All the better, a private college. Very few invites. It doesn't accept a lot of outsiders. Very big on letters of recommendation. And not everyone gets accepted.

But, we need the basics of a magic system. How it works. What happens when you don't do it exactly.

<Snipped hider>

or are spoken enchantments even needed?

I'm actually thinking it was originally a school for magic. At the time that it was founded, arcane study was considered to be so erratic and dangerous that schools were often put in out of the way places. Over time, as advances were made that stigma fell away, so the school is actually older than most of the town.

I'm thinking of calling it Sanctuary, or something with a similar connotation.

Maybe it's considered more like a private Ivy League school - difficult admissions process, requiring outstanding extracurricular activities/achievements or strong SAT/ACT/equivalent scores. It's divided a College of Theurgical and Thaumaturgical Arts which has additional requirements to get into (like how one might have to audition to get into a performing arts school, or need an impressive project on their resume to get into a technical institute) and has interdisciplinary studies within other traditional colleges, which were gradually incorporated in the 1800s/1900s as firearms industrialized, becoming more deadly and gaining equal, if not greater, footing against magic.

For the magic system, I think it makes sense for nothing to happen if you don't have enough materials - like in chemistry, when you don't have enough reagent for a reaction to continue. If you do something wrong, your magic can backfire, sometimes in improbable or bizarre ways, perhaps with even greater force than what your initial input was. A simple prank hex could become a harsh curse.

Maybe magic, like life, is just borrowed energy - as such no spell can last forever, and at some point it must decay and return its energy to nature. A magical contract can fade if it isn't "fed." Everyday enchantments need some kind of fuel to keep going - there are a variety of associated costs or sacrifices with them, but there's always a price to be paid, even if that price is trivial, silly (perhaps whimsical, even), or embraced with enthusiasm.

Edit: Also, if we're going for a 90's setting, I would love to bring in 90's music for character throwback songs.

<Snipped quote by Expendable>
<Snipped quote by Gisk>
Maybe it's considered more like a private Ivy League school - difficult admissions process, requiring outstanding extracurricular activities/achievements or strong SAT/ACT/equivalent scores. It's divided a College of Theurgical and Thaumaturgical Arts which has additional requirements to get into (like how one might have to audition to get into a performing arts school, or need an impressive project on their resume to get into a technical institute) and has interdisciplinary studies within other traditional colleges, which were gradually incorporated in the 1800s/1900s as firearms industrialized, becoming more deadly and gaining equal, if not greater, footing against magic.

For the magic system, I think it makes sense for nothing to happen if you don't have enough materials - like in chemistry, when you don't have enough reagent for a reaction to continue. If you do something wrong, your magic can backfire, sometimes in improbable or bizarre ways, perhaps with even greater force than what your initial input was. A simple prank hex could become a harsh curse.

Maybe magic, like life, is just borrowed energy - as such no spell can last forever, and at some point it must decay and return its energy to nature. A magical contract can fade if it isn't "fed." Everyday enchantments need some kind of fuel to keep going - there are a variety of associated costs or sacrifices with them, but there's always a price to be paid, even if that price is trivial, silly (perhaps whimsical, even), or embraced with enthusiasm.

Edit: Also, if we're going for a 90's setting, I would love to bring in 90's music for character throwback songs.

Blockbuster Video. Trolls. Tamagotchis. Spice Girls. Backstreet Boys. Dialup. AOL. Beanie Babies. Game boy. The Macarena.

Maybe it's considered more like a private Ivy League school - difficult admissions process, requiring outstanding extracurricular activities/achievements or strong SAT/ACT/equivalent scores. It's divided a College of Theurgical and Thaumaturgical Arts which has additional requirements to get into (like how one might have to audition to get into a performing arts school, or need an impressive project on their resume to get into a technical institute) and has interdisciplinary studies within other traditional colleges, which were gradually incorporated in the 1800s/1900s as firearms industrialized, becoming more deadly and gaining equal, if not greater, footing against magic.

