Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[JoshuaFH]

I feel bad that I kind of dominated my magic system thread with my own stuff, especially since people were posting their own magic system on there, so I thought a new one might be appropriate so as to start again with a new idea I had.

So you all might know I spend a fair deal of my free time pacing and thinking of imagined things to entertain me, and this is one of them. I've always like the idea of crazy/openly malevolent greek-style gods, so I thought of this as a videogame idea (I play imagined videogames in my head, is that bad?) which was meant to parody cliche'd RPG's in general. I was mostly inspired by Grandia III, which is very cliche'd in many ways.

(I can't use colons, since that particular key on this keyboard is broken)

For one, it's something of a medieval setting with very little technology. There are gods, and they're physical gods that actually live among the populace. How it's presented though is that their presence is more of a mundane reality than a fantastic occurrance, so people live around them without too much hassle. The gods themselves though range from indifferent to openly spiteful of all of humanity, and will wreak disproportionate amounts of punishment on anyone that annoys them even slightly, so it is custom to only talk directly to a god if you're a chosen one (explained later), if they talk to you first, or if you're truly desperate for divine intervention.

The gods themselves, while the parents of all of humanity, think very little of them. Since they can't harm eachother though, they use humanity as a vast set of playthings in order to play godly games, and will often use their knowledge and power to incite wars, rebellions, and the like just to see what will happen, as that's more interesting than harming humanity directly. In this way, they play a game every, let's say, 200 years where they each choose a mortal, and make him a "chosen one" or somebody with special magical powers that are similar to that god's specialty. However, one of the god's just so happens to be much, MUCH more powerful than the rest, and so it has become custom between them for all the other god's to band their chosen one's together in order to defeat him first, and then turn them on eachother. This is the premise of the game.

There is destiny in my fantasy world, but this only applies to the chosen ones. Mundane people don't have destinies and can live however they want. Destiny isn't an invisibe guiding hand, like how it's usually portrayed, but instead it's an incredibly strong instinct that drives and compels them to do the god's bidding.

I'm running low on time right now, but to make things more interesting, these wouldn't be cliche'd "elemental" gods, but instead they would be gods of weird things. Kind of like in that one forum game I had.

[sonerohi]

Whenever I need to run a magic system, I use the elemental kind with spell components and incantations. It's a very un-informed science, wherein you can barely manage to acheive even semi-expected results. Like, say you know that sulfur invokes elements of fire, and a certain pattern of runes works kind of like a ward. Combining them, you are hoping that it works as a ward against fire so that you can insure a buildings safety, but it can range greatly. It might invoke fires, or ward for fires so that they can't be put out. It might be a dud, or it might create a familiar alligned with fire (not in the ultra-cliched gamey way of being visibly alligned). It is acessible to anyone who can memorize a rune pattern and bring ingredients to the runes, but most things are duds. Wizards and sorcerors are those lucky enough to find a sentient artifact or a familiar, which will usually posess slightly more knowledge of magic, but still be very much in the dark.

But I do find yours interesting. What exactly makes the one god so uber?

[alfie275]

Here is my idea:
A spell can consist of 4 things:
Elements
Shape
Mana
Behaviours

Elements might include:
All the standard elements(fire,ice,water etc), moods (angry, happy etc), materials (gold, iron, steel etc) and effects (death, pain).

Shape is the physical form of the spell, ie:
Animals, arrows, statues, money.
If there is no shape it is a curse or an AoE spell (ie heat up certain area).

Mana is certain types, ie:
Fast, strong, weak, small, big.
To attain that type a mana of that type must be used, mana is attained through different ways:
Burning an object associated with it at a magic fire, sacrifices to gods of that mana, mana from the surrounding magic fields.

Behaivour is a description of how it acts, ie:
Agressive, protective, fearful.
Behaivours may have a material which it applies that behaivour to, or is invoked by.

Example spells:
"Strong cunning coin of death",This might attract people to pick it up, or hide in with other coins.
"Fast gold seeking bird of collecting".
"Quiet agressive arrow of fear".

[JoshuaFH]

I like your system, it reminds me of that one thread where alot of people thought that magic should have random elements to make it more interesting. You know, the one where Vester's sig came from.

Though, to answer your question, it's kind of like how Zeus was the king of the gods and the most powerful of them all. Though, I don't have any real education on greek mythology outside of reading TvTropes articles.

Though, I suppose I should elaborate a bit more, since I was cut off by a timeline last time.

Basically, the story was that since the humans are essentially playthings to the gods, the backstory of my world was that humans have actually gone extinct several times over, but the gods have been bringing them back for the sole purpose of toying with their lives. However, one of the god's grew fond of one of the human races (since they're all different in a kind of way) and went out of his way to preserve their last city including residents, which was neatly tucked away in a nearly impossible to reach canyon in the middle of nowhere.

