Magic is one of my favorite things about a fantasy setting. You are not bound to the laws we know of and you can rewrite basic physics and reality to whatever you want. Also, building the world around it is extremely fun.
I like ping-pongs between harder and softer magic systems, but my favorite hard-leaning magic system has to be bending from Avatar. There are four elements, most people who can bend get one, and they can really stretch them out.
As for softer magic systems, I enjoy when it helps to make the world function. So far, I kind of enjoy the Owl House. Sure there are glyphs that harden it, but there are some branches like healing and construction that make it seem more like these magic covens are divided like labor guilds, rather than strictly element.
I have a real soft spot for when games translate the idea of "magic is complex and you can fuck it up" into actual mechanics. Magicka gives you 8 keys to combine elements, 4 keys to pick a target/spell shape, no mana or cooldown limitations, and zero friendly fire protection.
Even if you know what you're doing you can still fatfinger a key and accidentally heal enemies, brain yourself with a rock, yeet your party because someone wandered into someone else's water mines. Gamble on a thunderstorm and explode your buddy, then electrocute yourself trying to fix your mistake because Revive is electric magic, you rain-drenched dumbass.
Death and resurrection is cheap, you're a party of bumbling wizards constantly tripping over each others' dicks, and the whole world is extremely goofy and absurd to match that inherent comedy.
God I loved the chaos of Magicka but I never managed to finish a playthrough
I fully understand I've got a specific brainworm to have dumped over 100 hours into it :wizard:
On a separate note I forgot to mention that enemies also have no friendly fire protection, so it's common to see goblins get turned into pasta sauce by their own grenades or a troll's club
The Emperor's Soul by Brandon Sanderson has a magic system that works by convincing inanimate objects to become something different. For example, you could break out of jail by magiking the lock to convince it that it was rusted. There is limitations though. Like you could turn a wood chair into gold if it belonged to a king because the king having a gold chair is plausible but one belonging to a peasant could not have the same thing done.
Sanderson is great at this. I loved Mistborn's different systems, as well.
Noita. Magic in Noita doesn't care about you. It is not your friend, merely a fact of nature. Wield magic irresponsibly and it will destroy you.
A key moment of learning in Noita, for me, was discovering Horiztonal Barrier. I cast it without much thought, as a child would. I was promptly bisected by the magical barrier.
Noita works like this: There are wands, with slots. You finds spells and put them in these slots. Most spells aren't very good. Many spells modify the other spells on the wand. Making a good wand is vital to success. Making a bad want can kill you. Many spells are hidden behind secrets; They much be attained. It is your own cunning and desire for knowledge that will lead you to these secrets.
Because magic does not care about you, it is a power you must respect. Lest it consume you.
Pact/Pale, the webserials by Wildbow (most well known for Worm, the super hero webserial).
Fairly hard, but a lot of specifics are left vague to the reader. But I love how it both feels 'programming-like' for making diagrams, but the 'basis' of magic being deals, agreements, and showmanship. It's just great.
Its at palewebserial.wordpress.com, assuming you're not just making a 'the pale' joke
I also love the Pact system. Been wanting to run a Pact dice game because the magic is very mutable for a creative party.
Yeah, it's definitely something that's been on my 'games I'd like to run someday' list.
Malazan. The magic source is also a series of realms you can travel too. But also there are weird magicks that don't belong to the Warrens and spirit stuff. And learning about how the magic has changed over time along with cultures and religions.
It's interesting to read but it's not really a hard magic system, it seemed quite arbitrary to me at times.
Then again I never did finish the series, maybe it ties up more nicely towards the end.
Malazan is a book series where you never have all the information as a reader. I haven't finished yet either, on book 7 currently, but you get dripfed lore about the origins of the Warrens and the depth within them. I have also been told that the ending is very nice, the last few books in general. If you enjoyed it, I'd give the rest of the books a shot.
Would also recommend Tor Reread of the Fallen to catch you up on the last books. It's very helpful for catching things that were easy to miss or forget.
The Name of the Wind feels rather obvious, but it combines understandable rules and limits on how magic works, with enough metaphysics that it still feels mystical.
For example, if you wanted to create a representation of a person and use it to inflict pain on them, you'd create a crude mommet of them out of wax, stick one of their hairs into it, and then use your mind to create a "link" between the mommet and the person. If you stuck a pin into the mommet, they'd feel a weak pinch, because the crude likeness and single hair mean that the connection is inefficient and thus loses energy.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, where the basis of it, the strongest force in the universe, is absent-mindedness.
Flying? Just fall at the ground and miss the ground
Invisibility? Just generate a Someone-Else's-Problem field around it
Faster-than-light travel? Just serve it up a nice hot cup of tea
Divine prophecy? "We apologize for the inconvenience"
If you liked the magic system in Avatar, read Cradle by Will Wight.
This was interesting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_D.O.D.O.
A setting so dense that they're still dropping expositional lore in full page dialogues after hundreds of pages. I'm not even entirely sure what the plot is with all the characters and storylines but damn if it isn't a read
Yeah the names are good (Duuuaaaaaaaannnneeee) but the lore just doesn't stop not stopping to the point the main is getting hampered by explanations of smoke eels, wicked First Silver, character reintroductions hundreds of pages after last sight (I don't know why I care who the burnt looking wizard guy is when he gets a splash panel), and flashbacks after flashbacks in the middle of action sequences.
I like Kill 6 Billion Demons quite a lot. Background: God committed suicide and the universe is the flaming corpse-wheel of their 777,777 narratives, and some chick from California has been forcibly given the True Name of God to deal with it. Watch her struggle to fight the seven rulers of the corrupted corpse universe while the previous King of Reality, who is dead and not letting it stop him, occasionally shows up to Title Drop the chapter.
I like the theming of Vancian magic. Magic is this thing that was once extremely common, with millions of spells - but as the world has become more advanced, the prominence of wizards has waned. Without entire societies backing their research, the creation of new spells has come to a halt - and without large numbers of apprentices memorizing spells and copying them every generation, many spells are lost every year. Now there are only a few thousand spells remaining, and instead of working together wizards guard their knowledge from each other - instead of packing lecture halls full of students only a handful of apprentices are being trained at each time.
It's a take on Tolkien's theme of the magic in the world running out and being displaced by industry, but where Tolkien had only a small number of Wizards Vance had entire societies of them.
