I love the Goblin Punch blog's post about this stuff. Pigs never stop growing, roosters crow when horrible things happen, squid can travel to other planets, cats are spellbooks and foxes are imaginary.
The way i handle this in my world is that magic can be used in two main ways: Arcane Magic and Academic Magic Arcane Magic in inherent to the beings capable of using it. It's not about casting spells or thinking through it. It's more like a superpower; you just go and do it. It's more instinctive and deeply connected to genetic. Academic Magic, in other hand, is all about studying the magical properties of components, drawing runes, and recite verses. It's usually performed by people without magical powers.
For my own perosnal writing, in recent years at least, I've settled on the system of using magic as a simple force of will. Not just a simple urge however, as even say just a will to survive is not strong enough to tap into thia ambiguous force. It is the will to bend the fabric of reality at ones own feet. It is a deliberate choice. It is quite littieraly ablity to impose ones self over reality. Wich the level of requirement, at least to myself, I've found helps answer well why doesn't eveyone and things do it while still giving a understandable answer as to how some people stumble upon it. Now granted this does raise the question of "how far does that go then," and "can you just do anything?" Unforuently these questions, to be fair, I've littile answers for beyond hand waving; saying "they lack the sheer might needed to do X,y, and z." Which while this does at least provid an easy and nebulous out that still makes sense within the confines of the unviverse. I sometimes find it hallow and for some writings i implement it in makes it difficult to establish any form of structure to magic. Though I don't think these are issues that couldn't be answered by those smarter than myself.
I totally did not forget I scheduled this video for today, and consequently to promote it on the Discord. It is all RUclips's fault! I mean, in all honesty, it partially is, but still.
Another thought... If you talk about the maximal scale of power, then Lovecraft has eldritch ones. The whole category of Elder Gods was that they do not have a mind. They just do things without any reason or thought. Like Azathoth or Ibo-sathla, they just spawn parts of themselves and keep the power of life of atomic chaos. I think they can be counted as animals, with their mindless, instinct-driven state.
The codex inversus is an interesting little world-building project were many animals cast 1 to 3 magic spells as part of their daily life and many that don't use any magic yet are still successful It think it's and interesting case study for this topic
I'm personally interested in the idea of magic being energy source for entire ecosystems it could change biosphere big ways. Like the entire ocean floor would become a mass reef of many kinds with many kinds of animals living on them to smallest fish to truly gigantic organisms that are much bigger than a Blue Whale, Plant life could use both magic and sun in which makes them grow much faster and get them be more energy dense in turn makes animals grow and reproduce possible have them evolve into megafauna easier. there are all kinds of ways that magic being energy source could change.
For beyond reality I have a surprising example of Hanazuki: full of treasures. It’s a kids (but adult friendly) show where all of the characters are almost definitely aliens and most creatures are magical. The world is bizarre but understandable. I do justice the entirety of it here but the entire series has been uploaded to RUclips.
So, could a person wish nobody else would ever get to wish again? Could someone wish the world would end or restart, or for time to stop for everyone, including them? I'd assume everyone that is being attacked would wish they were safe, and every attacker would wish they were successful in the assault. Whose wish comes true if they are conflicting? I'm sure you have some rules and limitations that deal with the above questions, but these are what came to mind when trying to imagine that system.
@@ACrowingCockatrice yea these are good questions. I think the chances of your wish going how you want it to are based on specificity. There are also hard limits on backward time travel, mind control, ressurecting to dead, or impeding the magic of others
One thing I'd like to see you make a video about is how to have magic develop like technology does. For example, if magic is something that can be done without external resources, how does it develop and change over time? What factors would make it harder or easier to figure out all out in one life time vs in 100 generations? If I'm not careful, could or would my magic system more realistically be completed in one life time without people having to discover or use the scientific method? It's something I think about a lot, and I at least want to find ways to limit the growth of my magic systems in my settings and account for factors I might not be aware of. For example, I want to develop a system of Ki somewhat inspired by Dragon Ball, but one of the issues I have with Dragon Ball is that the main character goes from a powerlevel of 2 at birth to a godly levels of power within a single lifetime despite no one else in the history of the world seemingly having done that(With Numbers like 5 Million and 10 Million for the timeline being thrown around for the wow factor without thought and Civilizations having exist for that long), and having surpassed the rest of the universe long ago(And don't get me started on a scientist developing beings stronger than the emperor of the universe despite solely working on Earth and Earth being a technological backwater to the rest of the universe). Sure, there seems to be some explanations there, like the main character having rare opportunities to train with minor deities and thus perhaps limiting some barriers to them, Powerful Destructive Entities have recklessly destroyed countless planets perhaps hindering or reseting the development of Ki, but there's no official explanation and it doesn't 100% add up, especially as most of would just be fan speculation, nothing confirmed. I'm still left wondering why it's only the main Character and his friends developing at this rate and why seemingly no one else in the universe of Dragon Ball Has, or if there has been people to do similar, why did the average power level of the universe Drop and leave no evidence of their existence? This is basically what I want to avoid for my work and find ways to justify power growth/powerscaling that is similar to that(Of course I don't plan on power being everything, there will be other factors regardless, but it's something I want to consider and explore nonetheless.) I'd also recommend to check out Dragon Ball yourself as I'm probably not great at describing or explaining things, and it's a good show regardless(at least until you get to DB Super, which is the one with the most issues, but it's somewhat fun, but of course that can be subjective) and It might be fun to analyze it's worldbuilding concepts, and maybe make review on it. Though just keep in mind that it's worldbuilding isn't meant to be taken super seriously(Or at least Dragon Ball Fans don't take it too seriously or question it too much.), as it is at least part comedy, or something along those lines.
I'd not worry too much about people organically discovering everything about magic in one sitting. Take just the simplest of powers, like telekinesis, and imagina all the ways in which it could be used in all sorts of fields. The more you are thinking about it, the more opportunities spring to mind, and probably none of us could even imagine all of them. Add to this the fact that you are quite a bit more learned than the most knowledgeable people living thousands of years ago. I have no doubt in my mind that even a simple spell like that has centuries if not millennia of development potential ahead of them from their conception. Advancements in different fields could also unlock new opportunities for them. But even when thinking about a spell with fewer use cases, like creating a light source, you can increase the time it takes to fully explore it through other means. Limiting power is kind of an arbitrary barrier, but slowing down the technological (and subsequently arcane) development of a setting or parts of it can also work. Isolated populations, a lack of strong drivers for change, catastrophies, religious or cultural barriers, etc. As for extremely powerful magic, I'd actually look for the closest equivalents we have. Weapons of mass destruction. The agreements on the limitations of chemical and biological weapons, mutually assured destruction, disincentivising nuclear proliferation, stuff like that. These powers linked to individuals as opposed to objects makes it a bit more complicated, but the main principle is the same. This is an extremely serious matter, that requires careful consideration for all parties involved, and is by all means something that can be the cause for global treaties. The capacity to destroy the world is a scary prospect, and probably not the thing we want a single person to have access to. At least not any person.
it could also be that the positive aspects of magic come at a cost that is disadvantageous from an evolutionary perspective it could be that evolving to use magic requires a momentary drop in fitness. in the same way that a big ground species cant just evolve flight for no reason because theres no intermediate pressure where having a proto wing is useful and so it wont be selected for even if the final product would be useful in the long run. edit nah imagine an anchient demon being summoned and then it just gets eaten by a bear immediately💀💀 edit edit imagine a organism that reproduces by ripping itself apart and regrowing but it uses healing magic to do it 100× faster but the process requires a huge amount of energy to as it dose so it eats other creatures imagine getting bitted by a bug it explodes heals multiplys and a hundred more bugs are biting you and within a few seconds anything it attacks is transformed into a swarm or identical bugs all spawed from one bug
Geez. I'm pretty disappointed that, on this amount of research and thought, you do not think about the main example. The whole premise of Pokémon is 'They are superpowers, but humans do not have them.' So all human culture and most of the work revolve around these creatures, training them to do what humans want them to do. And if someone has a powerful Pokémon, the only thing that can counter its power is another equally powerful Pokémon. So this is the main example of animals with magic powers. The second thing that comes to my mind is Monster Hunter because most of these monsters have some kind of powers or spells they use, and again, the whole society evolves around them. Another though is Avatar the last airbender. They say that first bender just study supernatural animals and learn all casing/bending from them. So flying bisons, dragons, and other creatures are true source of magic and knowlage about them. Example is a dragons teaching how to dance the firebenders. But even if they power oryginated from magical animals humans from this uniwerse hunt them to extinctions. Where Uncle Iroch kill last dragon to show how powerfull he was. And another example is Harry Potter universe. Where Magical creatures was just one of source of power. If something cant be done be spells, magic plants, alchemy, then you need to find some magical animal what can do it. And know how to handle this animal.
