Weimann
2014-11-19, 07:14 PM
Have you ever had that thing when you can't seem to concentrate on anything other than this one thing despite having loads of very important work to do? Yeah, that's happening right now.
I've always wanted to write a fantasy novel. I've never had a clue where to start, but recently I've been picking up some tips in the form of books and Youtube lectures. In the back of my head, I've started to generate ideas that might work as a foundation for an outline that may one day become a book (and, hope beyond hope, even a published book). Right now, I'm still on the "generate ideas" stage, though. While I have a few ideas for each major part of the story (setting, character and plot), I've decided to begin with fleshing out a part of the setting that I feel I, as an RPG enthusiast, at least has some relation to: the magic system. I'd really like to just throw out a few things there and see what you lot throw back at me, just to get a set of fresh eyes on it.
So far, the core idea is this: some people are able to enhance or diminish certain aspects of their bodily functions. To enhance an aspect is called to Blossom it, and to diminish it is called to Wilt it. In accordance with Sanderson's Third Law of Magic (http://brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-third-law-of-magic/), I want to keep the number of separate abilities rather low, and focus on developing them in a deep an interesting way. So far, I've divided them into two roughly separate groups: Sense and Body. I'm not sure if they'll be in-setting terms or not. If they are, I need better names for them.
Sense includes the following, with examples of uses. Normally, these should be beneficial to both Blossom and Wilt.
Sight - Blossom to gain improved visual acuity and distance, judgment of distance or low-light sight. Wilt to gain better high-light sight or go blind for tactical reasons.
Hearing - Blossom to gain improved auditory acuity and distance, improved auditory range (as in being able to hear sounds humans normally can't) or improved voice recognition. Wilt to focus on specific sounds or voices in a din or go deaf for tactical reasons.
Touch - Blossom to gain improved tactile acuity, ability to sense subtle irregularities, tremors or shifts in a material, and a particularly light and careful touch. Wilt to go numb, I guess?
Taste - Blossom to improve taste intensity or taste recognition. Useful for finding poisons or such by ingesting non-lethal doses. Wilt to focus on a specific taste in a dish.
Smell - Blossom to gain improved sense of smell and smell recognition, allowing for tracing and other things. Wilt to ignore smells in the surroundings.
Temperature - Blossom to gain an "infra-red" sense, allowing the user to identify sources of heat incongruent with the surrounding temperature. Wilt to ignore weather conditions related to heat and cold.
Pain - Not really sure why you'd want to Blossom this one, to be honest. Wilt to reduce physical pain from all sources.
Body includes the following, with examples of uses. Normally, you'll be mostly wanting to Blossom these, but they are possible to Wilt.
Strength - Blossom to grow strong and explosive. A very powerful ability that turns you into a wrecking ball. Enhances punches and attacks, explosive charges, feats of strength, climbing, jumping, swimming. A battlefield monster, but runs out of gas quick.
Agility - Blossom to gain improved reaction times and control over your body. Reflexes, balance and other involuntary reactions become faster, and voluntary actions becomes steadier and more controlled. Allows for excellent dodging, dancing, aiming and rapid-fire attacks, and general precision movement.
Stamina - Blossom to be able to operate at max physical capacity for longer. Long-distance running, extended combat in heavy gear and other physically exerting activities can be sustained for much longer. Able to sustain an attack and wear their opponent out.
Regeneration - Blossom to increase your body's natural regeneration and health-restoring powers to extreme degrees. Heals both flesh wounds, fractures and diseases, and speeds the expulsion of poisons. Not fast enough to use on the battlefield (normally...) but reduces recovery time from wounds from months to days.
Pheromones - Blossom to boost your natural pheromone production. I kind of need to read up on pheromones, but the main gist is a more social kind of effect that encourages certain behaviour in others. Much more blunt than speech, but useful to supplement it and affect subconscious levels.
So, now you know the broad layout of the current version of this magic system. General comments, ideas and complaints are greatly appreciated, but I also have a few things I'd like to focus attention on.
1) Does this feel even moderately interesting? Does it just feel like what it is, a bleak copy of Mistborn? Before that, I had a whole system of elemental magic that I had worked out before I realized it was actually done to death. I'm not asking to be original, but if it doesn't even tickle the audience, then it needs to be scrapped and sent back to the drawing board.
2) Is the difference between Blossoming and Wilting really beneficial, or does it just make you divide up effects for the sake of having nifty names? Would using, like, Manipulate (or just Blossoming for everything) instead make you care less about if certain effects should be the one or the other, if they can be combined or not etc., or does it add depth to the system in a way that's worth keeping around and working with?
3) Touch and Taste seem rather weaksauce to me. I had an idea of mixing Taste with Smell and create a sort of blood hound investigator type of effect. Furthermore, since Touch is weak on the Wilting, and Pain is useless to Blossom, and they both seem to move in about the same circles, maybe there's a case for merging them. Thoughts on this?
4) Does my game background show in this summary? I fear that I might be struggling to "balance" the system a bit much, and particularly that I might be using a combat scenario as my point of comparison. This might feel plastic and artificial when put in a novel. I definitely need to come up with costs and downsides to these powers, but I'm not sure they need to necessarily be "balanced in a vacuum".
