Too much magic can ruin a fantasy. Magic is a very powerful ingredient and it unbalances everything...

>Too much magic can ruin a fantasy. Magic is a very powerful ingredient and it unbalances everything. You can't put in a lot of magic and then still have a medieval setting or the same social structure. The existence of magic would radically deform any society or culture in major, major ways. If you look at the history of the real Middle Ages, magic was very present. Of course it didn’t really work but they didn’t know that. They believed in witches and killed and burned many witches and wizards. They believed in alchemy and angels and demons. There were also doubters so I try to replicate that. When magic works, it works a little uncertainly and it’s not something everyone can work. I don’t like the idea of a magic system, which some fantasists use. If magic is systematic, then it’s not magic and more of a fake science. Magic is the supernatural and it’s beyond nature. It’s dangerous, uncontrollable and unpredictable, which is the flavour I try to deal with. Really my models were the great fantasists like Tolkien. There’s a very magical feel to Middle-earth but there’s very little on-stage magic. Gandalf never tries to solve the problem by whipping up a potion or a spell. When he’s attacked he doesn’t throw lightning bolts from his fingernails, but picks up a sword like everyone else.

B-b-b-but I want to fly around invisibly while transformed into a Giant Ape that doesn't exist in the setting! I want that setting to be an easy to grasp Ren-Fair version of old Europe while also having the power to warp reality at the fingertips of every magician! REEEEEEE

t. every DnDpleb ever (Dark Sun masterrace excepted)

Stop trying to force your fucking GRRM threads. This is the third one and it's fucking annoying.

>Really my models were the great fantasists like Tolkien
Will this finally shut the autists up?

>implying the OP of these threads cares about anything other than annoying Veeky Forums and getting (you)s

He has literally no stake in the fight beyond that.

But user, this time Martin actually has a point. Magic is shit in most settings.

He has a point about the tax policies too.

>buht muh storees 'bout wizurds XD
De-pleb yourself.

I like GRRM, so I'm fine with those threads. I can use them to discuss asoiaf with other people.
Speaking of which, why were Sand Snakes in GOT so universally hated? It's not like they're any better in the books. In fact, being unsympathetic, violent bitches is kind of the entire point of their characters. They are meant to be hated.

Hidden feminist agendas

But OP can't get (You)s, they get (OP) like everyone else.

>Puts OP dragons

>OP white wight things

>OP league of assassins that can impersonate anyone whenever

>OP green fire that blows up everything

Ok fat faggot

>want to get revenge for Oberyn
>do this by killing his and their family
That'll show those Lannisters.

They basically turned six characters into one character (all Sand Snakes where Obara in appearance and personality), and then made Ellaria Sand that exact same character too.
They removed pretty much all of the significance of Dorne from the novels by removing most of the characters there and their plot relevance, and in this last second they basically killed every single one of them as if to acknowledge how unimportant they made the entire arc.
Dorne is hardly the most key arc in the novels themselves mind you, but they managed to make it even LESS relevant in the TV show.

But that happened in season 6, and they and the Dorne plotline was hated back in season 5. In fact, it was hated so much, they cut the whole plot down to basically nothing and quickly killed off the dornish characters.
Doran Martell's actor said that there were a lot of scenes with him planned in the season 6, all of which were cut, and his character was killed.

Same shit, OP.

>“A start?” said Ellaria Sand, incredulous. “Gods forbid. I would it were a finish. Tywin Lannister is dead. So are Robert Baratheon, Amory Lorch, and now Gregor Clegane, all those who had a hand in murdering Elia and her children. Even Joffrey, who was not yet born when Elia died. I saw the boy perish with mine own eyes, clawing at his throat as he tried to draw a breath. Who else is there to kill? Do Myrcella and Tommen need to die so the shades of Rhaenys and Aegon can be at rest? Where does it end?”

>"Oberyn wanted vengeance for Elia. Now the three of you want vengeance for him. I have four daughters, I remind you. Your sisters. My Elia is fourteen, almost a woman. Obella is twelve, on the brink of maidenhood. They worship you, as Dorea and Loreza worship them. If you should die, must El and Obella seek vengeance for you, then Dorea and Loree for them? Is that how it goes, round and round forever? I ask again, where does it end? I saw your father die. Here is his killer. Can I take a skull to bed with me, to give me comfort in the night? Will it make me laugh, write me songs, care for me when I am old and sick?"

