Magic spells outside RPGs

[Closet_Skeleton]

There's also the book the Wizard of Oz, where even if you exclude the fake magic of the title character the various witches seem to be pretty fake as well outside of one magic item (there's another important magic item but if you actually analyse it then its supposed magic ability to command the monkeys isn't actually magic).

I don't know about the later books, but other adaptations not directly based off the books add a lot more magic.

[jedipotter]

The problem is that an RPG is a game, and needs to be playable. Gygax and the D&D creators found in Vance's Dying Earth a system that allowed for easily codifiable magic effects and restricted it sufficiently that someone could actually play as a wizard alongside other types of characters.

This is a good point.

Most magic in fiction is all powerful. The caster has magical energy and can pretty much do anything....that the plot allows and/or needs. The plot provides the balance as they have just the right amount of power to fit into the plot perfectly. Sure in the story the wizard will get ''tired'' or ''whatever'', but that is just following the plot.

Harry Potter Example: In every book/movie, the character's run away from a monster/bad guy at the start or middle of the story. Yet, other times they are shown having dozes of spells that they can cast in a second to fight off monsters and bad guys.

But it is near impossible to do ''anything'' magic in a game. You need to have some limits. Spell point type systems come close, but they still fail as in you'd need tons of points to come even close to ''apprentice'' casters shown in fiction. Worse, they have the power problem: it is easy to make your rule something like ''telekinesis effects one pound per power point''. It sounds like a good limit. Until you consider that just a power point can choke someone or otherwise kill them. So sure you can use 100 power points to drop a mountain on them...or use one power point to block their windpipe....

[PairO'Dice Lost]

I disagree that being recipe-like is enough to be D&D-like. D&D has material components, but most of its spells are not rituals in the sense of the "real spells" you mentioned; the feel is more 'magic trick that's actually magic' than 'ritual'. It also has all the memorization and fire-and-forget-and-forget and predictability stuff.

The memorization/preparation is the ritual part. In Goetic magic, you pull out your musty old tome, inscribe a mystical diagram on the floor, wave your arms in mystic gestures, chant for an hour and ten minutes, call out "Demon, come forth!" and poof, a minor demon from the Lesser Key of Solomon appears in your magic circle.

In D&D magic, you pull out your spellbook, inscribe a mystical diagram on the floor, wave your arms in mystic gestures, chant for an hour--then magically lock the current state of the ritual away in your mind instead of finishing it immediately. When you want to complete it, most likely after buffing yourself, double-checking the dimensional anchor, etc., you wave your arms in mystic gestures, chant for ten minutes, call out "Demon, come forth!" and poof, a CR 6 or lower demon from the Monster Manual appears in your magic circle.

Not only is the general flavor pretty much the same, going from "perform a big fancy ritual" to "perform most of a big fancy ritual and save the last bit to be triggered later" is probably the best extrapolation of traditional European magic to get you combat-time spells, since as Closet_Skeleton pointed out, the concept of nebulous "magical energy" that a person just has and uses to "do stuff with magic" is a very modern one, comparatively, and negotiating during combat with previously-bound spirits to help you would be too slow.

There's one other fairly old aspect of magic, popular in modern fiction, that hasn't been mentioned: the True Names/Language of Power stuff. Which D&D tried to do only once, resulting in the most broken/broken class ever.

While it isn't explicitly called out aside from truenaming, D&D magic is already practically built on the Language of Power concept. The vast majority of spells have verbal components, spoken in a tongue belonging to ancient and powerful magical beings, and there's an entire class for people who can talk and sing so well that magic happens. You need to know creatures' names to call them specifically, and most magic items have magic words that make them function. Power Word spells pack the most amount of power into the smallest space (in AD&D, they were very powerful spells given lower overall HP, and had ridiculously fast casting times, and even in 3e they're no-save spells with proportionally powerful effects) and are explicitly words with inherent magical power. Other examples of words-as-magic abound: glyphs, sigils, runes, symbols, etc., and of course wizards write down magic in their spellbooks which is made of words which themselves are magical and can't be understood by the uninitiated; scrolls, likewise, are literally written-down magic.

If you were to decide that D&D magic works by knowing and using the language of magic, you'd have to change absolutely none of the fluff and it would work just fine.

Most magic in fiction is all powerful.

Hardly. Taken as a whole, "magic in fiction" may be all-powerful, because every setting has different rules and assumptions, but I can think of no setting where magic itself is able to do anything, much less individual wielders of magic.

The caster has magical energy and can pretty much do anything....that the plot allows and/or needs. The plot provides the balance as they have just the right amount of power to fit into the plot perfectly. Sure in the story the wizard will get ''tired'' or ''whatever'', but that is just following the plot.

It's "just following the plot" in the same way that a soldier getting "tired or whatever" after fighting for his life in a long battle without a break is "just following the plot." If the rules of magic in a particular setting say that using magic is physically tiring, then you get physically tired when you use magic, there's no need to handwave it as a plot contrivance. On the contrary, if the rules of magic in a setting establish that magic is physically tiring and then a protagonist doesn't get tired after using an amount of magic that tired him before, without a good explanation such as more training, focus items, etc., then that is a plot contrivance.

[TheThan]

Despite whatever sort of being the “good” magic users are, we don’t see them suffer any consequences for their magic. We don’t even see Saruman and Sauron suffer ill effects of using their magic and they’re the bad guys. Granted magic in the Lord of the Rings is supposed to be subtle (which is fine).

