#fantasy advice

(and get along well with all your little neighbours)

1. If you find a spider in your house, don’t kill it. They will remember, trust me on that one.

2. If you find your book laying in a different place than you’ve put it, don’t freak out about it and, if you have the possibility, leave it there. It might take up to a day, so just let them finish reading.

3. When entering a library on a rainy or snowy day, make sure to wipe off your shoes, you never know who’s helping the librarian. Probably nothing special would happen if you didn’t, but it’s just impolite.

4. If you spot someone who you think have scales or fangs, don’t stare, that’s rude.

5. Always be kind to stray dogs. Always.

6. If you’re having an argument with someone and they start to produce steam, just keep in mind that it might be time to leave.

7. If a bunch of pidgeons seem to be following you around, don’t pay attention to them and don’t show that you noticed. They’ll give up eventualy.

8. If you find random money in your pockets, don’t be weird about it. You can leave a cup of tea in the kitchen over night, they’ll feel appreciated. You can totally drink it later, in the morning, too.

9. If a stranger smiled at you, smile back. It will pay off later.

“I don’t see enough works of fiction where magic is more easily accessed by the elite of a land, as opposed to some magical minority group who somehow happens to still be oppressed despite having the ability to shoot fire out of their hands.”

Am I going to elaborate on this? Yep, I’m going to elaborate on this. As it turns out, people with special gifts aren’t usually looked down on by society. To the contrary!

If their magic could plausibly serve some useful purpose, society will want to take advantage of this. Taking my previous example, someone with fire magic could apply that talent all sorts of industry — welding, cooking, combat, you name it.

Speaking of combat, someone with battle-ready kinds of magic is probably not going to be hunted down by society. Because… well, can you imagine how difficult it would be to take down someone who can shoot fireballs at you? Yeah, not very oppressable. Again, it’s much more beneficial for a society to embrace those magic-users and possibly even integrate them into their own military force.

And what does a society actually gain from extinguishing, making fun of, or otherwise tormenting a group of magic users? A sense of safety? I’d argue that you’d be a lot safer not pissing off people who can set you on fire with their mind.

Will some folks be jealous of the magic-users? Hell yeah. Does “people are jealous of me” count as oppression? Hell no. Again, especially not if you can set those people on fire with your mind.

So basically, I’m saying that access to magic will usually give a group of people great social advantages instead of disadvantages.

Not to say that a group of people can’t have magic and also be oppressed... It’s just going to take a lot of effort to set up a situation where that actually works. Here are some ways to tip the balance back in logic’s favor;

If your minority’s magic is noncombative, they’ll have more difficulty fighting back, and thus can more easily subdued.

If your minority’s magic is of limited use, they’re less likely to be embraced by their society for their talent... but this one’s hard to apply, because magic is often inherently cool and/or useful.

If your minority’s magics could challenge a regime, there’s a chance the regime could lash out against them… but the regime has to be reasonably certain that the magic-users cannot be integrated safely into the status quo, and/or are an active danger to that status quo. Otherwise, the people in power just look really stupid.

A group that uses one type of magic and oppresses a group that uses a different type of magic is (usually) more believable than a group of mundane people who oppress a group of magic-users.

Having anti-magic measures exist within your world will make it immensely easier to oppress a magic user.

Do you have any advice for new DMs?

Keep your Initiatives in a comp book/journal/notebook and your story details in a google doc/online writing medium of choice. Handwrite the stats, ac, and details of a monster. Keep them separate, this will make it less overwhelming

Don’t be afraid to do some wack impulsive shit that could break your plot, sometimes you think of something really cool on the spot and that’s okay. Do some foreshadowing. Give them something powerful. Curse them. It makes it more interesting for you.

At some point your players will break plot. That’s okay too. You can fuck them over. Make them suffer for skipping out on an initiative, or for adopting a monster. Let them split up the party. It’ll suck for them, but be hilarious for you.

Do a preset. Write a sample campaign, like how everyone met each other, or their first battle together. This is to help you get a feel of who everyone is like.

Personalize your story to the characters. Make your players cry. Get to know their background.