Based Ellaria Sand

Not giving any (You)s, but I will concur that magic in fantasy has lately been, well, utter shit.

>"everything must be a science!"
It's gotten really fucking out of hand

Magic just isn't magic anymore.
Anime is partly to blame.

One thread wasn't enough eh? Just had to go for two.

The issue is that anything with repeatable and reproducible effects can be made subject to the scientific method, assuming sufficient resources. This means magic has to exist in the space between 'different science' and 'making it up as you go along'. Both of those have their issues after all, it's definitely a writing challenge to balance the two so normally it's just part of the assumed suspension of disbelief for a fantasy setting that "Magic exists and some people know how it works but the world, in general, is pretty much still medieval Europe" and so long as the audience can buy into that it's still verisimilitudinous so that's just what people do because it's easier.

Magic as science isn't the problem so much as ridiculously powerful magic in a setting that doesn't acount for it, mysterious magic is one way of curbing the power of magic but there are other options, plus I wouldn't mind powerful sciency magic if the setting was built around its implications

Also his settings.

Seriously, Time Travel in a gritty fantasy setting.

Actually sometimes Gandalf does try to solve the problem with a spell, like when he shoots lasers at the nazgûl during the battle of minas tirith. But he doesn't do it often

That's the show, dumb shit. It's one of the pivotal reasons why book readers fucking loathe D&D.

There is no time travel in the books, only looking into the goddamn past. Great, now you've triggered me like some sort of rotund feminist.

Shit, that describes me.

.

Maybe GRRM will die before he can port that into the books.

The show producers have lost all sense of realism, sadly.

People teleporting across distances the size of India in 2-3 days. It's fucking atrocious.

>A queen, under trial for being a murderer and a whore, blows up a church where 90% of her political enemies are
>One of them - a leader of a populist uprising against her, and also the pope
>Nobody cares about it
>One episode later, she is suddenly beloved by the people
?!?!?!?!

Yeah it's bad. Really really bad.

Depends on how you do it, I see three ways:

Either magic is so rare only a few people can use it, and it has distinct effects rather than being a versatile thing. Magic A produces Result A, not Magic A produces result A-Z

Magic is attainable by anyone and is versatile, but comes at such a price that no one but madmen would use it Magic A produces result X with consequence Z. Consequences can range from insanity to magical fallout.

Or, magic is so common and versatile that it's industrialized, everyone's using or used it and it's shaped society.

Because they literally have done nothing but be spiteful and obnoxious cunts who made everything in their kingdom worse.

Magic takes a lot of forms IRL. Get yourself stuck into the Golden Bough.

i kind of like going full magic
where magic is used like going to the pharmacy, and magical trains run on magic coal, and magic robots do battle with magical knights

i just love the magical made mundane, it doesnt need to be full on magocracy, but the general idea that amazing wonders of mankind fit in your pocket and is bought from the pharmacy appeals to me more than magic is rare and dangerous

Agree with you there about anime being partially the problem. The issue is that the Japanese ascribe all the mysticism of magic to ki a la DBZ. Whereas in the west magic is typically mysterious and ill-understood, in japan it's viewed seperately to their own brand of mysticism and merely regarded as another mundane tool. The most recent and glaring offender in my eyes is probably Knights and Magic where it's so close to a universal operating system that the MC's knowledge of coding from his previous life was directly applicable.

To be fair, even Western fiction approaches magic as some sort of fake pseudo-science. Arguably more so, if we go by history.

Post-renaissance occult movements really pursued it as such. Heavy ritual and rigorous study. Even Newton was enamored by it.

The magic of D&D is practically a fictional science, if not an art form.

Japan treats it more like a technology, which is what kills it. The West is, strangely, more talented at mistreating magic. Kind of funny, kind of sad.

I love how the Gordon's Fisherman has become to go to shitheel opinion for everything fantasy. Really contemplates my cashews.