Society may evolve around something, but as I said in the video, society needs to have a chance to even develop. If a creature has the ability to delete everything in a 3-meter radius, then that creature will use that ability without regard to things like sustainability. Vithout significant limitations, that creature will eventually delete the ecosystem around it, and then die of starvation. Alternatively, if there are things that can coincidentally withstand that ability, the ecosystem will consist solely of those, making the ability much less useful. A creature cannot really evolve around an ability unless it can already survive it. With magic, that is a lot harder to achieve, as a much higher level of power is achievable than by natural means. I don't know much about Monster Hunter, but Pokémon is filled with world-breaking stuff. One of the moves is simply an Earthquake, can be used by a large number of Pokémon, with people willingly using it in densely populated areas with numerous buildings. It is a fun game, that I myself like a lot, but I would not look to it for worldbuilding advice.
Agree. But the whole fun with magical creatures is designing ecosystems they're part of. And finding believable reasons for them to exist. And think about the impact that these creatures will make on every aspect of the world
@@ACrowingCockatrice Pokemon also has all the Pokemon be sapient, they just can't communicate with humans unless they're psychic or try hard to mimic it, and humans don't try to understand Pokemon outside of N (Black & White and BW2) and Prof Oak, who even designed a Pokedex version that can convert human language into pokemon speech (Hey You Pikachu). So I think that alone exclude Pokemon from being considered non-sapient magic animals, given they can talk with each other and understand humans, it's just that they don't understand how human technology and society works.
I love the Goblin Punch blog's post about this stuff. Pigs never stop growing, roosters crow when horrible things happen, squid can travel to other planets, cats are spellbooks and foxes are imaginary.
The way i handle this in my world is that magic can be used in two main ways: Arcane Magic and Academic Magic
Arcane Magic in inherent to the beings capable of using it. It's not about casting spells or thinking through it. It's more like a superpower; you just go and do it. It's more instinctive and deeply connected to genetic.
Academic Magic, in other hand, is all about studying the magical properties of components, drawing runes, and recite verses. It's usually performed by people without magical powers.
That is a helpful distinction.
For my own perosnal writing, in recent years at least, I've settled on the system of using magic as a simple force of will. Not just a simple urge however, as even say just a will to survive is not strong enough to tap into thia ambiguous force. It is the will to bend the fabric of reality at ones own feet. It is a deliberate choice. It is quite littieraly ablity to impose ones self over reality. Wich the level of requirement, at least to myself, I've found helps answer well why doesn't eveyone and things do it while still giving a understandable answer as to how some people stumble upon it. Now granted this does raise the question of "how far does that go then," and "can you just do anything?" Unforuently these questions, to be fair, I've littile answers for beyond hand waving; saying "they lack the sheer might needed to do X,y, and z." Which while this does at least provid an easy and nebulous out that still makes sense within the confines of the unviverse. I sometimes find it hallow and for some writings i implement it in makes it difficult to establish any form of structure to magic.
Though I don't think these are issues that couldn't be answered by those smarter than myself.
1st
Sad :(
This channel deserves more attention
it definitely does
I totally did not forget I scheduled this video for today, and consequently to promote it on the Discord. It is all RUclips's fault! I mean, in all honesty, it partially is, but still.
@@ACrowingCockatricelol
Another thought... If you talk about the maximal scale of power, then Lovecraft has eldritch ones. The whole category of Elder Gods was that they do not have a mind. They just do things without any reason or thought. Like Azathoth or Ibo-sathla, they just spawn parts of themselves and keep the power of life of atomic chaos. I think they can be counted as animals, with their mindless, instinct-driven state.
The codex inversus is an interesting little world-building project were many animals cast 1 to 3 magic spells as part of their daily life and many that don't use any magic yet are still successful
It think it's and interesting case study for this topic
I'll look into that one, thanks for the recommendation.
@@ACrowingCockatrice happy to contribute something, no matter how minor
I'm personally interested in the idea of magic being energy source for entire ecosystems it could change biosphere big ways. Like the entire ocean floor would become a mass reef of many kinds with many kinds of animals living on them to smallest fish to truly gigantic organisms that are much bigger than a Blue Whale, Plant life could use both magic and sun in which makes them grow much faster and get them be more energy dense in turn makes animals grow and reproduce possible have them evolve into megafauna easier. there are all kinds of ways that magic being energy source could change.
