A tip for people that struggle with coming up with ideas for a magical system I am personally a sucker of taking something common from real life and extending it into something magical. Let me explain on an example. I once wrote a magic system based on probability calculations. The witches and wizards could feel which outcome an action could have and use magic to make said outcome happen. The unlikeliest outcome would cost the most magic and energy to archive and when the possibility for it to happen was 0% no witch could make it happen. (So making fire through magic when its dry and someone is clanking stones together is easy. Making fire in poring rain hard to impossible). It's fun because it works with so many things. You can make magic out of cooking, sewing, weaving, cleaning, programming,... endless possibilities
Smartasses like me would cry out, that there is hardly such a thing as "impossible", even in real physics, due to tunneling. Adams plays with this idea, in "The Hichhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", the "Heart of Gold" overclocked normal probability, reversing its effects, which made extremly improbable events extremly probable and vice versa. For example, turning two ballistic missiles into a sperm whale and a potted petunia (although the petunia was actually an ever-reincarnating, immortal being, which made this event even more unlikely)
I am making a TTRPG and I was experimenting with environmental factors. What happens if at low levels, you may be unable to use most fire magic except for making sparks for a fire (so simple and cheap to do you can do it anywhere that has air). On the flip side, you may burn yourself alive at low levels as your low level spell jumps up to ten times as powerful by being on top of a volcano.
@@monochr0m completely agree. in the end, execution is what determines whether a magic system is good or not. Nobody really questions why the 'post mortem' power up has to exist because of how well the story has been told around it.
To be fair, hard vs soft magic is very much a spectrum. The harder the magic system, the more strictly defined the rules and limitations are. Even very soft magic systems still need some rules to be bound by, they just tend to be a lot more flexible in how that magic can be used
@@abbycaldwell3166 i don't think it's even that. take hxh for example, how characters acquire their specialised nen is completely arbitrary and is very soft magic system esque. however when pitted against each other, the rules established in the fight gives it a hard magic system feel. in the end, i find hard and soft magic system as optional guidelines rather than rules on how magic systems in fiction works
@piemastah2258 That's the same thing. The "Rules Established" are the same rules everyone else's Nen goes by, and because of that you can even come to the same conclusions as the characters. Hence, it's a Hard Magic System... Their Unique Abilities and how they got them are irrelevant to how they are actually utilized.
I personally prefer writing around Limitations and Costs rather than weaknesses. Weaknesses can make a story predictable and settings I enjoy rather focus too much on the mundane characters within it. I'll usually only throw in weaknesses as an extension of costs, kind of playing into the idea that the cheating to gain power as a price even if you don't pay for it immediately.
I got a semi-hard magic system, and since I wanted to have something more substantial than "magic require stamina" I made my wizards run on batteries. Not literal batteries, but magic crystals that store the energy they use for spellcasting. It can give you the power to level a city block, but when you run dry you're SOL.
I made a magic system that ran on a principle that was basically all three of these tied into one. Magic came from an outside source, but using it required the caster to actively focus on channeling it. The more energy you tried to channel, the more focus it took, so a big spell done sloppy wasn't any more effective than a small spell done well. This could actually be dangerous to the caster, too (think of a water balloon v. a squirt gun, only with fire). Also, if an area didn't have much magic, you had to be careful what you used it for, or you'd run out of juice mid-spell.
I took inspiration for my rules of magic from physics, specifically thermodynamics. I think pulling inspiration from hard science can be really interesting.
@@maiaduffield678 that really cool I wrote the "3 laws of Magic" which are basically the laws of thermodynamics. The Magic system has some other things to it. It took me a long time to come up with a system that actually works.
Also I'd like to bring War of Broken Mirrors to the spotlight: it's magic directly correlates with bodily functions. Use too much fire? Your body can't maintain its temperature anymore. Too much mirror magic? Your vision gets worse. Protection? Your body is more prone to injury. It's a really fun magic system
Sounds like the Curse Workers books. Basically, Workers can affect another person in their own unique way, but they then suffer blowback in a similar nature. For instance, Memory Workers who can manipulate someone’s memories will lose their own and a Death Worker loses a piece of their body every time they use their power to kill someone.
