In your setting, what exactly IS magic?

Magic is the lifesource of all life and even unlife. Thus it works for undead and the living.

Most beings, humanoids or creatures, have their inner magic locked, and cannot control it or use it in any way. But some people have an affinity to it and have managed to unlock their inner magic, chi, whatever you want to call it. And are able to use it via training, mediation, etc.

From then on humans started studying magic, and like I said most people just aren't born to be able to use it. Making mages not the norm, but the exception. Same for creatures that can use magic.

The fae folk are well established to be unable to lie. It's a truth about fairies.

Their language was not intended to be spoken by any non fae, and thus anything spoken in Fae is expected to be the truth. Humans and other races are not restricted with inherent honesty.

Spells are simply lies spoken in Fae, which the universe views as a paradox and acts to correct. "This door is unlocked." "That man is on fire."

The spell may fail if the spoken lie seems dishonest, and the caster could experience a sort of karmic backlash. Thus mages are expert liers, colloquially known as charlatans by common folk, as this dishonesty extends past spellcasting.

Fae is also a difficult language to learn as teaching by speaking it aloud causes paradox. So it is shared through scrolls, if ever, as fae no longer speak in their tongue to mortals.

Magic still exists and can be harnessed by creatures in other ways, but for mortal men this is the most common.

Now that is a weird but cool thing.

Divine energy from the stars

Thanks. My players really enjoy the small twist to the setting.

Depends on who wields it.

Some people draw it from the energy that naturally emanates from all things, drawing small portions from everything around them to focus into something else. It has greater potential to manipulate the environment than other sources, but if let loose, could wreak all kind of havoc. All kinds of beast races exist because someone didn't close the circle completely.

Others draw power from a different plane of existence, and the act of drawing it into their place crystallizes it, allowing them to store magic power in jewel batteries to power stronger magic, or use it as a catalyst to create explosions.

The second one also uses these crystals in place of gunpowder, drawing it around a metal ball, putting it in a metal tube, and detonating the crystal.

Multiple energy planes, with two primal ones that were used in creations of the existence. The primal ones are bound by the runic language and a shit ton of attunement to the specific plane. The energy from lesser planes can be bound by spells and magic scrolls.
Two primal planes are the planes of material and immaterial energy. Binding the power of either one will give and enormous control over the element it had created, and allow the user to bend reality. Control over the lesser planes provides much tamer results, but is much easier to achive.

Magic is the twisting of the natural instinct of the will to survive into the will to power. This creates a state of being known as the Gate. While the mage awakens the Gate, they can generate mana from their stress and force the world to their bidding.

This means magic only works when they're in life or death situations or are performing self-harm. It also means that they can't perform the setting's equivalent of mystic kung fu because mystic kung fu uses the will to survive.

Basically this.

Magic exists as a energy field that people can tap into with enough training. The world was in a magic depression for a while and it is now starting to return to full force. Non spellcasting people still benefit from the return of magic as it allows for greater feats of strength and whatnot.

That is kind of cool, user.

All intelligent beings possess a Psyche, or Spirit, which is the seat of their consciousness. This Psyche radiates a field of energy called Vimana, which means roughly 'divine chariot' and is a reference to the fact that a chariot is a Buddhist metaphor for the Mind.

This 'spiritual energy' is the basis for all types of supernatural abilities.

When Vimana is focused through foci and catalysts it is termed Magic and its application is termed Spells.

When Vimana is focused through the mind and shaped by the will, it is termed Psychic Powers and its wielders are termed Espers.

When focused through the physical body, it is termed either Supernatural Abilities, if referring to an innate biological feature [such as the ability of dragons to breath fire] or Ki when intentionally trained as innate energy. This is partially the reason why beings can become far stronger then in our world, and work out so hard they become bulletproof [the other reason is that the physical limits are just higher]

There is also the fact that the party is currently on another planet, where the metaphysics are a little different, since unlike the Modern Day Fantasy world they came from, where people die for real, ghosts are impossible, and while the afterlife is known to exist due to necromancers calling up the dead, the content of it is utterly unknown since the dead refuse to speak of it, or give contradictory accounts, or lie.