For beyond reality I have a surprising example of Hanazuki: full of treasures. It’s a kids (but adult friendly) show where all of the characters are almost definitely aliens and most creatures are magical. The world is bizarre but understandable. I do justice the entirety of it here but the entire series has been uploaded to RUclips.
Love from a TaleFoundry and Vaush fan!
I have a system where magic is wished, so any creature that can communicate can wish. A dog barking to ward a threat can create a magic barier.
So, could a person wish nobody else would ever get to wish again? Could someone wish the world would end or restart, or for time to stop for everyone, including them?
I'd assume everyone that is being attacked would wish they were safe, and every attacker would wish they were successful in the assault. Whose wish comes true if they are conflicting?
I'm sure you have some rules and limitations that deal with the above questions, but these are what came to mind when trying to imagine that system.
@@ACrowingCockatrice yea these are good questions. I think the chances of your wish going how you want it to are based on specificity. There are also hard limits on backward time travel, mind control, ressurecting to dead, or impeding the magic of others
displacer beasts don't teleport, they just cause their image to not align with their actual location via illusion
One thing I'd like to see you make a video about is how to have magic develop like technology does. For example, if magic is something that can be done without external resources, how does it develop and change over time? What factors would make it harder or easier to figure out all out in one life time vs in 100 generations? If I'm not careful, could or would my magic system more realistically be completed in one life time without people having to discover or use the scientific method? It's something I think about a lot, and I at least want to find ways to limit the growth of my magic systems in my settings and account for factors I might not be aware of.
For example, I want to develop a system of Ki somewhat inspired by Dragon Ball, but one of the issues I have with Dragon Ball is that the main character goes from a powerlevel of 2 at birth to a godly levels of power within a single lifetime despite no one else in the history of the world seemingly having done that(With Numbers like 5 Million and 10 Million for the timeline being thrown around for the wow factor without thought and Civilizations having exist for that long), and having surpassed the rest of the universe long ago(And don't get me started on a scientist developing beings stronger than the emperor of the universe despite solely working on Earth and Earth being a technological backwater to the rest of the universe). Sure, there seems to be some explanations there, like the main character having rare opportunities to train with minor deities and thus perhaps limiting some barriers to them, Powerful Destructive Entities have recklessly destroyed countless planets perhaps hindering or reseting the development of Ki, but there's no official explanation and it doesn't 100% add up, especially as most of would just be fan speculation, nothing confirmed. I'm still left wondering why it's only the main Character and his friends developing at this rate and why seemingly no one else in the universe of Dragon Ball Has, or if there has been people to do similar, why did the average power level of the universe Drop and leave no evidence of their existence? This is basically what I want to avoid for my work and find ways to justify power growth/powerscaling that is similar to that(Of course I don't plan on power being everything, there will be other factors regardless, but it's something I want to consider and explore nonetheless.)
I'd also recommend to check out Dragon Ball yourself as I'm probably not great at describing or explaining things, and it's a good show regardless(at least until you get to DB Super, which is the one with the most issues, but it's somewhat fun, but of course that can be subjective) and It might be fun to analyze it's worldbuilding concepts, and maybe make review on it. Though just keep in mind that it's worldbuilding isn't meant to be taken super seriously(Or at least Dragon Ball Fans don't take it too seriously or question it too much.), as it is at least part comedy, or something along those lines.
I'd not worry too much about people organically discovering everything about magic in one sitting. Take just the simplest of powers, like telekinesis, and imagina all the ways in which it could be used in all sorts of fields. The more you are thinking about it, the more opportunities spring to mind, and probably none of us could even imagine all of them. Add to this the fact that you are quite a bit more learned than the most knowledgeable people living thousands of years ago. I have no doubt in my mind that even a simple spell like that has centuries if not millennia of development potential ahead of them from their conception. Advancements in different fields could also unlock new opportunities for them.
But even when thinking about a spell with fewer use cases, like creating a light source, you can increase the time it takes to fully explore it through other means. Limiting power is kind of an arbitrary barrier, but slowing down the technological (and subsequently arcane) development of a setting or parts of it can also work. Isolated populations, a lack of strong drivers for change, catastrophies, religious or cultural barriers, etc.