The avatar the last airbender magic system works because it's based off Martial arts, and the limits are similiar between the 2. You could try to copy a technique you see someone else do, but without the proper training, it'll never be as good or effective.
I remember you've made a video on hard and soft magic systems a few months ago back, I thought. Is there going to be an update video or is this short related to that original one?
In my og magic system magic is simply an energy that a normall human body is not equipped to handle so it need to be channeled through a staff wand crystal scroll and such You can still use magic raw without any conduits but if you use some lower mid level spell and fail your save your arm meat will peel off the bone in a sparkly explosion leaving strands of your arm hanging at your elbow Anything that the caster touches (even other living being though hard to pull off) can be a conduit but unless specifically made to channel magic it will most likely just explode and the rest of the energy will still come to bite your arm off
My favourite magic system indeed is Magic: the Gathering. It's somewhat hard, not to extreme levels. I would love to hear an analysis of yours within this framework of it, but I understand it may be unfamiliar to you
Obviously Eragon doesn’t work as well for adults as it did when they were children for numerous reasons but I like the idea in their magic system that you can’t do anything with magic that you couldn’t otherwise do just with more time or while closer, thereby encouraging clever and economical use of magic.
I've always liked that metal magic. can't remember the name of it I think it's farrilchemy. but the premise is you ingest medal to gain power. there's a second type of magic in that same world in which you can use metal to store attributes for later consumption. it's a zero sum amount you store your strength now you are weaker now, but you can use it later. though another series I'd ran across by Devon Monk had magic cost pain. a quick glamour spell to make you look nice might make you have a headache for half an hour or something like that. if you want to do something more, you very well might be debilitated for days on end. they also have the choice of a way to offload this discomfort and pain. which means that either you can pay someone to hurt for you or if you're cruel just dump it on someone on willing.
Most of mine fall somewhere in between hard and soft. They're all probably hard at the end of the day, because I have no idea how to write a soft magic system in the first place, but I digress.
HelloFutureMe you have to read the Cradle series of you want to see an example of a truly beautiful hard magic system and the worldbuilding that surrounds it
My magic system works with "magic radiation" is a type of fantasy radiation that comes out of the bone, the only limit to the usage of spells is how much your body can contain or manage the radiation, so yeah, all kinds of tumors going on in the magic of my fantasy world
I don’t really like magic that drains a person stamina in story writing because there’s too much room for exaggeration since stamina isn’t something you can visually measure. A person can have as much stamina or as little stamina as the writer wants and so it can make the story feel a bit lazy.
The Wheel of Time tv series is a terrible example of a hard magic system. They contradict themselves often. The books are a great example not the show.
![On Writing: hard magic systems in fantasy [ Avatar l Fullmetal Alchemist l Mistborn ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/iMJQb5bGu_g/mqdefault.jpg)
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People: Are you a hard magic system
Reality bending: Depends, do I want to be?
Fellow SCP fan?
@@peculiarcanine9443 We die in the dark so humanity may live in the light
When does aang learn that one?
Lol not THAT bending @felixowen2693
A tip for people that struggle with coming up with ideas for a magical system I am personally a sucker of taking something common from real life and extending it into something magical. Let me explain on an example. I once wrote a magic system based on probability calculations. The witches and wizards could feel which outcome an action could have and use magic to make said outcome happen. The unlikeliest outcome would cost the most magic and energy to archive and when the possibility for it to happen was 0% no witch could make it happen. (So making fire through magic when its dry and someone is clanking stones together is easy. Making fire in poring rain hard to impossible). It's fun because it works with so many things. You can make magic out of cooking, sewing, weaving, cleaning, programming,... endless possibilities
Not a bad idea. Thanks
Smartasses like me would cry out, that there is hardly such a thing as "impossible", even in real physics, due to tunneling. Adams plays with this idea, in "The Hichhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", the "Heart of Gold" overclocked normal probability, reversing its effects, which made extremly improbable events extremly probable and vice versa. For example, turning two ballistic missiles into a sperm whale and a potted petunia (although the petunia was actually an ever-reincarnating, immortal being, which made this event even more unlikely)
I am making a TTRPG and I was experimenting with environmental factors. What happens if at low levels, you may be unable to use most fire magic except for making sparks for a fire (so simple and cheap to do you can do it anywhere that has air). On the flip side, you may burn yourself alive at low levels as your low level spell jumps up to ten times as powerful by being on top of a volcano.
