How do you come up with a good magic system for you comic?

aqua03 2020-09-09 04:06:51 UTC #1

I've been working on refining Drachenseele and building up a solid enough setting to build my comic and story off of. However, I realized I'm having a bit of trouble with coming up with a solid enough magic system with good rules for a story. Not helped by the fact that Drachenseele is supposed to be a sort of "Sci-fi/Fantasy" hybrid of sorts, so I should probably have a sort of semi-scientific explanation behind it as well.

I have a general idea on how the magic works (A special form of radiation that the species can absorb and process into unique elemental magic based off of their elemental tribe.) But I don't seem to have a good explanation about where and how that magic came to be and why the species have the individual elemental tribes in their species as well.

Just one problem: I was never that good at hard science stuff in general..... So I kind of have a lot of trouble coming up with hard "rules" and explanations of sorts for my magic system for my science-fantasy world and story and am now kinda in a hard place for that.

So how do you develop a good magic system with good magic system with solid rules and explanations that can also work from a decently scientific standpoint that it doesn't feel dumb and contrived as well?

How did you guys develop your magic systems or similar systems for your comics as well?

Thanks for the help.

cherrystark 2020-09-09 04:10:49 UTC #2

I use medicine as my analog for magic, since one person could do great on a medication, while another person could get sick taking the same drug. This way I also can explore the effects of increased exposure to the magical source and how addiction comes into play.

kmlangleyauthor 2020-09-09 06:25:12 UTC #3

The beauty of magic is... it’s magic. It doesn’t actually need tons of hard rules. However, if it’s going to be important to your storyline (I ran into this problem), then my suggestion would be the make a magic “character sheet” of sorts. Write down all the info you already have about your magic system and see what holes need to be filled. Then, either start making stuff up or (my favorite), Google to the rescue! Seriously, google random stuff and see what works for other Magic stories and you’lol (eventually) happen across something that will help you out. If you’re worried about the science lingo, either Google some more or you can always make up your own science/magic terms. If you get really stuck on something, roll it into a plot point.

“This * magic thing * has been a mystery for millennia,” one character reminds another seriously. The second brushes off the warning, pushing even harder as they cast the spell.

Just a few suggestions best of luck!

ScarletDemon 2020-09-09 06:30:33 UTC #4

I use a weird method and that is...the DnD method.
I see there being two forms of magic systems: a soft system where the lines of what someone can do and can't and how magic is learned is more blurred and less clear (Example: Lord of the Rings or Narnia)...and a hard system which is regimented and strict (Example: Full-Metal Alchemist or Harry Potter). DnD is a hard magic system where depending on how you learn the magic defines what you can do: a wizard can do such and such whereas a druid can do this and so on so forth.
Here's an Article that may help which system best fits your story and you can go from there: there are articles to help you for everything and anything.

darthmongoose 2020-09-09 07:21:33 UTC #5

I do hard magic because I overthink everything and I like science. Like... seriously, my day job is making edutainment activities to teach kids about science and coding and checking the narratives for errors in the science and tech facts. It's what I'm about.

But soft magic isn't worse. Ursula K Leguin's Earthsea books and Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones are books I absolutely adore and both have extremely soft magic systems where the mechanics are completely fluffy and beyond mortal understanding. Plus I actually liked Star Wars better before they tried to make the Force a harder magic system by explaining how it works with midichlorians. It was cooler when it was just... a mysterious power that can kinda do miraculous things like extrasensory perception, hearing the voices of the dead or moving things with telekinesis and there weren't obvious rules as to how it works, or strict power levels.

Soft magic, done well, can bring a wonder and mystery to a story. It's worthy of respect.

jcmraz 2020-09-09 11:08:48 UTC #6

Honestly I kind of wing it. I read a LOT of Brandon Sanderson because he's the master at magic systems. I read on reddit r/magicbuilding sometimes. I don't think I'm very good at magic systems because I get too bogged down in how it works within "reality". I'm doing better now but I still find holes in systems that bug me. For my magic system in Runner I started with the "fuel" system and did the world building outward from there. I still don't think my system is complete or perfect but I'm using it more as a narrative device. The further characters get from civilization the less magic and the less powerful magic they have. I don't have a completed spell list or anything. There would be too many. I'm treating it like a science on the world. But I have general ideas of what is possible at each circle. I'm keeping it vague enough that people can't look into specific spells too hard but I'm trying to make it understandable enough that the reader will grow to have an idea of what might be possible in any specific setting. I also took some ideas from video games to help design the limitations on the magic's active use (considering my initial thought for worldbuilding was gamey). I'm going to be starting to use color to signify the circle they're in. I didn't do that in Chapter 0 but now I know better how I can do that.

