Guild Wars 2

“Magic does not mean logic goes out the window.”

I plucked this gem from the suggestions forum, one of the more recent discussions about um, armor variety. I was going to respond, and then decided that my response has very little to do with armor.
‘[the presence of] Magic does not mean [that] logic goes out the window.’

Actually, it does. Magic causes entities to behave contrary to their natures. That is the essence of magic. Oak trees do not become fully grown within days, it is not in the nature of oak trees to gain that much mass that quickly, yet sylvari magic can manage that. A slow flowing stream does not run up hill, it is the nature of flowing water to take the path of least resistance,the inquest’s magic causes a stream to flow against the pull of gravity.
Boulders do not become self willed humanoid shapes, air cannot be ignited by mere force of will, you cannot pass from one point to another without first traveling through the space between those points. Magic allows all of this to happen. If you should ever place a restriction upon magic, magic cannot accomplish this or that particular thing, a wizard, an eldrich abomination, a god, or a little girl will step forward and say, “Well, actually, " I can make that happen.” Magic means that logic becomes an impotent and arbitrary method. Yes I could take several months and learn to speak French fluently, or I could just perform this ritual and have the same effect. Within a day, an hour, a few minutes…

To doubt the protective ability of a party dress or thong woven using a ritual, is laughable in a magical world. If it is inherently magical of course it will stand up to a great sword or a flamethrower, magic means it gets a free pass to do the impossible.

Anyone care to argue?
But our magic has rules !
Yes, yes, of course it does! Now go and tell that to the new self-styled lord of darkness over there, he seems to think he can break all of your magical rules… He must be doing something, even plot armor isn’t holding up against him!

I think what you’re doing here is taking what writers have talked about for ages, and using the word logic, in place of plausibility.

Magic does not have to be “logical”, but within the context of a single system, it should be plausible. This is what most fantasy writers do as part of their world building. They decide how magic works in advance and they stay within that framework…and if they’re good they’ll build within that framework.

In Stephen Donaldson’s book “Mirror of Her Dreams” he uses magic that centers around the use of mirrors. It’s not plausible at all, except that it is within the concepts revealed in the book.

In Steve Lazarowitz’s book “Fantasy Cereal”, the author does something completely different with mirrors. In the real world totally implausible. In a fantasy world it works perfectly because it’s just so brilliant.

In Guild Wars 2, there’s less “world-building” centered around magic, but the magic is themed. Asuran magic is very different from Sylvari magic, which is very different from Flame Legion magic.

The same can be said for technology. The charr techology is themed. So is the dredge technology.

Which is all you can really expect from most games.

As a writer, I would love to talk to the both of you more on this.

Any time. I love talking writing. Feel free to message me in game if you like.

I look forward to it.

Nope. altering probability, cheating, is not unique to magic. You could use magic to fix dice, you can also weight them or file down the edges, and then throw them so that the die lands on the sides you want it to.
The thing about magic, the thing that makes it unique, that sets it apart from everything else. Is that it can make things act against their natures. All of my examples from the previous post are not improbable, they are impossible without the presence of magic.
Think about a world where magic is common.
If magic were to exist, how could Sr. Isac Newton have discovered gravity? People hovering around on brooms, the only fruit that actually falls off of trees is in the poorer communities who don’t have spells to automatically gather it. "Gravity is a force that pulls on things related to the poor and unintelligent… " How do the asura know about electricity? Do they know about electricity? “A fluctuating magnetic field generates an electric current… and so do an elementalists hands…” How can you even say that A=B (except when magic is present) If magic is everywhere in your world? Is there a place in Gw2 that is totally devoid of magic? Even a null field is caused by magic. “All objects fall at the same rate, unless one turns into a sparrow in midair, or falls upwards, or disappears.” Where are the crucial non magical similarities or differences between different types of matter and energy when they may be converted from one to the other or even cease to exist for any number of magical causes?
God, the elementals alone… Absolutely everywhere! The whole planet must be saturated with magic. I am sure you want to compare magic to a natural force like gravity.. but my brain is fried at the moment. Later.

Magic is like religion, it explains the unexplainable

Nah. Magic does not make anything work contrary to their nature.

It just changes natures.

Everything is made out of energy. Matter is a form of energy. Magic is another form. They are basically three sides of the same thing. All is just eternal alchemy.
Just one thing manifesting itself in different ways.

When you freeze water, it is no longer liquid. When you boil it, it becomes gas.
Same with magic. When you apply magic, you change the nature of matter, energy, time and space at a fundamental level, and so their behavior changes.
You can make matter generate energy. You can make energy generate matter. You can make magic generate energy and matter, and same with matter and energy. Picture a triangle with six arrows, two of each go from each vertex to the other two.

Our world doesn’t have “magic”, it’s not part of the fabric of our reality. Magic is not part of the rules of our universe, but it’s part of many fantasy universes.
People make rituals and spells, and they work, but so did many people with things that are not explained with moder science like engineering and medicine.

Apply science to magic, and you’ll be able to make devices that work on magic and produce magic effects, just like asura do.