God HxH had what is most likely my favorite hard magic system. Nen is just on another level
I love it too, but i'd go as far as to say it is the most complex and well thought of magic system.
What are you on about? The rules are completely arbitrary and making up some cost doesn't justify weird ass abilities that don't make sense
@@monochr0m completely agree.
in the end, execution is what determines whether a magic system is good or not.
Nobody really questions why the 'post mortem' power up has to exist because of how well the story has been told around it.
Nen is only pretending to be a hard magic system.
Can someone explain what y'all are talking about???
Like in Kane chronicles, if u overuse magic, u run out of energy and start using life force to power the magic which eventually makes u burn up
Well hello fellow Kane chronicles fan how do you do
Similar to the Secrets of th Immortal Nicholas Flamel series
The magic system in Dragon Age basically was based on a crystaline drug that people got addicted to and had withdrawals from.
Unironically finding out your magic system is hard, not soft like you thought
To be fair, hard vs soft magic is very much a spectrum. The harder the magic system, the more strictly defined the rules and limitations are. Even very soft magic systems still need some rules to be bound by, they just tend to be a lot more flexible in how that magic can be used
@@abbycaldwell3166 i don't think it's even that. take hxh for example, how characters acquire their specialised nen is completely arbitrary and is very soft magic system esque. however when pitted against each other, the rules established in the fight gives it a hard magic system feel.
in the end, i find hard and soft magic system as optional guidelines rather than rules on how magic systems in fiction works
@piemastah2258 That's the same thing.
The "Rules Established" are the same rules everyone else's Nen goes by, and because of that you can even come to the same conclusions as the characters.
Hence, it's a Hard Magic System...
Their Unique Abilities and how they got them are irrelevant to how they are actually utilized.
I personally prefer writing around Limitations and Costs rather than weaknesses. Weaknesses can make a story predictable and settings I enjoy rather focus too much on the mundane characters within it. I'll usually only throw in weaknesses as an extension of costs, kind of playing into the idea that the cheating to gain power as a price even if you don't pay for it immediately.
Imagine a hard magic system which attempts to describe IRL biochemistry, mechanics, physics and how a brain could interact with it all. 🎉
I like that more than weaknesses. It’s more specific and gets you to think about it more.
I got a semi-hard magic system, and since I wanted to have something more substantial than "magic require stamina" I made my wizards run on batteries. Not literal batteries, but magic crystals that store the energy they use for spellcasting. It can give you the power to level a city block, but when you run dry you're SOL.
Magical heroine.... IDEA~~!!!
I made a magic system that ran on a principle that was basically all three of these tied into one. Magic came from an outside source, but using it required the caster to actively focus on channeling it. The more energy you tried to channel, the more focus it took, so a big spell done sloppy wasn't any more effective than a small spell done well. This could actually be dangerous to the caster, too (think of a water balloon v. a squirt gun, only with fire). Also, if an area didn't have much magic, you had to be careful what you used it for, or you'd run out of juice mid-spell.
I took inspiration for my rules of magic from physics, specifically thermodynamics. I think pulling inspiration from hard science can be really interesting.
Me and a friend love chatting about our personal magic system based on energy transfer and forces.
@@maiaduffield678 that really cool I wrote the "3 laws of Magic" which are basically the laws of thermodynamics. The Magic system has some other things to it. It took me a long time to come up with a system that actually works.
Add some biochemistry!! 🎉
All the best powers in anime are done by taking a scientific principle and misrepresenting it a little
Allomancy and Feruchemy are some of the best examples of hard magic.
Also I'd like to bring War of Broken Mirrors to the spotlight: it's magic directly correlates with bodily functions.
Use too much fire? Your body can't maintain its temperature anymore. Too much mirror magic? Your vision gets worse. Protection? Your body is more prone to injury.
