Magic isn't just the casting spell variety of power, but can be any power that is outside the norm for human society. That applies to things like ESP, spirit possession, or anything else that would be considered out of the ordinary. This means any principles used to develop a magic system can be used to develop the rules and guidelines for any other extraordinary power. And, yes, you should create basic guidelines for your world's extra powers.

Magic, or anything else you place on your world that would be considered outside the norm, must be a well thought out system. It must be logical, it must have limitations. Remember what we said in the previous lesson: if it's available, it will be used. If you have no limitations, you better have a pretty good reason why your world hasn't blown up by now. You can simplify your work and use a "real life" magic system, like Wicca or some other similar belief system, but, just like building from scratch, there are some things to consider before you do.

As with anything dealing with the real world, you need to research it thoroughly, especially when you consider that most real life belief systems have splinter groups. You want to make sure that what you say is a belief for your Golden Dawn group actually IS a tenant of the real life Golden Dawn group if they're in any way associated (and consider changing the name of your group if they are not). People get touchy when you start messing with their beliefs. You can also use such groups as a stepping stone, but you still should make sure you understand what they really believe before you go changing stuff.

If you do use a group as a foundation to the powers within your world and choose to modify them, make sure to change more than one characteristic (only one change can look like a mistake on your part), that the changes follow naturally out of what the beliefs your are giving using as a foundation, and the changes still work with the philosophy behind the group. Everything has to be integrated and make sense. The changes should probably also come out of some historical change in the world around them. For example, Wiccans and many other groups believe magic is real, but subtle. You aren't going to get flashy fireballs out of Wiccan magic. But what if that changed? What if Wiccan and other magic suddenly started resulting in flashy fireballs? How would that change their belief system?

It's up to you to make sure the final system you come up with makes sense and fits together as an integrated whole. Knowing everything you can about what you start with and what inspires it to change is one way to make sure the system makes logical sense.

But what if you want to build your own unique system? Then there are some basic principles and questions you need to consider, types of magic to look at, and a step by step process you can use. As with everything else, you start with the foundations, develop what you need, and be prepared to keep building in the future. So, let's take a look at some of the basic guidelines to developing a magic (or other) system:

First, any system you create must have rules. There must be limitations to what the power can do. Remember, what's available will be used. So if there are no rules, anything can happen and your world probably would have been destroyed ten times over by now. These rules must be logical and consistent - magic must work the same every where for every one, and the use of magic must follow the rules you set up. Think of yourself as a god trying to protect your creations from themselves. Humans just cannot leave well enough alone, and when they find something new, they have to play with it.

When you set up these rules, there are a few things you can look at, a few questions you can ask yourself, that might help you decide what will work with your world setting. For example, how magic rich is your world? This determines how common users are. If users are rare, then more than likely others on your world will consider them elite, possibly even gods, or would be so afraid of them they would become hunted, maybe even both. If users are common, more than likely you still won't have large groups of them traveling together too often, but there could be schools for magic. And if magic is mundane to the world, well, then everyone uses it.

Magic is much like water and air, in some respects. Your people may or may not need it to live, but it should be integrated into your world setting. It can't be an after thought. You can't create a character and then have an offhand remark, "oh, and she uses magic too." Being able to use magic or some other power becomes a part of who they are and influences how they think and behave. Remember what we said before about unusual physics: they will affect the development of your world. How people got to your planet determines a lot about their development. Likewise, magic will affect the evolution of your world. It will influence plants, creatures, and humans to some extent.

How long magic has been used will affect the development of your societies and how reliant they are on it. If you have a magic rich world where everyone uses it, that society is going to be pretty dependant on it. What happens if it should disappear? That society will fall apart. Every society also has a level of technology, but the richer and more common magic is, the less incentive people have to make technological breakthroughs, so you also have to consider how technology and magic interact in your world. It is possible to have magi-tech worlds, just read some Shadowrun books to see one version. But they need to have a well-developed ideology and background to it work.

Another big question to think about is the source of magic. If it's from within the user and requires the users life energy, you're going to have a lot less mages around, and very few truly powerful mages. By the same token, magic that uses outside sources such as other lives, would probably be illegal. Who can use this power? What makes them different from those who can't? How does using it change them? How do they realize they can use it? How do they learn to use it? What does it cost them to use it? Are there "black" and "white" uses of it? What makes them different? What makes the users different?

