The Factory Floor

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Worldbuilding Meta

03:09

Q: Should the Worldbuilding-Process tag be discontinued?

Relevant test question on Main: Magic Systems: Advice for developing opposing forces The roll-over text for the Worldbuilding-Process tag reads: For questions about the process of creating a new world or changing and developing an existing one, as opposed to questions about some element of the...

Thomas F. Webber

I want to workshop the magic system for the book I've outlined. Would creating a room to chat about it be the right idea? or is there a way I could open a conversation about it? I know it wouldn't be the right thing for a specific question.

1 hour later…

Jiminy Cricket.

04:33

Sure, but why not try putting your ideas down here first, you can always create or beg someone to create a room later once you've got some people interested @ThomasF.Webber

Then there's always the sandbox (if I can find the link) for polishing questions before posting,

If there's something that stumps us, or there are too few visiting here at the time, there are ways of pinging selected other users to invite them to pitch-in.

Feeds

05:17

Once the air from the top passes below the plane of the wing and catches sight of the spooky skulls, it panics, which is the cause of turbulent vortices.

2 hours later…

Feeds

07:24

A: Sandbox for Proposed Questions

I'm mainly concerned about the fact this question has bonus questions, but I don't think they can be separated as they're so closely linked. Tags: science-based space space-travel light I never really know what tags to use. Apparently science-based is also reality-check, and it's ultimately about...

8 hours later…

sphennings

15:11

@ThomasF.Webber Given how inactive this room I think you can just start asking here. Given the size of the possibility space for magic systems, it can be hard to ask a suitably constrained question on the main site. There is no such restriction on what you can ask about in chat.

In fact in our help center we recommend that people bring questions unsuitable for the main site to chat.

Unlike a dedicated social networking site, stack exchange places a lot of restrictions on how you can invite someone to chat. Unless they've recently been active in the room @ mentions do not notify someone.

If you do decide to create a separate chat room, I'd recommend posting a link to it here to give it at least a little visibility.

Journeyman Geek

15:52

I'm a fan of 'the chat must flow, and if it needs another room later, we can move it' :D

6 hours later…

Worldbuilding Meta

21:49

Q: Why are questions asking for absolutes not a good fit for this site if the whole point it definite, objective, factual answers?

I noticed that any questions asking for absolutes were heavily downvoted. Why are questions asking for things that are always or never the case not appropriate for the site? I tought stackexchange talked about definite answers, and absolutes are definite. Why are absolute questions wrong? Some qu...

discussion

Thomas F. Webber

Thanks for all the support! I'll post here and we can move later then.

Could I get some advice on my magic system? I’ve plotted out a book, but I think the system could lend itself to more than one. Working on writing. The main theme I wanted to use this magic system to embody is survival, so mundane everyday use of these magics is something I have focused on so far. That said, there are a few times when fighting will come up and I want the main character to be able to use what she learns to face the challenges along the way.

1 hour later…

sphennings

23:21

From a writing standpoint, if you subscribe to Sanderson's laws, the magic that will most satisfactorily help an action scene is the magic that is the least surprising to the reader.

This isn't a function of your magic system per-se. It's a function of what you've already prepped the readers to expect. You can do this explicitly by info dumping, the rules of magic onto them, and hope that their interpretation of what is and isn't permitted matches your own, when spells that apply those rules are used. Or you could show instead of tell, and demonstrate someone's powers earlier in the story, or have the magic mentioned in conversation.

You haven't really given us much to go on in terms of what can and cannot be done via magic in your setting. You've provided some flavor surrounding it, runes give you a programmatic interface for interacting with magic. But you don't describe the boundaries, and limitations.

Sanderson's second law is applicable here. "Weaknesses are more interesting than powers." You have a lot of flavor, but not a lot of substance to your magic system.

You say that the runes are volatile when applied to organic matter, what does that mean in practice? If I place a rune on something does it blow up immediately or slowly fade out over a year? Do you need to just create the shape of a rune for it to work, or is there something extra that is needed to turn it from a shape, to something imbued with power?

All these questions help flesh things out but they won't move you closer to knowing what magic will work in an action scene. Fluff can inform that, like salt in soup, but you'll need to decide what using magic makes you capable of doing.

sphennings

23:49

As an example; The LISP programming language has been around since 1958. The fundamentals of the language haven't changed. But what you can do with the language has. An IBM mainframe in the 60s took up an entire room, received instructions from punch cards, and ran at a snails pace. Lisp gave programmers a way to command it. Today Lisp still gives programmers a way to command computers, but what those computers can do has changed in fascinating and terrible ways.

Saying "my magic runs on runes" or "my magic is based on the 118 elements" is like saying "my computer uses C" without knowing the capabilities of the computer itself we can only guess at what your runes, or program can actually accomplish.

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