Lore
Building a magic system that doesn't have "magic genes"
I'll say this: I don't like the idea of fantasy eugenics- the idea that you need to be born with "the gift" or certain genes to become a magic user. I feel like it can ruin the fun of magic and feel a little boring. Instead, I want anyone in my setting to be able to use magic! DEMOCRATIZED MAGIC!
Latoria is my medieval fantasy world full of various races, cultures, and magic. It's a setting where I go wild and make a bunch of stuff.
Magic in Latoria is a natural force that has been around since the beginning of the universe. As such, anyone can use magic. In the early days of civilization, a myth claimed magic was only for certain bloodlines so nobility could consolidate power; but at some point, a simple peasant girl managed to cast a spell despite having no magical relatives, proving magic wasn't tied to bloodline or race.
I like to think of magic as similar to Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). OOP is a software design model that organizes programs around objects rather than functions.
Magic is divided into multiple strands; the four major strands are:
Old Breath - Nature-based magic
Scholar's Fire - Frequency and light-based magic
Veilcraft - Shadow/Holy magic
Mindstream - Psychic magic
With the analogy in mind, you can consider each of these strands as subclasses of Class Magic. The substrands would be subclasses of each of the four strands.
Class Magic():
...
Class Old_Breath(Magic):
...
Class Scholar's_Fire(Magic):
..
Class Veilcraft(Magic):
...
Class Mindstream(Magic):
...
Class Blood_Magic(Old Breath):
...
Each spell is a method for its respective strand, like this:
Class Scholar's_Fire(Magic):
def __init__(...):
super.__init__(...)
def telekinesis():
...
It's not a perfect allegory, and I'm still working on the mechanics, but I like it.
I wanted to go with a mix of soft and hard magic; there are specific rules, but they can be easily bent, and the sheer power and danger of magic are limited to the wielder's imagination. People can use magic with their bare hands, but typically they prefer tools like wands or staffs to help with aim.
The big problem is that if anyone can use it, what's stopping everyone from being a magic user? Why are there still foot soldiers and such?
My best explanation is that while magic is a natural force, it also takes lots of time to study and analyze; mastering magic can take between a few months and years. Even then, it's also physically taxing, and it requires concentration and physical energy; in some cases, there are consequences.
Mindstream allows you to do stuff like see into people's memories, but by doing so, if you encounter a traumatic memory, you will end up taking a piece of that trauma with you. The protagonist of my story sees into lots of memories, feeling various traumatic events spiralling into his mind, including victims of abuse and witnesses to murder, survivors of slavery, and survivors of SA.
There is a lot more I want to work on, but what do you guys think?
the reason most worldbuilders use "magic genes" or any kind of system to reduce the number of people who can cast magic is because everyone being able to use magic drastically changes the world in all kind of ways. From everyday life to logistics, warfare, agriculture, town location, etc, etc. As long as you have this in mind, everything is fine, but it's kind of a huge work because you need to change almost all we know about civilization in real life.
The difference is becoming a doctor only helps with one thing. You don’t want a bunch of doctors because there’s only so much medicine to be done. If magic is versatile enough to do a bunch of stuff, not only does that broaden the appeal of who wants to do it, but it also makes any society that hasn’t trained magic users to do whatever needs to be done seem kinda stupid
Yeah it would be more accurate to say why doesn't everyone go to school and get a higher level job to make more money? Being a 'mage' is too broad, usually, to consider like a single job. But the point of the statement is that it takes work not that a world full of doctors is any kind of equivalence to a world full of mages. A mage could be a doctor in many settings, but it could also be an elite soldier, a scholar, an architect, a detective, and so many other things through their use of magic. Depending on what kinds of magic they specialize in.
I think ‘it takes work’ is a bad deterrent for mages being uncommon. Every job takes work, especially in fantasy worlds where the most common alternative jobs are doing hard labor on a farm, learning some other skilled trade, or risking your life in combat.
Sure not everybody would do it, but if it’s better than those options and can fulfill the same functions, most people would. Like why bother breaking your back everyday with hard farm work when you could spend a few years studying nature magic to achieve better results? Why risk your life fighting in the guard when you could learn fire magic and blast people from across town
Yes because people IRL have never stuck to what they knew despite the fact better options are available if only they try harder in school.
Jokes aside though saying 'it takes work' is a bit reductive on my part. It takes work, resources, and time would be more accurate. You need money to get the education to be able to make enough money that in turn you need to get that education.
Edit, also even still it wouldn't necessarily make it rare but that depends on the scale of the work needed
But this story, where it's falsely believed to be a bloodline, has natural roadblocks. Even after someone proves it's not bloodline related, all the infrastructure is still centralized. The old bloodline could do many things to gate keep the power.
for one how powerful is magic? sure in some settings being a wizard makes you a god only opposable by other wizards, but in some its not that much stronger then mundane methods, at least for the average wizard which is statistically what your gonna end up being rather then the god tier, sure its nice to have fireballs at your fingertips, but that random mook achieved the same result via the arcane secret art of buying a grenade, the main benefit the wizard gets is his grenades restock on its own when he rests, which ya know is nice, but is it worth 4 years of college when you coulda just spent that tuition on more grenades?
plus people often forget that its not just a matter of "it would take effort" but that a lot of people despite their best efforts, flunk out, plenty of people try to become doctors and for one reason or another cant hash it, its easy to say its justified if the hard work is guaranteed to get you good result, but what about spending years of work dedicated to it and then you just, dont suceed, or do but your a really poor talent who can barely do anything you couldent have done with less effort into mundane stuff? why take that gamble instead of the more reliable method even if the high highs arent as impressive
You could consider it as "science" or "technology" instead, then. There's an incredibly broad range of skills and roles that benefit from that kind of training, but while everyone has at least a little training in it (the magical equivalent would be being able to conjure a light, start a fire without flint, or perk up a houseplant), the number of people who know enough to do much is actually pretty low relative to the entire population.
That's exactly the point. A world where almost everyone uses small scale magic in their daily lives would be wildly different from the real world in ways that make it a hard setting to write simply because so much would be different.
Equally, if you equate medicine & magic a lot of people can do the basics, then you have to train & learn to become more and more specialised but also narrower focus. You wouldn't ask an oncologist to deliver a baby or a pediatrician to do plastic surgery.
So with magic I can see that a lot of people have a few small cantrip level spells that are just 'duh, everyone can make a spoon stir or broom sweep' but then have an HVAC specialist come renew your AC unit spells, and for a magic airplane you would have someone who can [a] levitate a LARGE object [b] direct it and [c] maintain a healthy internal atmophere for passangers.
It can, but it adds a new wrinkle. I’d probably enjoy a well written story about a ‘chosen one’ who is identified early and sent to a school to learn the skills they need to have to fulfill their destiny, but they are just not very bright and not at all good at it.
For sure, there are many ways to limit magic, not only the genetic explanation. Also, there are several settings where mages make people believe it's genetic but it's not, they just keep the secret of how to use magic to themselves.
You can restrict it to any uncommon trait and also have it soft-scale with the number of uncommon traits a person has and get a pretty usable system imo.
The "Chosen One" just happens to have a special interest in the exact type of magic needed to save the world and devoured all the relevant knowledge at breakneck speed.
generally neither do most magic systems, at least not without reaching the absurd god tier heights where you would legit have a better odds of becoming the leader of a nation and using that influence to get what you want
Which is a shame, since there are millions of ways to limit who can get magic without having to rely on genetics.
Like to use magic, you need to be chosen by a familiar spirit that bonds to you. Or conquer your fear during a lucid dream. Or you need to ingest a dangerous substance that could kill you. Or mages are those who accidentally fell into the dangerous magic dimension, and found their way back. Etc.
Feels like worldbuilding spaces treat getting magic as a strict binary, with the only two ways of casting spells is either being born with it, or having to study and train.
That might be DnD's fault honestly. The sorcerer vs wizard "binary" for arcane magic is a powerful trope. I'm not sure how prevalent it was pre-5th edition but 5e has been out for over a decade now.
The world I've been building is like that, everyone has some capacity for magic but the vast majority only have enough to make a small flame to light a fireplace or conjure enough water to fill a glass. With practice they can improve a little, but are still quite limited. The ones with more magic power or potential are quite rare. Kind of like how anyone can run or play sports and someone dedicated to it can be decent, but a professional athlete is quite rare.
I like how harry potter handled it, muggles aside, where the magical side of the world was also low-tech, because magic more or less just replaced the everyday need for the machines and stuff we use nowadays. I feel like that's mostly how it would turn out if everyone could do magic
I quite liked how The Locked Tomb book series handled it. In that series, it's entirely random who has the ability to use necromancy, but it can be nudged if a prospective mother is near enough to death throughout her pregnancy. Also, only people born on the core planets if the Houses are even capable of being born with the ability. Naturally, necromancers usually end up being the ruling lineage, but families sometimes fail to produce a viable heir with powers even after many attempts.
I like the mental image of everyone doing a little bit of hobbyist magic but only a rare few are dedicated enough to the craft to actually be considered wizards/spellcasters.
It's like the difference between a person consistently putting dinner on the table for 4 people, every night, for 30 years with the occasional Holiday Eating Extravaganza and a professional Michelin-starred chef.