Now that we have the questions figured out, let's look at the types of magic. There are five basic types of magic that you may or may not want to use in your world: sorcery, divine magic, psychic abilities, magic items, and summoning magic.

The traditional magic, or sorcery, is the manipulation of the world through a mystical power using things like naming, rituals, incantations, sometimes even music. It's most common expression is found through what we call spells. This is the primary type of magic you will see in fantasy novels, usually supplemented with divine power.

Divine magic, magic from the gods, can also be called priestly magic or miracles. Things like dividing seas, creating water, and healing the sick and injured with a touch falls in this category. The power is granted by some higher power and the human caster is the conduit through which the magic works.

Psychic abilities is mind magic and mental talents such as ESP, telekinesis and the like. The user manipulates energy and objects solely with his or her mind. This type of magic tends to show up more in SF worlds or alternate earth realities. You sometimes see it in "mainstream" works as well. A popular fantasy series with mind magic is the Mercedes Lackey Valdemar novels.

Magic items are objects either with inherent power or that are created to hold power. They generally require some kind of action or word to activate them. Many items we could consider to be "magic" items are considered holy artifacts or relics, items of great power that are probably better off out of human hands, like the Holy Grail and the Ark of the Covenant. The old "Relic Hunter" TV show dealt with an archeologist that often found such artifacts and experienced their magic first hand.

And last we have summoning power. With summoning, the user only uses magic to summon a creature to him or her and that creature performs tasks for the summoner. Some of these tasks can seem magical, depending on the characteristics of the creature. An invisible sprite moving a cup would make the cup look like it was levitating, for example. Summoning is also often considered the "dark side" of magic in that it is associated with summoning demons and other evil creatures to gain power or cause harm. While similar to traditional magic, summoning almost always requires some kind of ritual. The beings summoned can be genies, sprites, fairies, spirits, elementals, and so on. And the tasks they can do can range from moving things to animating the dead.

You can use any one or all of these types of magic in your world, depending on what works for your world. But when you develop the systems, the more multi-leveled it is, the more work you will have to do. Each system has to be developed, not only independently, but with the other systems your world has in mind. There should be distinctions between each type of power you use, how it is used, what it can do, and so on. They each need to have their own advantages and disadvantages, and, ideally, they need to balance each other out. Finally, when all the work is done, they must also fit together in an integrated whole, with each system providing a part of the puzzle called magic in your world.

But how do you develop a magic system for one type of power, much less for several? Let's look at one step by step method for developing a magic (or other power) system. Keep in mind that you do not need to know everything from the get go. Like everything else, this will develop more as you go along. You also may not develop your system in the order considered here, but I have to say that having these steps when I created the system for Alden certainly would have made the process a lot easier.

The first thing you need to do is determine what kind of magic system do you want? How magic rich do you want your world to be? How common is the use of this power? You have to determine if it's used in daily tasks by everyone or only for the most significant, earth shaking purposes by a select few. Here's a list of world types based on the level of magic that can be found in them:

The Modern World has minimal magic (regardless of your beliefs on magic, we have very little pop, bang, boom that can't be explained in some way) with little to no affect on the world. Even priestly magic is a rare thing according to this setting, and is usually explained away scientifically. The further you go along the scale in this direction, the more the world will rely on science and the less the "miraculous" is seen. The further you go along the scale away from the modern world, the less the world relies of science and the more the "miraculous" can't be explained away.

Low Magic Worlds have magic, but it is rare. Miracles get attention, and few have access to use the power.

In Mid-Magic Worlds, magic is known and used. At the upper end of this particular level of magic, there may even be schools dedicated to training users. While magic is not generally relied on by society at this level, it may be used for minor things within the government or other organizations.

High or Mundane Magic Worlds use magic as a part of the fabric of life. It is a part of common, every day activities. In this world, the loss of magic would be devastating and civilization as they know it would end. The further along the scale in this direction, the more prevalent magic becomes and the less likely you are to see science as we know it, though there may be a science to magic in its place. The more magic there is in a world, the more integrated it will be in everything else in that world, from the natural flora and animals to the cultures that develop there.

Once you've determined how magic rich your world is and how powerful and prevalent that magic is, think about an underlying philosophy and background for the system. Consider how the magic might have influenced your world's development and its history of use. How many of the magic types will your world have available? Magic rich doesn't mean you have to use all of them, it just means magic is prevalent in your world.