Again, much more need to be done with the system, in terms of why it works, how one gains access to it, what the limitations, costs and requirements of it are. Not to mention the rest of the setting, and all the character and plot work. Right now, though, I'd be very grateful for any comments on this part in particular. :smallbiggrin:
I've always wanted to write a fantasy novel. I've never had a clue where to start, but recently I've been picking up some tips in the form of books and Youtube lectures. In the back of my head, I've started to generate ideas that might work as a foundation for an outline that may one day become a book (and, hope beyond hope, even a published book). Right now, I'm still on the "generate ideas" stage, though. While I have a few ideas for each major part of the story (setting, character and plot), I've decided to begin with fleshing out a part of the setting that I feel I, as an RPG enthusiast, at least has some relation to: the magic system. I'd really like to just throw out a few things there and see what you lot throw back at me, just to get a set of fresh eyes on it.
So far, the core idea is this: some people are able to enhance or diminish certain aspects of their bodily functions. To enhance an aspect is called to Blossom it, and to diminish it is called to Wilt it. In accordance with Sanderson's Third Law of Magic (http://brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-third-law-of-magic/), I want to keep the number of separate abilities rather low, and focus on developing them in a deep an interesting way. So far, I've divided them into two roughly separate groups: Sense and Body. I'm not sure if they'll be in-setting terms or not. If they are, I need better names for them.
Sense includes the following, with examples of uses. Normally, these should be beneficial to both Blossom and Wilt.
Sight - Blossom to gain improved visual acuity and distance, judgment of distance or low-light sight. Wilt to gain better high-light sight or go blind for tactical reasons.
Hearing - Blossom to gain improved auditory acuity and distance, improved auditory range (as in being able to hear sounds humans normally can't) or improved voice recognition. Wilt to focus on specific sounds or voices in a din or go deaf for tactical reasons.
Touch - Blossom to gain improved tactile acuity, ability to sense subtle irregularities, tremors or shifts in a material, and a particularly light and careful touch. Wilt to go numb, I guess?
Taste - Blossom to improve taste intensity or taste recognition. Useful for finding poisons or such by ingesting non-lethal doses. Wilt to focus on a specific taste in a dish.
Smell - Blossom to gain improved sense of smell and smell recognition, allowing for tracing and other things. Wilt to ignore smells in the surroundings.
Temperature - Blossom to gain an "infra-red" sense, allowing the user to identify sources of heat incongruent with the surrounding temperature. Wilt to ignore weather conditions related to heat and cold.
Pain - Not really sure why you'd want to Blossom this one, to be honest. Wilt to reduce physical pain from all sources.
Body includes the following, with examples of uses. Normally, you'll be mostly wanting to Blossom these, but they are possible to Wilt.
Strength - Blossom to grow strong and explosive. A very powerful ability that turns you into a wrecking ball. Enhances punches and attacks, explosive charges, feats of strength, climbing, jumping, swimming. A battlefield monster, but runs out of gas quick.
Agility - Blossom to gain improved reaction times and control over your body. Reflexes, balance and other involuntary reactions become faster, and voluntary actions becomes steadier and more controlled. Allows for excellent dodging, dancing, aiming and rapid-fire attacks, and general precision movement.
Stamina - Blossom to be able to operate at max physical capacity for longer. Long-distance running, extended combat in heavy gear and other physically exerting activities can be sustained for much longer. Able to sustain an attack and wear their opponent out.
Regeneration - Blossom to increase your body's natural regeneration and health-restoring powers to extreme degrees. Heals both flesh wounds, fractures and diseases, and speeds the expulsion of poisons. Not fast enough to use on the battlefield (normally...) but reduces recovery time from wounds from months to days.
Pheromones - Blossom to boost your natural pheromone production. I kind of need to read up on pheromones, but the main gist is a more social kind of effect that encourages certain behaviour in others. Much more blunt than speech, but useful to supplement it and affect subconscious levels.
So, now you know the broad layout of the current version of this magic system. General comments, ideas and complaints are greatly appreciated, but I also have a few things I'd like to focus attention on.
1) Does this feel even moderately interesting? Does it just feel like what it is, a bleak copy of Mistborn? Before that, I had a whole system of elemental magic that I had worked out before I realized it was actually done to death. I'm not asking to be original, but if it doesn't even tickle the audience, then it needs to be scrapped and sent back to the drawing board.
2) Is the difference between Blossoming and Wilting really beneficial, or does it just make you divide up effects for the sake of having nifty names? Would using, like, Manipulate (or just Blossoming for everything) instead make you care less about if certain effects should be the one or the other, if they can be combined or not etc., or does it add depth to the system in a way that's worth keeping around and working with?
3) Touch and Taste seem rather weaksauce to me. I had an idea of mixing Taste with Smell and create a sort of blood hound investigator type of effect. Furthermore, since Touch is weak on the Wilting, and Pain is useless to Blossom, and they both seem to move in about the same circles, maybe there's a case for merging them. Thoughts on this?
4) Does my game background show in this summary? I fear that I might be struggling to "balance" the system a bit much, and particularly that I might be using a combat scenario as my point of comparison. This might feel plastic and artificial when put in a novel. I definitely need to come up with costs and downsides to these powers, but I'm not sure they need to necessarily be "balanced in a vacuum".
Again, much more need to be done with the system, in terms of why it works, how one gains access to it, what the limitations, costs and requirements of it are. Not to mention the rest of the setting, and all the character and plot work. Right now, though, I'd be very grateful for any comments on this part in particular. :smallbiggrin: