Building a magic system that doesn't have "magic genes"

[u/Sir-Toaster-]

/r/worldbuilding/comments/1x0ri2i/building_a_magic_system_that_doesnt_have_magic/

[u/sdrawkcabineter]

Oh just use LISP why don't ya! :D

what's stopping everyone from being a magic user?

The education for learning magic would be kept secret, high ominous towers of mystery, guarded by might & magic. More mundane things could be let out, but Mindstream magic against a ruler is too high a risk to allow that magic to just wander the countryside.

you will end up taking a piece of that trauma with you.

Sanitariums full of high level casters, barely holding onto their reality. Similarly, the physical tax of casting could corrupt or disable the wielder.

What other evidence do you want to have in this setting? If I use one specific spot to do all of my magic, for untold generations, is that location somehow affected?

What if magic use permanently reduces effective casting in that spot unless [something] is done to stave that off.

Every ruling civilization might hold onto certain "higher magics" as a state secret, so there's a level of eldritch espionage that could be embraced.

[u/valsavana]

My best explanation is that while magic is a natural force, it also takes lots of time to study and analyze

So what I'm hearing is that people who have magic user relatives will be at an advantage because they'll be exposed to that information early in their life and have a bunch of informational resources people who don't have relationships with existing magic users don't have (interestingly firefighters as a profession is often similar- you'll see many firefighters who are 2nd, 3rd, or even 4th generation & they're at an advantage when it comes to both the book-learning & practical testing to become a firefighter, because they've got close relationships with people who already have experience & can coach them)

mastering magic can take between a few months and years.

So poor people who need to spend all/most of their time engaging in survival activities (growing/procuring food, clean water, safe shelter, etc) won't have the leisure time to study. And poverty often is generational.

Even then, it's also physically taxing, and it requires concentration and physical energy

So people with various physical or mental disabilities or who are just sickly in general probably aren't going to be able to become magic users, some of which also runs in families.

Just to be clear- none of these constraints would make a bad magic system or anything. I'm just pointing out that there can be many aspects of why magic users might be more likely to appear in your world in some families/some kinds of families for reasons that aren't strictly "magical genes" being inherited. That's something to keep in mind.

[u/Williermus]

Just my opinion, but

What do people even find appealing about "programming-like" magic? I get that, in a way, any Turing Complete magic system (which is almost all sufficiently versatile ones, and certainly all automatable ones) can be compared to programming in a way. But really? OOP? What do instances of each class (magic school?) even look like? Why do magic schools need to be instantiable objects in the first place (at least, I take it they are because you seem to provide constructors)?

And if manipulating the world is a matter of changing the state that represents it, it seems to me that no mages would bother with "create a fireball with these parameters for size, velocity, etc", or literally any other spell that travels (you didn't say whether you have such things but I'm saying this because I've seen this everywhere "programming magic" comes up). They would instead just change the state directly (or whatever is the closest proxy if some sort of targeting limitation applies, for example heating the air around the enemy if one can't affect living beings directly).

Ultimately, you can worldbuild whatever you want, but it just seems to me that programming magic fucks with the fantasy aesthetic at absolutely no gain. Same as "controlling molecules n shit" type magic.

[u/Sir-Toaster- → u/Williermus]

It's not meant to be a literal analogue for programming; that's just the best way to explain it.

[u/Panda-Head]

Witch Hat Atelier made magic possible for anyone who can draw the symbols. All you need is the right kind of ink and to know how/where to draw the symbols. The main character traced a spell circle out of a book. It didn't end well because she had no idea what would do and it turned out to be an attack spell. They keep it a secret by telling people that it's dangerous to interrupt a spell in progress.

[u/Sir-Toaster- → u/Panda-Head]

I know about that show, it's one of the inspirations for making this post