Physics of Magic

[Xecutor]

I can't remember where I first came across the concept—I believe it may have been an anime?—but there was this universe where saying a word out loud caused a magical spell, but no one was physically able to speak that word ever again. It simply vanished from existence at that point. I found the concept to be utterly fascinating. However, this would negate the benefit of discovery, so perhaps a compromise could be made: each successive use of a spell diminishes its potency, so eventually you have to branch out to other things. But in the mean time, you can leverage your discovery.

Several years ago I read a novel where magic had somewhat similar principle. Magician could turn almost any sentence into a spell.
But every time the some sentence was used as a spell, it was loosing strength a little. So, over time most common sentences weren't working at all anymore.
Magicians had to come up with weird and ornate sentences in order for their magic to work.

Too bad it is practically impossible to make a game based on this. Very powerful semantic analyzer is needed for this.

[Trystan]

I've seen something like this before.

I played an rpg long, long ago - back in the DOS era - where one of your party members could craft magic spells. There were ingredients and ruins that were chained together to determine the effect (fire, poison, ice, etc) and the shape (projectile, cloud, 8 adjacent tiles, etc) of the spell you are crafting. Hitting a creature or wall would begin the next chunk of the spell. So you could create a spell that would make a fire projectile that, when it hits something, creates clouds of poison in the adjacent tiles. That would require sulfur, a projectile ruin, frogs, a cloud ruin, and an adjacent tiles ruin. Or something like that.

I think my most used spells were a projectile that makes a healing cloud and another one that created a cloud that shot fireballs in 8 directions. It was glorious. I hope you come up with something.

[Trowel]

Thanks for all the interesting responses to this thread guys, I'm still working on another project which is eating most of my time but as soon as that is done with in a few days I'm going to try and write a simple experiment to test some concepts for this game idea. A sort of unofficial seven day roguelike and I'll post up the results here.

I really love the ideas here anyway and I have some more stuff to say, so I'll come back and reply to the discussion properly once I've got time a little later today (I'm on a super short break now). 

[Serefan]

Definitely an interesting idea. I'm imagining a narrative-heavy game, in a world where magic spells have been in use for quite a while, but never fully understood. They were more viewed as a thing that has 'always been there', and should be used in conformity with the laws. Schools have long teached several magic spells, but these teachings never really evolved beyond basic fireball, ice cloud, heal wounds, etcetera. Until one guy suddenly discovered the true powers behind them in a very Newtonesque way. But because of the experimental nature of his ideas, they were dangerous, and therefore, feared and misunderstood. So he was mocked, shunned; he fled, and brooded... Biding his time.. He would show them... HE WOULD SHOW THEM ALL! MWHAHAHAHAH!

*cough* Sorry, got a bit carried away there.

[Vanguard]

I've said this before in another thread somewhere, but the absolute best way to get an interesting and believable magic system is to borrow from a real world culture's beliefs.

[AgingMinotaur]

Thales: sounds interesting. Is the player put in the shoes of the "mad scientist", or a disciple or some other character figuring out the details? Release early, release ofen (Also, a thousand actors per second doesn't really sound that bad to me; the real trouble starts when each of them are doing complex calculations, like heavy duty AI or area effects.)

As always (going off on a tangent),
Minotauros

[Serefan]

Thales: sounds interesting. Is the player put in the shoes of the "mad scientist", or a disciple or some other character figuring out the details? Release early, release ofen (Also, a thousand actors per second doesn't really sound that bad to me; the real trouble starts when each of them are doing complex calculations, like heavy duty AI or area effects.)

As always (going off on a tangent),
Minotauros

How did you... What the... My good sir, you seem to have tried to answer to two different threads in one post if I'm not mistaken.

As for the brief story I jotted down here, anything goes really.
-> The scientist guy is the ultimate Big Bad of the game who himself is convinced he is working for the greater good
-> The guy could have gone undercover in a small farming village that hasn't heard of his deeds, helping out the villagers, posing as a humble skilled alchemist. The player then starts out being his apprentice (optional plot twist, the missions he sends you on is ultimately for some form of great evil)
-> The guy is very esteemed until the he reveals his ideas, gets stripped of all his influence and renown, and has to prove himself yet again (in this scenario the player is the scientist)
-> The guy wasn't really in control of what he was experimenting with, unleashed a great terror into the world, but since he's a good guy, he'll continue to hone his newfound skills to try and fix his error and save the world

You can go with it in so many directions. What's nice about this kind of 'logical magic' is that, narrative-wise, you can associate it with some goings-on in the real world, compare it to the controversy of certain scientific or religious happenings in the past or present.