Death is always an option. It changes the game, and you can even control what kind of character you get next. But if death isn’t an option, be prepared to find an in-plot way to save their life. Maybe even multiple times.

It’s okay to lie to them. So what if they figure a small part of your plot before you get to properly tell them. Keep the lie simple. They didn’t cast Zone of Truth in real life.

Look up the spells they cast. Always. It helps you become familiar with it, but also so they don’t lie (or, more likely, if they Misunderstood the spell)

Don’t be afraid of details! Describe the scene. It’s better if they know their surroundings. If your lazy, use magical darkness. 

It may be extremely easy to just put magic into a story you’re creating, or explain away things with the excuse of “magic.”  But if that is how magic is handled in your world, readers are going to find major plot holes in your story.  Magic needs rules and guidelines, even in stories where it’s not in the foreground.  Without rules, magic could be the solution to all, or you end overpowering a character because he has no restrictions on how he can use his magic.

But where do you start when setting ground rules for how and when magic can be used?  My goal in this post is to give you some ideas while you map out your world of magic.

Who can learn magic? Is magic a thing that all people can learn, or certain people who have a knack for it?  Is magic something that can be learned at all?  Perhaps it’s only readily available for those who are born with it, such as the wizards in Harry Potter.  Or magic is contained in things, such as charms, amulets, or unicorn horns.  People may have to learn how to access the magic contained in these items, but they are solely reliant on items in order to use magic.  Perhaps magic can only be learned by certain races.

How is magic learned?  In Harry Potter, wizards go to school for seven years to learn how to use magic.  Other books wizards have apprentices they train.    Can magic be self-taught?  How does a person access magic?  Through emotion, thoughts, something else?  Perhaps learning magic requires a large sacrifice.

Does the magic need to be channeled?  Once again, using the example of Harry Potter, wizards need wands in order to use magic.  Other common themes involve wizards using staffs in order to use magic.  But there are stories where wizards don’t need an item to channel the magic, such as the wizards in the anime/manga series Fairy Tail.  Perhaps magic does need an item to be channeled through, but it doesn’t have to be the traditional wand or staff.

How often can a person use magic? Does magic use up a person’s energy, and therefore a person’s magic is limited to how much energy they have?  Perhaps they have a different “energy”, such as mana, that restricts how much magic they can use?  Maybe you want to go the Once Upon a Time route and magic isn’t used in excess because it comes with a price.  Perhaps how magic is used is why people don’t use it so often.  Maybe magic is used very often.

Does magic need incantations?  Harry Potter uses incantations, whether is it is verbal or non-verbal.  There does not seem to be an incantations in the magic that the Witch uses in the Chronicles of Narnia.  Incantations are used quite often in the Septimus Heap series.  And there no incantations in Lord of the Rings.  Or maybe incantations are reserved for the more powerful, older spells.  Perhaps incantations make a spell more stable. 

Can magic be invoked by using items?  Potions is one of the common ways this is used.  But sometimes certain spells can only be invoked by using ingredients, like in the show Charmed or the movie Practical Magic.  Perhaps it’s only used occasionally, such as some spells performed in the show Sabrina the Teenage Witch.  Maybe items are used in only certain branches, such as Divination in Harry Potter.

What cannot be done by magic?  With the Genie’s magic in Disney’s Aladdin, he could not make someone come back from the dead, fall in love, or grant more wishes.  Food cannot be created out of thin air according to the rules of magic in Harry Potter.  Actual love in Harry Potter can’t be created, but enchantments that cause the victim to have an obsessive type of love does exist.  Perhaps the dead can be raised, as evidenced by stories with necromancy, but it can’t actually bring back the person completely.  Something’s missing.  Perhaps only skeletons can be brought back, or the person comes back in a zombie like state.  Perhaps you would go so far as to say that magic cannot create permanent things out of nothing.

Does magic have categories/a way it is organized? Potions, Divination, Transifiguration, Charms, etc.  Or light, dark, chaos, order,  water, fire, etc.  Or human magic, dragon magic, unicorn magic, elf magic, etc.  And it doesn’t have to have only one way of organization.  It can have several levels, just like when science organizes living organisms. 

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