As for extremely powerful magic, I'd actually look for the closest equivalents we have. Weapons of mass destruction. The agreements on the limitations of chemical and biological weapons, mutually assured destruction, disincentivising nuclear proliferation, stuff like that. These powers linked to individuals as opposed to objects makes it a bit more complicated, but the main principle is the same. This is an extremely serious matter, that requires careful consideration for all parties involved, and is by all means something that can be the cause for global treaties. The capacity to destroy the world is a scary prospect, and probably not the thing we want a single person to have access to. At least not any person.
Can you talk about if fantasy dragons can fly(without magic) and how to make sure your dragons can fly?
Sure, I'll add that topic to the list of potential episodes.
it could also be that the positive aspects of magic come at a cost that is disadvantageous from an evolutionary perspective it could be that evolving to use magic requires a momentary drop in fitness. in the same way that a big ground species cant just evolve flight for no reason because theres no intermediate pressure where having a proto wing is useful and so it wont be selected for even if the final product would be useful in the long run.
edit nah imagine an anchient demon being summoned and then it just gets eaten by a bear immediately💀💀
edit edit imagine a organism that reproduces by ripping itself apart and regrowing but it uses healing magic to do it 100× faster but the process requires a huge amount of energy to as it dose so it eats other creatures imagine getting bitted by a bug it explodes heals multiplys and a hundred more bugs are biting you and within a few seconds anything it attacks is transformed into a swarm or identical bugs all spawed from one bug
20:55 so basically pokemon
magic sterilizes the user the moment they cast a spell, done
oh shit i could make a story about gay wizards this way
That is indeed a very effective limitation.
After reproducing an animal could use it to protect its offspring.
Geez. I'm pretty disappointed that, on this amount of research and thought, you do not think about the main example. The whole premise of Pokémon is 'They are superpowers, but humans do not have them.' So all human culture and most of the work revolve around these creatures, training them to do what humans want them to do. And if someone has a powerful Pokémon, the only thing that can counter its power is another equally powerful Pokémon. So this is the main example of animals with magic powers. The second thing that comes to my mind is Monster Hunter because most of these monsters have some kind of powers or spells they use, and again, the whole society evolves around them. Another though is Avatar the last airbender. They say that first bender just study supernatural animals and learn all casing/bending from them. So flying bisons, dragons, and other creatures are true source of magic and knowlage about them. Example is a dragons teaching how to dance the firebenders. But even if they power oryginated from magical animals humans from this uniwerse hunt them to extinctions. Where Uncle Iroch kill last dragon to show how powerfull he was. And another example is Harry Potter universe. Where Magical creatures was just one of source of power. If something cant be done be spells, magic plants, alchemy, then you need to find some magical animal what can do it. And know how to handle this animal.
Society may evolve around something, but as I said in the video, society needs to have a chance to even develop. If a creature has the ability to delete everything in a 3-meter radius, then that creature will use that ability without regard to things like sustainability. Vithout significant limitations, that creature will eventually delete the ecosystem around it, and then die of starvation. Alternatively, if there are things that can coincidentally withstand that ability, the ecosystem will consist solely of those, making the ability much less useful. A creature cannot really evolve around an ability unless it can already survive it. With magic, that is a lot harder to achieve, as a much higher level of power is achievable than by natural means.
I don't know much about Monster Hunter, but Pokémon is filled with world-breaking stuff. One of the moves is simply an Earthquake, can be used by a large number of Pokémon, with people willingly using it in densely populated areas with numerous buildings. It is a fun game, that I myself like a lot, but I would not look to it for worldbuilding advice.
Like the snail Pokémon with a temperature approximating THE SUN
Agree. But the whole fun with magical creatures is designing ecosystems they're part of. And finding believable reasons for them to exist. And think about the impact that these creatures will make on every aspect of the world
@@ACrowingCockatrice Pokemon also has all the Pokemon be sapient, they just can't communicate with humans unless they're psychic or try hard to mimic it, and humans don't try to understand Pokemon outside of N (Black & White and BW2) and Prof Oak, who even designed a Pokedex version that can convert human language into pokemon speech (Hey You Pikachu).
So I think that alone exclude Pokemon from being considered non-sapient magic animals, given they can talk with each other and understand humans, it's just that they don't understand how human technology and society works.