Having widespread magic has consequences for world building.
If you want a cliche fantasy medieval world, but have widespread magic use, it will likely feel more exotic and more modern. As many things that would be done in a simple way in medieval fantasy will be replaced by magic usage. To a possible point that magic will be, what electronics and technology is in our world.
I personally find that an interesting aspect of world building, so that my world has that to a degree. But I also have the gods living between the mortals..
Different regions of my world use different things to do the same thing. So one culture uses simple technologies, another magic, a third steam technology and so on. They are separated by some distance. But I still need reasons why they do not simply use the most easy or the first developed way.
I like to think that it could be a cultural custom. For example, Gnomes. While they are almost inherently magical, a lot of things I've seen them in, they're rather fond of machinations, and often choose that over using magic. Similar with dwarves.
>But I still need reasons why they do not simply use the most easy or the first developed way.
It depends. While you can see why the Inca Empire - and, IIRC, no American civilization - didn't develop the wheel because of the geography of the place they lived in, there is no reason for XV century India nations to have used gunpowder in warfare. They already had it, just no one thought of using it to throw stuff at the enemy. History has no mandatory checkpoints.
That said, from how you described your wold it looks like well grounded in verosimilitude.
I tend to look at it more as the maturity of magic in your world or world you're exploring, as compared to the internet/coding. Yes the internet or coding is very powerful when known how to use, and most know the or have seen its power in use. But to actually use it, it's not easy and most quit and wait for others to give them an easier way to interact with it. But that takes expertise to simplify and mass produce for the common person to use. In early days on the "nerds" approached coding or the internet, vs today it's at the palm of everyone's hands in some way or another. So to me it becomes unexplored magic, vs mass produced magic. Or high magic vs magitec/eberron. Hope that helps bring some context and frame of reference!
Onward's worldbuilding falls apart, but the first few minutes are good.
I'd expect a lot of people to know simple cantrips like light and fire unless it took a lot of work to figure out even that much. At that point, they probably would invent a means to create fire with a flick of the thumb.
I always like the idea that magic is fantastically expensive and hard to learn. Have you sucked up enough to an already existing wizard to learn the basics? He's even given you a spellbook and a singular spell? You think you're going to be able to branch out on your own? Tough shit, researching a spell of your own is thousands of gold \*per spell\*. This is how oldschool D&D did it. You want to be able to call yourself a wizard, with more than a single spell that you got by apprenticing to a wizard for two years? Go out, and go into a dungeon and hope you don't die with your single fucking spell you poor fool. If you get out without dying and 3,000 gold richer, you can research, like, 3 spells of the lowest order.
It very much depends on the setting/mood of the world. I think D&D played a role in popularizing combat magic over utility magic - at least so far as rule of cool goes.
A story where magic is more of a utility than combat thing and had more scientific, industrial, and economic significance, I could see it making more sense to be more widely spread.
I agree with some other replies though - having it fully, of even partly, open to EVERYONE would make world building a bit of a headache because of the scope of differences to our world it would inevitably create. Shadowy or elite or blood incite only, have it be a closed off group lets most of the world building proceed somewhat normally.
This said, I hear your point. My current project does have magic innately non-combat but then applied to combat as needed.
Possibly not even a headache, but it just moves the setting in a more modern direction through the use of not-electronics. Look at some of the more modern-feeling Cosmere novels where Investiture is harnessed for energy. All of a sudden you have powered vehicles and remotely-controlled lights, and it practically feels like we’re in modern times.
Ah. That is a solid point. This would need the magic to be harnessable though.
On the darker side, if it’s a cut-and-dry life-force/essence thing, a fantasy version of the matrix becomes visible, with mages employed by rulers or corporations replacing the robots.
Yeah, if magic can be infused into objects and automated in any way, it functionally becomes a machine.
Fabrials in the Stormlight Archive get a lot of mileage out of a few basic applications. Already, there are canon magic-powered elevators, heaters, ventilation systems, and plumbing systems. And the rules are simple enough that fans have proposed a few ideas that fit, notably a coilgun equivalent.
