What is magic, anyway?

>How does mana turn into spells?
>What is mana?
>Is there a reason why people would not use magic for mundane applications?

Before, one of my pet peeves was that magic doesn't affect society at large. Now I am unsure about that. I got into a long winded discussion about the subject, along with the subject of mana and magic in general.

I was told that, magic is a protected thing and a magic users are reluctant to help people for several reasons. One would be that they exert their body for that, and the use would be disproportional of the use. Other would be the availability of proper spells, or at least ones where using them is more efficient than doing it without.

My friend likes OSR very much, and I think his views on the matter might come much from that. That a slight err in your spellcasting can slipperyslope you into madness, or that spellcasters are all more or less Raistlin.

Anyway. My previous idea of Mana was that it was somewhat tangible energy, much like Life Force, which is also somewhat tangible energy. But my friends mostly think it's an abstract construct of your willpower and mental prowess or somesuch, and that the only way magic is physical / tangible is in blood magic.

This has got me to thinking, people might actually have wildly varying ideas about this, so I kinda want to gather opinions and ideas about this sort of things. Because really, something this fundamental to magic is rarely talked about.

And before posting "depends on the setting", consider the following: This isn't about a singular setting or system. This is about universal thoughts on the matter. What makes sense, what doesn't. Internal consistency is key, after all.

>How does mana turn into spells?
Depends on the setting
>What is mana?
Depends on the setting
>Is there a reason why people would not use magic for mundane applications?
Depends on the fucking setting, but generally speaking the mana needed for magic comes from somewhere and draining it away for some useless bullshit isn't very practical

You see, I wasn't looking for setting-specific shite. I was searching for the first idea the people get when they think about this. Like, if a setting EXPLAINS this then ok, but USUALLY there is next to no explanation for these building blocks of magic.

Had you actually read the whole post, you might've noticed.

You don't deserve the (You)

>>How does mana turn into spells?
>>What is mana?
>Mana-using plebs on my board again

>>Is there a reason why people would not use magic for mundane applications?
Because people hate magic, it's difficult to scale up, magic users are insane, they did but everyone who knew how to do that died, antiwizards destroy any attempt to do so, et c.

>What is mana?

this

But that's the essential point: There isn't a unifying concept of what magic is.

In a lot of settings there's a very thought-out explanation as to mana, the source of magic, and how people use it exactly. In other cases, magic and mana are mere concepts playing into a greater, undetailed scheme that simply ask you to roll with the fact.

The general idea however is that mana is something you have a pool of in order to cast magic, and how is, again, completely setting specific. How it all works to the core depends on how you write your world. Is mana directly from your body or from a direct source of power? Do you simply channel it by thinking hard about it or do you have to make some form of modification or communion to gain access to it?

If you want an uber-specific case study to look into on the functionality of magic and mana, look at Warcraft for instance.

Well, mana is very vidya-type of system, but what are some better alternatives in your mind? Infinite spells but long casting times / complex rituals? Spells per day? Prepared spells?

If I was to be completely honest, spells per day doesn't sit with me at all (Except maybe in L5R), and prepared spells work only as scrolls IMO.

But everyone does have some notions of what works and what doesn't. I wanted mostly to spark discussion, really.

>Magic is the bare machinery of the cosmos
>The Mind and Body is the interface through which the bare machinery is manipulated
>Mana is the fuel which drives it
>The resulting magical effects are no more than the direct result of interfacing, through a humanoid with access to mana, the bare machinery of the cosmos.

>The Bare Machinery of the Cosmos
This is a metaconcept I had, it is very similar to the internet in that you can not access it without the relevant apparatus. But all effects and affects that one could desire are accessed witin the Bare Machinery it is simply a matter of activating them with the correct application of a humanoid.

>The Body and Mind
As said above it is the interface through which one can operate the Bare Machinery. The Body may need the correct application of its extremeties as well as alteration of the enviroment around it. So too must the Mind, for it is the mind which directs the Mana to the extremities of the Body. Both must be strong.

>Mana
Mana is the fuel of the Bare Machinery, everything operates on the agreement that something is expended to gain a result. Mana is the embodiment of this agreement, typically presented as lifeforce from grass to blood and all in between. The amount needed to operate the Bare Machine is difficult to judge.

Nanomachines, son.
Nanomachines and a huge load of PAIN.

Does this sound awful?

Synthetic Magic
Synthetic magic is very versatile and flexible; through channeling of forces of the world, almost anything is possible. It works by lining magical forces (of which the caster may be one of) and channeling the forces to patterns that make up this world. This can be done in various ways, from drawing repetitive patterns, to chanting words of power to simply concentrating and controlling the forces with pure willpower.