It's a really fun magic system
Sounds like the Curse Workers books. Basically, Workers can affect another person in their own unique way, but they then suffer blowback in a similar nature. For instance, Memory Workers who can manipulate someone’s memories will lose their own and a Death Worker loses a piece of their body every time they use their power to kill someone.
Ooooo! That sounds NEAT
@@animeotaku307cooool!!!
Remember that movie, doctor Strange, where they use magic to conjure weapons to fight other mages who also use magic to conjure weapons?
The avatar the last airbender magic system works because it's based off Martial arts, and the limits are similiar between the 2. You could try to copy a technique you see someone else do, but without the proper training, it'll never be as good or effective.
There are also free lectures by Brandon Sanderson on YT, the guy who coined "Hard Magic".
I remember you've made a video on hard and soft magic systems a few months ago back, I thought. Is there going to be an update video or is this short related to that original one?
*years
@@ag7898 I didn't need to know how long I've been watching his videos.
Hunter Hunter system's, Nen, Is One of the most amazingly fleshed out magic systems I've ever seen ❤
I like the magical system in Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight archives. Honestly, I just like everything he writes.
Or in WoT's case men can go Insane and cause a Magic Nuclear Apokalypse 👍
My magic system make the characters rely on physical strength as the more they use the magic system their lifespan shortened
In my og magic system magic is simply an energy that a normall human body is not equipped to handle so it need to be channeled through a staff wand crystal scroll and such
You can still use magic raw without any conduits but if you use some lower mid level spell and fail your save your arm meat will peel off the bone in a sparkly explosion leaving strands of your arm hanging at your elbow
Anything that the caster touches (even other living being though hard to pull off) can be a conduit but unless specifically made to channel magic it will most likely just explode and the rest of the energy will still come to bite your arm off
My favourite magic system indeed is Magic: the Gathering. It's somewhat hard, not to extreme levels. I would love to hear an analysis of yours within this framework of it, but I understand it may be unfamiliar to you
Love the HxH magic system.
Obviously Eragon doesn’t work as well for adults as it did when they were children for numerous reasons but I like the idea in their magic system that you can’t do anything with magic that you couldn’t otherwise do just with more time or while closer, thereby encouraging clever and economical use of magic.
I've always liked that metal magic. can't remember the name of it I think it's farrilchemy. but the premise is you ingest medal to gain power. there's a second type of magic in that same world in which you can use metal to store attributes for later consumption. it's a zero sum amount you store your strength now you are weaker now, but you can use it later.
though another series I'd ran across by Devon Monk had magic cost pain. a quick glamour spell to make you look nice might make you have a headache for half an hour or something like that. if you want to do something more, you very well might be debilitated for days on end. they also have the choice of a way to offload this discomfort and pain. which means that either you can pay someone to hurt for you or if you're cruel just dump it on someone on willing.
Allomancy, Feruchemy, and hemalurgy
@@enderknight39 that's the one
That's the Mistborn series, yes?
Wait... can we read into this being a short as that you are going to do a new hard and soft magic systems videos?
"Here or over on RUclips"? Aren't we already on youtube?
This was probably a tiktok they threw together into a short
Most of mine fall somewhere in between hard and soft. They're all probably hard at the end of the day, because I have no idea how to write a soft magic system in the first place, but I digress.
HelloFutureMe you have to read the Cradle series of you want to see an example of a truly beautiful hard magic system and the worldbuilding that surrounds it
Cursed energy the most interesting one imo
My magic system works with "magic radiation" is a type of fantasy radiation that comes out of the bone, the only limit to the usage of spells is how much your body can contain or manage the radiation, so yeah, all kinds of tumors going on in the magic of my fantasy world
I don’t really like magic that drains a person stamina in story writing because there’s too much room for exaggeration since stamina isn’t something you can visually measure. A person can have as much stamina or as little stamina as the writer wants and so it can make the story feel a bit lazy.
Wow 😳
The Wheel of Time tv series is a terrible example of a hard magic system. They contradict themselves often. The books are a great example not the show.
Only problem I have with this video is that all heroin is magical.
Wheel of time was such a massive disappointment. I did not know the terminology back then, but he killed the story for harem nonsense
NEN IS THE BEST MAGIC SYSTEM DON’T @ME
Avatar is NOT MAGIC