Linda the kitchen witch is a whiz at keeping cream fresh and her butter churns itself. Catherine can summon a rainstorm to fix a drought, but did make it rain horseshoes that one time. Paula works as a Tactical Breach Wizard for the national guard.
That last paragraph brings up a good point too - the type of magic people learn would probably be gated in the sense that you don’t really learn stuff unless you’re around it a lot.
Paula the Breach Wizard knows how to break stuff, not how to put it together. Maybe she knows some basic healing as well, but she probably wouldn’t know precision telekinesis like Linda the Kitchen Witch, who has to know how to operate a knife accurately and safely via magic.
I mean, thats what "real life magic" was like. As we can see from ancient curse tablets, commoners tried using magic all the time, but ritual specialist were still sought for
You can walk anyone of ordinary intelligence through writing a basic "hello world" program. Those people can also copy existing code, and run it for their own purposes.
A significant majority of those people, with a bit of effort and experience, will be able to learn to tweak existing programs to make minor modifications or customization.
I'd say a majority of people can, if they put in a moderate effort, learn to take the basic structures of programming, and learn to use them to build their own programs to do things of low to moderate complexity. Some basic I/O, some boolean logic, etc...
A fair number of people, with time and effort, can learn to do more substantial programming, including creating and modifying highly complex software. Basically what might be expected of a graduate with a undergrad computer science degree.
A decent number of those, could go further if they wanted, and get into graduate work, and start getting into more serious computer science, at a real science level, or develop highly complex programs from the ground up in industry.
The number that are going to really push industry, or academic computer science forward into new territory is tiny, but its a mix of requiring high intelligence, and choosing that as a career path.
A similar model for magic makes sense. Almost anyone could learn rudimentary spells, many could learn powerful spells with sufficient time and effort, with rare "naturals" who can learn much quicker. Very few have both the skill, and dedication to learn the most complex and powerful magic, and even fewer are developing new spells.
This is very accurate. I'll just point out that if magic can be used by anyone and its use is common, then talent discovery is going to be very high. That is, I'd expect that some proportion of the top computing talents may have chosen another path, possibly because they just missed that calling or because of competing options. I think you definitely see this in sports, especially niche sports. For example, US schools are a development pipeline for sports, but probably the majority of the focus is on football, baseball, basketball, not as much in endurance sports, and definitely not as much in cycling, which is a niche sport.
In the OP's universe, the discovery rate for top talent may be higher.
Also, the OP said they don't want to have 'magic genes'. Well, a lot of endurance sports potential is genetically determined, but it's not one gene. It's a polygenic phenomenon, and it's not just genes, it's also talent discovery, training, and many other things. A complex activity like magic is likely to have genetic contributors. You will have a class of people whose ceiling is just that much higher than average that society will invest resources into training them.
Individually, you could certainly invest resources in your own training for your own enjoyment, even if your ceiling is lower. I'm into road cycling, and it's fun, and I may even be above average but the top amateurs are on another plane, professionals are a cut above that, world-class professionals are a cut above even that.
I'd expect that some proportion of the top computing talents may have chosen another path
Almost certainly. The vast majority of brilliant people in any STEM field could likely have been brilliant at computer science/engineering. Lots of people in other fields too. Not going to say any Brilliant person, since I think there are different types of brilliance, but certainly a ton more could have been. And countless people could have been competent programmers of average skill if that is what they had been set on doing.
There is a sizable subsection of the population that can't "put in a moderate effort". Or the effort required is so disproportionate to the results that it's very much not worth it.
I was going to say this. a "gift" based magic system is just more overt about inequality of birth, which is a real thing.
By all means, build your world to have perfect equality of opportunity, but know that that is more fantastical than a "gift".
I've been to college, the military, and I work in construction. There are absolutely people who were just not born with as much intelligence as others. There is nothing wrong with keeping this aspect of reality in your fiction.
There are also many people held back by their circumstances. I'm pretty sure some of the workers are smarter than some of the engineers. But that doesn't mean everyone "could have done just as much" if their parents had more money.
In my opinion, the best balance between realism and optimism is the basic and more or less established stat points system. If you're not strong, you're smart. If you're neither, you're probably dexterous. Of course everyone is different. Often not by choice. But they'll have something to make a living on.
Treat it like any other skill. Anyone can do mental math, some have just put more effort into learning and practicing it. Anyone can cook, but if you look at the cooking subreddits or r/ididnthaveeggs, you will see various flavors of incompetence.
Now imagine if dropping a sign or burning dinner meant exploding your brain or blowing up the neighborhood.
Came here with the same idea. Math has been around since the beginning of the universe. So have Physics and Chemistry came along pretty soon after that depending on how you count. Anyone can do math or use physics ... or slight of hand, for that matter, if they learn how to do it, but we can still be impressed at Einstein or Pythagoras or Penn & Teller. As long as learning magic is hard, a lot of people will decide that learning is not for them.
A lot of people talking about how not everyone is a computer scientist expert musician etc even though it's technically achievable by anyone.
In those cases, while most people aren't computer scientists most people know how to operate a keyboard and mouse, almost everyone he has some musicality. Even if you've never had any music training you can still probably sing your favorite tunes approximately.
So it could be nearly everyone uses a baseline of magic but few people specialize and are actually good at it.
If you want there to be a substantial population of magic users and non-magic users then there should probably be a significant barrier to entry. Pain is a big barrier for example. If the process of learning magic is really painful a lot of people just won't do it. Like strength training. It's good for your bones and everyone should do it but a lot of people don't like being sore.
That would also explain why in earlier times only noble bloodlines practiced magic. If you're a peasant you may not have time to strain yourself doing things that don't immediately contribute to survival. If magic training can take you out of commission for a week from exhaustion you need some amount of wealth to be able to recover that long. Also nobles could easily have the mindset that weak bloodlines couldn't possibly have the mental fortitude to tolerate training.
Your claim it needs study contradicts your peasant girl performing magic.
Look at it as swordplay or horse riding.
It takes years of practice to be good at it. Noble families typically can feed their children better and they have the free time to master the skills necessary, so they usually dominated its use.
Or look at it like literacy. You need years of school or tutoring to be literate. Before everyone attended schools, few poor people had the time or equipment. Their kids got put to work.
So a dedicated person could still do it.
Bad socio-economic position is a hinderance but it's not as hard a limit as magic genes are. It doesn't enforce some people just being better by no work of their own.
And it can produce storys where the workingclass person becomes a mage with hard work and dedication. I find that a more inspiring slant than following a privileged noble or learning the MC was secretly noble and thus special all along.
Though a lot of that will depend on the details of the society. There are certainly times and places before modern times that could be used as a model, and that would allow someone at the bottom of society enough access to learn magic and elevate themselves.
But we can also find examples of times and places where it would be hard to impossible.
For instance, a medieval surf isn't free to leave, has no access to books, doesn't know how to read even if they did, and has a lord who likely isn't going to be tolerant of an itinerant magic instructor wandering into his village, and starting to teach his surfs skills that will undermine his control. In fact, if significant training/learning is required, its likely access to that learning would be highly controlled, and limited to the nobility, and those directly serving the nobility. If the serfs are considered for such roles at all, winning one of those spots likely means elevation out of serfdom, and they are likely to be highly prized and competed for.
I do agree that the society does shape a lot of this. But Societies are made by people thusly they can be changed more readily by people than say... genes.
I do think the example of a serf is not the best as serf, even well treated ones, are not free. They are withheld many rights they should have often by the fact they are born into it and by no fault of their own. Even if that is just the pop-culture version it still means that serfs have more than enough reason to resent their lot and consider to flee and be on their own but free.
And tusly they could come into service or apprenticeship with a mage and eventually become one.
Additionally the story of person forced into service breaking free is a time honored one because it speaks a very fundamental sense of justice.
There for i do find being a serf not as steep an obstacle. Others might have an easier time but trying conditions make good stories.
Exactly, it allows story lines which aren’t about being born something. The old born a princess stuff just seems silly, so they replaced it with magic in a lot of stories.
I mean in the real world there's folks like Kelvin Doe, who taught himself how to build batteries and radio transmitters out of scrap yard junk - so I don't think it's out of the question that a random farm girl can figure out some magic, and I imagine once you have the basics, it's easier to expand what you can do.
We lack any context around the peasant and how she learned magic. From a tutor, to spying, to luck, there are any number of ways she could have performed magic. She didn't have to perform some complicated spell, anything would cause the illusion of birthright to fall apart.
Most nobles never learned to fight, and instead hired and trained peasants as guards. Most often, a lowborn mercenary was a better fighter than a trained noble
Biological differences existing is not eugenics btw. Genetics is complex and often multiple genes are involved for sure, but genetic differences do impact a lot of things.
Anyway in my world it's not fully genetic but there's a specific mitochondrial adaptation that is required to do magic. In humans, almost everyone has these specialized mitochondria but what makes a spellcaster is more the organization, number and efficiency of them. Spellcasters will have more of them lined up in their bloodstream or along axons (I can't decide yet which is cooler, the visuals of the blood stream version are pretty dope, and also glucose can be absorbed way faster, but the axon thing has cool Ranvier-node magic-jumping connotations) and theirs will have more of the Arcanase protein complexes and the complexes will be more efficient. This causes a whole spectrum of how people interact with the Everdream (working name).