Primal and Destructive Magic
Primal Magic comes from the self, showing itself in exceptional individuals. It cannot be trained consciously, and noticing it is very hard. It enhances the self naturally, making a strong person inhumanely strong, a silver-tongued person more convincing etc. It is very much a poorly understood type of magic, but one that can be recognized from a dark or transparent, steam-like glow. Most accounts of heroes of past have some mention of this glow. The holders of the glow are highly respected individuals, because they have naturally reached something normally unattainable.

Destructive Magic is the antithesis of Synthetic Magic, and a subtype of Primal Magic. Destructive Magic draws the glow forcibly from the body, warping the world around it. It is very taxing to the user, but also very powerful. Because of its irregularity and danger, it is generally frowned upon to use Destructive Magic. While being very unstable and dangerous, it cannot harm the user directly, being a part of their body, after all. The aftereffects, however, can be very lethal.

What exactly is synthetic about synthetic magic?

That is a good point. Another name for it is Harmonious Magic. But it's synthetic because you synthesize the largely invisible forces into something tangible. Maybe 'synthetic' as a word has a too strong connotation as something inorganic or artificial, so that may be changed.

>Depends on the setting
I opened this thread just to see how long it took someone to reply with this. Needless to say I was not disappointed.

Magic is a spacetime Idiosyncrasy.
Mana is just an unsourceable form of radiation that is brought about by the Observer Effect where our very existence is the instrument in question that has much the same reality altering effects on spacetime as the center of a blackhole does through its own form of energy rather than the devastating effects of gravity.

historically magic is the force that makes the world do things. magic was the rules that governed the natural world. there are 2 distinct types of historical "magic".

1.) the idea that you can take 2 things that have a correlation and force things to happen
>rooster crows when the sun rises. if you can make the rooster crow the sun will rise

2.) using the forces of nature that might seem to have nothing to do with each other and manipulate one to change the other. a sub study of this is historical alchemy
>char coal comes from burning trees. if you burn trees underground you can change the rocks around it into coal.

magic was thought to be natural and messing with it was against the will of god in judo-Cristian society. it was also dangerous because fucking with natural law could build up the power and crush the sorcerer (not DnD sorcerer).

just a little thought for your game

How have I not read of this before? That's pretty freaking neat.

Tho the only book on the subject I have is The Three Books of Occult Philosophy, so they don't really have the spells themselves.

/thread

For D&D, and the systems I like, mana is a field of energy that suffuses the multiverse though it tends to lack an explanation except in Forgotten Realms.

In many settings however, it isn't explained how it works. For myself, and my homebrew based off 3.pf, spells work differently depending on caster. There are different ways they affect reality through their "spells" or abilities.

>How does mana turn into spells?
Using a wizard as an example, At the start of a day, the wizard uses specific gestures, sounds, and materials known to alter the flow and intensity of the mana in the vicinity binding it together in specific ways. This precasting forms a construct built of mana that is imprinted within the mind of the wizard. This takes quite a bit of time to do, at least a minute for the weakest, and up to ten minutes for the most powerful.
>What is mana?
A mix of astral, ethereal, elemental, and aligned energies that suffuses the multiverse. It has differing concentrations depending on what plane of existence you are on. When it crystallizes or gathers in large amounts it takes on different looks depending on the ratios of the arious types. A gathering of earth energies looks like large crystals that tend to form an acidic coating, while astral energies form pools of cloudy shimmering liquid not bound by gravity.
>Is there a reason why people would not use magic for mundane applications?
They would, it's just monstrously expensive. It would be the same as an average person from a third world shithole trying to buy a high end computer from America. This is because the number of people able to create these magical effects is fairly small. Many of the more powerful effects are only able to be created by a pool of less than 100 people in the entire world.

it was a series of laws and court cases by the church on witch craft in the middle ages. fall of Rome to protestant reformation

>sorry about the delay i had to finish my history paper

forgot to add that its different from the occult. occult is the worship / impressment of demons / supernatural entities. though it might involve magic (in some form or another it probably dose) it is different than manipulating reality. instead you force (or preferably convince) the demon or entity to do something that would be impossible for the individual who summoned / called them (might already be in the world).

another note on alchemy (their historical belief) was that you could combine items with similar traits and dis similar traits. mixing similar traits will add them to the new product and dissimilar traits will be negated.

just for those pesky PCs who want to go full shroom alchemist.