Magic System Monday: Recent Episodes
Magic System Monday
Magic System Monday is a podcast where we delve into, investigate, and rate magic/power systems in fiction as well discuss how they affect writing. You can make suggestions and send us stuff on twitter @MagicSystemMon.
I'm sure no one here is a stranger to the many contradictions in Naruto. Despite this, many people still hold out believing that the magic system somehow isn't that bad. I've encountered many excuses and lies meant at justifying this, but nearly none of them are true. So lets talk about them.
Sometimes we take side character development too far. When is that? when we forget what the main character was supposed to be doing.
Sometimes we take side character development too far. When is that? when we forget what the main character was supposed to be doing
It's been over a year on Magic System Monday, and I have had plenty of time to think about how I feel about my original claims in the key qualities of a magic system. Do I still agree with them? Well yeah, but I suppose I have some additions to make for the sake of being clear.
No matter what you plans areas a writer, you have to actually refrain form taking part in things that are bad for your work. If you can't do this, no amount of writing advice can help you.
Works of fiction are generally considered to be separate. We all know this to be true, however there are occasions where our own opinions, preferences, or bias affect our ability to apply this notion in practice. Today's episode is a matter of recognizing this degree of separation, the ramifications of neglecting this premise, and making a distinction regarding how works can affect each other to some limited degree.
"As it turns out, low hanging fruit doesn't always go down so smooth." -- Isaiah, probably.
Today we talk about the principal of "The ship of Theseus" and how it pertains to some aspects of world building as I have seen recently. We continue on and ask a serious question that the ship of theseus forced me to ask, in what may or may not be a tangent that doubles the length of the episode.
On this episode of magic system Monday we will discuss my takeaway from specific aspects of the magic system in Little Witch Academia, specifically as they pertain to how the series addresses limits. It wasn't the most unique thing every, but the goal isn't always to make something completely new. Often, the way we structure a thing itself if the determining factor of it's success.
The concept of time traveling is a common one in fiction, giving rise and prominence to the concept of the butterfly effect. But is the butterfly effect accurate? And how much of a place must it hold in the case of writing time travel?
Steins;Gate has entered the chat to put a lid on the matter with its clever time mechanic called "The once percent barrier" which limits the degree of the butterfly effect's reach. Join us as we talk about the interact of the one percent barrier and what we can draw from it conceptually to enrich the way we execute time travel in our work.
On today's episode of magic system Monday, we have an odd change of pace. We'll be discussing not the magic system as a whole, but a specific spell in dnd as well as an odd player made workaround surrounding it. The invisibility spell seems to have some clever players coming up with ideas that may ruin it's respective place in the meta, so today we expirament with how to solve this issue with the addition of a few small qualities with the purpose of demonstrating how ironing out some finer details or phenomenon in a magic system can effect the overall result.
TLDR: we defeat flour,GG-no-Re. We'll, except the trail. But with what we have in this episode, I'm sure we've drop enough hints for you to figure that out.
People often say that a good magic system needs to have a cost, but what really is a cost? And is it true? Well that depends on your definition,which varies far more than reasonable. But perhaps another interesting question to ask would be wether or not your cost is too dramatic, as I've seen a trend of making magic dramatic to raise the stakes seem almost mandatory to some. So join me as we take a look at these two questions and the implications on the community due to even having to ask them.
In this episode we will discuss the Earth elemental as well as it's expression within the series as a demonstration of the benefits of a hard magic system
The first in the series of episodes covering A:TLA. Firstly we have an explanation for the the basics of how the bending works, what the Avatar is, as well as the the principles and origin of Airbending.
To day we start with some basic info: what a magic system is, why it is useful, and how I go about grading one.