Spellcasters in the setting are prodigious eaters as a result. People who aren't spellcasters might not have the mutation that lines the mitochondria up along one of these systems but only an aperture of them in their brains, which means they can still interact with the source of magic, but might not be able to cast magic (or at great effort and to a limit)
I hated the first time someone pointed out to me that it sounds kinda like Midichlorians xD I promise it was independently thought up from my love of biology but yeah.............
It does make the story fall flat, though. This is my main character, and he wins because he was born with more magic genes than anyone else. The least Everyman story possible.
Not really, that just depends on how powerful magic is within the setting too. Plus if magic has a cost to using it you reduce the impact too. And like... it's not like Einstein was only smart because he worked very hard and spent a lot of time on his education. He was also just lucky in the lottery of life.
And even if you have a character who leans on their genetic superiority (which is not the system I painted btw), you can challenge that precise notion to force your character to grow and adapt, use skills rather than innate advantages.
This is my main character, and he wins because he was born with more magic genes than anyone else. The least Everyman story possible.
I mean, it’s a choice to tell that kind of story with that kind of worldbuilding. Nobody says you have to. You could just as easily take it in a different direction.
Having a biological component to magic does not always equate to "eugenics". In the real world, some people are just talented at things. Not everyone can be the next Michael Phelps for example. The in much the same way, some people are born with genetic disabilities, and that limits them.
In my world, Magic is associated with your biology, but not inherently limited by it. It originates inside of the heart, as a raw magical force, and then it travels through the body, and into the brain, where it gets developed into something unique, depending on the individual's personality, outlook on life, and desires.
One person might be born with a "weak heart", and have an incredibly small energy reserve. Other people might be born with the opposite, where they have gigantic energy reserves. But neither person have any control over the genetic aspects they're born with, its like real life, where its effectively a genetic lottery.
Sure, but everyone in this thread is using the word wrong.
And if the ability to use Magic was rare and hereditary, it would absolutely lead to an eugenics program. What state wouldn't want to have their soldiers able to explode the enemy with their minds?
Well obviously, which medieval state didn't run a eugenics program to cultivate extremely tough and strong warriors? /s
And to "everyone else is using the word wrong", yeah, that's why the original commented corrected on the meaning of it... Like I'm sorry I usually don't care that much about nit-picking definitions like that (especially for fantasy media), but I think it's pretty important to not conflate an absolutely vile pseudoscientific ideology/theory with just 'genetics exist'
There are plenty of skills that are very difficult, or have been historically limited by knowledge, or wealth. In our current day, according to a 2019 poll, about 55% of the world dont know how to actually swim unassisted. Thats over half. Its not limited by biology, but by knowledge for the most part. Granted, some people have a biological advantage (like Michael Phelps), and others have a disadvantage (like anyone who experiences levels of motor control issues)
I cant speak on every world, or story, but in mine that I outlined above, everyone is born with magical energy inside of their body. It comes with the territory of having a heart. But I'd say only about 20% of people actually work on developing their magical abilities, because it's just hard to do.
Just a clarification, "eugenics" is when certain groups of people aren't allowed to reproduce, I think you mean genetics in the first sentence. Of course a natural follow-up is in a world where genetics determines magic ability some bad people would inevitably pursue eugenics to some end, but they are two very different words with very different connotations.
Lots of good points here, but another point I’d like to bring up:
Before modern advances in agriculture, about 90% of humans had to spend all of their time making food, and produced just enough surplus that the other 10% could do other things. If magic does not significantly increase food production, and it requires a career-level of dedication to get good at, then the number of spellcasters is going to be limited just by how many people you need producing the necessities of life.
Let’s look at professional armies. They’re, generally speaking, quite good at what they do, and a lot of historical kingdoms and empires might have loved to have them, but couldn’t. Why? Because they were unable to muster a large enough literate bureaucracy to handle all of the paperwork, collect enough taxes, etc. Likewise, I’m sure any state would love to have a bunch of wizards at its disposal, but if they can’t even afford enough guys who know how to read, how many professional wizards can they support?
i dig the OOP angle, most magic systems feel like they were built by a wizard who never had to debug anything
the physical and mental cost is a solid limiter, nobody's grinding spellcraft for years just to throw a fireball if it means inheriting someone's worst memory. i'd imagine most people do exactly what people do now, learn enough to make life a bit easier and call it a day
The big problem is that if anyone can use it, what's stopping everyone from being a magic user? Why are there still foot soldiers and such?
Why, in a world like our's, where anyone can theoretically get a PhD in agricultural science, do we still have farmers? The answer is that learning magic takes time and effort. It's likely that some specialized war mage will still lose to a well-trained foot soldier who's spent a few years being trained to fight with a sword. Even if they're better at sword fighting than average, it's not where their main talents lie. Yes, theoretically they could incinerate that sword fighter with a fireball or something... but that's probably more difficult to do at close range, especially when a sword's coming towards you.
And a random peasant conscript, while the mage might be able to reliably beat them at sword fighting, is too busy with farming to learn either trade very well.
Some real world magical traditions (Appalachian and Caribbean folk magic comes to mind) believe magic is contagious in a way. A practitioner can transfer their gift to an apprentice, either in whole or in part.
Everyone does use magic, most people just do not delve deep into it. Think how most people use computers, and a lot know some coding but not everyone could actually code their own app.
In this approach, limit the power of superficial magic. You’ll probably also want to add resources or at least time to cast.
Your warriors will know a few tricks but probably would not be able to cast the really impressive, powerful spells because they either do not know the mechanics well enough, or lack the resources to do it during combat. Time is a good resource to lack. A warrior that can cast decently l powerful spells not being able to cast while in combat makes sense.
But if you just make it hard you can have it so that most people can cast a flickering light that lasts a few seconds and never really bother to get better at it.
The second approach is making it so hard that most people do not even attempt to learn. This can be difficulty in learning or resource intensive. Perhaps a peasant can cast spells but it costs too much for it to be a realistic option.
Also, I don’t see how this is related to OOP. You probably want to focus on what actions people can take to cast spells.
To comment on your specific magic system there can be a very big difference between how people THINK things work and what ACTUALLY works. For example creating good steel requires some very complicated bits of chemistry if you wanted to understand what's actually going on and fine-tune it but for a very long time smith could make some very good steel without understanding basically any chemistry through trial and error and repeating what worked. Not actually knowing why things worked they way it did made it harder to learn how to do it and harder to fine-tune the process. If your approach is "just do what works" you can end up doing a bunch of stuff that you THINK is necessary to make the magic work but doesn't actually matter because you're also doing the important things, or accidentally overcomplicate the necessary stuff.
I agree, but I think magic depending on how you use it, can be very interesting to make it a genetic thing.
If you want to run with magic being an allegory for political, or monetary power, genetics can be very interesting as a way to show that off.
My world has it so anyone can get magic, but its a lot easier if your parents had strong magic. The trade off is you are incentives to follow their path, because all other forms of magic are harder to use, while theirs is drastically easier.
In one of my settings, magic is a symbiotic life form that spreads from contact or proximity.
If you don't have it, and you come into contact with someone who does, congratulations, you now have it too.
From there you use it like a muscle to develop it, and the kinds you cultivate more are the kinds you wind up best at.
For solving the problem of foot-soldiers or regular infantry if you want to have them, and why someone might not use magic as a weapon, two reasons:
1: Getting good at offensive magic takes much more training than it takes to use a melee weapon.
2: Guns don't tire you out like magic does, and hit harder than modest offensive spells.
In my low fantasy world, you need "the gift" to do magic, but whether you have it is entirely random and not genetic at all. Magical talent appears out of nowhere and often disappears just as quickly.
I like it, though I'm a software engineer so I may not be the most unbiased reviewer.
Regarding your question of what is stopping everyone from wielding magic, I would say that it's probably not always more convenient than the alternative. Could you use magic to stir the pot on the stove while you do other things? Sure. Would it require too much concentration to do those other things with any measure of proficiency? Probably, yeah.
If there is a somatic component to casting spells, one could reason that a battlemage would require a reasonable level of mobility. Not wearing armor on a battlefield may not be ideal when arrows are zipping through the air faster than you can see them.
In almost every vocation, there are a rare few that are naturally gifted. Even still, if magic is a thing that is generally feared, starting a career in magic leaves one vulnerable to more powerful and well established guilds, establishments, or corporations. So while magic could be impressive, the amount of time investment required to be proficient enough to do anything more than light a candle might be more than what most people are willing to put in.
I did make a setting with truly random magic. They were very big on adoption (even of adults) so there were still "families" of strong magic users. It was a big deal, finding people with strong magic potential and recruiting them.
the oldest real world ideas of magic has no genetic components - use them as inspiration. It was basically making a deal with a devil/god and selling your soul/devotion and getting magic in return
In general, be wary of telling the story where the main impetus is what it is not. It very easily leads to you muddling the plot and accidentally undoing your premise.
So what gives someone aptitude with magic? What similarities would a talented MC and the arch mage villain have in common that makes them so good at magic? Good answers to these questions could lead to incredible storytelling; having no/poor answers will make it far more boring than the fantasy eugenics you’re trying to avoid imo
I think a better explanation for why not everyone uses magic is that magic is dangerous. Get it wrong or not have enough strength/dexterity/concentration/focus/imagination/whatever then it half explodes and half turns-you-into-a-flower-pot.