I think i figured out part of the problem. Magic in works are dramatic; when Akiro raises Conan (ok raises is too strong a word, but that’s basically what happens) he warns Valeria that there would be a great toll to pay. It’s also very dramatic, they have to fight off spirits that are trying to take conan away; high blowing wind, dramatic music and all sorts of amazing drama on display. When Gandalf stands up to Durin’s Bane it was epic, climatic, with fire whips and awesome lines being delivered by Gandalf. It was dramatic and awesome and cool.


In DnD often times it’s boiled down to the player saying,“I cast fireball”, and then the player starts rolling dice.

[Zaydos]

Even in Howard's stories not all sorcerers suffered for their art, Pelias didn't, for example; magic was dangerous and if you did something wrong it would lash out back at you. It was also often draining so you could only use so much in a short span.

Also D&D used to have spells aging you and the like (haste aged you a year, and I'm trying to remember which buff caused a system shock roll making it really good at killing people, wish aged you several years/reduced your Intelligence permanently/permanently lost you an entire level depending upon edition).

[JCarter426]

If you want to look at the differences between magic in a game vs a story, I say the easiest thing to do is look at a game adaptation of a story. Look at what was changed or left out to see what they thought would be too powerful or couldn't be codified, and so on. And then compare the features of that system to the more common ones.

The Dresden Files RPG is an interesting read, even if you have no intention of playing it; it's presented as an RPG developed by characters from the story, with their notes in the margins.

But I can think of a better example: Slayers has a d20 handbook. Notably, the designers focused on reflecting the source material as much as possible, rewriting just about every rule so it fit the story. The magic in Slayers is so overpowered that the handbook's foreword jokingly describes the following contents as "sick and wrong", so you can rule out scale as a variable.

The first key difference is that spells don't have to be prepared; all spellcasting is spontaneous, but there are various saving throws to determine how effective the spell is and how much damage the caster takes from casting it. In a case of failure, a spell might do nothing or it might go out of the caster's control. The types of magic are white (healing and protection), black (destruction), and shamanistic (the five elements), as well as common magic that anyone can learn. There is no distinction between arcane and divine magic, or at least less of a distinction than in D&D; the most powerful spells of both white and black magic require invoking some sort of deity. The difference is whether the caster is drawing power from a specific god or monster, or just the raw magic energy that the gods and monsters use... so one could make an argument that all white and black magic is divine magic, or make a comparison to channeling positive or negative energy. Regardless, casters are restricted by their ability to cast magic of a certain type, rather than whether it draws power from a deity. The process of learning magic is probably the biggest difference. The ability to learn spells is tied to intelligence, so anyone with a positive modifier can learn any of the common spells even if they don't have a spellcasting class. Multiclassing is not required to learn magic of another type, though it can be done to decrease the penalties associated with this. The result is a much greater variety of possible combinations, in order to better reflect the source material.

Personally, I like this post Mark Hall wrote on the subject:

Now, a lot of modern fictional sorcerers do a combination of this. They invoke entities for powerful effects, but less powerful effects (such as levitating a pencil with which you stake a vampire) is done through personal power.

I've been thinking on this matter recently, but I hadn't considered the combination style to be especially common in modern fiction... but now that I think about it, it does seem pretty common. I guess it's more flexible, and there's the added drama when an outside force is required for something to work.

There's also a range of possibilities within this subset. On one end you have just the really big spells requiring invocation of an outside force (such as raising the dead) while the individual caster has range of abilities of their own (often based on the four or five elements). On the other end of the spectrum, there is the caster that only has one power of their own (something akin to a spell-like ability) and must rely on invocation for most magic.

Historically, even when power came from the caster, it was usually explained as the result of something supernatural - fairies, congress with the Beast, etc. Merlin's magic usually stemmed from the circumstances of his birth, such as his father being an incubus. Even now, when magic is just a kind of energy that some people know how to manipulate, this sort of prerequisite can still exist in the form of the witch species or Homo magi or what have you.

[Broken Crown]

Despite whatever sort of being the “good” magic users are, we don’t see them suffer any consequences for their magic. We don’t even see Saruman and Sauron suffer ill effects of using their magic and they’re the bad guys. Granted magic in the Lord of the Rings is supposed to be subtle (which is fine).

I think the idea behind this was that the "good" magic users didn't suffer negative consequences because they were using magic in the "good" way: It was right and proper for them to have and use those powers, so no harm came to them as a result.

Saruman and Sauron, and Morgoth before them, were wielding powers that they were never meant to have, and it did cost them heavily. Sauron put a lot of his power into the One Ring; he was consequently much weaker after losing the Ring than he was before he made it. Morgoth, as Melkor, was the most powerful of the Valar, but after investing so much power in creating Orcs, Trolls, Balrogs, Dragons, continent-spanning fortresses, and so forth (power that he never got back), he eventually became weak enough to be defeated by elves, abominations from beyond space, and even mortals. Saruman was originally the greatest of the wizards, but after doing things Sauron's way for a short time (by Middle-Earth standards), he was weakened enough for Gandalf to defeat him (though Gandalf may also have become more powerful in the meantime).

[TheThan]

I think the idea behind this was that the "good" magic users didn't suffer negative consequences because they were using magic in the "good" way: It was right and proper for them to have and use those powers, so no harm came to them as a result.