Meanwhile, on the medieval world they find themselves on, every living thing reincarnates through an elaborate system, part of which is the shedding of a "Soul" at death. A Soul is a magical object the size of a marble that contains a fragment of the being's power, knowledge, and skills.

[cont]

True names, everything in the world has a true name and knowledge of what somethings "true name" is gives you a degree of power over it the level of control of that power comes with years of practice.

For example somone who knows the true name of Iron (Ferrum) a novice could form a raw ingot into a crude dagger or maybe a protective disc, whereas a master could command the iron in your blood to congeal in your heart or brain leading to obviously fatal results or the tiny particles of Iron in the soil beneath your feet to suddenly coalesce and erupt from the ground as sharp blades.

different schools of magic will guard their knowledge of true names with a level of Jealousy bordering on paranoia.

There are even rare individuals known as Cognoscente's whom seemedly have a innate knowledge of a specific element or objects true name that allows them unparraled controll over it, far beyond the abilities of a normal person though how such individuals came to inherit such powers is shrouded in legend and rumors.

The users of Souls are called Numeri, and the abilities granted are termed Anima Powers or Soul Powers. Each Soul grants one of three effects, depending on which of your three 'slots' its equipped in. Souls equipped for offensive purposes are termed Glavo, from an ancient word for Sword. Souls equipped for defensive purposes are termed Sildo, for an ancient word for shield, and souls equipped for utility are termed Ilo, for an ancient word for tool. [the 'ancient language' is actually Esperanto]

In any case the mechanics are the same. Vimana is focused through the Soul [which is absorbed into your Psyche] to create the supernatural effect. Pic above mostly unrelated, the game isn't 'entirely' anime, its mostly modern fantasy [though it doesn't take place on Earth]

I like this a lot.

Miracles from various god-like entities. All magic users are priests. The more fanatical the more powerful.

It's magic.

>In your setting, what exactly IS magic?
It's a naturally found force found throughout the world. Honestly nobody knows exactly what it is because it doesn't like to be studied or observed for long periods of time.

>Furthermore, how exactly do people harness it?
Very irresponsibly. To put it into perspective, most people do the equivalent of conjuring a lightning storm and waving a metal rod around because their cell phone died. Sure, it'll work, but it's dangerous, stupid, and highly excessive.

>In your setting, what exactly IS magic?
A subconscious attunement to information that is unavailable, which is possessed by all humans to some extent as intuition and luck. Some people have extreme intuition and luck to the point of being able to guess where people are, what they are doing, where they will be, what their plans are, and so on. In the most significant cases, the user may predict chains of events that lead to paradigm shifts decades in the future, something which occurs based on the aesthetic value of the events.

Most people with a notable degree of this ability end up paranoid or schizotypal and held back because they have enough intuition to be prone to magical thinking and ideas of reference that they will obey, but not enough for their insights to be reliable or true. At the next increment, they will have enough intuition and aesthetic insight to be mystics, fortune tellers, spiritual teachers, shamans, skilled artists, clairvoyant advisors, and charlatans, all of whom are prone to receiving incorrect visions. Further, people at the highest extent are often driven into madness and psychosis, disconnected from the world around them and living in worlds of fantasies and possibilities scattered around profound clairvoyance that they cannot explain nor formulate into any sequence or language, completely unable to justify their conclusions and predictions. Thus, they tend to be discarded as madmen unless they are of the extreme minority who can keep touch with reality and were born into positions of power that allow them to be a part of their own predictions. There have been only a handful of clairvoyants that acted out their own predicted events that would change the world, the overwhelming majority were only observers.