Logic still works. It’s like with quantum physics. Classic physics may no longer work at a quantum level, but that doesn’t mean there’s no rules and logic. There’s rules and logic, just OTHER rules and logic.

If you change the nature of something it is no longer that thing. If I file down the edges of a die it is now a fixed die. It has become another entity and cannot behave exactly like the original. I am not talking about using magic to convert one entity into another. As you pointed out several forces can convert matter and energy into other forms. Since that is not unique to magic it is not essential to magic. Converting things is not the essence of magic. Magic causes a stream to run up hill, when the magic wears off, or is depleted, the stream will once again run down hill. Magic didn’t convert the water into special water that runs up hill. take that same water out of the stream, away from the magic field and it will behave normally. The nature of that water has not been changed. You get moa morphed, and for the duration of the spell you are a moa. When it wears off you are yourself again. Your nature hasn’t changed. the only thing that changed was that a spell was present which acted upon your nature, and then the spell was removed and its influence upon your nature ceased.

You could be converted into energy and that energy converted to a moa, but at that point you would not be you and your nature would have been replaced, not just acted upon, by magic.
The problem with talking about magic is that it doesn’t exist and, the terms I can use to describe magic are not as precise as I would like.

What people once called magic….many now call science. Some may argue that in a sense, they are one and the same.

“Oak trees do not become fully grown within days, it is not in the nature of oak trees to gain that much mass that quickly” …yet. We just haven’t found the miracle-grow that will make this happen…..yet, and I’m sure some scientist out there is looking for something like this.

However, discussing the logic of this as it pertains to fantasy video game is kind of pointless. Its world and ours do not have the same rules.

Not even going to comment on the whole ‘magic is cheating’ thought process. That’s just one big lofl.

“Magic is just science we don’t understand”. A lot of stuff in nature appears magical until we pick apart and learn what is happening. Glowing jellyfish, for instance, is an impressive phenomena that would easily be marked as Magical until we attained our knowledge of biology and chemistry.

A good lore has a proper “system of magic”. Introducing limits and circumstantial peculiarities to magic makes it more believable. It piques curiosity as to how it works and how the world takes advantage of it. Orrians making use of magic for trivially as opposed to Krytans who use magic strictly is really telling about the difference of culture and the circumstances in which they live.

Magic is part of nature. It’s a fundamental force that can be manipulated just like electromagnetism or nuclear fusion/fission. Since magic can interact with any other fundamental force(gravitomagical, electromagical, etc.), it’s at the very least part of the basic set of natural laws governing the universe.

Tyrian lore says the gods gave the creatures magic, but that statement can be interpreted in different ways. Did the Gods imbue the whole planet and everything sentient on it with magical radiation, or did they just teach everyone that was intelligent enough to understand such fundamental concepts how to use it? Much older races lived on the planet eons ago, before the Gods’ interaction, and they supposedly knew many many times as much about magic as even the smartest Asuran think tank today.

Tyrian magic is a resource, an energy with limited capacity. It can be harnessed, stored, and converted. Just like photonic or kinetic energy. The people of Tyria use magic in different states of purity, with Mesmers being masters of it in its least refined and controlled form.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Not even going to comment on the whole ‘magic is cheating’ thought process. That’s just one big lofl.

I didn’t mean that using magic was cheating, I just meant to use cheating at dice as a non unique use for magic. My point was that if you can replace probability with other means, such as physically altering the dice, then replacing probability is not unique to magic and so is not essential or part of magic’s essence. Like setting things on fire is not an essential characteristic of magic, there are other non magical ways to set things on fire.

My point is that magic causes things to act against their natures, and this would make the application of logic to a magical situation difficult, if not impossible.

Does every law of physical science have the disclaimer, “unless affected by nearby magic.” 2 + 2 = 4 unless a doubling enchantment is in effect, though such an enchantment can be affected by a counter charm which will negate or merely diminish the effect of the enchantment, except on the one hundredth day of the year at 2:00 pm when such charms have no effect, not to be confused with the one hundredth day of the centennial year which actually doubles the effect of doubling enchantments, unless that day happens to fall on a Thursday…

See Arthur C. Clarke’s third law:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is completely indistinguishable from magic.

Also see the other side of that law:

Sufficiently analyzed magic is completely indistinguishable from technology.

The hardest part about perpetually having magic is that magic can only violates the nature of things once. Then, once that new phenomena is discovered and studied, then that new knowledge becomes the nature of the universe. Indeed, the laws of physics are constantly changing. For awhile we thought matter could not be created or destroyed, but then we learned off mass energy conversion. Then we thought that energy couldn’t be created or destroyed, but then we learned about virtual particles spawned from the uncertainty principle that dictated nuclear strong force.

Inevitably it will come to an end. Every time the laws of physics are broken, they mend and restructure into something else that incorporates the previous law-breaking phenomena. To come up with something that is “magic” that will not eventually be broken down into a naturalistic explanation is truly a remarkable feat. To this day I haven’t seen a fantasy setting ever accomplish such a feat.