Saruman and Sauron, and Morgoth before them, were wielding powers that they were never meant to have, and it did cost them heavily. Sauron put a lot of his power into the One Ring; he was consequently much weaker after losing the Ring than he was before he made it. Morgoth, as Melkor, was the most powerful of the Valar, but after investing so much power in creating Orcs, Trolls, Balrogs, Dragons, continent-spanning fortresses, and so forth (power that he never got back), he eventually became weak enough to be defeated by elves, abominations from beyond space, and even mortals. Saruman was originally the greatest of the wizards, but after doing things Sauron's way for a short time (by Middle-Earth standards), he was weakened enough for Gandalf to defeat him (though Gandalf may also have become more powerful in the meantime).

Yeah but all that happened behind the scenes; we don’t know that Sauron has become weaker for making the ring. It might be inferred to us but I don’t recall it being explicitly spelled out in the novels (and certainly not in the films). Or that Saruman has become significantly weaker when he turned on humanity. To my recollection we have no way to judge how strong these characters were before their fall. The audience doesn’t immediately know that using that magic to do bad things has a negative effect. All we see is the good overcoming the evil.

I honestly have a few problems with Tolkien’s writing, and it’s been forever since I’ve read the books so If this is explicitly stated and shown, then I’ll stand corrected.

Anyway, I’m talking about power at a cost. In the example of Koura, he’s trading his vitality for power. He’s made some sort of unholy bargain, he can do amazing things the others can’t do, but it takes a toll on his body. In Tolkien’s work, the bad guys suffer consequences for doing bad things; they’re not really trading something for power. It comes across as if they’re being scolded for doing bad things (ok that’s kind of facetious but I hope you get the point). Sauron and Morgoth already had that power, they didn’t need to trade something for it. In fact, everything they did made them weaker. So they did the opposite, they sacrificed their personal power for another sort of power, that of having followers. Did they trade a greater power for a weaker one?

[Eldan]

Saruman did become weaker the more he turned. Gandalf pretty much says so, in the end: "You've misused your power, I'm taking your staff away in the name of the gods" [paraphrased] When before, Saruman had the power to imprison Gandalf.

It's the same with all the evil beings. They invest their power into objects, to control them, or into other beings, to be their lords and in the process, become personally weaker. The Silmarilion is very clear and explicit on that.

[Broken Crown]

Anyway, I’m talking about power at a cost.... Sauron and Morgoth already had that power, they didn’t need to trade something for it. In fact, everything they did made them weaker. So they did the opposite, they sacrificed their personal power for another sort of power, that of having followers. Did they trade a greater power for a weaker one?

I think that actually sums up the situation quite nicely: They had power, which they sacrificed in order to get a different power, which gave them some advantages, but ultimately made them weaker overall.

Morgoth wanted armies of slaves, but he couldn't create something from nothing: He had to use up part of himself to make them. (Which is why he, and later Sauron, preferred to corrupt pre-existing creatures rather than make new ones.) Eventually he used up so much of himself that he couldn't accomplish much without his slaves.

Sauron created the One Ring to give himself the power to enslave the world. He put so much of his own inherent power into the Ring that, when it was destroyed, he was rendered powerless and effectively destroyed, too. I would consider that to be power at a cost by any measure.

In Tolkien’s work, the bad guys suffer consequences for doing bad things; they’re not really trading something for power. It comes across as if they’re being scolded for doing bad things (ok that’s kind of facetious but I hope you get the point).

It sounds facetious, but I think that was Tolkien's point: Evil is inherently destructive, and if you act in evil ways, even with good intentions, you will gradually destroy yourself. (Tolkien, being an old-fashioned conservative, included "going against the Natural Order of Things" on his list of evil deeds.)

There's one other fairly old aspect of magic, popular in modern fiction, that hasn't been mentioned: the True Names/Language of Power stuff. Which D&D tried to do only once, resulting in the most broken/broken class ever.

That was how most of the magic in Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea books worked, wasn't it? As I recall, Ged was pretty broken, too, power-wise. (At one point, he killed five dragons by commanding them to drown themselves.) If you have high enough Knowledge skills, and at-will use of Dominate Anything You Can Name, Including Inanimate Objects, there isn't much you can't do. It's really not surprising that D&D opted for Vancian magic over that.

[Gnoman]

He laid his hand on Gimli's head, and the Dwarf looked up and laughed suddenly. "Gandalf!" he said. "But you are all in white!"

"Yes, I am white now," said Gandalf. "Indeed I am Saruman, one might almost say, Saruman as he should have been.

"Come back, Saruman!" said Gandalf in a commanding voice. To the amazement of the others, Saruman turned again. and as if dragged against his will, he came slowly back to the iron rail, leaning on it, breathing hard. His face was lined and shrunken. His hand clutched his heavy black staff like a claw.
"I did not give you leave to go," said Gandalf sternly. "I have not finished. You have become a fool, Saruman, and yet pitiable. You might still have turned away from folly and evil, and have been of service. But you choose to stay and gnaw the ends of your old plots. Stay then! But I warn you. you will not easily come out again. Not unless the dark hands of the East stretch out to take you. Saruman!" he cried, and his voice grew in power and authority. "Behold, I am not Gandalf the Grey, whom you betrayed. I am Gandalf the White, who has returned from death. You have no colour now, and I cast you from the order and from the Council."

He raised his hand, and spoke slowly in a clear cold voice. "Saruman, your staff is broken." There was a crack, and the staff split asunder in Saruman's hand, and the head of it fell down at Gandalf's feet. "Go!" said Gandalf. With a cry Saruman fell back and crawled away.

