The main problem with shaping rpg magic alike folklore magic is that it plays a completely different role. In old tales, magic is usually either background or a source of problems - and when it really helps the hero, it is still mostly out of his control. In rpg, if you give magic to a PC, it becomes a tool and problem-solving method. And a tool-like magic is, by definition, controllable and predictable - otherwise nobody will use it in play. It's a mirror reflection of Sanderson's First Law.
It does not mean that it's impossible to have "magical magic" in RPG. Some of the ideas the article's author mentions work well. PC magic cannot be unpredictable and needs to have resonable limits, but it may come with risk or, even better, moral choices. It may work without daily limits or be self-limiting in a way that makes more in-game sense. It may be an inherent part of the world and come naturally from high level of skills instead of being added on top of everything else.
I agree with majority of the article. It's only the mysterious-vs-scientific divide that I oppose. Magic in RPG needs to be scientific, "you may repeatably apply your knowledge for predictable results" scientific. But being scientific also means deep dependence on world's natural laws. And the natural laws of a fantasy world may be fun and interesting to explore in themselves.
It's not to make magic non scientific. It's to make fantasy science magical.
I think you're onto something really good here, and basically agree with many of your points.
One thing I perhaps have a different view upon though is this:
PC magic cannot be unpredictable
Magic (PC or otherwise) can easily be unpredictable, it just can't be always unpredictable,
if it is to be employed as a modern problem-solving tool. (Of course that is not all it can be used for even by PCs.) Part of the way it would be dangerous, in comparison to science, is if it occasionally either backfires, or presents itself in a way the user or no-one else ever really predicted.
For instance when technology fails, it is not science that fails, but the fact that either the technology is functioning incorrectly, or some variable in the technology or even the underlying science is unknown or not properly understood. But with magic you have built in aspects of "not understood" and "unknown." Because as you mentioned and implied magic is rarely under the real control of the user (not to mention the spectators or observers) in myths, or is not under the control of the user in the way the user suspects this to be so. Therefore there are almost always consequences of using magic that are unanticipated.
For with science the point is not only to control the forces that manipulate states of matter (regardless of whether such matter is organic or inorganic) and energy,
but to fundamentally understand those processes (regardless of whether real understanding has been achieved, or is even possible given the limitations of the human senses and the human mind).
The point being that not only is control desired, but understanding is.
With magic however it is a matter of control, far more-so than understanding. Yes, a very few select individuals may understand certain aspects of how particular magical effects function,
but it is not the summa esse of the magical experience to understand,
but to control (as much as is possible, assuming this is possible, at any rate) the magical forces.
Modern man has an extremely difficult time understanding this distinction and so commonly blurs the lines between control and understanding, assuming that control naturally and fundamentally implies understanding. He thinks and assumes (wrongly so) that one cannot have control without understanding, and that the more understanding he has the more naturally he will be able to control a thing. This is practically ingrained in modern man so deeply that he simply subconsciously assumes it is a basic and unchallenged condition of existence. He automatically demands it be true, and so to him it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and weltanschauung. This is even more obvious and pronounced among the Geek and Nerd sub-populations, such as those whose lives are filled with the background ambience of science and technology and whose livelihoods depend ever increasingly upon technology and "understanding their world." (This is not to be confused, but very often is, with "Understanding the World.") They simply, de facto, conclude that any system of real or desired control would be "scientific" by nature, or would want to be if it were not. How could it be any other way to them?
However throughout the course of human history it has been an extremely small percentage of the population who has sought real understanding of fundamental forces and phenomena (in comparison say to control of such forces, for instance compare the numbers of men like Archimedes or Da Vinci to the entire human population). The truth is that the vast majority of human beings still prefer and are satisfied with the practice of control over the concept of understanding, or at least are very much satisfied with that small level of control necessary to command and manipulate that level of technology and those forces in the world with which they daily interact. How many people watch television in comparison to how many people understand how it operates? How many people drive automobiles compared to how many are able to take an engine apart, or even understand the basic principles of the internal combustion engine? Technology seems far more scientific to us than magical (and so it should because technology is not magical, but it's effects are seemingly magical in some respects sometimes) because our entire background and worldview is based upon the dissemination of a basic level of realization involving the "understanding of basic principles." That is to say, generally speaking, modern and advanced societies imprint upon their populations the idea that it is important not only for their own personal welfare, but for the good of their society, to have a fundamental grasp of the understanding of matter and force and science and technology.