>The most recent and glaring offender
>Japan treats it more like a technology, which is what kills it

*cough* *cough* Final Fantasy 15 *cough* *hack* *cough*

KAMAMAMA

what is wrong with mundane magic?
its not any worse than mysterious magic is it?

>not liking xv
It's a decent game

Nothing is wrong with mundane magic, just how it's executed.

Yeah, but it lost all the magic. It just didn't feel like proper fantasy to me.

FF6
I mean really user

Yeah, except there was really good balance in that one. The differences really made it interesting. FF15 just fucking went all "magic exists, meh".

No it fucking isn't.

FF6 did it well. FF15 did not.

There's also the fact that FF6 had its focus on magic.

Yes it fucking is

I SAID IT FUCKING ISN'T! XV WAS A FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT ON THE SAME LEVEL AS 13. FF HASN'T BEEN GOOD SINCE 9.

>Too much magic can ruin a fantasy.

Or make it baller as fuck.

Unsounded is legitimately better than anything GRRM has ever written, and it's partially because it takes the presence of systematic magic to its logical conclusions.

>I don’t like the idea of a magic system, which some fantasists use. If magic is systematic, then it’s not magic and more of a fake science. Magic is the supernatural and it’s beyond nature.

He probably thinks this is more 'genuine' and 'realistic', but IRL magic was always systematic to a degree. It wasn't beyond nature, it WAS nature. It was how these people believed the world worked. It was, in his words, a fake science.

>This is the third one and it's fucking annoying
It's actually the fourth one in 2 days.

It's fucking retarded. The mods should do something about this spammer. And all posters should do what we used to do with shitty threads: SAGE

Hey now, 12 and 10 were pretty good.

If 13 had the combat system of 15 it would have been good too.

>Magic's not systematic

GRRM is one dense motherfucker, yeah sure let's prentend alchemy wasn't studied and practiced in 18th/19th century

>FF15 just fucking went all "magic exists, meh".
That's because literally only one very small group of people in the game can use magic at all, and the empire that is creating the game's demons managed to do so mostly by reverse engineering demons left over from a time when magic was more extant. Now the only magic users are the hexatheon and those that they grant magic to. XV is like a game set in the future of a fantasy setting and it handles that at an enjoyable level.
That doesn't stop /v/ from foaming at the mouth on sight, though.

Nope. It's shit. Stop defending diarrhea.

This was only a thing in the West(and to a lesser extent China) though.
The last millennium really took a turn with the Occult and those who took an interest in it.

Everything before and out of that range was whack job mumbo jumbo.
European magic was always a very rigid and defined system. More refined even.

There's a reason why people think of whites when 'wizards' are brought up.

Yes. High Magic had a very scientific structure. Some of it even leading to certain facets of natural philosophy, which was the precursor of modern science.

Lesser "hedge" magic was a silly thing and often seen a womanly practice.

>This was only a thing in the West(and to a lesser extent China) though.

Bullshit.

Structured magical ritual has existed in almost every society we have record of.

No, you're right. Just not to the extent of what the West went through. They -really- wanted answers. Everything else just seemed like hogwash. Which is ironic, considering all magic -is- hogwash.

idk, if it's spam why do these posts keep getting many replies with different conversations throughout?

Doran was killed to show off the female actors, whom D&D are fanboys of.

>detailed argument for why it works
>"lol no it shyt xD"
Top argument there, kiddo. You sure proved him wrong.

@55181101

Thanks for the (You), fgt

Why the fuck are Martinposters even a thing

How did this happen?

Sounds like you're a hack who can't write how world would be different.

George R. R. Martin is the Tolkien of the 21st century.

You're all just afraid to admit it, really.

Here, have another, with all my pity.

>IRL magic was always systematic to a degree
You are aware there is no magic IRL right?

Yeah, nah. I just want an excuse to throw fireballs.

Also fucking seriously, would he say that Greek myth suffers for Zeus being able to lightning motherfuckers that step to him?

>When a pseudo intellectual purposefully misinterprets context to incredulously feign superiority

He's obviously talking about medieval occult studies dude. Hence "was," and "how these people believed the world worked."

Anime is explicitly NOT to blame.