"No, not dead, so far as I know," said Treebeard. "But he is gone. Yes, he is gone seven days. I let him go. There was little left of him when he crawled out, and as for that worm-creature of his, he was like a pale shadow. Now do not tell me, Gandalf, that I promised to keep him safe; for I know it. But things have changed since then. And I kept him until he was safe, safe from doing any more harm. You should know that above all I hate the caging of live things, and I will not keep even such creatures as these caged beyond great need. A snake without fangs may crawl where he will."

"You may be right," said Gandalf; "but this snake had still one tooth left, I think. He had the poison of his voice, and I guess that he persuaded you, even you Treebeard, knowing the soft spot in your heart. Well, he is gone, and there is no more to be said. But the Tower of Orthanc now goes back to the King, to whom it belongs. Though maybe he will not need it."

It isn't explicit, but it is pretty clear that Saruman is far, far less than Gandalf the White, and it is also pretty clearly stated that Saruman the White should be equal to Gandalf the White (who is, after all "Saruman as he should have been".)


There is also a marked contrast between Gandalf's statement that "None of you bear any weapon that can harm me" (directed to a party of great heroes carrying dwarven steel and an ancient magical sword of great power) and Saruman's death to a common dagger carried by a "Witless worm".

[SiuiS]

I is it really that uncommon in books and movies that wizards just wave their hand and something impossible happens instantly with no terrible cost or drain?

Yes. Fiction always has associated cost. This must be changed for a game however because a book can tell us "there was a terrible cost" and show us signs of it, but in a game where you play that wizard straight from apprentice to demon whisperer, the traditional methods of cost don't work in any way – the narrative can be ignored, the penalties can be rationalized, and worst of all in an interactive media they do not lead to compelling drama.

There is always a cost in fiction, it's just not of the "pay 10d10 hit points" variety. Learning magic makes you alien. You have an innate understanding of things which divorced you from everyday life. You spend time and energy and mania poring over musty books which you must find by sounding out the most likely holder and then seducing your way into their library to find it, hidden in an alcove, and your connections, your loves and joys and vices, fall to the wayside. From the outside you waste away, the human you were replaced slowly by a power hungry thing clutching at ever more and greater and more esoteric knowledge just in case, and when you do face human interactions hubris arises because with a word you could make the very stones of the earth tremble, how dare this mere mortal tell you you're being self destructive?!

All that is glossed over so hard in RPGs that worrying about how it functions is detrimental to the game without supplying anything. Even in Mage, where this descent into alien paradigms is the literal point of the game, you have people who wave their hands and dismiss it as not needing basic human needs anyway, now that you have gnosis three! You'd never see that anywhere else. The Earthsea wizard who held all of a collapsing subterranean temple up with his will, who traveled to an imaginary island of shadows to reconcile with his own soul; the fallen angel wizard whose innate distance from events led him to miscalculate routinely what the personal effects of companionship and fear and loyalty would be in his closest, But not close enough, friends; the man who delved deeper into the necronomicon's secrets. You will not find these people hand waving these costs as acceptable in order to learn another ritual.

[factotum]

Thinking about it, the closest example I can think of to costless magic is the Will and the Word from David Eddings' Belgariad and Malloreon--practitioners of that can do some ridiculously powerful things. Doing it a *lot* is fatiguing, but that only comes up once in the story that I recall. Again, the costs and complications are generally more subtle--for instance, if you use the power to lift a boulder, you have to remember to brace yourself or else you'll sink into the ground; if you try to change the weather, you stand the chance of disrupting planetary weather systems so much you'll sink the world into an ice age. The only thing that is unequivocally forbidden in that system is to utterly destroy something, because that will always rebound on the caster.

[BeerMug Paladin]

But apart from the scale of these spells, is it really that uncommon in books and movies that wizards just wave their hand and something impossible happens instantly with no terrible cost or drain?

It's easier to understand a setting that is more or less similar to the normal world. In a universe where it's possible to wave your hand and have awesome things happen, it probably would make sense for that ability to be very desirable and if it's a learned ability, be fairly common. Thus, having some mitigating factor to curtail the appeal would realistically limit how common the magic is. There's also the narrative appeal of giving certain things like that a drawback, so it's just not used constantly. Having more open-ended magical powers also makes this more important.

Superhero settings use magic (the superpowers) which usually have no cost. But they're modern settings whereas most fantasy worlds seem to be flavored with heavy doses of the past. The point of magic in such a setting seems pretty different than the point of magic in a traditional fantasy setting. Superhero settings have much more limited magic.

In D&D, sorcerors, wizards, clerics, druids, etc... Are superheroes or villains. Rogues are the Batman equivalents (non-powered, supposedly mundane characters with super-skills still exist alongside the superpowered). And so on. In some ways, D&D seems a lot more like a superhero setting than a traditional fantasy setting. At least to me.

As others have noted, that's probably due to ease of handling in a game. Game settings need to be quite different from story settings. They need to be consistently defined so the players and the GM know what is transpiring when people say what actions are being taken. That includes having player-used magic have clear uses and advantages. A story has everything transpire by author fiat, so it's not a problem if magic is a dues ex machina. It can be a problem in a game, though.

Avatar is a pretty well known fantasy setting with no drawbacks to magic. MLP doesn't seem to have a drawback either. So it happens now and then (at least in animation), but it's not very common overall it seems.

A lot of this is going to hinge on what the point is of having magic in the setting, and personal taste. It seems a lot of people just prefer stories where magic has consequences.

[jseah]

The thing about Sanderson's magic is that it's frequently more akin to a science than an art. The rules of magic are quantifiable, well-documented and, to the practitioners, well-known. This leaves little room for surprise. It doesn't help that Sanderson frequently wastes no time explaining every detail.