On the contrary, I was thinking this was like a step down from a state college. Like, it's old and historic, and certainly capable. But in terms of prestige? This is some kid's safety school.

Like, sure, there's a graveyard where every dean has been buried since the school opened. And maybe the dead deans serve as a ghost council that advises the current dean. But at Yale, the dean is an actual vampire, so I mean it's kinda lame when you think about it.

It also definitely has more mundane curriculums. It's definitely worth noting that magic isn't a monolithic field. Like, one person might go to Sanctuary Hill University for eight years to learn medical magic, and another is there for two to get a certificate to use kinetic magic on a construction site.

For the magic system, I think it makes sense for nothing to happen if you don't have enough materials - like in chemistry, when you don't have enough reagent for a reaction to continue. If you do something wrong, your magic can backfire, sometimes in improbable or bizarre ways, perhaps with even greater force than what your initial input was. A simple prank hex could become a harsh curse.

Maybe magic, like life, is just borrowed energy - as such no spell can last forever, and at some point it must decay and return its energy to nature. A magical contract can fade if it isn't "fed." Everyday enchantments need some kind of fuel to keep going - there are a variety of associated costs or sacrifices with them, but there's always a price to be paid, even if that price is trivial, silly (perhaps whimsical, even), or embraced with enthusiasm.

I definitely think you're on the money about cost, although I don't know that we want to plan too much about magic. My idea here is for the magic and fantastical elements to be a little like window dressing for a college town slice of life.

I like the idea of keeping the process of doing magic deliberately vague, since it's a tool for the narrative, and not the focus of it. But there's definitely a need to define some general rules and boundaries.

Like you say, any spell has a cost, and the cost must be paid for the spell to remain in effect. By the same token, I think we can hold with "equivalent exchange" as described in Fullmetal Alchemist.

Ritual fires burn without smoke, and don't give off heat, because the fuel isn't being expended for the fire, but for the spell. Cold spots are a telltale sign that magic has been done, because spells suck heat out of the air. Particularly vigorous spellcasting can create enough cold spots to make warmer air rush in, causing gusts of wind, even indoors.

Magic is prescriptive. You have to write a spell, and lay out its elements to describe your desired effect. It's kind of like programming in a way. You don't raise your hand and cast a fireball, you arrange the formulae to describe your fireball, and hope that you didn't mess up the scale or intensity. Magic requires preparation.

I definitely think you're on the money about cost, although I don't know that we want to plan too much about magic. My idea here is for the magic and fantastical elements to be a little like window dressing for a college town slice of life.

I like the idea of keeping the process of doing magic deliberately vague, since it's a tool for the narrative, and not the focus of it. But there's definitely a need to define some general rules and boundaries.

Like you say, any spell has a cost, and the cost must be paid for the spell to remain in effect. By the same token, I think we can hold with "equivalent exchange" as described in Fullmetal Alchemist.

Equivalent exchange falls under Hermatic magic, also known as the Laws of Sacrifice - giving up in equal value to what you obtain. Some rituals, like stone circles, taps into people in the circle to charge a magical battery, which can then be used to work more powerful magic. However, it's very important that you replenish the magic you use. There's a magic circle in the series Outlander that transports a woman back in time, for example, at the cost of any gemstone she's wearing. The purity of the materials does affect it.

Sympathetic magic, or the Laws of Sympathy, is basically like calling to like - Voodoo dolls and spinning straw into gold, that sort of thing. If you can establish a relationship with runes and symbols, they work much the same. Like the Wizard's Eye, a drawing of an eye that allows a witch or wizard to see what's going on there.

Often, it's just two different methods to obtain the same result.

Newton's Fourth Law explains that in a given magical system, the energy applied in its effect will be equal to or less than the energy supplied to the system. There is complicated math to describe the loss of energy through inefficiencies in the spellcasting.

But we're getting a little off the rails here.

I'm calling the school Sanctuary Hill University, and it's situated in the Blue Ridge Mountains in western Virginia.