>Furthermore, how exactly do people harness it?
Genetic predisposition, high intelligence, high intellect, lack of emotion or emotional expression, lack of positive emotion, cautiousness, responsibility, and social maladjustment are all predictors of clairvoyance. It does not manifest until adolescence and peaks in late adolescence and early adulthood, when the individual will experience the most visions alongside dissociation and psychosis. Higher knowledge significantly increases the vividness of ideas and visions, someone uneducated will see little more than vague emotions and aesthetics in their predictions. The harnessing is involuntary and begins as mild suggestions and ideas that are further formulated and connected to other ideas until the individual becomes convinced of their truth. Some things require very little formulation and can be declared at a moment's notice, such as knowing what someone will soon ask them or what the weather will be the following day.

In my homebrew, it's a randomly-manifesting biological ability that taps the remaining Chaos energy left in the world after Creation. The fact that it appears and disappears from families completely at random means that it's hard to form magocracies. It's not something you can learn, you have to be born with it, and students are measured on something called the Bridge Scale, which is a base-ten logarithmic scale. 0 is inert, 5 is average, 6 is very rare and brokenly powerful, 7 is 'that kingdom looks nice; shame if something happened to it' scale, and any given 8 could level a nation without effort. The highest any person has ever been is a 10, but he's a one-in-a-quintillion freak of nature, and very much aware of it.

There's a second power in the world, not magical in nature, called the Gift. Gifts are hereditary, and a person with a Gift shows up like a dull ache in the senses of a person with magic. They range from completely useless to game-breaking, and absolutely nobody, not even the Pantheon, knows where it's coming from. It's becoming more common, too, and most frighteningly, when a demigod absorbs the power of a dead Gifted person after death since there's no afterlife to put them in any more, the demigod's powers grow stronger. NOBODY knows why. It's one of the two dead Creation-deities attempting to reincarnate, and doing it wrong. Things will only get worse before they get better. The three demigods that are left are nice folk, but they're pretty badly overworked.

Every being has hopes and dreams, from not getting eaten to eating. These are all magic, because an organism wants something to happen, and every living thing gets a +1% to whatever they most desire, everything is a "caster", the rabbit runs just a little faster and there's good undergrowth ahead by chance, and the wolf, by chance, chases a shit-brained deer and kills it easily.
A tree gets 1% more sun per year because it makes the clouds go away, and more rain because it wants the clouds back when it's droughty. Creatures aren't usually aware that they're making the universe reroll or increase their chances.

Kinda like Orkz and their if they believe it it happens. The small twist is that the more there are and were living beings, the thicker the Mana is and the bonuses grow bigger.
You can't use magic in space (like Shadowrun).

Now, people and anything that's considered a magical being is on a spectrum; from a lowly farmhand that has a 1% greater farm yield per year to a fiery archmage that can erupt volcanoes, they all use the same kind of Magic, the Mana.
How much mana can be used or how big the spell is, is determined by a character's Soul stat, which is Destiny, Luck, Fate, Charisma, Drive and other anime-laden attributes. Soul also determines how many magical items someone can wear at once without being possessed or exploded.
Dragons have a huge destiny (and therefore huge guts) and can influence the world a lot harder and with a lot more bang than a rabbit getting a 1% speedboost. Player Characters usually have a big destiny and can fling fireballs aged 18 instead of the NPC wizards aged 36.

The people, gods and pretty much everyone in the setting have no idea how Mana works. The Gods exist because so many people will it, and are semi-aware of that.
The clerics cast miracles that heal, the wizards cast fireballs, the warriors hit harder, the rogues stab viciously-er, the rangers shoot better.

The best answer. Once you try to give magic an explanation, it begins to fall apart. It soon become something else entirely.
Magic is wonder.
Magic is that which cannot be explained.
Magic is, well, magic.

>In your setting, what exactly IS magic?
Depends but usually it is making very limited contact with the collective knowledge of humanity. Just tapping into the Akashic records via a variety of different methods.

>Furthermore, how exactly do people harness it?
Faith, study, creating art, sheer stubbornness, you know the usual.

Wait, a second. So mana is just social status? That is kinda of a letdown.