You'd think that, but a well-constructed Sanderson's Law magic system has emergent phenomena that can leave room for surprising uses. And frequently, in Sanderson's Law type of magic systems, the magic itself is not the focus of the story but the circumstances they put the characters in / means to get the characters out of trouble.


Additionally, Sanderson's Law does not mean that your magic can't have sideeffects that are tiny but scale to become important when you take a spell and do things outside of the "usual" scope.

eg. telekinesis of a kilogram or even an apple cart might not be too hard. But exerting enough force to split a mountain might find you triggering earthquakes where you stand (let's say the spell conserves momentum but dumps the excess into the ground you're standing on; it normally doesn't matter but in this case, it does).
EDIT: in this interpretation of TK, you also find that trying to magically lift heavy objects is also not recommended when you're in a structurally unsound building or bridge. Which could come up! And then prompt your protagonists to try demolishing the bad guy's castle by standing on his roof and casting levitate on the city...

Or you find out when first trying to cast a really huge spell that... oh say, the magic energy you manipulate around in the environment isn't actually infinite. It's a really big number, but not big enough for what you're trying to do. And then you find that trying to raise mountains drains magic from the nearby forest, thereby killing it.

Of course, this is not to say that sideeffects can't be used... or that sideeffects, when pushed to their limits, have third/fourth-order effects.

[factotum]

You'd think that, but a well-constructed Sanderson's Law magic system has emergent phenomena that can leave room for surprising uses.

Reminds me of Asimov's Laws of Robotics--he spent a great deal more time covering what happens in the odd corner cases where the laws break down than he did playing them straight.

[jseah]

Reminds me of Asimov's Laws of Robotics--he spent a great deal more time covering what happens in the odd corner cases where the laws break down than he did playing them straight.

Ninja relevant edit: "in this interpretation of TK, you also find that trying to magically lift heavy objects is also not recommended when you're in a structurally unsound building or bridge. Which could come up! And then prompt your protagonists to try demolishing the bad guy's castle by standing on his roof and casting levitate on the city..."

[TheThan]

There is always a cost in fiction, it's just not of the "pay 10d10 hit points" variety.
All that is glossed over so hard in RPGs

That’s just it, it’s so glossed over in RPGs that it’s never a thing. Magic tends to just become another form of technology. It’s just a really useful tool. Magic can do nearly anything and fix nearly any problem. Timmy fell down the well and broke his leg? Cure moderate wounds fixes it, Farmer Maggot’s crops start to dry up because of the drought? Control weather fixes that. You need to get over the misty mountains on your epic quest to kill a dragon and reclaim your homeland? Teleport, overland flight etc gets you over those pesky mountains. The king enchanted by an evil sorcerer? Dispel magic and Break enchantment fixes that.

Magic has become the opposite of magic; it’s become mundane, normal, an everyday occurrence. Sometimes literally anyone can become a wizard if they so chose, there’s no requirements and no cost associated with it that’s actually felt by the players. There is no more “you’ve been studying magic your whole life and are now just capable of casting a few cantrips”, now it’s “you want magic? Sure, no problem everyone has magic”. Other times you have to have something special, which means picking the right class and stats at character creation.

Then when you try to put restrictions on magic to make it more interesting, players piss and moan and make forum posts complaining about how bad their Dm is because he won’t let the player have candy after 10 pm.

So now do we fix it? How do we make magic that’s fair for the people on both sides of the Dms screen and still magic it feel like the magic we see in movies and read in books?

[Closet_Skeleton]

So now do we fix it? How do we make magic that’s fair for the people on both sides of the Dms screen and still magic it feel like the magic we see in movies and read in books?

Giving mages other stuff to do so they don't have to bring up magic in order to not feel useless would be a start. If you don't want mages throwing around cheap combat spells all the time you have to give them non-magic combat skills, which leads to its own problems.

[Xondoure]

Yes. Fiction always has associated cost. This must be changed for a game however because a book can tell us "there was a terrible cost" and show us signs of it, but in a game where you play that wizard straight from apprentice to demon whisperer, the traditional methods of cost don't work in any way – the narrative can be ignored, the penalties can be rationalized, and worst of all in an interactive media they do not lead to compelling drama.

There is always a cost in fiction, it's just not of the "pay 10d10 hit points" variety. Learning magic makes you alien. You have an innate understanding of things which divorced you from everyday life. You spend time and energy and mania poring over musty books which you must find by sounding out the most likely holder and then seducing your way into their library to find it, hidden in an alcove, and your connections, your loves and joys and vices, fall to the wayside. From the outside you waste away, the human you were replaced slowly by a power hungry thing clutching at ever more and greater and more esoteric knowledge just in case, and when you do face human interactions hubris arises because with a word you could make the very stones of the earth tremble, how dare this mere mortal tell you you're being self destructive?!

All that is glossed over so hard in RPGs that worrying about how it functions is detrimental to the game without supplying anything. Even in Mage, where this descent into alien paradigms is the literal point of the game, you have people who wave their hands and dismiss it as not needing basic human needs anyway, now that you have gnosis three! You'd never see that anywhere else. The Earthsea wizard who held all of a collapsing subterranean temple up with his will, who traveled to an imaginary island of shadows to reconcile with his own soul; the fallen angel wizard whose innate distance from events led him to miscalculate routinely what the personal effects of companionship and fear and loyalty would be in his closest, But not close enough, friends; the man who delved deeper into the necronomicon's secrets. You will not find these people hand waving these costs as acceptable in order to learn another ritual.