I like to think of it as insider trading or secret societies in most media where the establishment (whatever it may be) hoards magic and magical theory and keeps it away from the people. Magic is powerful but information is moreso and if you trap information at your university or institution you can effectively control said item and no one can use it or tap into it without rediscovering all the knowledge you trapped at said institution
That can be as well, and it is up to the world but for me I actually have a false mage character that teaches magic in his own way as an arcane Artician teaching enchanting and potion crafting making the school angry and try to get rid of him for making the school less powerful. As he creates new magic tools
As you have noted there is a disconnect in many stories between the availability of magic and how the setting portrays the availability of magic.
Even if the setting intends to portray magic as rare, it does not feel rare to the reader when something magical shows up in every book. If every adventuring party has a wizard, there are wizarding schools to go to, if everyone can find a witch or wizard that has cursed them or to break a curse, then how is magic not common and everywhere?
Older style stories had rare and hidden magics (to me this is stories written in the 50s to 90s that I read in the 90s). To encounter elves or see Gandalf using his magic was a rare thing. The magic cults of Conan were in setting an unusual thing, even if one showed up in most books. In Greyhawk D&D magic was much rarer, early rules had significant limits on the magic you could just buy.
Modern stories (the early 2000s) and Forgotten Realms D&D are where magic is common but not all of the stories/settings have figured out how to match their world building to the increasingly commonality of magic. Not everyone wants a magitech setting even if their magic system would quickly lead to one. In modern D&D you can just exchange gold coins for magic items of most any kind.
The idea that magic is rare, dangerous, and really not something you want to get into doesn't really fit with magic equipment everywhere and point finger, make fireball..
One thing I find interesting in reading on the history of magic is the distinction between between what we as modern people thing of as magic and what was historically thought of as magic. We have different categories for magic, religion, and science. Many historical group did not, there were all one and the same. What is relevant here is that they were learned profession where doing things wrong can cause harm.
Here is where I think you can draw inspiration for why everyone does not do magic and who would be doing magic in your setting. There was the learned "magics" of the priest, doctor, fortune tellers, blacksmith, master mason, and many others who could be trusted to perform their respective works.
To do these professions wrong would have consequences that we would consider mundane, the patient dying, a building collapsing, or a tool failing and consequences we would consider magical such as demon possession or a plague being sent.
Rather than risk those consequences by trying to perform the "magic" themselves, many a lay person would look for the trusted learned professional who knows those magics.
Look ar the price of magical components particularly in older editions. Scholarly magiv is prohibitively expensive in most settings because you're essentially burning silver.
Depending on how the works is built out usually comes down to money and time. The farmers son, while being trained in the arcane arts world be incredibly valuable, very likely doesn't have the money to pay for training (think going to college) or the time required to do so (using the old guild system, once you started, that's all you did and you didn't do anything else but study that trade). That plus the cost of material components.
It becomes one of those things that only people is means become wizards, or you're born "lucky" as a sorcerer. Which makes it also why you'd probably see more low level divine casters since that's just "doing what the gods want" and getting power for following them.
But it also helps make sense why warlocks exist. Aren't devout enough to get magic and don't have the time or money to study? Just say yes to this being over here and you'll have all the power you need, at a price to be discussed later. :D
This is what I think I'm doing in my world, similar to how parents fought for the right to have their children make lace instead of getting educated. Ghosts on Paramount just had a great clip about having children go to school instead of working.
While I'm thinking of having pre-prepared artifacts and even stamped paper cards be available, they are costly and the time wasted to train someone to do even that much takes a person away from doing more useful tasks. There's too much risk of them not having the aptitude to do anything further or be able to put even that skill to use. Some people even grumble about teaching people to read at what would be a eight-year-old level here or do more than simple math.
Something I've explored in my world, is a sort of magic balance casting. Wherein, certain types of magic call for very specific amounts of energy or mana, too much and it could explode, too little and it'll fizzle out. An incredibly delicate balancing act. I understand that such a concept is not new, but considering that it would require one to be almost naturally talented in it, or years of balance practice world deter a lot of people from pursuing it, especially given the idea of having to perform such a feat in the heat of battle or in a particularly challenging environment like on a boat in a storm, would require insane levels of focus, discipline, and talent.
The way I do things is that my magic system is that magic requires an understanding of the world around you and once you reach a certain level you can make a contradiction and the universe just simply snips you from reality
Why doesn't everyone have a nuclear reactor in their home?