But for the vast majority of people who have ever lived, and who still live (I'd bet dollars to doughnuts), it is satisfactory and sufficient to have a certain level of practical and pragmatic control over whatever it is necessary or desired that one control, and real understanding (at least as far as human understanding is possible in most things) is under the purview of a very small segment of the population. It is only a modern conceit fostered by an assumption that everyone wants to be, or should be, or would choose to be if given the chance "scientific" in their worldview in how things operate, how much one understands about how things operate (which of course say nothing about why they operate as they do), and what that implies about controlling operations and functions. This idea is so immediately and reflexively (I'd even say culturally and sub-consciously) ingrained that not many in modern societies even stop to critically reflect upon the possibility that it may not be anything more than a blindly prejudiced assumption of values, rather than an accurate reflection of human reality. (I am not passing moral judgment on either position or condition in either direction, I am merely pointing out the underlying set of assumptions. Just as non-technological societies and peoples and even individuals have sets of underlying values and assumptions, so do scientific and technological societies and peoples and individuals.)
And if all, or at least important aspects of the above are true, then magic can operate fundamentally differently than science, and produce vastly different effects, while still maintaining the corollary illusion that what is being practiced is understanding, but what is actually being practiced is an unsure and unsteady (that is dangerous and in some ways very unpredictable) method of control.
And I also agree with Sanderson's First Law to the extent that the idea of understanding implies actual control of magic as a problem-solving-methodology. However as has been practiced and repeatedly proven throughout human history you can still control a thing and not understand it, though some things cannot be controlled pragmatically unless there is at least some degree (no matter how small or how mistaken in many respects) of understanding of the thing. But one can understand degrees of a thing, and everyone does, for no-one understands everything about anything, so that one knows enough to satisfactorily control, at least often enough to be effective, without really comprehending the hows, the whats, and the whys of a thing. [Indeed science itself is often at a total loss about the why(s) of a thing. Or at least, as the old saw goes in science, "fundamentally confused as to the why of this..."]
I would also state that as regards to Sanderson, a rule does not imply an understanding. A rule can imply an understanding just as it can a limitation, but it can also merely imply a set of observations by which one believes a thing operates because it has been observed to do so on numerous previous occasions. But with magic, with the idea of magic, as with the idea of miracles, rules need not be consistently functional limitations at all, but rather just a state of habitual conditionals, habits and conditions that are always open to modification when brought into contact with the right (or wrong) set of variables or states of being. That is to say a "rule is a rule until it is not," and unlike with science, you don't have to apply overwhelming energy principles and exotic and quantumized matter sates in order to shatter previous limitations, all you have to do is cause the "inherent potentiality" to express in previously unknown or unpredicted ways. In chemistry (which is science) you cannot transmute lead into gold, you would rather have to impose tremendous external energy states and fundamentally alter physical matter expressions. In alchemy (which is magic) the potential for lead to transmute into gold is already present within the characteristic nature of the matter, all that is required is that the proper and secret method of control be exercised, and the effect will be achieved.
"Presto-chango." With magic matter and energy are not bound or unbound by their basic limitations, but by "their fundamental character,"
and with magic the idea is that most everything has a secret and ultimately meaningful fundamental character (in this respect magic is very close to a religious ideal, and matter and energy are more miraculous than mundane - and the mundane can be relatively easily predicted - but the miraculous always retains an unpredictable and covert aspect of "secret and mysterious expression.")
That is a difference in worldview most modern men have a whole lot of trouble intuitively "understanding."
Anywho, I gotta go. I've enjoyed the dialogues and ideas.