I don't know about that. If magic was to have a cost in a game I was running, I would write it into the narrative in a way they couldn't ignore. Say, cast a spell from this school of magic and an abomination begins hunting you down to use an example from Earthsea that would work quite well in a tabletop game.

I would say magic simply has more means of expression in creative writing than while gaming and thus can be called on to fill different roles in the story. The concept of a single spell however long predates D&D, being a central part of many fairy tales for centuries if not millennia.

[SiuiS]

That’s just it, it’s so glossed over in RPGs that it’s never a thing. Magic tends to just become another form of technology. It’s just a really useful tool. Magic can do nearly anything and fix nearly any problem. Timmy fell down the well and broke his leg? Cure moderate wounds fixes it, Farmer Maggot’s crops start to dry up because of the drought? Control weather fixes that. You need to get over the misty mountains on your epic quest to kill a dragon and reclaim your homeland? Teleport, overland flight etc gets you over those pesky mountains. The king enchanted by an evil sorcerer? Dispel magic and Break enchantment fixes that.

There are in-game fixes for those, actually, but aye.

It's fully possible to make this work, you just need to acknowledge that it's about base assumptions. Dungeons and dragons (and thus many derivative or inspired works) are not about being a wizard, or rogue, or fighting man, they are about dungeoneering and only care about class insofar as what you bring to the table for dungeoneering.

In order to make the game function with limited magic you need to change that base assumption; make the game about what your class is and what being your class is like and have dungeoneering be a tool to showcase that. This is what Mage: the Awakening does; all the focus is on how being a wizard affects you as a person and human being and what being a wizard is, and any adventures – be they social, political, dungeon based, combat based, whatever – facilitate and showcase that. Don't make the game about treasures and levels, make it about the process of discovery, invention and mastery. Look up research notes on Arneson's magic system.

Then when you try to put restrictions on magic to make it more interesting, players piss and moan and make forum posts complaining about how bad their Dm is because he won’t let the player have candy after 10 pm.

So now do we fix it? How do we make magic that’s fair for the people on both sides of the Dms screen and still magic it feel like the magic we see in movies and read in books?

This is a legitimate complaint though. If we go to play "wizards who wizard freely" and you decide we're playing gritty grim
Corruption magic game, you've deceived me and we have an issue to resolve. You need to say "I want to play a game where these matter", not "I want to play D&D, but change some fundamentals in a way I can't really articulate clearly but totally know and will tell you about when they come up".

Giving mages other stuff to do so they don't have to bring up magic in order to not feel useless would be a start. If you don't want mages throwing around cheap combat spells all the time you have to give them non-magic combat skills, which leads to its own problems.

Completely disagree. Misses the point entirely. This is still about one-and-done bullets as magic with absolutely no depth to the actual mystical properties.

I don't know about that. If magic was to have a cost in a game I was running, I would write it into the narrative in a way they couldn't ignore. Say, cast a spell from this school of magic and an abomination begins hunting you down to use an example from Earthsea that would work quite well in a tabletop game.

Aye, but this is a principle we need to be able to understand well enough to write up as a series of rules that will make sense despite individual tables. Doing it this way puts the onus on DM fiat in a series of traditionally low fiat systems – oberoni fallacy almost.

Instead, make it clear (and crunchy) that exploring the system instead of simply using the system is the point.

[warty goblin]

At least in the fantasy I read that isn't explicitly based on an RPG system *shameonme* the dedicated spellcaster is actually something of an anomaly. They may exist, but your common or garden magic user is likely to use a lot of non-magic sorts of solutions to problems as well. By which I mean swords, in a lot of cases. This isn't necessarily a matter of magic having a terrible price or anything like that, but merely that it isn't a universal (or universally reliable) solution to the sorts of problems that a person has to deal with.

[veti]

Discworld has specific spells. They're usually named just because their names are a joke of some sort.

I'm pretty sure Discworld magic, from the get-go, was consciously parodying D&D magic. The story of the Great Spell that got stuck in Rincewind's head and frightened all other spells out of it, was probably conceived from the Vancian system via AD&D.

(Pratchett was well aware of AD&D in those days. Maybe he even played sometime, I don't know, but he certainly had at least a basic familiarity with the rules.)

Other fiction I can think of:
Earthsea: Magic is a matter of control - of the elements, living and nonliving things. People rarely talk about "spells", as such - the wizard just decides what he wants to happen, then figures out how to make it happen, like an engineer. There are a few simple, standard solutions to standard problems, like Magewind to propel your boat, or some kind of light spell to see in the dark - but most of "being a wizard" is working out from first principles how to produce the effect you want.

Recluce: All about effects rather than spells. A mage perceives and (mentally) manipulates natural forces that others can't see.

Chalion: Magic is granted either by the gods, or by a demon who bonds with, and eventually devours, the sorceror's soul. Either way, it takes the form of being able to see and manipulate forces that others can't. There is no concept of a "spell".

Lord of the Rings: Gandalf uses Pyrotechnics several times, he uses Knock (unsuccessfully) on the doors of Moria, and Hold Portal (equally futilely) inside it. In The Hobbit, he casts a Lightning Bolt at least once. However, no-one talks about "spells" as far as I can recall. The closest may be the Barrow-wight, who chants something that sounds like a spell, but might be no more than a prayer said over a sacrifice.

Chrestomanci: A highly codified world, where "spells" are definitely a thing, much used by witches and warlocks and other lower orders of magicians. However, "enchanters" - the highest order - are far above such trivia, viewing them as condescendingly as we might watch a baby playing with alphabet blocks. To them, magic is just something they do.