Think about what will distinguish each type of magic you allow: will they overlap? Will they be rigidly categorized? How are they distinctly different from one another? And they must be distinct or there's no point to having more than one variety of magic available. What limitations will each have? Here's just a few options to consider: limited power available; it's difficult to use; it takes too long to do anything immediate; it's unpredictable; it can cause physical, mental, and/or emotion exhaustion; the resources needed to use it are rare or too expensive either monetarily or personally; the target or the source must be willing or must be within a certain distance; every use does something detrimental to the user; and so on.

One option some may want to try to impose is a code of behavior as a limitation, but that's actually unrealistic and here's why: it only takes one psycho with no morals and who doesn't give a rats a$$ about the code to blow up the world. Look at how many treaties the U.S. has signed with the Native American tribes over the years. Look at where the American Indians are now. Now try to apply that to real men (and you must see your characters as real, with flaws and weaknesses) with magical power at their disposal. Give them power and it will be used, and not necessarily in accordance with an ethic or code or treaty unless some greater power can enforce it in a dramatic way. You see enough people self-immolate from using their power in the wrong way and you think twice about doing so yourself.

This stage of development ends with you writing down your goals, parameters, and philosophy for your system. You can use these decisions to help check all the other decisions you make as you go along and to double check the system as a whole when you're done.

Stage two of developing your system begins with considering the nature of magic in your world. Just what is magic in your world? It can be an essence, a person's will in a mind over matter kind of way, a molecule, it could even be the glue that holds your world together (and, as you can probably imagine, messing with that kind of magic could be very dangerous! ). In Alden, magic is a force that is both a part of everything and layer's over everything, and mages have to be taught to reach for that separate layer or risk harming anything they take the magic from.

You also have to decide the source of the magic and how stable that source is. Even if the source is stable, the availability of power can fluctuate and be unstable. There are four basic, possible sources.

The first is the user him or herself. A practitioner of magic in this case draws the power from within, which means you have to decide the nature of those who can use magic. Is the ability a natural, biological process, perhaps genetic? Is it a gift given only to a few by some outside source? Is it a form of adaptation? How limited is it? Can everyone use it or just a few? If not everyone, why not?

The second source is from the environment, either the surroundings themselves or another person. The user could either have to draw from these sources, or act as a conduit for a power that fills him automatically. The source could be generally available, or require access to some special place either physically or spiritually.

Third, the source could be someone or something from outside the world or the reality of the user. An example would be the gods. How does a person qualify to use this power? What requirements must s/he meet? What kind of history is there between this other and the user and the user's society? Why does this "other" allow people access to the magic? When these requirements are decided, you have to decide how they are enforced. Does the other just keep access closed to people who do not meet its requirements? And don't downplay the attitude of the one giving the power - not all who give gifts do so for benevolent reasons.

The fourth source requires others to use the power for the user. For some reason, the power is inaccessible to humans, so they must ask others to do it for them. In this case, you would need to profile the beings that can use the power as if they were characters and determine pretty much the same things as if in the third source. Also keep in mind that there would be less incentive for humans to develop new spells and magic would more than likely be less prevalent in the world.

Within those four sources, there is a lot of leeway for your system. Some specific sources include: divine power, the life force of either the user or other living beings, the shedding of blood or taking of life, sacrifices some part of oneself such as intelligence or ability, a magical aura that's a part of everything, a separate plane of existence, or particular objects or materials. Perhaps crystals on your world actually store power, although they can only be used to power objects and burn out rather quickly. Now, what will that do to crystal mining on your world?

The source will sometimes determine how the power behaves. Electricity has particular characteristics that give it certain behaviors, gas has others that result in other behavior. Using a real element as a template can make it much easier to figure out what will happen when the unexpected comes up in your story. I likened Alden magic to water. Water tends to flow, to fill in the space where some was taken from, and so on. this gave me a lot of information on how Alden magic behaves.

Stage two of developing your magic system ends with determining whether or not the magic in your world replenishes. If it doesn't and your society is reliant on it, they will eventually run out. What will happen when it's gone? If it does replenish, how does it do that? Is there any concern that the magic will run out faster than it can be replenished? Think about our oil problems and you can see some of the issues that can come up with a magic source that replenishes too slowly.

With these basics set in place, you will be able to develop the specifics of how magic works - what kinds of "spells" the users can create and so on - and how it will affect your writing. At the very least, you can see what kind of influence it has had on your world's development. Because you know how the magic behaves, you can develop rules of use that take that behavior into account. There are a few more characteristics that we need to look at to develop our system, and we'll take a look at those in the next lesson.