I'm still trying to figure it out myself.

magic is significantly advanced technology, in theory usable by everyone, but the technology became self aware thousands of years ago and now chooses who can use it by way of a ritualistic bonding to a focus object. it allows itself to be used or denies the user access to its abilities based on the intent of the bonded caster. people who are rejected can be accepted later based on appropriate changes to their mentality, and people who are accepted can be rejected later based on how many times they attempt to perform intolerable actions.

basically, it doesn't trust people to not wipe themselves into extinction, so it only lets itself be used when its effects are limited in scale.

Magic is the divine essence of the goddess that only her priestesses can use because she says so.

Magic, magical items, magical effects, and magical healing does not work on anyone but her own priestesses. However their harmful magic can work on the goddesses enemies especially the jealous, crude and cruel men.

please. -nothing is inexplicable-.

if you cannot explained it, you have thought it through enough.

The channeling and shaping of Anima via Auctoritas or Gnosis. Auctoritas is mystical authority granted by elementals, angels, or demons. Gnosis is intuitive mystical knowledge instilled by initiation rites or cultivated by study and contemplation.

it is the "background radiation" from when the gods sung the world and life into creation, and because it's "made" out of all creation, so does it allow the manipulation of creation.

wizards spend countless hours trying to understand and use it, they need intelligence to understand the machinations and layers of such a subject to use it

sorcerers are naturally "attuned" to the magic, but they need to dig into themselves to shape and control it, their charisma is born out of a deep understanding of themselves born from and needed for their gift

bards simply come closest to mimicking what the gods did, and this resonates with the magic itself, to "lure" raw magic into your bidding is of course no simple task, and it takes a clear defined person with enough charm to do so.

clerics and other divine casters form "bonds" with the sources of these magic, and create something of a symbiotic bond, where they gain a fractal sliver of the "sources" magic, in exchange for what they have to offer.
druids, similar to other divine casters also form bons, but rather than with the original sources, so do they from them with the result, i.e. the very essence of life. to do what these casters do requires vast insight, to see past reality and touch what is beyond the veil of the physical

monks use the "life" inside of themselves, and train it like a muscle, forcing it to manifest itself as a physical part of them in the form of KI, this not only requires similar insight, but also a vessel strong enough to contain something as such.

While I hate Vancian Casting as a mechanic, I love the explanations for magic in Vance's actual novels.

My African American Brethren.

...

Latent energy in the air, generally unmeasurable (although in theory, if you had advanced enough science you could probably detect it based on what it's supposed to be doing at the time, but nobody in the setting has developed that far yet, though they did at one point in the very distant past), but existing everywhere to a greater or lesser degree.

Certain gifted individuals have the innate ability to turn this into actual visible effects, i.e. spells. Some do it through force of will and "innate talent" (sorcerers), some do it through carefully studying effects and the patterns needed to produce them (wizards, bards via song, etc.), some just go to a god and beg for the knowledge (clerics, paladins), some work more on instinct based on their relation to the world around them (rangers, druids), some make deals with various entities to "hack" the system and access that power, but it's generally very limited (warlocks).

In the past there were artificers, as the above mentioned note on science says, but there are none in the "present day" of the setting, unless they were perhaps locked up in a stasis box or something to that effect. They had the very best knowledge and understanding of everything involving magical energy, and constructed a lot of things that now seem impossible to replicate save by actually warping reality (read: wish spells, divine intervention).

But if you explain it, then doesn't it stop being magic, and just start being applied science under slightly different rules?

they have specific schools in different parts of the world (3 schools i know of so far) if you arent a part of the school you're very vulnerable due to the general populous rejecting magic users (except pallys and clerics)

people harness it by being hyper intelligent aqnd being able to buy/work their way into the magic school which basically has a monopoly on magical resources.

depends.on.the.setting

Why is it people can never grasp this shit?

You answer within your own setting or with whatever context other responses provide.
The point is to drum up inspirational conversation, but to directly steal gameable ideas.