So the new race got started with the old one still intact, and the god's, in their game, decided on a deal. The one god that grew fond of that city would have to play hardball in their latest game, with all the other gods ganging up on his chosen one. To be fair though, he get's the handicap of giving his chosen one significantly more power in order to compensate, and if, in the long shot, he wins, then his cizilization will be allowed to grow out of the canyon and re-take the Earth.

So, to summarize:

Humans are playthings.
Gods are bastards.
The world is nothing but a game board to the gods.

I'm on another time limit at the moment, but does everyone understand the basic idea of my game world? I just realized I haven't actually elaborated on the magic at all, but the backstory is important.

To sum up the gods' game:

Each god gets to choose a mortal, and give him a limited amount of his power, which constitutes magical ability. The god's then compel them play the game, often enticing their whole kingdoms to play along with threats, rewards, or whathaveyou. The chosen ones gang up on the lone chosen one, who's fighting for his whole race.

Will elaborate more, but time is up!

[sonerohi]

I like your system Josh. I'd so want to play around in that world. Do the gods try to better their humans at all, i.e. teach them certain technologies of war to make things more 'fun'? That'd be an interesting plot point if the canyon civilization was more advanced because of not going extinct, so the other gods give their people way advanced techs.

[eerr]

The mighty armies of Elf-Zeus arrive!

You rally the Forceps of Hepheous to wage battle!

The gods find themselves evenly matched, and therefore promise Baalzebub wealth and riches for the support of his goblin armies.

[LegoLord]

I had an idea for a magic system based around gemstones imbued with magic.  Not new, fancy stuff, but real world gems imbued with magic.  It would also stretch to some minerals commonly used for jewelry, like malachite.

And it would make pretty jewelry look more bad ass than the most bad ass thing we have on earth, whatever that may be.

[sonerohi]

That'd be pretty cool, but would all gems have magic properties? The effects of life-protecting gold and diamonds that provide light and such seem pretty weaksauce when everyone and their great grandmothers are blinged out.

[LegoLord]

Only ones imbued with magic.  It'd be a natural process occurring when the gems formed that would be difficult to replicate effectively.  Some things would be extremely common, others would be rare, and some very few wouldn't even have any evidence of having once existed aside from legends (by game world story, that is)

[JoshuaFH]

I like the idea Lego because, as a matter of fact, I have an idea that might coincide with it nicely.

Basically, in another imagined world of mine where magic is actually an art that can be learned and practiced is, is where there's a 'magic world' that is underneath the earth.

The idea is sort of complex actually, the world itself is flat, but the entire world rests ontop of a magic world, and the sorcerers and whatnot on the surface world can access it through intense concentration and use magic as a result. However, you can't go down closer to the magic world because physical beings can't survive being that close to it, and magic creatures (that live in the magic world) can't come up because they can't live in the physical world.

This idea of mine is new, and has something of a story, but needs alot of refinement.

This could go neatly with your gem idea, as the gems that are naturally made over time could be magic simply because they've been formed in close proximity with the magic world.

[eerr]

I like the idea Lego because, as a matter of fact, I have an idea that might coincide with it nicely.

Basically, in another imagined world of mine where magic is actually an art that can be learned and practiced is, is where there's a 'magic world' that is underneath the earth.

The idea is sort of complex actually, the world itself is flat, but the entire world rests ontop of a magic world, and the sorcerers and whatnot on the surface world can access it through intense concentration and use magic as a result. However, you can't go down closer to the magic world because physical beings can't survive being that close to it, and magic creatures (that live in the magic world) can't come up because they can't live in the physical world.

This idea of mine is new, and has something of a story, but needs alot of refinement.

This could go neatly with your gem idea, as the gems that are naturally made over time could be magic simply because they've been formed in close proximity with the magic world.

Wouldn't that mean magic-users have to live exclusively in caves?

[JoshuaFH]

In the setting, the strongest wizards would live in caves, but your hum-drum ones can't just learn in areas in deserts or valleys or whereever is a tad lower than sea-level and thus closer to the magic world. This also means that the best fortresses are on mountain-tops, since magic users can't easily attack them there.

Wizards are by no means bound to low areas though, they can stray further up, it just means that magic takes longer to use and might be less potent. The individual skill of the caster is a large factor though.

[eerr]

In the setting, the strongest wizards would live in caves, but your hum-drum ones can't just learn in areas in deserts or valleys or whereever is a tad lower than sea-level and thus closer to the magic world. This also means that the best fortresses are on mountain-tops, since magic users can't easily attack them there.

Wizards are by no means bound to low areas though, they can stray further up, it just means that magic takes longer to use and might be less potent. The individual skill of the caster is a large factor though.

sounds like magic increases with pressure.

[JoshuaFH]

It's pneumatic magic.

[LegoLord]

Heh, yeah, that would be a neat mesh.  The game I had thought of to apply mine to is science fantasy, though, so I don't think that in particular could use the mesh.