Worldbuilding: The Fantasy School Problem

Comments · 139

• JU

  @JustInTimeWorldbuilding · 6 months ago · pinned

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• DA

  @davidclifford7408 · 6 months ago

  It&apos;s never occurred to me before that every wizard I&apos;ve ever played studied at an institution, rather than a much more plausible master-apprentice relationship. Except for one, an ambitious half-orc who self studied by stealing teaching material from a human wizardry student. <br>Also, I&apos;d point to Taoist sorcery and Arabic alchemy as real world examples of proto-scientific practices that where functionally magic. If those systems or something similar actually produced repeatable results, you could very easily have a system of scientific study in a world with &quot;magical&quot; technology impossible in our world&apos;s physics.

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• RO

  @ronecotex · 6 months ago

  When it comes to Magic I like the idea of The Apprentice model how do you get an apprenticeship how long is the contract lots of plot points in my mind

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• VI

  @vishnu_m · 6 months ago

  To be fair a lot depends on how exactly magic works, how hard is master it or actually how easily it can be used for mundane stuff. <br>I often imagine &quot;magic&quot; as a system to &quot;direct&quot; some form of &quot;force&quot; and create an &quot;effect&quot; for that you would need to understand what you actually try to make. Spawning a complex construction like a bridge would most likely require equally advanced knowledge to engineering.

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• RO

  @Royalblue64 · 6 months ago

  In a world that’s had a sufficient amount of time to develop, I would expect something similar to the scientific method to form. It might not be the exact Hypothesis -&gt; Experiment -&gt; Results -&gt; Repeat setup, but I can imagine many ways of arriving at something similar. Of course, with very soft magic systems, it’s probably true that scientific advancement would stagnate if the soft magic is very influential in the world. Additionally, there will be fantasy worlds that have not advanced enough to form this method. For example, in my fantasy world, there was an extreme apocalypse about 330 years before the story, the human population was reduced to a tiny fraction (fewer than 1000 remaining) and the gods essentially had to rebuild humanity and society from the ground up. As such, while there is some technological carryover from the prior era, the methodologies and processes of that era have been lost and replaced with rudimentary engineering and medicine with no scientific method. However, even in that world, people understand that doing things in different ways yields different (sometimes better) results, so people still invent and refine things in a semi-scientific way. But really, that’s just entrepreneurship.

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• IR

  @ironyconfident · 6 months ago

  I imagine magic like lifting heavy weights. &nbsp;The further away from your body the weight is, the more difficult it is, and you can only lift a weight so many times before your body is exhausted. &nbsp;So creating bread from nothing would consume huge amounts of energy.

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• DA

  @darwood_writer · 6 months ago

  I can imagine the drama of wanting to learm a type of magic and being told &quot;No, you&apos;re talents actually work better for Y magic, not X magic&quot; like HunterxHunter&apos;s Nen system. <br><br>Still, I imagine that you could still read from your preferred topic while not being your primary magic

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• HA

  @hasseo195 · 6 months ago

  About the part: &quot;They have the secret word of power. They only work in secret&quot;: <br>The prequel to the books: &quot;The guild of black magic&quot; had used that concept in a nice way. <br><br>In that world, had every wizard only his own knowledge. The wizard took a appreantice (sometimes more), where it was a exchange of learning vs working (the appreantice hat to work for his teacher, i think in male/female relationship had the appreantice even bed duties to do, when the master wanted it). <br>That leaded to the point, that many mages had secret knowledge to spells and skills, that others didnt knowed. And than came a war, where many of the mages died. And some of the lead characters of that book questioned, how much knowledge was now lost. Because only one person, or only a few person had it (the mc discovered healing magic in that story, what was a key factor for them to win that war). <br><br>After the war ended, had they than decided, to create a academy, where all knowledge is gathered toghether. And where a more modern school system (like whe have it in other magic schools) was created. <br><br>So, it can make sense, to not have magic in secret.

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• OK

  @okeyy91828 · 6 months ago

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• AT

  @Atanalcar · 6 months ago

  Regarding the interplay of science and magic, I like Rick Cook&apos;s Wizardry books. A computer programmer gets pulled into a world where magic is real. Despite not having magical ability, he ends up coding his own spells. The magically adept don&apos;t understand his magic, he doesn&apos;t actually understand the principles behind what he&apos;s doing, and some ordinary folk learn how to hack his spells without really understanding either magic or coding. While it&apos;s not the main focus, there are some attempts at teaching this &quot;new magic&quot; as the series goes on, which leads to other problems with the magical creatures of the world.<br><br>As for the after class… the sentient library point made me think of Discworld&apos;s Unseen University library where some books are so dangerous they need to be chained up for students&apos; safety. And L-space, of course.

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• OR

  @orchidburch1214 · 6 months ago

  In my world, magic only occurs with people who have it in their bloodline. And not all people of that bloodline have the power to do magic. Because magic is linked to emotions, a large part of the education is teaching people how to control their emotions. They live in a boarding school style school because if they are emotions get out of control, they can do some real harm. In the school. If, at the end of the education, any people cannot control their emotions or someone didn&apos;t take their education seriously, the dwarfs bring a white Crystal. Once that Crystal touches their body, it nullifies their magic. Magic can increase the healing power of herbs, but can only heal without herbs for rare mages. All the others learn herbs along with the basics: arithmetic, reading, writing, paper-making, mapmaking, history, law, and politics.<br><br>Because of a complex history, mages are technically the rulers, but each city has a judge that does the actual governance. The mages are in charge of keeping the magical barriers that protect the country, and controlling who has a treaty.

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• RO

  @ronecotex · 6 months ago (edited)

  But I think would be interesting is an unsanctioned education someone born with a natural Affinity to Magic but for whatever reason no one wants to Mentor them do they teach themselves mind pillage simply seizing the knowledge they desire because of that they are a fugitive unsectioned wizard

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