>Why is it people can never grasp this shit?

can someone give me some thoughts on this? im not gm, im a pc but i think its pretty good, it gets wizards into a neutral niche and also gives your party meaningful encounters out of battle towards wizards that you need to traverse

science
>The collective discipline of study or learning acquired through the scientific method; the sum of knowledge gained from such methods and discipline.

scientific method
> A method of discovering knowledge about the natural world based in making falsifiable predictions (hypotheses), testing them empirically, and developing theories that match known data from repeatable physical experimentation.

If magic is not repeatable, it is inherently not scientific.

>but to
*not to

The gods are those who have ascended beyond this realm and live on a higher dimension closer to the cosmic core.

It's a CPU. They live in L1/2/3 cache. The world is RAM. The past/the dead live on the hard-drive.

Gods need followers in RAM space so their cache isn't dropped.

Magic is tweaking and adjusting the rules that govern reality, disrupting the normally running program with single-upsets. Like when a cosmic ray comes through and flips a bit in RAM.

It's a simulated reality, but it's not like anyone can really do anything about that.

They're asking about your shitty homebrew. Duh.

I was thinking of turning Divine magic into a similar "ocean" of magic Arcane generally is set out to be.

But from this divine ocean gods emerge, kind of, as people's faith compels the them to.

Honestly the only original-ish idea in this is that the source of divine powers is not-arcane weave.

Primarily There's 3:

1) Shaman/Primal Magic where you call down a spirit from the Primeval World to posess your body and give you some of its power at the cost of either taking on its appearance or accepting its ban.

2) Divine Storytelling wherein you speak aloud a tale of a Daeva, something related to their ancient tale and in so doing inspire others to heroic feats akin to their own power.

3) Arcane Magic which is from the Fay. Fay are masters of illusion, so good in fact that their illusions are indistinguishable from reality and effect the real world just like any other. The problem is: studying Arcane Magic requires you to study and understand how something works before you can properly create a version of it in reality effective enough to harm or alter others.

Goddamn this is such a cool spin on it. Damn fine work

France. It comes from France!

Yeah, that's pretty good.

All of the shit that is too complex to even bother understanding by the layman or anything too weird to fit into the common paradigm.

The Capital M magics that are often utilised by errant Magicians are:
>Elemental Alchemy or Natural Sorcerery
Using chemistries, the primal hierarchies and invocations which back them the elementalist creates powerful potions containing the power of nature.
Elementalism also includes the study of beings with inborn natures which produce fantastic elemental effects.
>Mentalistism or the Psychic Alchemy
By study of the mind's most esoteric mysteries, the tutelage of goetic devils and the reciting of the commands of angels the Mentalists bypass the limits of the mind and body, their own or otherwise.
Mentalism also includes the study of drugs and devices which produce the mystical transformations they wish to trigger.
>The Realm of Spirits and Demons
Which no man may avoid but some find more profitable than others. There are many ways to interact with spirits which are not limited to those who would traditionally be called magicians. Spiritual pacts can be made by anyone with the cleverest gaining any kind of benefit.

Minor Magics
>Mathmatics
>Architecture
>Theology
>High Politics
>The Weather
>Gambling
>Nautical Navigation
>Surgery
>Espionage
>Uncommon Art
>Any guild protected craft

Gonna steal this idea and claim it as my own kiddo.

Horatio is the best
Magic is the aftermath of a dying parallel universe with some fucky-wacky laws merging with the current one. Some Masters of the Universe decided that it fucks with their perfect worlds and shut it off, some decided that it's rad and just tweaked it around to do what they want.
Nobody even knows that Masters exist, of course. Not even all Masters are aware of each other.

Magic is getting spirits to do your work or tell you thinks you might want to know. you need to make a contract with the spirits first, which will feed on a portion of your life from then on, or make a specific offering for their powers instead.

