Exchange of Realities

For those parts that I couldn’t fit into yesterday or the day before.

Differentiated elemental magic systems have one major weakness: phenomena that are perfectly balanced between two elements. Consider lightning: is it air or fire? You might think air, because lightning comes from clouds—I can think of several RPGs, both tabletop and video game, that would agree with you—or fire, because of its heat and the fact that it does, well, start fires (you wouldn’t be alone there either). Ice, if it isn’t a force in and of itself (that concept always seemed silly to me, but I suppose something needed to break the fire-water circle) may usually be assigned to water, but cold often ends up being handed off to air, so what are you going to do about snow?

Speaking of elemental differentiation, where does it come from? Why can’t people combine elements? Where do they get the power in the first place? This is a tough one; I’ve never seen it explained well without falling back on either bloodline or a gift of power from some sort of greater source. Often both at once. Might it be geographical? Academic? Is there a predisposition, or do people choose to study different types? (And if it’s a matter of study, why does choosing one type bar a given person from the others?)

And in something where the difference between elements is so striking, why not let it slip into the language? Most of us have seen nouns with gender; why not instead split them up between each of the elements most closely associated with whatever the word is and neutral?

And what about those ubiquitous elemental dominance systems? Do you plan on using one? If you must, do you have a coherent explanation for why each x beats each y? As one of my friends once pointed out, a pet peeve is “Arbitrary and nonsensical dominance systems, either when people have trouble figuring out the order for the four majorities (why does fire dominate air again?) or when they added other weird elements to make up for the general hollowness of the 4/5 (at least when fire dominates marshmallows that makes sense).”

How about making sure magic types aren’t one-trick ponies? Sure, it’s easy to see fire as nothing but damage because of your latest video game RPG, but there are things that can be done with it that don’t necessarily involve frying your foes or their furniture. Bringing about changes—think about those pine cones that won’t open without a good wildfire. Creating smoke and only smoke. Identifying metals. Heating up tea.

For added amusement, check out the association between the Greek elements and the platonic solids, and think about what it means for your dice.