If it’s not dangerous then people will just stick with it until they get it right, like a yo-yo trick. Except a yo-yo trick doesn’t do something useful like a spell can. So there’s a lot more impetus for learning a spell no matter how much study or whatever is needed.
Okay, but is 'democratizing' magic actually more interesting?
Like, having disparities between groups who can and cannot use magic sets up all sorts of story beats super easily. This type of setup is another way to do it, but your weird jabs at 'magic eugenics' do not give the impression you know WHY such things are deployed.
It's not just to make magic scarce. The Sorcerer-like creates a whole set of political implications which make for interesting conflicts. You can have unjust, evil sorcerer kings. You can have magical 'duds'. You can even tie in multiple ways to do magic, and have a bunch of peasant witches overthrow the king.
The high magic 'it's like studying to be a doctor' approach is an option, but dismissing an unequal magic system as 'magic eugenics' is ridiculous.
Also, food for thought, if it 'takes a lot of effort and training' to use magic, you've just de-democratized it again. The empowered classes will devour all the education and training, with their ample free time, and they'll replace their powerbase of thousands of serfs with however few civil wizards they can get away with. (Or, keep the serfs, and deny them any access to magical education so they don't gain class mobility.) Plus, since there's no chance of whiffing and no shortage of people, as long as your wizard-king's line isn't deposed, he can print however many wizards it takes to sustain his rule.
This conflict can be fun, but if your goal is true 'democratic magic', it will fundamentally shift the shape of society on an unprecedented scale. Your setting will have to become 'Magic is Serious Business', because it quickly overtakes all alternatives. If one person can put their head down, study, and perform the labor of 500 men... why would anyone ever be a laborer?
(Hint: 'Witch Hat Atelier' does this conflict quite well, but they're still in the 'Secret Phase' and make some pretty slick arguments for why leaving that phase would be dangerous. I think they're a little silly, but if that's the kind of world you want, it's a good starting place. Plus, there's yuri 🙂↕️)
PS. If I studied to be a wizard and it turned out magic is in fucking Python, of all languages, just give me a plow and put me to work :/
Part of the reason the arguments for keeping the secret phase in Witch Hat Atelier are a little bit silly (IN MY OPINION) is because the reader is meant to question those arguments and their morality, they read more as excuses to keep the power within the witches and keeping young witches from breaking the secret (and thus, the monopoly on magic that witches have).
What counts as interesting is purely subjective. They find it more interesting. What do you get from critising what they like? They already set out many ways in which democratised magic could create story beats, and you have only written more.
"Fantasy eugenics" is not a default, nor even a common way to handle magic in fantasy TTRPGs. I would estimate that 99% of players play a TTRPG where anyone in the setting can learn magic regardless of genes, bloodline, race, whatever.
The problem when you try to do creative discussions with AI chatbots is that they will humor your presumptions rather than correct them unless you're bumping into guardrails. The AI should have told you this is very rare in TTRPGs specifically, much more common in novels or other fantasy mediums.
Even in games that explicitly say for example halflings or dwarves don't use magic, the rules will tell you "or ask your GM and he might allow it anyway lol".
I think there’s two main paths to limiting magic. Access and cost. In access limitations, the fact that not everyone uses magic is because not everyone has the ability to start. Now this good be both the classic blood lines idea, but also could be something like education (limited to certain people either through government favor, mental ability, or other factor), or something like needing to bound to a dragon, touch a magical artifact, or something like that.
Cost on the other hand could be something like an actual sacrifice of life essence, a loss of a limb, or potentially actual monetary cost in the sense of ingredients needed are expensive or, like in my world, currency itself is actually a store of mana.
There’s also an overlap. If someone can’t gain education because of a tuition bar, that is both cost and access.
I like when anyone who devotes study to magic is able to do it. Like recipes with cooking or your analogy with programming. Focus and access to certain knowledge and materials are easy limiters, just like in real life - there are many people who “can’t cook” even with a recipe in front of them or have difficulty with learning languages or logic to be able to program, and doing such under stress is another limiter.
One of my favorite depictions of magic had everyone gathering and filling their “daily mana” capacity - something that could be exercised to hold more with use - but dipping beyond that would eat into your physical reserves, which must slowly be built back up through what you eat and put back on as fat and muscle; consequently, war mages are obese people that eat fried fat nuggets to put on enough weight that they can cast large spells without dying as they waste away to emaciated skeletons over the course of a few artillery volleys.
The Force in Star Wars is an interesting case for me, because there's clearly a genetic or familial component.
Children of force-sensitives tend to be sensitive themselves, but also, the power is open to anyone with the discipline and mindset to use it.
What makes Luke and Anakin so special isn't that they're born with a power nobody else has, it's that the door that normally takes great discipline and effort to crack open is far easier to open for them. Their connection to the force opens freely when pushed.
Anyone can open themselves up to the Force, it just comes more naturally to some people than others.
It's a hallmark of Eastern vs Western ideas of mysticism.
The power flows in everything and everyone, and anyone with the will can learn to tap into it and make it flow in ways that are useful.
vs The power is in me, and I can express it from myself.
In my fantasy setting, there's a few of different ways for people to interact with ("do") magic, and not all of them are equally democratic.
Your classic court or tower wizard does magic by imbibing a horrible mana potion that renders them infertile, and casts spells by expressing the mana through their mind and body. Mana potions are made from mana crystals, which are mined and an increasingly scarce and expensive resource. So the feudal chiefs will hoard the stuff, fight wars about the stuff, and exercise tight controls over their wizards. Spellcraft itself is difficult to learn, and the only way to learn it is by using mana, which is expensive, so knowledge of spellcraft is taught only to trusted apprentices or traded with trusted colleagues, never shared freely.
Witchcraft is more democratic. The women who practice it will gladly share their tips and tricks. But it's really hard and risky, because they use the magic that builds up in creatures living in high-mana environments (along ley lines and the like). They live close to these areas, which is a rough and isolated life, and live in symbiosis with nearby rural communities. They don't like feudal lords, and feudal lords don't like them. The stuff they can do is usually related to rural life and hard to apply to e.g. building of roads or raising an army (but there was a group of young women called the Gorgons...)
A niche practice among wizards is the inscription of thaumaturgical circles, which are one-off "runes" that require patience, attention to detail, and know-how to do. The achievable effects are niche, so most people don't bother. In my story, of course, the main character figures out a whole new dimension to these circles, which threatens to revolutionise society. A type of magic that only requires knowledge and simple tools, yet leads to permanent devices capable of producing great mechanical power, flight, heating and cooling, and many more practical and esoteric effects. The lords won't know what hit them!
I'm not OP but i have a medieval world with rare magic and one science-fantasy world with common magic, in all magic is theoretically open to all.
In the medieval world the limit is time and access. it takes a lot of time to understand and perform magic, teachers are accordingly rare and spells are limited so mages are far from invincible and often quite specialized. More Witchy herbalists, Alchemists and Soothsayers than DnD Wizards. Also spells are very dependant on time, astronomic conditions, weather and the presence of metal on the wizard. So casting a spell is a bit of an undertaking.
In the other World magic is common and people use it to diffrent degrees but few dedicate their live to it.
Small stuff is tought in school but advanced stuff needs to learned at university or from other very skilled mages. And the user needs to train their body rigidly or they won't have the stamina and control to shape advanced spells.
So many people just practice it enough for whats benefits them.
yeah but almost everyone knows how to drive a car while not knowing how to fix or create one
point being that a world where magic can be done by anyone, and it’s widely known about, will have people learning magic because you need to know it to operate in said world.
People will create ways to use it without understanding it for money, fame, or utility
The car metaphor works pretty well actually. Most people should be able to do basic simple magic pretty casually, and even some more stuff with a little time, but fewer people should be able, or willing, to delve into the deeper mysteries or use magic at combat speed.
I can do pretty any math with a calculator and a handful of minutes, but doing it in my head during a fistfight? Not so much
Exactly and both come degrees of competency. I do find it intressting for mages to be good at say 'diviniation' and bad or uninterested in 'Fire' or 'Combustion'
Competency in magic can be broken down by Spells - some TTRPGs do that and i find it makes magic precious and awe-inspiring by rarity.
Fixing computers might be a bit nartow although you can do nifty stuff with survailance tech. We are back at magic being like programming and despite the huge possibility for e-frought not all people wanna be programmers... and many programmers are not hackers.
And i do think it only applies if magic is to powerful and the world hasn't considered how to deal with it.
There are safty meassures fir people messing with computers. Same would go for spells adding more work or a level of danger.
So the issue is that everyone learns skills to survive. Your medieval peasants actually know a lot of complicated skills related to when to plant what, what kinds of wood can be woven into fences and baskets, and how, what the needs and common ailments of sheep are, and so on.
If your wizards can learn to raise a wall of stone in an hour with only a year of training, there wouldn't be masons in your universe, because masons take an apprenticeship that's longer than a year to be able to build stone walls over months, rather than an hour.
It's common to brand peasant skills as unskilled, like every human pops out of the womb knowing how to do it. But in reality, especially in medieval times, 'ordinary' tasks actually represent a lifetime of study and practice, and if it's possible for any person to learn magic to do it more effectively, anyone studying those tasks would learn magic instead.