The wizard hat is basicly a portable communication device for the spiritual realm. you can use your will to order the spirits around, but doing so exhausts your mind and body (resulting in temporary debuffs or a stigma)

Genetically modified humans created with the ability to use zero-point device implants in their brains.

Heavily influenced by the navigators of Dune in appearance, pic related is a first stage navigator.

As those mages use the implant, they get more and more affected by the chemicals required (taking the role of components in my setting) to cast. Their genetic predisposition makes them able to withstand some of it, but most mages die young, between 20 and 25 years of age. Those that survive to higher age than this average are considered second stage mages, and are given additional implants for two reasons.

>Primary
More power, duh
>Secondary
Once these mages eventually die, their genetic code is harvested and used to improve on subsequent mage generations.

Pic related is a second stage navigator of Dune and the main inspiration for second stage mages in my setting.

Third stage mages are those that somehow achieve the impressive feat of using their implants to an age more than double the average. At this point, the chemicals will have irreversibly warped the creatures body, but also its mind. Generally, these creatures now require the chemicals needed to use the Zero point device to even survive.

In turn, they are treated for longevity by their followers. Retroactively modifying their genecodes, which is an astronomical expense. There are currently 13 known third stage mages in my setting, ranging in age from 52 to 107, with the oldest being some sort of gibbering Oracle bound to a chemical factory on a space station closely orbiting a red dwarf.

Generally, magicians are feared by the populace outside of the guild. This includes the majority of the guilds customers, who hire the services of those mages at a premium.

Even first stage mages are often travelling fully cloaked due to their appearance. While this may protect the mage from initial shock and horror, it has also lead to urban legends about their true appearance being even more monstrous in the general populace.

Players can be mages if they wish. This almost inevitably means that they are vat-grown though. To make it easier on them, those that survive the implant surgery and initial training are given very lose reigns by the guild in the setting, only being bound by oath to drop everything when and if the guild calls.

Power increase is dealt with not with the stages, but rather by improving your skill at using the zero point device of your choosing (Replacing the "schools of magic" of most settings). Tinkering with these abilities, the player can unlock more powerful spells. As long as the player uses only the base power of those spells, everything is peachy. overcasting is done by using more / more dangerous chemicals and leads to harm and possibly mutations down the line.

Why does the Sun come up, or are stars just pinholes in the curtain of Night? Who knows.

Arcane magic is derived from having a Draconic lineage, though in this case it's linked directly to an ancestor who was blessed by a specific metallic dragon during the war between the Metallic and Chromatic dragons. Six metal types exist as nobility and have innate magical capability, but the more prolonged the use, the higher chance of their bodies slowly transmuting into that metal (Copper bloodline turns copper, iron to iron, etc). Think cancer, but visible. Once a noble turns fully, their body is still innately magical (though dead), and is commonly broken down and turned into magical items.

Otherwise, druids and warlocks and such exist, but even clerics are of the Iron Church and draw their power from the Divine Dragons (those that ascended after the war).

Also there are magical wastes where the war was fought that act like radiation, and have transmogrified people and animals into grotesque horrors and abominations.

>King's golden privates are a magical item
I like it. Gives me a conan vibe

Sort of? Commonly the metals are worked into a shape fitting whatever enchantment is on it, not just hacked off and given out. Else you'd have some bloody prat with seven metallic ears around his neck shooting lightning and fireballs.

>Else you'd have some bloody prat with seven metallic ears around his neck shooting lightning and fireballs.
I don't see the issue. You do you, but my group is walking east right now into the unknown and I am stealing this for the next culture they come across.

The possibilities about reliquiary trade are just too vast to ignore

>Snakeoil salesman selling "god-emperor shavings"
>The holy hand of Karl 2nd, King of Kings and slayer of Giants
>Left ear of the princess Ameralde, the most beautiful princess to ever live

The remnants of ancient technology created by a long lost society including a massive cloud of nanomachines floating in the atmosphere awaiting commands, a ancient internet that houses vast knowledge and communication abilities, and several sentient AI that have inserted themselves as gods occasionally giving power, advice, and making pacts and shit each AI having different motivation for why.

