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Magic-as-a-technology has been popular in the sci-fi/fantasy genres for novels for the past ten, twenty years. I remember when it started getting popular, and I
by hosh 11y ago
Magic-as-a-technology has been popular in the sci-fi/fantasy genres for novels for the past ten, twenty years. I remember when it started getting popular, and I thought, "this is awesome."
It's not so awesome anymore, not for me at least.
Magic as a consequence of shifts in consciousness and awareness, as in, how you perceive and experience reality rather than any set of manipulable and repeatable forces -- that's something more interesting. I've been seeing one or two indie authors writing in this space, listing their works for the under $5 bin at Amazon.
Now how to portray that in a game? That's more difficult. One of the games I remember that have done something like this is Bastion. It wasn't necessarily part of the game mechanic, though. It was the way the narration unfolded as a reaction to your actions that started changing experiences. Another is Batman: Arkem Asylum. Another one that comes to mind is Ninja Pizza Girl, though it wasn't intended as a game on magic. It does have the shifts in consciousness though.
I expect to see a lot more of this when immersive VR/AR gets more popular. It's very easy to start messing with frames and breaking out of them in ways that will seem mildly trippy.
Still, I've got some ideas of my own, and they are implementable even with a 2-D, top-down game.
- hosh 11y agoOh yeah, I forgot to add this in. There is a connection between the tendency to treat magic as a system, and modernity. See Ken Wilber's writings about that.
- DennisP 11y agoWhat indie books treat magic as a shift in awareness? That does sound interesting. It's similar to many actual shamanistic beliefs.
- hosh 11y agoIt's not just shamanism. I've met psychonaut, meditator, or practitioners in ceremonial magic will tell you about such shifts. Here are some of the recent ones I've found: MageLife, P. Tempest. Warning: badly edited, though the run-on sentences has it's own rhythm and somehow works with consciousness shifts. This author nailed it. This is the one that stands out the most among the ones I have read. MageBorn: the Blacksmith's Son. Five book series. First book is badly edited when I read it (the author didn't get a professional editor until the second book), and you don't really start seeing the consciousness shifts until at least the second book. It becomes more prominent as the series goes on. However, the first book starts out by treating enchantments as a lost technology. Notable mentions: "Path of Calm" is OK, but it could be done a lot better. I applaud the author's attempt because, frankly, people are stumbling their way through it. The book's "paths" are loosely based on Buddhist practices, with "Path of Calm" being samatha, and "Path of Fire" being tumo. However, the way the author talked about working with emotions tells me that, while the author might have meditative practice ... you can tell where his personal experience ends when when he starts making shit up. "Dawn of Wonder" doesn't start with magic. It does deal deep with emotions. It's probably one of the better fictional books I've seen that depicts a genuine "born again" experience. That's towards the end though. DK Holmberg's series, starting with Chased by Fire is OK. Again, by "OK", I mean it shows these shifts better than your run-of-the-mill magic-as-technology. The series is a bit slow, since the main character ignores a lot of himself quite a bit. I have to admit, I have not finished the series. Fell off of it at the end of the fourth book and have not gotten back into it. There is one by a Russian author, but I don't remember the name. In this world, there are no prisoners. Criminals get sent into an MMO with the pain blockers settings removed. There are a lot of classical MMO elements -- but as you start getting deeper into the book, you start seeing those shifts come out. I'm looking forward to the next books in the series when they get translated to English.
- hosh 11y agoI did think of a story I want to write. People use magic a lot in combat settings, and I finally got tired of that. If say, magic comes from the shaping of consciousness, what if there are grave consequences to using magic to kill someone. The story I'll write (eventually) starts with an intelligent kid whose been told never to do that. He's smarter than his teachers and parents. One day, he saw someone in trouble, wanted to be a hero -- and prove all those other adults wrong -- and steps in to kill someone. Consequences ensues. He pretty much spends his whole life trying to run away from said consequences. Not your usual fare. Most people want to hear a story about defeating impossible odds :-D
- DennisP 11y agoThanks for all the references! I've downloaded some samples. Your story idea reminds me of Le Guin's Earthsea trilogy, one of my all-time favorite fantasy works.
- hosh 11y agoEarthsea is pretty cool. Ursula K Le Guin grew up in Asia. Her father had this copy of the Tao Te Ching, something Le Guin later rendered in English. She worked with it with the ear of a poet, spent decades working on it, throughout her writing career. Earthsea superficially resembles a Western, Tolkien-esque high fantasy, but its thematic core is rooted in the Tao Te Ching and similar streams.
- DennisP 11y agoThat's really interesting, I didn't know that.
- hosh 11y agoNow, here's the thing. There are a few big-name authors who does it well, but in weird places. This shows up a lot in Peter F. Hamilton's Commonwealth Saga -- it's sci fi. Brent Weeks books all have this, and he does a great job with the martial arts in there too. These would be the Shadow Angel trilogy and the Lightbringer series. The books Brandon Sanderson after he ghost-wrote the end of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series have some of these aspects. Robert Jordan is pretty good about this in some of the places.