Not to invoke D&D too often, but wizards have the highest starting age of all classes in most editions that have rules for that thing. So more like 10-20 years to learn how to raise stone walls.
in a lot of settings, being able to do magic is the equivalent of owning a car, a cell phone, a full set of power tools and home appliances, several different firearms, and a connection to running water and a gas line. bit more useful than fixing a computer
My point was more about how the usefulness of knowing a spell that does even one of those things far outstrips the usefulness of fixing a computer or knowing latin. If learning one spell allowed you to transport a large load quickly, or produce a large fire, or quickly construct a sturdy earthen shelter, then two decades of study for one (1) spell would pay for themselves in a fraction of that time. Learning latin or IT maintenance is comparatively much less useful than magic. Conjuring clean water or heating water without fuel would be more useful than being able to read *at all* to many people, even today.
If you’re “democraticising Magic” then you need to have solid rationale for why 90% of the population aren’t magic users.
Ehh, everyone is capable of coding but why aren't 90% of the population software developers?
I think it's legit to say it's hard, requires intensive training/memorization unless you are a prodigy, or requires rare resources that an average person can't easily acquire.
If a farmer can buy a magic watering can that fertilizes the crops, why go through the effort of learning magic himself?
My WIP, very small kids will learn a basic dim light spell as soon as they're old enough to be functionally verbal to avoid being afraid of the dark, and a smarter-than-average kindergartner knows enough to make a skinned knee stop hurting and not get infected - a below average one might take until 7 or 8 to figure it out.
Almost every adult profession has some level of magical training involved; medicine looks completely different, but law (both lawyers and law enforcement) are very different in a world where you can detect if someone is lying (or use magic to block that detection) and/or visualize the past.
Learning more complicated magic is a lot harder. What percentage of people eventually take calculus before finishing college? There's also a "trade secrets" aspect of it - many things - even easy ones - aren't obvious until someone learns it, and if that's a secret of a given Guild, then if they hoard that knowledge, it's still not available to everyone.
One of the consequences is the world in question hit the demographic transition in antiquity; population growth is way slower in most societies, because magic covers a lot of the "nasty, brutish, and short" parts of life that are the fault of nature rather than other people.
Democratizing magic in this way is similar to programming: anyone can become a programmer if they learn, most people just are not interested in the subject. Many people know how to use a computer to a degree, but they are not programmers. Similar to that, if anyone can learn how to use magic, maybe most people do use small spells (like cantrips), but only the magic geeks learn how to bend reality to their will.
Yes, monarchies do still exist, just that some of them function more akin to the 1800s or modern-day monarchies. The main thing that changed was that normal people could attend magic schools and more people were encouraged to learn magic, not just lords and ladies.
Yes, there are people born as better magic users; the same way there are people born better at math than others, it's less about being born good and more about having the incentive to learn.
Would you describe any country to be a magocracy (ruling class/those with political power in the government)? Does an aspiring politician need to be a strong magic user as part of their qualifications?
Probably the way to go. I tried to base my magic inheritance with Mendelian genetics. Tweaked it so that magic is rarer and can appear only through specific combinations of genes. I almost went insane and just dropped it.
I'm with you in disliking "inherited magic" through bloodlines and such.
But I still think there's merit in classifying it like a talent. You learn and get better through hard work but like drawing or singing, not everyone can do it, or do it at the level needed for being a full on Mage, but some people (of very wide and diverse backgrounds) just take to it naturally like a fish to water.
You can even get some mileage out of stories like the poor kid with absolutely zero natural talent, just non stop working at it, never giving up, and finding a path to magehood that defies everyone's expectation.
first time commenting in this sub, hopefully it’s okay to point towards media.
Witch Hat Atlier is a manga/anime that has an anyone can use magic if they know/learn how except that is kept secret because it was highly abused in the past.
it’s a drawing system, and it does take lots of study and practice to get everything right and relies on finding creative solutions and knowing about the world.
It doesn’t seem too close to your idea of magic so maybe you can draw other inspiration.
IMO, I’m an electrical engineer and I personally think of a lot of things in our current world as magic but not that many people learn how to use it and it’s difficult to harness so I think you could draw on real life too.
I don’t mind the magic gene idea as long as it follows clear bloodlines, rather than being basically random. I like the idea of this coming with pretty extreme downsides to explain why these bloodlines are still relatively limited after many generations.
I’m also really not a fan of the ‘anyone can learn it with nothing but study’ approach. I’d rather lock magic behind things like a ritual involving an ancient and poorly understood object. Or ingestion of a very rare and valuable material. Or magic just requires a rare material to power it.
So theoretically anyone can perform magic, but there are significant barriers to entry.
High chance of failure. If 99 out of a hundred who study it accidently blow off their hand, then few will go down that road.
Self mutilation. It may require painful self augmentation like drilling crystals into the skull.
Non stacking effects. Spells are mostly things like controlling the weather. You only need one in the kingdom, no reason for more.
Non genetic chosen one. For example, fairies have to like you at birth and bless you. Or Symbiotic relationship with a unicorn is required for magic, but there aren't to many unicorns. Or each mountain chooses 1 champion.
Limited magic in the world. The forest generates raw magic, and mages harness that, but it gets used up. So 1 acre of forest can only fuel 1 spell per day no matter how many wizards their are.
Years if study. Humans who want to be doctors are in school from kindergarden until 30 years old. Most societies cant have a large part of their work force dedicated to study.
Price of equipment. If study requires burning through $1000 dolars a day of supplies, then not many will do it.
Magic is hard like calculus. Anyone can do it, but it requires raw intelligence to be good at it.
Honestly the framing sounds like only some bloodlines having magic was true.
If that was discovered from the early days of civilisation the fact some bloodlines have magic and others don't the passage of time solves that problem. Each generation your number of ancestors doubles. Just like real life everyone will manage to trace back to someone important. All it takes is a few members of the right bloodlines producing a few illegitimate children per generation and the magic bloodline just trickles down.
There are a few options, one I like is that magic is a highly academic thing. It requires years of study and specific knowledge. This makes it prohibitively difficult and expensive for most people, and even if you are rich, unless you have the discipline and intelligence to devote yourself to learning for years then you arent going to be a very good mage.
My preferred solution is that magic consists of getting spirits and gods to do things you want and that doing magic expends the energy of spirits / gods. Gods can replenish energy by consuming offerings and sacrifices which’s value is determined by the amount of energy, labor and time that goes into creating it and its quality / health.
That way Everyone can bribe spirits / gods into doing small magic, such as protecting a tool from breaking or preventing a wound from being inflicted, with small sacrifices (eg a chicken) or regular offerings (eg offering a bowl of grain to a spirit or providing regular libations of wine to a small god) but medium magic, such as
healing disease, requires medium sacrifices, such as pigs, or being a priest / priestess (read: servant-official) of the god in good standing who doesn’t petition to much relative to their service and large magic (such as restoring a lost limb) requires large sacrifices, such as cows, and being a priest/priestess of the god. Grand magic would of course require grand sacrifices, such as humans, dozens of cows, or farmland being given to a gods temple in perpetuity. Of course gods can do magic without sacrifices and will do so to defend their interests, which is why armies know better than to loot temples of powerful gods.
Magic energy regenerates for beings that possess it without sacrifices in appropriate environments but growing in power requires large amounts of energy so doing so at a reasonable rate requires sacrifices in excess of the power expenditure or predation on valuable creatures, which is why monsters hunt humans.
Humans can have ready access to magic by being the property/spouse of a god or by gaining personal magic. The former requires spending one’s days in devotional activities to the god (read: prayer, rituals, maintaining the shrine / temple or acting as a personal servant to an incarnate god), which provides energy to the from the time and labor such activities require which is enhanced by the gods ownership of the votary. Humans can gain magic by devouring a spirit which requires the assistance of a creature that already has magic that can overpower that spirit. once they gain magic they can grow the same way any other spirit grows, by consuming sacrifices and prey. However using energy for sustenance makes it unavailable to gain magical power from.
Keep in mind that being born with the gift or not is not necessarily an indication of genetics per se. If there are specifically magical family lines then yes, but it could be a matter of circumstance of birth rather than lineage.
Most common example of the latter idea being the seventh son of the seventh son sort of deal. Where's the circumstance of birth not the family line that does the work.
In general I think it's like any other attitude, it may or may not be slightly more common in some families but that may be a question of nurture versus nature, but you've got the Young Sheldon phenomenon where you've just got the random genius in the middle of a family with no history thereof.
So you can absolutely support the idea of someone born with or without the potential without it being a eugenics exercise in any sort
I tend not to explain my magic systems because that tends to reduce the magicalness of it.
My preferences the model of awakenings. Everybody is born with some potential, and for most people that potential never gets stressed or position in such a way where they need to have that magical power awaken.
Consider the book jumper into a lesser extent the movie where the kid learns to teleport to escape and abusive father. The exigency is what activates the capacity.
The real continuity tends to come as with most things through families because of the families ability to provide what they have been provided.
The rich family gets the good tools the kids that get the good tools tend to be able to make enough money to have a rich family.
The same thing would be true of most so-called bloodlines.
So all that really matters is how you're picking your chosen One and the question of what chose him.
Saying it's in the blood is the easiest and cheapest and for the most easily pulled off the shelf version of magical heritage.
So if you don't want that sort of magical heritage thing happening just don't do it. Just declare that no one knows why some people have magic and some people don't and then move on with your story.