In case you're curious

DokiDokiTsuna 2020-09-09 16:17:24 UTC #7

...You don't actually need one, though. =/ I mean, if you think about Avatar TLA...we didn't technically get that info until LoK. And some people wish we hadn't...^^;
Origin stories aren't as important as you might think....if you can fit one in/want one, fine, but if not it's really not that big of a deal.

Having usage rules is actually separate from having explanations; in the words of my man Dunban, "you can eat bread without knowing how to bake it." Humans are great at finding ways to utilize forces they know nothing about. See: the entire history of science. ^^

And speaking of science, I really don't think you need a 'scientific standpoint', either. If you've ever heard of midichlorians...sometimes trying to make things 'plausible' just ruins the fantasy element, at least in some people's eyes. There's a line between 'hard magic' and 'this could reasonably exist in our universe', and you don't have to be on both sides of it if you don't want to.

Basically...I think you need to get a better handle on what kind of system you want, before you start thinking critically about what you are and aren't unable to do. These things you're 'having trouble' with may not actually be necessary for your story.

Darth_Biomech 2020-09-09 17:09:29 UTC #8

My main verse doesn't have place for any conventional magic stuff (it's quite hard scifi), but my secondary project that I'm developing now is a steampunk world that seems to have magic in it. In reality though it isn't magic, but if follows Clarke's Third Law, so I thought it would be nice idea that magic spells are basically computer scripts that are executed on some sort of "global magic server". Mage says incantations in the old dead language that sound very mystic and stuff, but what he really says is something along the lines of " get fire; define fire.shape = ball; define fire.velocity = (self.eyesight.vector * 100); execute"

rajillustration 2020-09-10 02:52:38 UTC #9

Kinda depends on what the magic system is for--in Alchemist Burnouts I made it very simple. I wanted the story to revolve around different parts of America and feel like it's magic has roots in american folklore. So the magic systems were already there for me. Alchemy is sort of self-explanatory, messing with luck and fate is also kind of self explanatory, and channeling the power of an animal is also...self-explanatory. And so to balance out all these systems (because there's just a lot of different types of magic) I just made sure that there was a rock-paper-scissors method so no one system could stay on top.

But since Alchemist Burn Outs is a coming of age story, the magic takes a back seat in a big way. I'm sure if you thought it about it too long you'd realize it's a pretty shallow magic system, but it's sort of unimportant because the book is...about growing up.

But other stories I've written that were more high fantasy, my magic was based on things that went along with the theme of the story. So Avu is a cat comic (that I will never have time to continue) but it's about going extinct. So I got inspired a lot by astronomy and how the stars we see aren't actually there and are already dead--so there's a lot of references to stars in the magic system. Most of the spells have been forgotten (so I don't have to write them) and the only ones left seem to have very little purpose. (but I, the author, knows their purpose, and the whole story is the mystery of figuring all that out) A lot of the ancient text they have is written with star patterns that the modern people can't read. Little things like that.

And then when I wrote the current story I'm writing now I wanted the theme to be about abusive relationships, not just as romantic relationships but also between nations and organizations. Exploring that theme sent me towards psychology and history as inspiration for the magic system and how it works. So I decided to make the goal of my magic system to be "rewriting history" since that's one of the most powerful tools that an abusive person uses. Once I knew that was my goal, I was able to form the rest of the magic system over the course of writing the story (there's still stuff I haven't fully figured out. Even now. I'll get there eventually.)

But I find that even not science stuff can be inspiring for magic system. Like I was watching AGDQ one year and they did this skip in Ocarina of Time that involved a ton of steps to make Zelda's Letter appear in a box where it shouldn't be, and doing that could call anything in the game to appear in their inventory. It was wild, and I was like...damn that would be a great magic system for a fantasy. To make a letter so powerful that it could just give you anything in the world. I don't think I'll ever write that story, which is why I'm like...propping it out here. But magic doesn't have to be just based on science or math. It could be anything.

DiegoPalacios 2020-09-10 03:58:31 UTC #10

The only think you need for a magic system is to establish is what your characters can and cant do with it.

That's all.

It could be as simple as "with the fire crystal, i can create and control fire". Or "The transformation device has different levels of power and each level unlocks a new ability".

No need to overthink about it.