I think the last of these examples is quite illuminating, because it consciously highlights the gulf between "spells" and "magic". Magic is the effect/energy that makes spells work, but "knowing a few spells" doesn't mean you know magic, any more than "being able to switch on a light" means you know electrical engineering. Someone who really understands it sees "spells" as trivial, and only remotely related to what they do.

[TheThan]

I agree, we have to change that base assumption. My issue is that not everyone is willing to put in a little effort to change that base assumption. I’m willing to sit down and read the book and learn what the game feels like; others, not so much. I’ve had people completely ignore the campaign setting information I handed them before. They just wanted to roll dice, make bad jokes etc. they really weren’t interested in getting involved in a story. Which is a perfectly reasonable way to play, the problem is that it’s frustrating for others that want to get more involved. I guess it’s all about finding the right group of players, which is problematic if your dnd playing friends are not already that right group of players.

[Chd]

I never really understood the complaint that certain ideas of spellcasting don't "make sense." Sure, there isn't really a good reason for someone to instantly forget a fireball spell the moment they've cast it, but it's strange to complain about that while accepting the fact they managed to create a gigantic ball of fire by waggling their fingers around and speaking some Pig Latin. Even the most wearingly strict adherents to Sanderson's Law require such a massive suspension of disbelief up-front that it seems untenably capricious to demand "reasonable exlanations" afterwards. In general, I feel the same way about most "Sanderson's Law" magic as I do about the technobabble in any given science fiction show; it's as obnoxious as all other exposition, with the added insult of usually not even being particularly plot-relevant exposition and, as if that weren't bad enough, being so largely composed of gibberish as to not really expose anything other than the author having a little notebook in which he makes sure he uses his gibberish in an internally consistent manner. I guess it would be impressive in the era of oral tradition, but now that things can be written down I don't really see what is particularly impressive about a guy('s editor) remembering that Ill'tshub energy can only be used to manipulate to Conmeo fields during the moon of Lyrouseis.

The biggest difference between games and fiction, at least with regard to depictions of magic, is the requirements of the genre. Just as the ideas of mana/spell slots/&c. are much more common in games than in literature, extremely long casting times are much more common in literature than in games; the same way being able to cast unlimited spells could upset the balance of a game, taking like a month to prepare a ritual isn't very fun for the player. Similarly, healing magic is ubiquitous in games because most people find it more fun to charge into the dragon's lair right after slaying its ogre guardian than after months of bedrest and physical therapy, while it's much more rare in fiction because the dramatic impact of seeing a character cut clean in half is considerably lessened if you know he can get put back together with like six seconds of effort. Of course, there are exceptions to all of this, but the general expectations of any given genre more control its implementation of magic than anything else.

I actually added these 4 things into my games to 'bridge the gap':

'The Spell Components are expended': If a player wants to cast more then one Fireball a day, he'd better have the components prepared ahead of time, or leave himself vulnerable to being attacked while he fishes through his pouch in the heat of battle... I allow hero/fate points to be spent to waive this, and assume that they'd have reached to a specific sub-compartment for the back-up reagent preparation they have for if SHTF.

Volatility: A natural 1 causes the spell to backfire, (the caster is affected instead of the target) and a natural 20 casts the spell at double potency.

Mental exhaustion: At the end of an encounter, the magic-users take a -0.2 penalty (rounding to the nearest whole number) to Intelligence until they rest for an hour.

Spell Creation: I allow players to expend X hero points to create a spell 'on-the-fly'. (admittedly, I hand out points regularly as a means to Reward Good Role-Play.)

[warty goblin]

I agree, we have to change that base assumption. My issue is that not everyone is willing to put in a little effort to change that base assumption. I’m willing to sit down and read the book and learn what the game feels like; others, not so much. I’ve had people completely ignore the campaign setting information I handed them before. They just wanted to roll dice, make bad jokes etc. they really weren’t interested in getting involved in a story. Which is a perfectly reasonable way to play, the problem is that it’s frustrating for others that want to get more involved. I guess it’s all about finding the right group of players, which is problematic if your dnd playing friends are not already that right group of players.

I have a hard time seeing the assumption of extremely powerful no-cost magic as a problem in D&D, since that's kinda how the game is set up. It's not like the RPG universe is monolithic on this score either. If somebody wants a system with scary, high cost magic there's always, say, Sorcerer.

[Grinner]

Then when you try to put restrictions on magic to make it more interesting, players piss and moan and make forum posts complaining about how bad their Dm is because he won’t let the player have candy after 10 pm.

So now do we fix it? How do we make magic that’s fair for the people on both sides of the Dms screen and still magic it feel like the magic we see in movies and read in books?

I sometimes wonder if the Big Damn Heroes-variety of fantasy so common in D&D wouldn't be better if set up in the fashion of superheroes. You know, with actual superpowers instead of "magic".

Or perhaps Exalted would work? But who wants to play in Creation all the time...Still, it may be prudent to follow some of White Wolf's cues in this area.

[TheThan]

I have a hard time seeing the assumption of extremely powerful no-cost magic as a problem in D&D, since that's kinda how the game is set up. It's not like the RPG universe is monolithic on this score either. If somebody wants a system with scary, high cost magic there's always, say, Sorcerer.