Tell me things that y'all want to see in this town, so I can include them as I work on writing it up.

A character concept I came up with was a witch working off campus in a secondhand student furniture shop, complete with the basics. It's also how they can get ahold of odd items.

@Gisk: Coming from a public school, college town myself, I just have a little list of ideas - feel free to use some, all, or none at your leisure. :)

• Weird, out-of-touch local politicians
  • Nobody really likes 'em, but they're obviously heavily backed by business leaders in the community
  • Maybe they've got the werewolf vote something, maybe some of their kids go to SHU
• A run-down, kinda sketchy amusement park
  • Could be a front for a secret casino or some illegal slot machines
  • Lots of people have precious memories of the place and people go on dates there, locals take their families
• A buffet run by a shapeshifting magician (has almost been closed for health violations at least twice, but also a staple of the community)
• A monthly art trail in the arts district/downtown
  • Brings together some of the more artistic, avant-garde crowd
  • People come to look at the galleries, proselytize, listen to live music, watch spell shows, drink craft beer, etc.
  • Has a vendor fair as well, where some dropouts, community artists/freelancers/etc., alumni, etc. showcase their small businesses, selling crystals, jewelry, divination readings, small painted canvases, prints, T-shirts, you name it
• Farmer's market on the outskirts of town/in an adjacent city
  • A popular spot for magicians and also draws some of the attendees/vendors who participate in the art trail
  • The food trucks come out there as well sometimes
• Some younger, smaller university in the same town, but lesser known than SHU
  • Or even a community college, as an even cheaper, safer option to SHU for the anxious or overbearing parents who don't want to sink too much money into tuition or who don't want their kids taking a lot of loans
  • SHU itself still being one of the cheapest options compared to other major schools in WV - it just happens that at least with SHU, you'd have better networking opportunities and job prospects
• There's a couple renowned bookstores in the town
  • Some focus on the student population and selling textbooks/supplies, others focus on publishing services for local authors and community events
  • These are important places for magic practitioners, as they're a nice place to find cheaper sources of info
• Local cafes/coffee shops frequented by teachers, college professors, and university staff for the discounts
• Maybe a Civil War, WWII, or Vietnam War museum which specializes on the involvement of magic and its practitioners in those wars
• And of course, no shortage of bars and nightclubs, employing a host of dancers, barkeeps, DJs, bands, and drag queens to keep the show going late into the night

@kalanggam great list! I actually also live in a smallish college town, so this list is funny to me because of how much of it I recognize.

A quick note: this is in the western part of Virginia, not West Virginia. It probably doesn't matter a lot, but I wanted to nip that confusion in the bud.

My own character idea is a young townie. Big awkward gay mechanic. Their family runs a local mechanic shop that's been there for generations. They actually went to SHU for their Auto Tech program, so any of the characters who were upperclassmen might have seen them around for some basic classes, and/or orientation.

Gisky, you seem to resonate with my own vibes a lot. This is a rad idea. I'm going to lurk and be snooping all over this, and if the muse strikes me I'll toss my hat in the ring.

Well you're certainly welcome!

So I'm planning to write up town details and a character sheet this weekend(the weekend for me includes Monday, just saying that ahead of time lol) but I'm at work right now. For today, I'll probably pop in occasionally to say things like:

"Magician" is an official title, like a medical doctor. You can't just call yourself one, you have to actually attend school and pass exams. Someone who practices magic without passing official exams is called a witch(this term is gender neutral). Not all professional magic users are fully qualified magicians, witches can be employed in all kinds of fields. If they do magic for money, technically they are supposed to be registered with a state governing body.

I like my players playing a roll in world building, so if you want to write up a town feature to submit, feel free! I may make some small tweaks before adding it to the town's lore, but I'd love to see what people want to add.

