Mythruna

I wanted to move this discussion where I could guiltlessly expound upon it. I have an idea for how to organize the elements

(https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-GkVjFurzUcM/Tr4Uth-gFsI/AAAAAAAAAcM/N7t6bCHu3Ro/s402/Mythruna%252520Elements.png)

in this system:
Life and Spirit are very similar, and are the main elements. Life is calmer, and Spirit is rougher. The four "branches" (mag, light, elec, grav.) are similar to the main element that they are connected to, and the element they are lined up with. Inside the main box, there are the four contesting "facets", if you will, of each of the main elements (water, fire, earth, air).

And that's basically it. Hope it's helpful!  ;)

It's interesting.  I have a few different sets of notes to jive and this picture doesn't really fit any of them! :)

Which isn't to say that it isn't cool... I just have to think about it. :)  Yet another set of theories for the mix.

In one old set of notes, there is the physical plane and the spirit plane separated by the astral plane.  The spirit plane is where the ghosts live and the physical plane is where the rest of us live.  The astral plane is basically devoid of energy.  All gems and crystals punch through these layers in some way but only spirit crystals punch through to the spirit plane as they are a result of this all being twisted together.  Mythruna (the planet), at least in this particular mythology, is uniquely twisted in this way which is why the spirit plane bleeds into the physical one at all.  In my old DMing days, this was how I internally explained ghosts, etc..

A similar but separate mythology explained all magic as a bunch of spheres that were misaligned.  Because they are out of whack, sensitive people can see them and potentially learn to manipulate them.  Life energy in this approach is a harmonic combination of the other elemental energies.  Combined with the above, life with a spirit is a combination of other magic energies in harmonic resonance that pulls a spirit to the astral plane.  When the body dies the spirit goes back to the spirit plane.

The interesting thing in both of these approaches is that there is no "spirit magic" energy.  It's a place not an energy.  I waffle on this one but I will likely drop it as a separate force.

Similarly, the distinction between gravity and earth energy is a very weak one and I may just combine those.  This would make earth energy one end of a spectrum that goes through magnetism, light, and heat/fire.  In the other direction, water then air then back to fire again.  And then life force is a meta-energy... if those others were in a circle then it would be in the middle and the convergence is strong enough to punch through to the astral plane.

This is the problem of having collected reams of hand-written material over the long years of DMing pen-and-paper role playing games.  (Only as I said in the other thread, it didn't actually have to work in that case.) :)  And I've been thinking about this kind of "magic system" since 2003 or 2004 when I tried to implement some of it in Neverwinter Nights mods... and then subsequently tried to refine the ideas for the RPG I was designing way back then before scrapping it.

So I'm still working on it... and was actually trying to fill gaps in the magic-physics part earlier this evening.  In one field based design, it's convenient if all of the four element magics (earth, fire, air, water) have a positive and a negative side that can be combined in specific frequencies to create physical manifestations and/or used to manipulate those (which would allow some cool things like "bending" as  in the Avatar series though I don't know that I'd take it that far).  If I do that, it may be convenient to treat electricity and magnetism differently.

Your input is very interesting.  If nothing else, it forces me to think about it all again. :)  Thanks.

Thinking more about your picture, I've evolved some new ideas that I'm playing with also.  In this approach, I've reduced the base magics down to gravity/matter, heat/light, and electricity/magnetism.

The ability to conjure water or fire or air (or anything else really) then becomes a manifestation of these.  In this mythology, someone who could manipulate water is just attuned to a certain frequency of gravity.  Is also nicely supports something like teleportation while still leaving it a really complicated build to produce.

The engineer in me likes it but I still have to map about a dozen sample magic effects to it to see how viable it is.  The problem with simpler systems is they actually make my programming job harder, sometimes.

Just another one for me to keep in the mix for when I actually go to implement code.

Incidentally, I've tried coming up with pen/paper games too, but usually the magic system is as far as I get.

One other system (I may as well put it up, while I'm here) goes as follows:

There are three circles, mind, body, and elemental, or, changing it a bit, spirit, life, and elemental.
that's the base idea, and then I came up with some less-than-amazing ideas for specific magics. each circle has two sets of opposites, so in a diamond-shape, the opposites would be at opposite ends.
Spirit:
internal-external
light-dark
Body:
life-death
organic-mechanical
Elemental:
earth-air
fire-water

I had them set up so they could combine, and that's where it really bombed. The lamer ones were things like sky-hammer (machine death) and knock-out (internal darkness)

But the idea was there. ;)