Well there four problems with extremely powerful, no cost magic:

1: intra party balance, in a game, everyone should be able to contribute to the game and have fun. When the wizard is capable of solving every problem the party faces with no effort, other players can lose interest and get board. While I don’t think part balance has to be perfect, I don’t want to wizard taking over the game from the other players.
You end up with a situation like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFuMpYTyRjw

2: why isn’t everyone a wizard?
Seriously if magic is so easy, how come everyone hasn’t become a wizard? Why do we still have peasants toiling away in the fields when they could be learning how to cast create food and water?

3: if something is keeping the masses from becoming wizards, then why haven’t the wizards taken control of the world? Seriously, why are there still a bunch kings and whatnot in power, shouldn’t wizards have taken control of the wolf?

4: what happens to technological progress when magical items start flooding the world. Who needs a steam engine to move a heavy load when you can animate a golem to do the same work?

If we take this into account, we end up with the Tippyverse. I don’t think many people want to play in Tippyverse.

[Rodin]

That’s just it, it’s so glossed over in RPGs that it’s never a thing. Magic tends to just become another form of technology. It’s just a really useful tool. Magic can do nearly anything and fix nearly any problem. Timmy fell down the well and broke his leg? Cure moderate wounds fixes it, Farmer Maggot’s crops start to dry up because of the drought? Control weather fixes that. You need to get over the misty mountains on your epic quest to kill a dragon and reclaim your homeland? Teleport, overland flight etc gets you over those pesky mountains. The king enchanted by an evil sorcerer? Dispel magic and Break enchantment fixes that.

I would note that in a fair bit of fiction, Wizards spend most of their time doing exactly this.

Healer? A lot of Yellow Ajah Aes Sedai in Wheel of Time set up shop in major towns to heal people who got sick/injured, using a combination of actual medicine and then magicking the problem away on the sly when the superstitious townsfolk wouldn't notice. There's also a major plotline about getting a MacGuffin to fix the weather.

The witches in Discworld are basically village wise women, unless something particularly nasty comes along that makes them break out their magic.

Deed of Paksenarrion has a couple of wizards that don't adventure at all. One is attached to a mercenary outfit in a healing and support role, the other is on a town council and does a lie-detector test on the heroine. When adventure isn't knocking on his doorstep (read: 99% of the time), he was sort of an odd jobs sort IIRC.

As for the king enchanted by an evil sorceror, Theoden and Gandalf would like a word.

As to why everybody in the world isn't a wizard? Every example I know of has some sort of restriction that prevents that. It requires natural talent, an affinity to the Force, and even when you have that it takes years of training. Your average peasant isn't going to be able to read to learn the methodology behind magic. Even if you naturally learn magic, you're more likely to accidentally blow yourself up with it unless you have someone to mentor you.

Also in fiction, most magic users that aren't the hero are way, way lower in power. The hero can Teleport across the world and depose a king. Your standard wizard can toss a few fireballs and then has to go lie down for a few hours - locally dangerous, but not a match for a nation. The wizards that do have that level of power tend to be the ones getting their heads lopped off by the hero.

[SiuiS]

Well there four problems with extremely powerful, no cost magic:

1: intra party balance, in a game, everyone should be able to contribute to the game and have fun. When the wizard is capable of solving every problem the party faces with no effort, other players can lose interest and get board. While I don’t think part balance has to be perfect, I don’t want to wizard taking over the game from the other players.
You end up with a situation like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFuMpYTyRjw

2: why isn’t everyone a wizard?
Seriously if magic is so easy, how come everyone hasn’t become a wizard? Why do we still have peasants toiling away in the fields when they could be learning how to cast create food and water?

3: if something is keeping the masses from becoming wizards, then why haven’t the wizards taken control of the world? Seriously, why are there still a bunch kings and whatnot in power, shouldn’t wizards have taken control of the wolf?

4: what happens to technological progress when magical items start flooding the world. Who needs a steam engine to move a heavy load when you can animate a golem to do the same work?

If we take this into account, we end up with the Tippyverse. I don’t think many people want to play in Tippyverse.

1. Only a problem if there is infra party conflict. No one complains the fighter is worse at stealing than the rogue.
2. "Always successful once you learn how" does NOT equal "easy". It's a foolish idea that just because after twenty to thirty years of study, a wizard can always succeed at a cantrip that just any ol' buddy off the road can learn the same with no time or effort. You know what else is always highly successful? Demolitions. Not easy to learn, mind; that's why it always works. Because it weeds out the losers.
3. I spent thirty years learning how to commune with the higher powers of creation, why the hell do I want the responsibility of your little dirt-hovel, crouching over stones of a castle like an old toad protecting it's young and croaking "gold, gold"? There are fighters because there are stupid people. There are knights because there are passionate people. There are kings because there are patriotic people. And there are wizards because there are inquisitive people. An inquisitive king is a poor king; a patriotic wizard is a poor wizard.
4. Yes, of course, how silly of us. By the time I'm thirty, I will have mastered the skills of
• reading magic
• copying minutiae
• learning to read and perform Maths
• perfect master's bath and snacks
• cast two low level spell

By the time sir Dudly of Doright has turned thirty, he will have learned
• how to win an argument with a sword
• how to win a war with taxes
• how to win a court with sex
• how to beat a peasant with all three
• how to dress really nice

Why on Ogma's green earth would I take these mysteries, these secrets of the universe that let me snub sir Dudly publicly in his own court and suffer no reprisal (for fear of my wizardly wrath!) and say "why sure, I will indeed consent to invalidate my own existence! Here, let me put the fruits of three decades of labor into a tiny box that the simplest monkey could control with finesse for you!", that's just daft!