? You know, enchanting items instead of casting spells.

[Revanchist]

I would assume so. It makes more sense than just "cast from your mana pool".

[Neonivek]

I would assume so. It makes more sense than just "cast from your mana pool".

I never understood why people cannot understand how Mana Pools work.

I know games have long since stopped explaining what mana pools are, but they are the collective raw magic within a person or with out them. Why it is there changes from setting to setting but most of the time it is because all life contains magic.

In magic Carpet for example the original mana was actually obtained by boiling down plants and extracting mana from that. You in the game actually have to attune fonts of mana to you and that becomes your mana pool. You could claim rulership over people and extract their excess mana that they do not use because most people do not use magic of any form.

So what part of this mana pool is senseless?

[GreatWyrmGold]

The part where it's never explained?

[Nonsequitorian]

Although I do like enchanting magic more than any other sort of thing, your old "wizard hermit who casts lightning bolts from his fingers" is also something I see as being extremely important to fantasy worldness.

I don't really agree with a "belief" based system, because adventure mode is basically you playing the game. How is the game going to tell you you don't believe in magic and thusly can't use it? A human outsider doesn't really have any preset racial belief because he effectively pops out of the air.

And what stops a geeky elf-loving goblin from using some tree-hugger spells? Just because his family voted for the conservative goblin in the goblin-elections doesn't mean that geeky elf-lover has the same beliefs.

I do like the idea of having certain races having certain magical preferences, I don't think it should be on beliefs but more on their tendencies. A goblin would much sooner take a flail and give it an ice enchantment then he would take a bow and give it a grow flowers enchantment. That doesn't mean he can't, but it just shouldn't be common.

Or a better example:

Dwarf Wizard lives alone in a cave deep beneath the earth with no light. He realizes it's hard to read without light, so he creates a way to light torches on fire with magic.

Goblin Warlock lives with others in a tower high above the tundra. He has been bothered by the stink of the rotting bodies of his latest test subjects and play things, so he decides to write up a way to light the corpses on fire with magic.

They both created the same magical device: a way to light something on fire with magic. They needed it for different reasons, but they both needed it. Their own tendencies to kill whores/read brought them to the same thing. Why should that not happen because Dwarves don't like prostitution or Goblins don't like books? Maybe they would have gotten to the spell through some belief they held in common, but that's not the point of this very contrived example.

Maybe what you mean by belief is that you have to believe in it for it to actually exist, like you have to believe in fairies for tinkerbell not to die. Frankly that idea is about as stupid as ghosts. Either they exist or they don't. If you didn't believe in magic and then a wizard threw a magical MacGuffin spell at you and killed you, would the magic still not exist? If you didn't believe in ghosts, and then a ghost strangled you to death, did the ghost exist? In both cases, ghosts/magic existed and the act of seeing or coming in contact with it would destroy the belief system.

Maybe I read to far into what you meant by belief and we're talking about the same thing, but then again I don't completely agree with what I have to say either.

I don't feel like magic should be something that needs a lot of space and preparation, like a stone circle would. Maybe for the sort of "make armok spit upon your enemies" spells you'd need to do whatever rituals upon a specially made temple, but making a sceptor a deadly bomb should be the work of an assassin in a hut. Maybe surroundings effect how effective, but that should either be preferance or skill (as in, warlock A likes to work in huts, thus his magic making is better in a hut. warlock B is much smarter than warlock A, so working a hut doesn't hinder his progress.).

If I had to choose, I'd say an office or a place to sit in a meadow would be what was needed, maybe some paper if you're bad at your memory skills.

[Cool Guy]

Pretty sure magic is already planned and it has definitely been suggested before.

[GreatWyrmGold]

This is suggesting a specific type of magic, as far as I can tell.

[GoombaGeek]

Isn't this all along the lines Toady is already considering? You know, enchanting items instead of casting spells.

That's good!

[Neonivek]

The part where it's never explained?

Because it has long since started to be considered something that didn't need to be said.

[GreatWyrmGold]

The part where it's never explained?

Because it has long since started to be considered something that didn't need to be said.

Arguably, but I've heard enough explanations of "mana" which are nothing like what you said, so I'm guessing no. My guess is that it was used in early fantasy games and was a simple way to do things.

[Di]

Mana was probably used to stop wizards from throwing fireballs left and right and yet so they wouldn't end up in an awkward dnd situation when you can cast a couple of all-destructive spells that alter the space and time itself, yet you cannot create a small source of light.
I guess we could get away with fatigue instead. (and in threetoe's story there was even more ways to pay for spells)

[Nonsequitorian]

I do like fatigue as a method for magic energy. Would make the wizard much more likely to be a mysterious "never around" sort of person because he always needs to sleep for his job. Would also give endurance another meaningful sort of place.

I suggest we also throw memory into this, as in if you carry around a bunch of scrolls it fills space but you don't need to remember it, but if you don't use a spell for long enough you can forget it. Memory for when adventurers go into fort mode can be used for when they get rusty and then very rusty. Would make more sense and let us use the memory trait more than never.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Sounds good. Mages get tired (another explanation for "mana" which is rarely brought to its full conclusion), and need to remember spells. Simple enough.