Gisk

Mundane fantastic slice of life

@Expendable Looks good!

I need to know the name of that furniture store, unless you don't mind me making it up wholesale.

I want to make two quick notes on her magic. Firstly, just remember that magic still follows conservation of matter. If She makes an item bigger or smaller, the mass needs to come from somewhere(or go somewhere). But I think you can just kind of minecraft it. If you're making a chair bigger, literally any wood could be added. Alternatively, if you make a chair smaller, you'll have some random pieces of wood left over(probably in weirdly regular shapes, spheres maybe).

Secondly, if she attended school, she's probably had some further education on the basic principles of how to actually write a spell.

In fact, let me expound a little on how different people use magic.

Technically, magician is a title that's tied to a degree. Colloquially speaking, however, the accepted difference between a magician and a witch is that a witch just learns spells. A magician writes them. They understand the principles of the magic, and know enough about the fundamentals of the physical world to know how the magic will interact with it. They know the "language" of magic, so to speak, and how to tell it what to do.

If you're a gamer, it's like knowing how to install mods, vs knowing how to make them.

Though, that might not give witches enough credit. They still need to know enough to make minor changes for things like scale of effect, and specifying the object of the spell. Even if someone only knows a spell for light, they usually know how to change the casting to make it brighter or dimmer.

A little update for all: I'm still hard at work! Unfortunately, as I said I didn't get as much writing time over the weekend as I expected, and I've been busy today. I actually went whole hog and bought a fancy keyboard, set up my computer and everything, to try to inspire myself to write more(for this, and other things). It seems to be working so far! I'm definitely working more efficiently.

I've also started working on a playlist for the roleplay, if you have any suggestions, my only criteria is that songs be from 1994 or earlier(though when in 94 they released isn't important). Right now there's mostly grunge and pop.

EDIT: The first post has been updated again. It will take me a long time to fill in all the details that I want to add, we honestly might start the game before it's done. There's so many ideas in my head(including a bunch that y'all have put there), but I've gotten a lot of the important background stuff out, so people should have an easy enough time making characters that are integrated with the world.

Mundane fantastic slice of life

I truthfully did not write as much as I meant to, but there's been some updates to the opening post, now including a character sheet.

Mundane fantastic slice of life

@Expendable cool! Deciding what a gargoyle is in this world just became your responsibility!

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@Expendable there's a lot of great stuff in there, and our sportsball mascot is definitely the Grim, although I think the school's main sport is baseball.

Mundane fantastic slice of life

I've added some of my work in progress to the opening post. Nothing is set in stone there yet, but I'm working on it.

Mundane fantastic slice of life

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I'm just trying to twist my mind around to how this came about so I can better image a character to fit within its framework. I'll probably file the bits I brought up for a future rp.

@Expendable

Yeah, I hear you, believe me! In this world, magic is one of the sciences. It isn't treated differently from engineering, electricity, radiation etc, and it developed alongside them.

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@naomimyselfandi Ah! Yes, sorry! It really did keep getting buried, my bad. It sounds great, algorithmic spellcraft is definitely a thing, too. If you need a spell to affect things differently depending on certain criteria, or to only affect certain targets etc.

I think I've brought up that there's some very real overlap between programming and spellwriting. But if I'm to understand correctly, this person isn't studying magic personally, are they?

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@Expendable magic is an accepted part of the the natural world in this setting. Your questions keep centering around magic and science as opposing forces, but in this setting they are not. Magicians didn't come out, because they were never hidden.

I recognize the instinct to try to fit everything together, because you're right that the world would be drastically different if magic were real. But the premise of this roleplay is that magic is just another part of modern life. I know there are aspects that are unrealistic, and if I were trying to make a movie or publish a book I might try harder to address them.

As Naomi points out, yes, anyone can use magic.

Mundane fantastic slice of life

<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?

@Expendable

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.

@Fading Memory

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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?

@naomimyselfandi

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

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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").

@naomimyselfandi

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.

Mundane fantastic slice of life

@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.