People can harness it in a few ways. Finding a device that can command these technologies (integrated directly with the nervous system) at which point they'd have the means but not the knowhow which takes years of study to rediscover the ancient secrets. Or they could make a pact with (warlock) or just serve the ideals of (cleric) an AI who would just do the commands for them. And occasionally there is the freak of nature who has somehow connected to these technologies without a clear indication of how (sorcerer)

Sorcery is reaching out with the body of your soul rather than your body of flesh to manipulate the world. Sorcerers perform extensive rituals with mantras and physical symbols in order to gather their strength and thoroughly visualize the metaphysical symbols they will manipulate to enact worldly change.

Shortly after creation, Ankou, a rogue entity whose origins are unknown, happened upon this creation and witnesses limitless cruelty on part of the gods and suffering of their poor children who were nothing but toys to the creator and his pantheon. Their sapience was not respected, and their flesh was twisted upon whim as the creator wished to create larger and better works in its self hatred of its own imperfections.

Moved to tears by what it saw, Ankou enacted what would be its great play of power that would earn it the title of the Usurper. The God broke its spirit, shattering it into trillions of tiny splinters that gifted all mortal beings a soul- something only gods ordinarily possessed. With this gift all the mortal races would be stolen from the cruelty of their creator, spirited away to an afterlife to await the resurrection of their dead savior in the death of all things.

Magic requires a soul, and is the method by which the Gods not only created the universe but also created life and can reshape it. With it not only are mortals gifted a meager defense, a shield against manipulation by their creator, but also can wield magic themselves. Any being can. Magic works via willpower, and is simply the will to reshape the world. The gods merely think and reshape things, but as mortals not only have weaker minds and weaker souls they require mental exercises for more mundane acts.

Spells and rituals not because the simple line of words or ritual itself causes the magic to happen, but because the concentration allows the mind to birth a stream of fire or alter the chemical composition of some material. Magic is also used both consciously and unconsciously, and thus those great leaders we read of in history who never had any training still use magic because of their indomitable will, allowing them to power through horrific injuries or inspire thousands of men to rally to their side.

god's debug toolkit

I think this is a good starting point
From it, i would suggest the following
> study or learning through revelatory sources
> sources may be: direct contact with the ones with higher wisdom (i e shamanism)
> oral traditions (i e witches)
> written tradition (i e alchemisn, cabbalistica, hermeticism)

> main methodology is sympathethic action on the world and symbolic/higher linguistic interpretation of sources available

Miracles work in a similar fashion. The prayers of the mortal races forms a gestalt a collective will of power that can lead to even greater and more wide-sweeping acts of magic. This can be anything from triggering early rainfall to save the crops of an entire nation or resurrecting somebody who has died. For this reason Churches are very strange places, as in the veneration of Ankou the subconscious mind goes wild. People will receive visions, melting candles will drip wax up onto the ceiling, and furniture will shake.

The more faith and zeal you have, the more powerful you are. The head of religion for example is an undead skeleton-man, sustained by his limitless faith and the faith of his original flock which still empowers him. In Ankou's sacrifice, all of mortal-kind has become miniature godlings wielding their shard's power. Who knows what could be achieved if somebody were to simply wake them up?

A fundamental force of the universe like gravity, the strong and weak nuclear forces, and electromagnetism. They harness it through focus and understanding either of yourself, or the world around you. Much like how the force of gravity increases when you get more mass together the force of magic increases as you gain more knowledge.

Magic can be harnessed in one of two ways, the first way is subconsciously which is generally seen as being just lucky or being good at guessing, although for more powerful individuals it can be manifested as a sort of physical mastery. The other is through study they can actively manipulate the force of magic just like one could manipulate gravity to slingshot a satellite. Put simply if you study magic you can make force fields and shoot lightning and shit, if you are simply a focused, disciplined person who never studied magic you are more like a lucky asshole who is stronger and faster than he looks.