@Gisk: Haha, funnily enough I put Virginia first, but then my brain said, "Hm, no that's not right." And I put West Virginia instead. Forgot my country roads :')

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I've got a character idea myself - a dude from the Richmond suburbs who went to SHU to become a licensed magician, finished his undergraduate degree a year early, and is now figuring out a career plan. He works as a barista in a local-owned coffee shop and does magical favors/odd jobs for friends and other associates of his. A queer guy from an immigrant family who speaks very candidly, loves his guitar, and uses cassette tapes like journals.

Hmm. So in this world, actual magic is public knowledge?

@kalanggam The Blue Ridge Mountains actually span multiple states! But funnily enough, most of the features listed in Country Roads are in fact in VA, and not WV.

Great character, happy to have him.

@Expendable Yes, absolutely!

I think a great real world analogue for magic is electricity. It's a powerful force that exists in nature in various forms. Humanity, through study and experimentation, have learned to harness and refine it, to the point that we can use it for amazing things.

It is common knowledge, feature in every day life, and anybody would recognize it immediately if they encountered it. People have varying degrees of knowledge about it, and how to use it. There are a variety of professions and fields that utilize it, and some people even work with it as a hobby.

The RP takes place the summer of 1994.
SHU was founded in 1790.

@kalanggam The Blue Ridge Mountains actually span multiple states! But funnily enough, most of the features listed in Country Roads are in fact in VA, and not WV.

Great character, happy to have him.

@Expendable Yes, absolutely!

I think a great real world analogue for magic is electricity. It's a powerful force that exists in nature in various forms. Humanity, through study and experimentation, have learned to harness and refine it, to the point that we can use it for amazing things.

It is common knowledge, feature in every day life, and anybody would recognize it immediately if they encountered it. People have varying degrees of knowledge about it, and how to use it. There are a variety of professions and fields that utilize it, and some people even work with it as a hobby.

The RP takes place the summer of 1994.
SHU was founded in 1790.

Okay, magical alternate world scenario. What is the level of technology in this world? Keep in mind that most of the things in our lives were created out of need - ships, planes, cars, etc. Who needs electricity if you have magic? Want to preserve food? Make a preserving cabinet. You can put hot food in, then come back days or weeks later and the food is still hot on the plate.

Why build cars or planes if you have a flying broomstick or carpet?
Why build motors or engines if you can craft golems who do all the physical work - pumping water, winding gears to make ship's propellers turn, etc?
Why build telephones or computers if you can use crystal balls?

DO we have classes in the natural sciences?

my mindset on that stuff is 'because it's not easy to do' and 'there's potentially very bad drawbacks for doing it wrong or badly'. Part of a setting idea like this is to just accept the premise and suspend the disbelief and allow it to exist for its own sake, methinks.

Busy few days, ahhhhh

Newton's Fourth Law explains that in a given magical system, the energy applied in its effect will be equal to or less than the energy supplied to the system. There is complicated math to describe the loss of energy through inefficiencies in the spellcasting.

OT a bit, but if you want to use real-world scientific principles, this is the first law of thermodynamics ("The energy of a closed system remains constant").

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Building off kalanggam's college town staples, here're a few more things that could be fun or cool to explore. I love the idea of mysteries around the campus and town and that's definitely a factor in my picks here!

• A comic and game shop, because what college town isn't prepared to cater to a geeky audience?
• An independent brewery, the sort of place frequented by quirky people and hipsters.
• An orchard off to the edge of town, run by a family who's been in the area for generations. They have money, but not as much as they used to.
• An underground weed den. It might operate under any of those places.
• A quirky local band or seven.
  • A record store where you can pick up their music.
• A forested area on the edge of town. It's largely untouched, aside from the odd hiking trail and a few campsites. Urban legends claim there's a monster in the lake, but no one's managed to get it on camera.
• An abandoned quarry or mine.

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Okay, magical alternate world scenario. What is the level of technology in this world? Keep in mind that most of the things in our lives were created out of need - ships, planes, cars, etc. Who needs electricity if you have magic?

