Wednesday, June 2, 2021

Categorizing magic systems is an exercise in madness

There are countless ways of classifying magic systems, and all of them are arbitrary because magic doesn't exist. The Net Wizard's Handbook offers spectrums of controllability and prevalence. The Templin Institute offers spectrums of hardness and learnability. John H. Kim offers a comparison between magic in game systems and magic in folklore beliefs. There are countless other articles that I could link.

In a way, I'm wistful for the old days when writers didn't put ridiculous amounts of effort and emphasis into designing magic systems. On the other hand, we did get Ars Magica and that's possibly one of the best magic systems ever designed.

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