Before all the undefined bits of the gap between universes and stable bits of ours got mixed up people used a big ol super computer to manipulate the gap for neat things by artificially acting as a god in undefined universe space, which naturally responds to commands fwith creation and change.

Eventually this went up in smoke and the universe sprung a leak, causing the computer to get really messy. It transcended the mortal plane, subsystems became pseudo-divine beings, lots of unpleasant disasters and the like happened, that said it didn't stop working and now the milk way was on its home turf.

So those humans able to interface with it, which is all of them still human enough to have their thoughts recognized as input, are still able to access what is basically the galaxies command line, however there is no documentation, the developer constantly is rolling out massive totally silent updates with zero notice that totally change the syntax in ways less and less intuitive every time to the point where blood sacrifice had several contradictory context dependent meanings for way too much for a full 3 years, and getting access to the part of the network you want to use in the first place requires sufficient devotion to its divine system admin.

inb4 one of anons pcs (pic related).

>biologically random magic

Is there any worse type?

Ones where magic is powerful and fairly easy to learn, but is still presented as something rare and mystical rather than something everyone uses to some extent?

That is very cool.

Look! Everyone turned magic into a bad pseudo science!

@55027442

But your system that you're not going to share is the epitome of originality and mysticism blended into the perfect ideal of magic that works for everything from scholarly alchemists to modern-day chaos magick, I'm sure.

It's the energy flowing from the previous world to the next. Some people can proverbially turn themselves into a metaphorical waterwheel, and as they allegorically spin, they can spin the world around them.

This, it's nothing special. Most cunts don't believe in it though.

What if somebody says "The fae can lie" in fae?

Magic way A)
>become so hecking good at something that it becomes supernatural.

Cause physical harm by being really great at throwing insults.
Cook a meal that fits into your hand but can feed a grown man for a week, you'ra just that goof of an cook
Convince diseases to go from one host to another, that charming you are.

Way B)
Meddle and bond with some sort of fae, so they theach you their ways or share some of their powers with you. Once bonded one uses it like he walks or breathes.
DO NOT MEDDLE AND BOND WITH ANY FAE

Way C (basically a combination of A&B)
Item bound to certain objects that have a shard of reality forged into them, buth with a cose. Think of the berserk armor from the Berserk manga/anime
Only dwarfs know this secret of forging and they guard it well.

Originality is overrated. but here's my system.
It's magic. I ain't gotta explain shit!

This reminds me of that Diane Duane series. I should go back and try to wrangle an RPG out of it some time, since True Speech seems like it would be fun as hell to play with.

I assume that the word "Lie" doesn't exist in Fae

Small microscopic organisms exist in the cells of all living beings. When a person has a sufficient amount of these microscopic organisms, and with a sufficient amount of training, it allows them to manipulate the pervasive energy field that surrounds the universe to perform magical and superhuman feats.

Just kidding. That's fucking retarded.

Magic is extremely high technology in a post-apocalyptic setting. The people using it generally do not know this. This goes ditto for even divine and druidic magic.

Magic either comes from, is used by, or is harnessed through weaponry and gadgets referred to as "casters"(as opposed to referring to the person) or by formulaic relay to nigh omnipotent AI who live on space stations and satellites orbiting the planet, depending on the AI, and who essentially function as deities whom empower a person or cause the effect directly via remote luminescent nanite swarms or satellite beam.

Magic takes longer and is weakened underground, which is presumed to be weakened by hell and dark forces by the savages below.

So there's absolutely no mechanics, patterns, or limits, and magic just acts as an infinite ass for you to pull things out of?

I'd even take the nanomachines over that.

Science m8

same here, except like physical effort, the amount of "influence" you're able to do per unit of time depends on your energy. So it's very tiring.
See how lifting a bottle with your arm is easier, but harder with just your hand, and even harder with a finger ? Imagine using only your mind.

Haha, you do you too, it just doesn't fit in my setting. Sounds hilarious