Tad Williams, well known Fantasy author, made some statements in an interview recently…
“The fine line between magic and just the incomprehensibility of the universe is big with me,” he says. “I never use a lot of magic in my [writing], because I think it denatures magic, to have it be like hot and cold running water, and I want every time it comes up to be something that’s exciting.”
Williams is definitely in the Tolkien mold where magic is rare in his worlds. That’s one way to do it, one that I don’t necessarily agree with generally, and honestly I think that in most cases it makes for boring books. I think that magic should be somewhat prominent if it exists, otherwise the world feels just like an alternative medieval world…but with maybe some elves or one wizard with a staff…It worked for Tolkien but for most it just doesn’t. Maybe it’s because there WAS alot of magic in Tolkien’s world, but it was just a world where the magic was mostly out of reach, or ancient, and ruined.
Sometimes, while reading a fantasy story that hasn’t been well thought out, Williams just has to ask, “How do these people survive? Yes, they all have cute little names and they all go around with huge staffs in their hands and they have friends that are dwarves and crap, but how do these people actually eat? How do they make a living? What do these people do when they need fresh water? How do they school their children? Is there any school? How do they pass on knowledge? Don’t you understand that a village like that wouldn’t be able to survive out in the middle of nowhere? Those people would die. They would have already died out a hundred years ago. You can’t have 20 people with no visible means of support living out in the middle of nowhere. It doesn’t work.”
This is something I totally agree with though. It’s kind of like when you watch some Fantasy movie and there’s this massive castle…surrounded by barren wasteland. Why the fuck is that castle there? I mean seriously. If you come across some mud village….why is it there? What reason does that mud village have to exist? Etc.
But that’s where the magic comes in for me, and one reason I really enjoy the Eberron and Dark Sun settings from Dungeons and Dragons. They’re settings that take magic in very different directions, but worlds where magic makes or has made a very real impact.
In Dark Sun when magic is used it saps it from the life of the land around the caster, making that land dead. Over time it’s turned the world into a desert, with powerful sorcerer kings, and people who hate magic and magic users, and have developed psychic powers instead to withstand the brutal world.
Meanwhile in Eberron magic is everywhere. It’s in the fabric of the world blending reality to alternate planes allowing otherwise impossible cities and technologies. There’s a “lighning rail” essentially a high speed rail line from city to city powered entirely by magic. Airships powered by captured elementals. magical everburning torches for streetlights.
Tad Williams, I would bet, hates Eberron.
I think it’s great though. Because in a world where anyone can learn a little magic, a little magic would be anywhere. The thing is in that world most peopel aren’t that high a ‘level’ in D&D parlance. They can cast basic spells, make basic magic things, but most aren’t the higih powered wizards destroying things with fireballs. But if most people can learn a basic spell, then I’d think those basic spells would be everywhere.
In a magical world I think you need to define, at least to yourself, if not the reader, WHY magic isn’t everywhere. Why doesn’t everyone have a stone that turns into a light source? Oh sure everyone wouldn’t necessarily be able to teleport to other dimensions, but a glowing rock? Why not?
Eberron I think has a good balance. Lots of ‘basic’ magic that’s leveraged in ways people would actually leverage magic were it available…but it’s still comparable say to blacksmithing in most fantasy. A sizeable town will have a blacksmith or two, and they can do some metalwork, but probably not as good as the one in the city who specializes in copper or steel smelting for swords. The mud village blacksmith can make a horseshoe or fix a plow, but a full plate suit? Never. Yet there’s one in the city working for the king who can.
Same for magic. The mud village magician can maybe make a healing potion, or a light stone, but not defend against rampaging orcs, but the wizard in the tower sure could without a thought.
Anyway, both are obviously viable in books, but I just think that if magic exists, and isn’t prevalant at a basic level you need to know why. Maybe not everyone can make magic. Maybe it’s a maiar thing like in Tolkien. Maybe it’s destructive. Who knows. But there needs to be a reason that everyone can’t learn a little cantrip.
Otherwise it just doesn’t make sense to me.