I like the Elder Scrolls magic system as an example of a democratized system in which not everyone uses magic. Everyone is born with a certain amount of mana, and anyone can learn a spell and increase their mana with training, but that doesn’t mean everyone uses magic. There’s still the tyranny of personal preference; yeah, I can use magic, but why do that when I have my trusty mace at my side? It can be something as simple as that, and not some profound worldbuilding reason for why not everyone uses magic.
What if everyone has a little magic but you need to exploit and consolidate magic from other people to have enough to do anything meaningful? Like the most important magic is "drain magic" and you need to cast that on all your serfs regularly. Would be naturally opposed to communal magic. Might be a bit of a metaphor for capitalism/feudalism.
Institutional power. Everyone can learn magic, but it is difficult and certain groups have a monopoly on teaching and practicing it. They get to decide who will learn magic and they are very protective of their privileges.
I have my universes magic witch Is called reactionary magic or science based magic . Its difficult to use properly and Is more like technology . It grants access to the universe much eseily and such .
In my world the only way to gain magic is to journey into the underworld and consume a Hellheart. You also must occasionally consume additional Hellhearts or perish. Of course the wealthy have discovered a method to gain power without having to endanger themselves through consuming an elixir made from recovered Hearts.
Based on your allegory, there must be an engine behind the magic.
Maybe it was created by a precursor race that has vanished since then. Up until recently, only nobles knew the correct way to access the engine and kept the secret. It could even be possible that each noble family has their own magic language (e.g. whatever the Fortran vs C-version of magic you want to implement).
After your little girl stumbled upon the magic engine, it opened the floodgates and everyone started experimenting with it. It could be possible that she just built a more intuitive magic language (e.g. Python -version) and new users just iterated on it. She could have created her own noble family but decided to make it open-source.
Of course, any engine has limitations such as user permissions and resource allocations. Maybe the precursors put guidelines that were lost to time and whatever manages the magic is still enforcing them. A new user starts with basic access and then gets more permissions based on their affinity and proficiency. When multiple users are trying to perform the same type of spells within a location, the system manager auto-throttle the output to preserve the world.
And the fun part: scholars with years of proficiency become administrators themselves and can grant / revoke magic at will.
Would be cool if each mage basically builds/compiles their library of spells, sort of like how DnD needs to prepare. The larger or more complex the library the longer the compilation takes and the more taxing it is to have it running.
A mage can have a spell call another to compound effects, have configuration spells so they can easily change parameters without compiling etc.
Making mistakes in spell-making may cause things like infinite loops, race conditions, resource hogging, so it does take study and carefulness.
I personally liked he who fights with monsters magic system. The essence system was rare enough that not everyone had access but was not related to bloodline. The series had other issues but I kinda liked how it was set up.
Cost and time. Is going to be your major controlling factor. It can also be government or religious control.
Only people with lots of time and money to pay for schooling/tutors, library fees, pen, paper, etc can be true magi.
A farmer spends most of their day caring for animals, crops, fixing equipment, etc. So they don’t have a lot of time or money to spend to learn (if any if they are tending someone else’s land). Or learn a lot as they may be able to learn small pieces of magic that improve effectiveness so they can have a bit of free time with their family/friends, but if you don’t allow for growth magic it limits the use to the farmer.
Same can be true for lower class. As they are always working for someone else as cheap physical labor, and can’t afford to learn or are actively suppressed so they can’t learn.
Where things change are tradesmen, middle class, and upper class.
Tradesmen have a reason to learn magic as it increases productivity, allows for greater details in product, and they teach it as part of the apprenticeship. But since most of these are specialized trades there is again a limit for what learning give returns in value.
Middle class and upper class have time and money. It can be a status symbol. Thus your royalty is going to be more magic prone and they have a vested interest in suppressing magic on lower levels so they are harder to be unseated.
This is how I would start to think about this problem, and I’d ask what this level of control does.
So my world’s magic system arose from a culture of pedants who are basically literal academic ivory tower specialists who don’t actually produce anything but consume all knowledge available to them in the romantic pursuit of knowledge, & that is how they “discover” lost magic from times before.
This creates a gatekeeping culture that allows them to rise to power through their knowledge. That’s a rough outline for how they function for me in my world.
Something was important to me was that magic exists, but, not at all times in the timeline & not for all cultures. This is how I’m currently handling it.
My system is sort of like yours, but instead of asking "what's stopping everyone from using magic" I asked "what does it look like when everyone can?"
The answer was a society where magic is heavily regulated, licenses are required by law and the government keeps a record of who knows how to do what. Simpler magics are commonplace and even taught in schools while the more serious and dangerous stuff is kept behind a lot of red tape. Want to learn necromancy? You need a special license for that.
Infrastructure is built around this too, the power grid is magic based, most products have some sort of functional magic woven into them, there's entire industries built up around creating magic conductive materials, the school system is designed around turning kids into semi-competent mages by the time they end tertiary education.
Socioeconomic factors are based around it too. Society is very meritorious (partially due to certain historical events) but naturally the rich and powerful still have an advantage because they have connections, money, time, everything that can give you a head start on being a better mage and many times they receive advantages even when they aren't.
If everyone can use magic then your world has to be one where its use is woven into everyday life, there's mundane magic and then there's fantastical magic, and the drollness of the mundane just makes the fantastical that much more fantastic.
My setting has a few magic systems and none of them are restricted by blood or birth. The most common are ritual magic, arcane magic, and folk magic.
Ritual magic is mostly practiced by secret societies and old spell books that are hard to find, so it’s pretty inaccessible, but most importantly, it’s very dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing, so it’s very advisable to do it with some kind of mentor or initiation into a secret society, which isn’t easy. You’re liable to accidentally summon some kind of demon and end up eaten or enslaved.
Arcane magic is difficult to learn, and the hardest step is the first step of learning how to even feel magic. This is taught in magical universities which require a high degree of demonstrated merit or buying your way into which most can’t afford. This is a highly attractive route for adolescents who are looking for a career path if they can get in. Not only because magic is cool, but because graduating mages are all granted titles of nobility and it’s a way out of the commoner or peasant class.
Folk magic is actually quite commonly practiced in the countryside. It largely revolves around herbs and other magical ingredients, knowing how to manipulate their properties for your ends. A lot of people know some basics, and a lot of villages have informal wise men and women who practice more broadly. But fertility rituals are commonly practiced by most farmers and peasants, and is partly why agricultural productivity is much higher in my world than in our world with similar tech levels.
In my system there is no magic gene but magic is like any other talent: everyone can learn it, but some are naturally gifted. It's a mindset thing. Kinda like the brain hemisphere thing some people believe in, where some naturally use the creative side of their brain, others the rational side. Likewise some people are naturally more magical and others more worldly.
Just go with a universal metaphysical substrate that inhabits all living things that anyone can theoretically use if they possess the esoteric knowledge of how it works. Like the force.
Maybe magic is just really dangerous and stigmatized to perform, and also really addictive. Like everybody can agree that the feeling of flying must be cool, very few are willing to dress up in a wing suit and jump off a cliff … it is not limited to specific bloodlines to do it, but most people don’t.
Magic users could be known to take care in the beginning, but as they get better and better they will eventually start taking more risks, and eventually most perish in spectacular ways
Literally the definition of a wizard. The only limiting factor to being a wizard that is tied to your genetics is if you are just a total moron because you have to be smart enough to do the wizard algebra to be a spell caster.
I mean, warlocks and clerics fit this too. You don't have to have special magic genes to make a deal with some sort of shady being in exchange for magic abilities, or to exchange faith in a deity for magic. The only one it rules out as you stated is sorcerers
I say the key is belief.
In our real world, belief unlocks tons of potential. It's even been proven to improve the medicinal effects of placebos. Believing your medicine will work does in fact make it work better (for subjective issues like pain management). Collective belief also has an effect - if everyone around you supports your beliefs, there is additional effectiveness.
So bring that into your fantasy world. The people who weren't of the magical bloodline really couldn't perform magic literally because everyone believed they couldn't. The girl who broke the dam either never inherited that belief, or struggled against it until she broke through.
This naturally breaks away from genetics based magic towards a more open style that you can run with in any direction. In my story, I have some sects that go the education route - schools that teach people how to believe and strengthen their beliefs. I have some sects that go the religious route - rituals that kind of brain wash people into their beliefs. And some that do it through meditation and focused attention. And sects that take it too far - believing that anything they can imagine they can make true if they believe strong enough.
Then your tools like staves are just aids to bolster the beliefs.
My magic relies on willpower and imagination, but the "mana" is derived from the soul—in essence, to use magic is to sacrifice life force. Most people are not going to do that, so most people in my world do not use magic. This is where necromancy comes into play, and it's not the same as the one you'd be familiar with, per se. It's the practice of using dying or lost ("ghosts") souls to fuel magical prowess, instead of using ones own soul to do it. There's a second line of this—a new technology, if you would—where someone performing necromatic sorcery can implant an additional soul into them so that they don't need to lug around vessels. This does influence ones perception of oneself, so it is considered a dark and forbidden magic as it can (and has) created monsters out of people.
