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Message: <blockquote data-quote="steenan" data-source="post: 5310189" data-attributes="member: 23240">I have several preferences concerning magic in fantastic worlds I play in. I'll list them in order of importance.1. I respect Sanderson's First Law. For this reason, I need my magic to have clear boundaries. What can be done with it and what cannot? What is the reason of these limitations? If the magic is a catch-all for all imaginable strangeness, if I may explain whatever weird I encounter with "a wizard did it", that's a non-starter for me. Magic may be mysterious, it may be based on myths and symbols, but it must be concrete.2. Magic must have a coherent cosmology. I need to know where it comes from, why it works, how it meshes with the rest of the world. I need to see that the consequences of this are taken into account, implemented in the setting. For example, if magic is directing energy flows through symbols, I expect all such symbols to work, no matter who draws them and in what scale. If magic is something one is born with, I expect wizard families that play the role of nobility.3. I like it when magic is either an inherent, fundamental part of the world that couldn't exist without it (as physics is IRL), or is something definitely alien and invasive (demonic power and similar things). If magic feels tacked on, it's a big downer on the game. As a result, magic is either something that may be researched through a scientific method, or something that by its nature evades any classification and modeling by human mind - not something in between.4. I don't like putting multiple kinds of magic in a game, unless they are both significantly different (in style and in effect) and unified by a bigger cosmological structure. That's the biggest problem I have with arcane, divine and psionical magic in one game. What is that what a wizard does if not using a power of mind? Is divine magic cast by humans (than why isn't it the same as arcane?) or by gods (then why does it depend on priest's power and experience?)? But if there were four separate magic paths using four elements, or gifts from two deities in a dualistic system, I'm ok with it.5. Now to the mechanics. I strongly prefer magic that is limited by price or risk (as in "risk of significant inconvenience", not "risk of death or other kind of unplayability") to magic with hard limits (per adventure, per day etc.). I like both freeform and spell list magic systems, but the spell lists need to be relatively short and with strong thematics, while the freeform systems need clear boundaries.6. Other than that, many variations are acceptable, as long as the setting is built with magic in mind. I may play in a Xanth-esque world where everyone has a single magical power. Or a world where everyone may learn magic, but in practice only rich people with a lot of patience do, as you have to study theory for 10 years or more before you are able to cast anything. Or where magical powers of great magnitude are available only to few thousands people in billions. Or where spells scale very strongly in risk and difficulty, so nearly every literate person is able to use some tricks, but only a few do powerful magic. And so on.</blockquote>

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