I know this was a rhetorical question, but I don't think it should be. "Magic as technology" is one approach, and many well-respected stories use it, but it's not the only way, and I don't think it's the approach @Gisk wants to take. As long as magic requires a witch, it will never replace electricity - no one's going to contract a witch every time they want to put the kettle on. To be clear, I'm not trying to argue for the superiority of either approach; I'm just not sure we're collectively on the same page about what sort of story we're trying to tell here.

Gisk, am I correct in understanding that you see the setting here as more or less like the real world?

e: Like, that's the vibe I get from things like this:

Barring the fact of course that this is all up to Gisk, I also like these ideas. Fantasy being interwoven with daily life in a mundane way. Small-town mysteries, local incidents and scandals, petty social drama - rather than the grandiose adventures and magnanimous ambitions we're accustomed to from traditional fantasy.

<Snipped quote by Gisk>

Okay, magical alternate world scenario. What is the level of technology in this world? Keep in mind that most of the things in our lives were created out of need - ships, planes, cars, etc. Who needs electricity if you have magic? Want to preserve food? Make a preserving cabinet. You can put hot food in, then come back days or weeks later and the food is still hot on the plate.

Why build cars or planes if you have a flying broomstick or carpet?
Why build motors or engines if you can craft golems who do all the physical work - pumping water, winding gears to make ship's propellers turn, etc?
Why build telephones or computers if you can use crystal balls?

DO we have classes in the natural sciences?

my mindset on that stuff is 'because it's not easy to do' and 'there's potentially very bad drawbacks for doing it wrong or badly'. Part of a setting idea like this is to just accept the premise and suspend the disbelief and allow it to exist for its own sake, methinks.

<Snipped quote by Expendable>

I know this was a rhetorical question, but I don't think it should be. "Magic as technology" is one approach, and many well-respected stories use it, but it's not the only way, and I don't think it's the approach @Gisk wants to take. As long as magic requires a witch, it will never replace electricity - no one's going to contract a witch every time they want to put the kettle on. To be clear, I'm not trying to argue for the superiority of either approach; I'm just not sure we're collectively on the same page about what sort of story we're trying to tell here.

Gisk, am I correct in understanding that you see the setting here as more or less like the real world?

Yes, 1994, and it's more or less the real world.

Fading and Naomi(is that an appropriate thing to call you?) both raise good points for answering your question, @Expendable, and I'm going to expound a little more.

I said before that magic is prescriptive. What I mean by this is that, in a given spell, you have use magical principles to tell the spell exactly what to do. Magic requires understanding, and our scientific knowledge of the world has been essential for increasing our magical capabilities. So magic and science developed together in this world.

Remember that I've said magic used to have a reputation for being unpredictable? That's because before our understanding of science caught up, we would create magical effects by pure trial and error, and then just repeating the steps that produced what we wanted. Magic was powerful and mysterious, but unreliable. And our understanding and use of magic tracks with our understanding and use of science.

So, yes, you have to take natural science classes. But I won't make you as the writer explain the full mathematical implications of every spell your character casts ;P

Also, like my pal Fading said, don't forget to suspend your disbelief a little.

I know magic is often the most interesting thing in a given setting, but I want to remind everyone that it's meant to be just background to an RP about a bunch of friends fucking around over the summer. It's fun to peek at it behind the curtain every once in a while, so I certainly won't put a stop to these discussions, but let's not get bogged down by details.

And if you've seen me around, you know I'm the pot calling the kettle black with that one, but there you go.

Busy few days, ahhhhh

<Snipped quote by Gisk>

OT a bit, but if you want to use real-world scientific principles, this is the first law of thermodynamics ("The energy of a closed system remains constant").

Uh, fair point there. No fourth law but I stand by that Newton invented a lot of the math that magicians use to analyze their magic. He was also a major forerunner in kinetic magic. There are still apples in orbit from his experiments.

Naomi(is that an appropriate thing to call you?)

Yup!

Uh, fair point there. No fourth law but I stand by that Newton invented a lot of the math that magicians use to analyze their magic.

