#magic rules

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it woooooorked! my spells are getting fucking stronger!!

transfer process is starting and hopefully i'll be joining the new school before the big block practicum!

If you find that you're having trouble understanding your divination tools (tarot, oracle, runes, bone throwing, what have you) then try making new rules.

Blog posts, articles, and books are all great and handy when you're just starting out, but if those methods don't work for you then make new ones!

There is no shame in breaking from traditional methods of divination. You have to do what works for YOU.

Can you elaborate on the step-by-step of resolving Tempt with Discovery? When do opponents choose if they are tempted? Do they know if other opponents are tempted? Do they know what land you grabbed, or what lands other opponents grabbed? When you search for the additional lands, do you know what lands your opponents searched for?

Thanks!

This is a spell that almost no one resolves correctly, but to be fair its resolution has a lot of steps:

You search your library for a land and put it onto the battlefield.

Starting with the player whose turn it is and going in turn order, each opponent chooses whether or not they're going to search for a land card. The search doesn't happen until everyone has chosen.

Every opponent who chose to search for a land does so simultaneously and puts it onto the battlefield. Players should set their chosen card aside face down and only reveal it when everyone had made their choice.

For each opponent who chose to search for a land, you search for a land and put those lands onto the battlefield. Technically these are multiple, sequential searches but that only matters for cards like Aven Mindcensor.

Each library that was searched gets shuffled by the player who searched it. This is usually the owner, but sometimes isn't when cards like Opposition Agent get involved.

So... who knows what when?

All opponents know the first land you searched for before they choose whether or not to search for a land.

The choice to search or not is made sequentially, so your opponents will know if previous opponents were tempted or not.

Your opponents don't get to see what lands the others are searching for, though they can, of course, communicate with each other and make their intentions known.

If all the ranting about magic rules I've done lately has not convinced you I'm pretty bad at magic rules, I'll go ahead and say I'm probably not the greatest person to ask. Still, let me try to be helpful someone.

Soft magic does need rules (but only you have to know them) - as a background hum of your world, you do need to have a pretty clear idea of what magic does and doesn't do. But as a natural part of your plot and not the core of it (aka this is not a magic school setting where we are learning about the steps of magic along with the students), think about the rules of magic somewhat like the rules of driving. The characters know how to drive, and you do too. In a contemporary novel, you're not going to explain why someone stops at a red light. But you will point out when someone violates a driving rule - blows right through that light, or gets into a car accident. As such, when magic plays a similar role (a spell backfires, an attempt to do too much causes an accident), you'll be able to establish how magic works and doesn't work.

For a more concrete example, you don't have to explain how a cleaning spell works if it's something everyone uses. You do need to explain your rules of magic if someone uses the spell wrong and it blows up in their face (too much power, the wrong ingredient, etc).

Soft magic also needs limits (which you need to reinforce) - Let's talk about some really obvious limits - vampires can't go out in sunlight (unless they sparkle), werewolves can be killed with silver bullets, Spider-Man can't fly. You can establish limits with throwaway lines ("I can make plants grow, but I can't create them out of nothing"), little actions (someone uses magic to lift a book, but struggles to lift heavier things), and of course, plot-relevant events.

As long as Dracula doesn't go waltzing out in sunshine without an established reason, you should be good. You can introduce his limits via action-related plot (he can't chase characters once they flee the underworld into daylight), but you don't need to repeat it every chapter.

The reader won't have questions unless you introduce questions - In the novel, it's not possible for the characters to blow up the sun. Your magic rules don't work that way, so it's not something anyone would ever think about. Therefore you don't have to introduce the idea that magic can blow up the sun just to establish it can't happen

I'd been taught all my life that people could only have an elemental, or healing ability. Spontaneous bear transformation was neither.

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You can start with the same few sentences and end up with a completely different story.

If you use it, please leave a link to my account so people can find me. Also, if you use it, please send a link to me! I'd love to read anything you write with it, I'm curious how our stories will differ (≧▽≦)

Rawr! (I'm saying good luck in bear)