Idiots like are to blame.

kek

weeb detected

>When magic works, it works a little uncertainly and it’s not something everyone can work. I don’t like the idea of a magic system, which some fantasists use. If magic is systematic, then it’s not magic and more of a fake science. Magic is the supernatural and it’s beyond nature. It’s dangerous, uncontrollable and unpredictable

Well this is something I've always agreed with. To me when magic has rules it stops being magic.

What happened to the days when "it's magic, I don't gotta explain shit" was a valid answer? When it was a term that meant making the miraculous into reality.

It still is a valid answer.

Some people are too pretentious to accept it.

Probably yes

How many times has magic been scientifically explained in anime? The spellcasting processes might be scientific, but the actual root cause and nature of magic are invariably "mysterious thing X", and 90% of the time when someone has more magic than is typcal (i.e. a protagonist) they're using a different and entirely unscientific method of magic compared to everyone else.

It has little to do with being a weeb and a lot more to do with how Westerners find imagination and lack of rules upsetting. god forbid magic be some mysterious unexplainable force that doesn't react predictably every single time, especially on a Veeky Forums board where rules must be autistically calculated to the nth degree.

You could have at least made this bait believable by using Moorecock instead of Tolkien but noooooo you got greedy.

Gee, I don't think anybody gives a rats ass over what you think, weeaboo.

Not an argument.

Well personally, magic should come with a sense of wonder and the fantastic. If it doesn't have that then all you've made is an alien planet with swords.

>using generalizations against generalizations

You're both retarded, you know that?

Who's trying to have an argument here?

:^)

Don't you know, books are more mature than kids comics user.

GRRM's never heard of Glorantha, I see.

You can't really make claim until you see his influence in posterity.

Even claiming him a Moorcock would be stretching it, since Moorcock was a highly influential author.

GRRM may just turn out to be a flash in the pan, we wont know until all is said and done.

>pulp
>kids comics
Whatever you say user

That's not much of a statement.

Tolkien wasn't a great writer, more so a fantastic world builder.

I'm speaking of the general opinion, ask your parents or any normalfag, they'll say comics is for children.

Because that's how Veeky Forums has always operated. Even the shittiest trolls can find their threads co-opted by a deep and enthusiastic conversation about something random how to properly represent sonar in a dice based system.

One time a shitty "what is this D&D thing you all keep talking about" troll led to the creation of a new Veeky Forums game based on loli necromancers.

Gonna need some better examples than 'muh protagonist'

>every setting must be mine
>every setting must be a replication of medieval Europe

Depends
On
The
Setting

cease and desist
I do whatever the fuck I want

Are we going to have one of these threads every day?

What a stupid, spiteful post

>spiteful

At least you know it was stupid

Actually a very legitimate observation though. It's incredibly hard to weave magic into a setting without having it OP or fucked up or not make full sense.

You've either got to limit it somehow (only certain people can be born with magic, it can't be learned, it drains your energy/life, it's dangerous, it requires sacrifice) or you've got to build your entire world around the fact that anyone can do just about anything, and when something happens that would have an easy magical solution (eg. Time Turner's in harry potter) then you have to either come up with a convenient excuse as to why that wasn't done or answer annoyed readers/partakers of your world.

I generally prefer to take the path of only certain people have magic/magic is very hard to do well/magic is dangerous so that sure, it exists, it's accepted, and it plays a big role in the world, but not many people are actually that good at it and overdoing it will kill you.

You want to know what magic is?

It's a plot device.

That is the sole purpose of magic in any written setting. It only become anything other than a plot device when it is brought into games, especially tabletop games where you have to regulate it strictly or it becomes a tool to beat the game into submission with. Regardless of how it works, how it functions, it's source, or the abilities of those who use it, it is first and foremost a plot device. Any other use of it is ridiculous in a book.

back to Veeky Forums with you

That's a pretty stupid opinion to have m'lady.

Except he's not wrong, you know.

So when my Black Mage casts LIT3 to defeat some goblins, that's a plot device. Does that mean my Fighter's sword is also a plot device? Is the movement function that allows me to walk to my next objective a plot device?

Is it possible that applying this level of reductionism to a concept is pointless and produces no valuable insights?

>muh plot

Just throw dice