I had a thought for a magic system for a game.
You see, the game would revolve around druids - the player characters, in this case, would be young druids sent by their deathless elders to go out and do various tasks that might be important to their lonely druid commune in the heart of the untamed woods or something of that nature.
These druids, then, would go out into the world and use their magical powers to solve problems, chief among which would be the ability to cast spells. These spells would be derived from the holy language of druidkind, revealed to them by the spirits of nature, the names for the ideal forms of each and every kind of life that may possibly exist, and by calling upon these ideal forms, the druids would then obtain terrain effects, summon the appropriate creatures, imbue themselves, their equipment or other people with abilities and more.
The names for these ideal forms, in what is the main mechanic of the game, are binomial names of real-world species of all kinds of life. Spells are cast with a certain intent (bless, curse, summon, terrain effect, mimic, that kind of thing), and then a roll is made to see how well the ideal form fulfills the intent.
Example: a druid sees someone she doesn't like one bit, some guy who looks too smug for his own good. So she maliciously curses "Heterocephalus glaber!" at him to take him down a peg. She rolls a 1-->1, and the man is not visibly altered, but has attained the ability to be immune to cancer of any sort of like an actual naked mole-rat. She feels sad that it's worked out this way, but is determined to make it work, so she yells "Condylura cristata!" at said individual, rolling a 5. This results in the man's nose suddenly sprouting twenty-two fleshy appendages, rendering it highly improbable that anyone will ever want to kiss him again in his lifetime.
See, I think the concept's sound and allows for a lot of player creativity and strongly thematic magical acts (plus a use for all that trivia about living organisms you may have accumulated over your lifetime), such as the druid in the example having a bent for subterranean mammals, but when I type them out, I realize that the Latin names sound a bit dorky much of the time, at least to me. Granted, that may not be a bad thing. I am also cautious that this may verge on edutainment if it becomes a reality. Could replace the Latin with something like "by the power of the naked mole-rat, I curse you, Random Q. Bystander!", which may, in fact, fit better with expressing intent. Opinions?