Hey, I'm a huge geek and like sharing what I know. If it came across like a callout or uhm, akshually, I'm sorry; that wasn't my intent. My thought process began and ended at "the laws of thermodynamics are neat".

I know magic is often the most interesting thing in a given setting, but I want to remind everyone that it's meant to be just background to an RP about a bunch of friends fucking around over the summer. It's fun to peak at it behind the curtain every once in a while, so I certainly won't put a stop to these discussions, but let's not get bogged down by details.

Good to know I wasn't entirely off base :) What did you think of my character concept? The permalink seems to be misbehaving, so I'll reproduce it here:

<Snipped quote by Expendable>

I know this was a rhetorical question, but I don't think it should be. "Magic as technology" is one approach, and many well-respected stories use it, but it's not the only way, and I don't think it's the approach @Gisk wants to take. As long as magic requires a witch, it will never replace electricity - no one's going to contract a witch every time they want to put the kettle on. To be clear, I'm not trying to argue for the superiority of either approach; I'm just not sure we're collectively on the same page about what sort of story we're trying to tell here.

Gisk, am I correct in understanding that you see the setting here as more or less like the real world?

There's a movie, Onward. In it, people could use magic, but it was difficult to learn. So when someone comes up with the light bulb and a means of powering it, they started moving towards tech, and not many people use magic. To me, that seems to be a logical progression.

Then there's the world of Harry Potter - the mages keep themselves hidden from the muggles, so you have cars and flying broomsticks. And that makes sense to me.

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In this world, we have magic which is still being practiced despite the existence of technology and a cost to work that magic....

So I have to ask how that works?

Edit - Okay, I accept that science and math classes are a necessary part of the curriculum, so there would be development along these lines.

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There is another series I've read by Patricia Briggs - Mercedes Thompson. Basically, the main character is a VW mechanic working in Seattle who also is a skinwalker - she can transform herself into a coyote. And she was raised by a werewolf pack - her neighbor is the Alpha of the Seattle Pack. And one of her customers is a vampire who had a van customized into the Mystery Machine from Scooby-Doo.

In this setting, like Harry Potter, the magical world maintains a separation between itself and the mundane. To quote MIB, "People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it."

But the various factions of magical beings realize at some point they're going to be exposed (same argument for supers, what with face recognition software, etc). So the fairy folk came out first, and wind up having to move to a reservation but they were able to control somewhat how they got represented.

The werewolves at the start of this series are trying to work out how to come out to the public themselves. Turns out there's a lot of werewolves in the military...

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So, in the 80's, we had the satanic panic, where religious groups were denouncing Dungeons & Dragons, while people and places like pre-schools became suspect due to the McMartin case (children were encouraged to tell stories about rituals, etc.) and lead to cameras being installed in them.

What if part of that panic was wizards coming out of the closet? (The government was aware of the wizards but hid their involvement as it wouldn't look good to admit they were working with them. Some UFO sightings were, in fact, wizards. But not all of them....)

Sanctuary was originally built to be exact that - a sanctuary. A magic bunker, as it were, one of many scattered around the country. (They haven't forgotten Salem.) Thus we have secret societies, much like today's preppers and militia groups preparing for Armageddon, against the day the government comes for the wizards.

The town itself is warded to prevent errant magic from leaking out....



...but things sometimes happen.

Some of the mages are not happy with the decision to come out when they did. We could also have busses arriving at various times with protesters.

Ladies and gentlemen, we will be having a protest at the main gate by the Westboro Baptist Church today. While you may defend yourself as necessary, we would like to remind you that turning the protesters into frogs or any other offensive magic will result in immediate expulsion, no matter who started it.

But yeah, there may be more things hidden away or even forgotten, little (and not so little) caches of various magic weapons, creatures, or even minor gods.

Because where there's ghosts, there's....

Oh, something I should ask - is everyone capable of working magic in the world, or is it a talent only some have? Typically along family lines (but talent doesn't always appear), but sometimes especially in the 60's, some children were born out of wedlock with the magic genes?