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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fuindordm" data-source="post: 4610338" data-attributes="member: 5435">Khuxan wrote: Magic is only magic if the players don't have it.Jack7 wrote: Magic should be closer to the soul than to science, more terrifying than technological.These two statements really resonate with me. How have other RPGs addressed the issue? I'm not widely read in RPGs, but it might be interesting to toss some ideas around.Warhammer: There is always a small but significant chance of incurring a nasty side effect from Chaos.Seventh Sea: PC access to magic is very specialized, and later sourcebooks indicate that magic is a poisoned apple, granting short-term power but harmful to the universe itself.Grim Tales: magic greatly and immediately weakens the caster.Cthulhu d20: magic not only weakens the caster, it is a limited resource (due to SAN loss) over the character's entire career.All these ideas have one thing in common: magic is kept rare in the campaign world by making it dangerous. This also limits it to all but the most dedicated PCs, in opposition to D&D v.1-3 where spells are just another tool available to the majority of adventurers.Jack is hinting at a different approach: the rules of magic can change over the course of play, preventing the players from ever knowing its rules fully. (I may, of course, be completely missing the mark--but that's to be expected.) Injecting mystery and rarity into magic is a worthy goal of any fantasy RPG. One of the things I am considering is how I can do this without necessarily making magic a sinister force. One possibility is to set up the rules so that beginning characters don't have the resources to actually use magic. At best they can construct a character who is capable of learning it as the campaign progresses. In this sort of RPG the players don't have it, and you at least have the potential to maintain a sense of wonder at the beginning of the story--perhaps at the risk of grandstanding.I'm interested in hearing other people's ideas on this matter, and any other examples of RPGs that have successfully made magic rarer, dangerous, and/or mysterious.Ben</blockquote>

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