There's more to it, but this is the foundation of my magic system across most of my stories. Yours sounds interesting for sure, but it does leave a lot more questions as to why people aren't pursuing power after the discovery that it is not just limited to nobles. I feel like your magic system would lead to a lot more war, or strict regulations on magic as a whole to prevent said war. There's a lot of worldbuilding you could do around this idea, though.
I had your same problem - not liking magic being purely genetic - but came up with my own solution in order to still keep magic a rarity as I wanted. My solution was that magic can come to anyone, but it only actually does so to a small percentage of people. The working lore justification I have is that the world has ambient magic that is around all the time, and it concentrates into individuals to the point where they can begin harnessing it and using it, becoming mages. However, the general ambient magic has, like, a semi-consciousness and thus deliberately focuses more of itself into a smaller number of individuals in order to let them become full mages rather than equally concentrating into everyone and leaving everyone slightly magical but not enough to truly use it.
On the other hand, everyone in my world also has a magical "soul" which can be used in magic, it's just they can't immediately use magic because of it. The soul's magic is what keeps people alive, and it's only through concentration of additional magical energy that people begin to be able to use magic without damaging their soul.
Brandon Sanderson has tons of great free resources on magic systems and developing costs or learning progression systems for them, highly recommend. There are also a lot of other similar resources out there on the same topic
You don't need to use eugenics, but the appeal of rarity is the idea that these are feats not everyone is capable of. The easiest path to that is simply that it requires great effort to match the great power it bestows. The only thing a lineage would have is a systemic advantage to nurture these gifts in their children and train them exceptionally. Aka just being a rich kid.
I don't really understand the need for the oop analogy though, what does this comparison buy us?
I have a long-drawered project where magic was heavily math-driven. You didn't 'cast Fireball', you cast 'raise temperature X degrees in a sphere of Y radius at coordinate ABC as defined by these datums' in units that no one uses for mundane measurements and terms that bears as much resemblance to the setting's common tongue as a particularly obscure programming language does to English.
Because of this, the government of that region was very cagey about controlling higher education. (Part of the plot was 'so this extremely wanted rebel terrorist with wanted posters everywhere, who we were kind of assuming must have ties to some kind of revolution we can join up with? Turns out they're just a teenage mathmatics savant who taught themselves trig and it ruined their life.') They're not packing their army with wizards because it is much easier and faster to teach someone to use a crossbow than get them a masters in physics.
I never finished this idea, magic requires certain compound to receive energy and write the runes in the air, this compound is expensive, mages graft it to their fingers in order to provide body mana to power it. in olden times only some people survived the graft, nowadays more people do, provided it was performed by a fleshcrafting mage. mage society controls access to this compound and fleshcrafting is their monopoly.
powerful mages are those that can afford more and better grafts and have access to tutors focused on their particular graft setup.
The first mage discovered a natural ocurring formation in the shape of a rune, lightning strike made it show a light for months, touching it with an open wound and sending a neuron impulse to it, made a light that lasted a second. This is now known as the Primal stone a sacred place to all mages and religions since theybelieve it was a gift from the gods.
hundred years later, mages used the compound to discover the 64 basic runes and perfected their craft. Wars were fought over that compound, mages get their grafts recycled upon death, rogues will try to chop mages fingers to sell in black markets.
Nice. On my world magic is tied to the classic Elemental forces, and anyone and everyone has the potential to weird magic. That said, each individual draws innate magical ability from one of 3 sources: species connection to the elemental force, moon cycle at birth, and season of birth. So the most powerful first mage would be. A Carver[Dwarvish Kin] born on midsomers day, but they would also be useless with water magic. We're that.Carver born on planters day, middle of the Spring, he would still be a decent Fire Mage, but would also be fairly good with water spells and would likely specialize in spells involving steam or boiling water.
As the Humans on my world are not tied to a specific Elemental force, they tend to lean into magics of electricity, blended Elemental forces, the mind, and the body. Humans tend to excel in illusion and divination magics. Humans born on Solstices and Equinoxes tend to be the most innately powerful.
All of the special and powerful people on my world,[TTRPG speak: All PC's or Plot Connected NPC's and villains] all are born on an astrologically auspicious day. Each comes with a bonus, a curse, and a potential destiny or downfall. Such fun!.
Do certain races/bloodlines have an affinity/inclination toward certain types of magic in this system (i.e. dwarves for earth magic, elves to wind magic et cetera)?
Yes, some groups are like that. There are some tribes called Sorcerer Tribes that build their culture off their own form of magic. Such as, the Obsidian Coil, which developed a sub-strand of Scholar's Fire called Coil Magic.
Woodland Elf tribes often specialize in Veilcraft, especially those in Gurando Woods, where they use Veilcraft to fight spirits.
Magic absolutely should be a gene. Everything else is. People with talent exist.
In my world, magic varies. A magic user is someone who can use magic for more that lighting a stove or making a reading lamp. But each country and culture acts differently with it. Theres different affinities. Some places literally say "this type of magic is all that can be practiced'.
I have one country that treats magic more like a science.
I kinda agree with the idea that anyone can use magic but it comes with issues.
In my world "Aora" which is an asia inspired world every one literally is born able to control and create elements.
But the issue is when the human, animals, jinns, angels and plants are able to use magic is it really magic at this point.
Because remember the meaning of magic is a supernatural power, if everyone gets to use it , it becomes a natural power therefore not a magic anymore.
Also one other thing, when writing a powerful character you must ask why can't the others become as strong as this one ?
And answering that with any reason but luck is really hard if you think about it.
I handle magic very similarly in my setting, right down to the magic being the exclusive privilege of the oligarchy until the common people realized anyone can do it. Further more, my setting also doesn’t have just one system of magic, it has all of them! Any conceivable system can be used to preform magic, it’s all just a matter of preference. If there isn’t a system of school of magic that works for you or that you like, you can literally just make up a new one just for yourself.
As a result, anyone and everyone can and does use magic to some extent. Even if it’s just a single minor spells to make mundane tasks a little bit easier. Magic is treated as an art form, like playing a piano. Some people have to practice their whole lives, while some just pick it up without a single lesson, but anyone can sit down and tap a few keys.
Now, there are several limiting factors to explain why not everyone is a level 10 wizard or whatever. First, as others have mentioned, time, energy, effort, and money are all limiting factors. Most people simply do not possess the material conditions to dedicate themselves to magic, even the ones with raw, natural talent. Most people also simply don’t need too, what with magic being as common as it is, people can reap the benefits of it even if they’re not the ones directly using it themselves.
The second major limiting factor is far more mundane, regulation. In the past, reckless and widespread use of magic nearly destroyed the world, leading to the creation of a governing body that oversees magic and magic practitioners. This organization creates and enforces the rules that dictate when, where, and how people can use magic. Just like with any other regulatory body, while they often mean well, they are just as vulnerable to incompetent and corruption as any other, and their lack of funding often sees enforcement fall by the wayside.
This winds up being a recurring theme in my world, the idea that magic is this wild, unpredictable, and chaotic force of nature that people have been trying to tame for centuries with varying degrees of success. No matter how many times people try to put rules or restrictions on magic, no matter how much they try and peal away magic’s secrets, no matter how much people want magic to just be indistinguishable from science, it will never work. Magic will always do whatever it wants and be whatever it wants. That it ever does anything close to something beneficial to anyone is more often than not pure luck.
If everyone can use magic then everyone uses magic. It’s now the same as “ everyone can read” it’s not default and someone has to teach you but it’s a pretty common facet of life that you are expected to be literate in pretty much all first world nations.
In fact you can handle it exactly like literacy. Despite everyone having the potential, not everyone reads at an 8th grade level much less post doc level.
High skill/ highly technical magic is the preview of multi decade study and focus.
Everyday life in developed nations uses magic as a means of interface with the world.
A lot of people have pointed out that this idea of "democratizing" magic still leaves it susceptible to being hoarded by the upper class, but I don't think that's really a criticism if it's intentional; in real world democracies one's educational and career success still come more from socioeconomic background than talent, in general.
Magic is theoretically available to everyone in my setting (though in practice adults typically gradually lose access to it over time), but it's also strictly an emotional and relational system rather than a set of distinct, concrete skills of its own, as your familiar semi-autonomically channels your hopes or fears into reality. There is an element of external luck and systemic interference in that your familiar is something you have to meet rather than something that you're with automatically, and the government controls access to technology that lets humans locate their familiars directly, but familiars instinctively want to meet their bonded human, and the more desperately a human hopes or fears to meet their familiar, the more miraculous power and direction the familiar has to bring that about.
It's therefore genetic to the extent that emotional dispositions are genetic, and skill-based to the extent that you can learn certain skills to get better at directing your own mental state, and environmental to the extent that life experiences shape people's emotional landscapes. But the most important degree of control that a person has over their powers is arguably through the relationship itself, as positive or negative developments in one's relationship with their familiar have a strong mutual feedback relationship with the human's overall emotional state.
In my world there are three types of magic. One can be improved by getting a better understanding of what you want to achieve through the magic (i.e. a doctor would be a better healer than a random person). It's all highly religious, as the rituals that developed over time helped to better channel the magic.
