Gisk

Mundane fantastic slice of life

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.

Mundane fantastic slice of life

@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.

Mundane fantastic slice of life

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.

Mundane fantastic slice of life

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.

@kalanggam

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.

@kalanggam

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.

Mundane fantastic slice of life

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.

Mundane fantastic slice of life

<Snipped quote by Expendable>
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.

@kalanggam

Yeah, you and Expendable got it exactly, that's what I'm going for.

With this setting incorporating magic as a normal part of everyday life, such that magic is its own profession, would it be safe to assume that everyone in-universe can use it? I also think it would be awesome to see how magic is passed down through families or shared across cultures, like you could log onto the internet to look up a particular spell or ritual, or you'd find stupid trends on social media involving dangerous uses of magic or its implements.

@kalanggam

Yeah, so I'm meaning for magic to be a discipline just like any other. Just as anyone at all could learn to be a mechanic or a hair stylist, anyone at all could be a magician. In the real world, a lot of people think that if magic was real they'd want to do it, but in a world where it's just a skill like any other, a lot of people just kind of don't bother with it. And as I mentioned earlier, a lot of people learn a little bit of what's useful to them(just like you might learn how to change your own brakes, or color your own hair).

@Expendable I love the idea of this taking place over the summer!

And remember that you don't have to play a student, or even a magic user. You can just be a townie who gets caught up in the bullshit.

I think this will take place in the nineties, if no one objects strongly to that. And I was actually thinking maybe someplace in Appalachia instead of New England, but I'm not super sure yet.

I'll probably end up just building the town around the school, so as soon as I decide on a name and general region, I'll starting writing the town up too. Any suggestions are always welcome.

Mundane fantastic slice of life

One of my favorite descriptions of magic is in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, by Susannah Clarke. It's deliberately vague, we rarely see a description of what magicians are actually doing to make magic happen. They talk a lot about formulas, and mention techniques by name without describing them. It makes for a fun, arcane "technobabble" that I personally really enjoy.

"No, see here? You've forgotten to set a boundary parameter. If you cast a spell like this, it'll keep going until it burns up all its fuel, or runs out of targets, whichever comes first. Try Cervantes' Discriminación, it's a great framework for selective description."

I also like magic that has a cost, I think it would just be material components, that are usually burned up in the process. The required components are symbolic, and depend on the nature of the spell. DnD has great examples, it could be something like a quantity of fine sand, special herbs, maybe blood, bone or hair(though maybe these are seen as kind of sloppy and uncouth).

This is something I don't want to put too much specific thought into, though, as it's really just a background for social roleplay.

Dreaming Together With You - A Fading Memory Experiment - On Hiatus

Audrey Springer

---

By the end of their dance, Audrey was grinning broadly, her face flushed with exertion. The two were propelled from each other with force, but both kept their feet, and Audrey half slid, half stumbled backwards from Rulania.

She could already feel the power that had filled her up. It was hot, and brutal, but also strangely brittle. She felt intuitively that if she slammed her fist into the walls, the stone might crack. She also felt however, that her bones certainly would too. The power coiled up inside her chest and limbs made her feel light and fragile. Like her own strength could shake her apart.

Her reverie was interrupted by Aleyn, and Audrey had to wonder where he had been about twenty minutes before, when she herself had yet to get on board. Still, she let him say his piece, after all he had the same objections as her.

"Leyn," she turned to face him, and spoke in a tone that was both gentle, and quite firm, "Rowan's right, I already tried the whole 'send us home' bit. I think they've been honest with us, and you know I'd be shouting about it if I didn't. I know how you feel, but did you think I'd let anything happen to Alycia, if I could help it? We're not promising anything to them other than that we'll hear them out. We won't let Alycia be in any danger. Or Odaya, for that matter," she glanced briefly at the other young girl, who seemed to be the happiest with the state of affairs, in stark contrast to her brother.

Mundane fantastic slice of life

I agree, fuck high school.

So how's this: Urban fantasy, in an old college town(probably a fictional town in New England somewhere). Modern day, or maybe the nineties could be fun, but alternate universe.

I think there would be very little, if any, focus on attending classes, like you said, more just the hijinks of a bunch of twenty-somethings. They aren't necessarily all magic users, or even all students for that matter.

I think this is a world where magic is treated like any other general field. Like you could say that you're a scientist, or you could be specific and say you're an aerospace engineer. Likewise, you could say that you're a magician, or more specifically a kinetic thaumaturgist.

I also think it's a skill like baking or working on cars. Obviously some people do it professionally, but a lot of people have some knowledge and skill in the subject that they've picked up here and there. Conversely, some people can't work a spell to save their life, and that's okay!

I think the word "magician" has the connotation of being a trained professional, and the common word for a layperson who does magic is witch.

Mundane fantastic slice of life

@Crimson Flame

Well you might be the only one right now, but if you're interested, we can bounce some ideas around, try to decide what kind of setting we want to do. If we get a really good, concrete idea maybe we'll make a second interest check.

If that's legwork you don't wanna do, I totally understand, don't worry, lol.