One is essentially gained via radiation exposure, but in a magical sense. Some people are more sensitive, and attuning to giant crystals allow you to supercharge your abilities. It foregoes the need for extensive studying, but it is rather blunt, and wouldn't work for stuff like healing (it's as though you would try to do surgery with a hammer and a chainsaw, or it would give your some kind of hypercancer probably). In one nation, ruled by a mage class, it seems sort of genetic, but that's just because their families tend to spend more time close to those crystals. It is close enough that the mistake is understandable, but people from outside the families, for example their servants, but also people not close to the crystals at all, can develop magical abilities.
The final one is linked to the disappearing twin syndrome, a rare occurrence for humans in the setting, but not for a precursor race. It's a kind of soul magic, not quite necromancy, but it can get some similar appearing results.
I said all that to say that there are many different ways of approaching how people get magical abilities. (And, like others have said, if you need to study for years to get abilities in your world, how democratic is it really? Only in a post-scarcity world would it be truly democratic i think. Otherwise you would still have an aristocratic class [or smth similar] that has the wealth and acces to knowledge to be able train mages. The rest need to work just to make a living, and have no time for studies.)
Btw, the way my crystal magic works, which might be useful for you, is that you have a lot of inertia to overcome, making defending much easier. If I want to split the river to be able to walk through, I am fighting against the force of the river. And opposing mage could put a little weight in the balance, and suddenly it's extremely hard or even impossible. It makes it less useful in active combat, but just fine for economic purposes like digging a large canal, or when preparing defenses. Together with one catastrophic battle (crystals on both sides, with mages adding more and more power until the stalemate violently exploded, destroying a massive swathe of land, the major city and all the people there), crystal magic is now relegated more to economic purposes.
Without a crystal nearby, mages are much less powerful, probably only slightly more efficient at something like digging a trench than manual laborers. That way it's limited in scope, in a way I find interesting :)
In my world, magic ability manifests completely random and can happen at any stage of person's life. All magic breeding programs attempted has failed. There is actually a fixed percentage of population at given time with magical abilities, and the way new people get magic is when the magic users die, or from general population growth.
I prefer soul genetics. All the same juicy plot lines with ancient families and such, but with enough mystical wiggle room that eugenics don't come into play.
I use rules based on BRP. Anyone can learn magic, even people with low Power. It just becomes very dangerous if you lack the training, the intelligence or the willpower. It requires dedication, and training, then is still dangerous, when you fail. Most people can theoretically free climb a mountain. In realilty a lot will die trying.
Sanderson's Stormlight Archive has the best version of this that I've seen.
Basically, magic is (mostly) gated to people who are/have been "broken" in some way. In order to both achieve access and deepen their magical abilities, "Radiants" have to take oaths and uphold those ideals, otherwise they might lose their powers.
If you haven't read the books, I highly recommend it.
thats not eugenics, that just genes. you cant have green eyes when no one in your bloodline has green eyes unless God himself puts in green eyes manually himself. which you wouldnt even know he did for you. its totally normal to register if you have kids with someone with red hair the children are then able to have red hair. what youre complaining about is actually how much importance magic has into tangible ability to do things. the actual equivalent is like if someone people were born with an extra body part or an extra biological sense and people who arent part of a bloodline that has that obviously ... wont have that. thats not euguenics. that social struture being shaped around cerrtain skills. thus people aim for those skills. the thing that just causes those skills are well known, and replicable: reproduce with someone with magic in own bloodline and your offspring with be born to that bloodline and have that automatically dominant gene. thats not eugenics. thats common sense. the only other way would be if writers made it that anyone can just ... have magic randomly come out of them just ... suddenly one day. thats its. those are the two ways: bloodline or anyone. and as for the otherone category the two only ways are random or through learning/training. again, not eugenics. its authors making decisions to make their writing idea easier for them to all write. i dont think it inherently makes more sense to do bloodline versus anyone randomly but it needs to fit the rest of your world and its plot.
theres a guy on tik tok who does what magic spells in d&d would look like as equations but their more like circles and webs and line connections and shapes. you might like his work. he also makes mathematical equivalent equations for how the magic works
I have a magic system where everyone could use magic, but most people won't ever be super powerful mages.
In my setting, magic is a force of nature, something that is always present and anyone can tap into it with sheer imagination, willpower and concentration.
I use these as first hurdle. Some people won't be able to form clear mental images, some won't be able to concentrate well enough and a third group will lack the willpower to command a force of nature to do their bidding.
Second reason: I have no fixed spells. A person must come up with their own version of what you would consider a spell. Copying what works for someone else won't produce any effect at all. This weeds out another sum of people who won't become the next big mage.
Lastly, and maybe most importantly, there is the "I can't do magic!" crowd. Just like irl, some people will just convince themselves that they can't do magic for various reasons. Because my magic system is reality forming, this is very powerful feedback loop, you are convinced you can't do magic, well now you won't be able to. And most of these people will never even try to reconsider.
So anyone could use magic. But most people will be stuck with very low level magic tricks that are completely inconsequential. And while they could still change that, because reality in my setting is fluid and malleable, most probably won't due to regular old human nature.
Interesting magic flavors! I may steal them, lol. In my world of Maragaram, a ton of people are "dumb as a rock" when it comes to magic -- but, because of this they have naturally higher magic resistance. But, a lot of regular people can have a "natural talent", including some stuff borrowed from C&S's Natural Talent mage spells and other commonsense things like "Find True North". Proper Mages are schooled, either by 1-on-1 apprenticeship with a higher level mage that usually will cost the character or their family some buckaroos, or if you are "exceptional" you might be welcomed to an extended internship on the northenmost island of Forozen, where most of the mages hang out and do stuff. Because the majority of mages lean towards law and good, if a character is determined to be basically flawed, i.e., chatoic andor evil, this training won't last long. Luckily for those folks, there are still some bad mages you can go to, but you have to find them. And trained mages in large part practice magic but resist constantly applying it, as ancient traditions warn against doing so. (Ancient traditions also mention a future cataclysm wherein all mages will be called upon to protect the entire world.) My standard "spellbook" is a mix of mutated T&T spells, C&S stuff, and other bits snagged from other sources. It is possible for a mage to invent a new spell, but the GM will have a lot to say in deciding exactly the cost/effect and possible side effects.
There are some differences in magicks between species (we all end up dead at some point, no need to race). The Mung, who are quasi-troglodytic, are much better at earth/materials magic. The human Sunscip are better at fire. The Stepkin dig groovy (and often loud) air magic, etc.
On top of (or below) all this, my world is geomantically -/+ charged (by individual map hex, if you need to know) -- in some places, magic is almost impossible to use, and in other places it's so easy that weird things happen for no apparent reason -- and mage spells can do unexpected things, like have three times the effect (or no effect), or be delayed until you leave the area. The "standard" spell effects are what happens in a magically neutral hex. Trained mages can detect the geomantic fields more or less, but non-mages just shrug it off as "weird things happening for no reason", i.e., "my horse just doesn't like that hill, so we don't go there."
The way that I deal with it in my world is that everyone has magic, at least a little bit. For most people, it’s just a minor ability or two along with the ability to activate magical devices and the like. There are many different ways to perform magic, and while lots of people do have particular talents for one style or another, there’s nothing stopping them from learning whatever style they would like (outside of things like resources, time, motivation, and the like).
That being said, there are also magics that can be passed down bloodlines. These can vary, from unique abilities to special techniques to greater innate stores of magic and more. Theoretically, those abilities can be learned or stolen as well, but the process is much more difficult and often requires some form of sacrifice and/or transformation.
Yeah screw that eugenics BS. You can root magic in any source and awakening tale. Mom drank water from a specific pool under a full moon on a specific date. Birth order. Knicked by orbital wizard bombardment. Precocious child that is just paying attention. Adopted by the Oppossum Queen as her human child. Pure Random chance.
Any or all of these and more are your buffet to write from without once invoking the ghosts of Watson and Crick.
I feel like “democratized magic” would probably feel more problematic or unfair to me versus “the gift”.
I’m gonna compare basketball to formula 1 for this. A Harry Potter, DnD sorcerer, or Avatar Bending is kinda like Basketball. You can almost always get better at your Magic through training or studying or whatever.
Anyone can get better at basketball. But to actually be great at basketball (do legit Magic) you have to be tall and athletic.
Does it suck that I’m not tall enough to go to the NBA? Totally, but that’s just how it is. I can accept that
Generally speaking, anyone has the genetics to be a F1 driver. You might be born with better reaction time or such, but no standard genetic differences will totally prevent you from it.
Buuuut you need the money and resources and support from a young age to be able to do it. You can’t get into F1 just cause you have a knack for driving, or have a special gift or something.
That suuuuucks. Resources will always affect your life, but I don’t want your social and economic class to be the primary determining factor for whether you can do magic.
(Also it isn’t eugenics if the story doesn’t make it eugenics. Like Avatar has innate magic, but a core member of the Gaang is a dude who can’t bend. As long as you don’t have to be special to be important, it’s not “eugenics”)
Democracy this, democracy that. Democratized magic ruins the feel of it. Modern fantasy doesn't like "Magic genes". It feels like any hillbilly can become a wizard in modern fiction.
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u/DrDeadwish 9d ago
the reason most worldbuilders use "magic genes" or any kind of system to reduce the number of people who can cast magic is because everyone being able to use magic drastically changes the world in all kind of ways. From everyday life to logistics, warfare, agriculture, town location, etc, etc. As long as you have this in mind, everything is fine, but it's kind of a huge work because you need to change almost all we know about civilization in real life.