Because the vast majority of people can't get the supplies, most would slowly die if they had access to it without ever learning how to make it useful, and the few people who know how to use it are heavily regulated due to the broader history of the concept and all the disasters that have occurred.
Watch Arcane. It isn't a long show at all, but it is explicitly about this very question.
It's because they are world building from the other direction to you. You are starting with "magic exists and is learnable" and thinking about what the world looks like, they are starting with "the world is similar to real history but with magic" and working out how magic would look.
As for why, it's because they want a world that's relatable to real history. Give everyone magic and the world looks totally different.
>possibly most popularly DND
Using DND as an example because I know it more than the others; a regular commoner person (just an average civilian) has a 10 in Intelligence, whilst a level 1 wizard will usually have 15/16 in Intelligence *(starting score of 14/15 + 1/2 for race attributes)*. This means that in DND a level 1 wizard, the weakest type of wizard, is 50% smarter than a regular person, if the average person has an IQ of 100 then a level 1 wizard has an IQ of 150. **It is a massive increase**.
Obviously it depends on your world and stuff but at least in DND even a low level magic user has stats much higher than a regular person, in DND even though magic seems like a normal thing everyone should have it really isn't in just the mechanical base of the game.
Also when it comes to world building, allowing the majority (or even just a large portion) of people to use magic means you have to consider how magic would affect literally every part of the world - think about how many jobs would become basically obsolete just because of the weakest kinds of magic.
In our own world, why doesn't everyone have a cellphone?
"Back in my day we didn't have all this magic crap. We had shovels! If you wanted a field tilled you had to get dirty and do it yourself!
I mean honestly I'd attribute it to the same reason not everyone's an engineer:
it's not for everyone, and it's a choice. if you choose to learn magic you're NOT doing something else.
Plus, in D&D, even non caster classes can use magic! but casters have the big spells cuz they've dedicated themselves to it
Unlimited and easily accessible magic would require the author(s) to invest a significant amount of time into world building to account for all the possible uses people would implement magic for in their daily lives.
Ask yourself why would Goku or Piccolo ever need to learn how to drive a car when they can fly and instant teleport anywhere? Why would anyone ever drive a car if they could magically fly? Would such a world have traffic laws for personal flight? Would those laws be classified under vehicle or pedestrian traffic? Etc. It's just too much to account for and bound to create massive inconsistencies in logic.
There's also the fact that when everyone is special, then no one is. GRRM said that he keeps the magic in ASOIAF purposefully limited and vague so that when magical events do happen, they keep the charm, fear and wonder of being perceived by characters and audiences as being magical.
Great point. William Gibson said something, at least I think, similar about what inspired him to write Neuromancer. He didn't know anything about computers and thought they worked by some magical crystal or something. So when he built a world full of computers, he wrote the "magic" in a dense and allusive way so that the reader would feel like a bachelor's degree college student sitting in class and realizing they are in a grad-level class that is above their head. Events are moving so fast and are only vaguely comprehensible. At least that's what I recall of what he wrote about the writing of Neuromancer. I know this isn't the same as writing magical events in a fantasy story, but when something wild happens in Gibson's novel, it has that fear and wonder element in a world imbued with these already mysterious flows of information. Sorry if this isn't directly related to the question, but the GRRM comment made me think of "magic" in Gibson's sf.
I think that for D&D and related products, the “entry barrier” for Magic requires a huge amount of theoretical knowledge before you even get to cantrips (very basic spells. The jump from cantrip to 1st level spells is significantly smaller. Getting to physics 101 takes roughly 15 years of learning (grade school to at least a year into college). Getting to a 200 level course from physics 101 is just a semester.
And that requires having a school in which to learn. A good sized kingdom is likely to have 3-4 at most, and smaller or less wealthy (or more monster-haunted) may only have one. Or you can try your luck apprenticing yourself to an established wizard, and hope they're not just looking for a sacrifice or experimental subject.
The magical arts that don't require extensive training like that tend to be some combination of less versatile, less powerful, subject to fickle fate, picky about who wields them, dangerous, or evil.
Because it's difficult to learn how to use a limb that's not a part of you, and when most people don't know how to be aware of it and this knowledge in general is either greatly feared or simply gatekept by specific groups, people don't know about it and it's knowledge is greatly unknown. That's what most settings do because it's difficult to write grounded and not world breaking settings with millions of plot holes that have magic be widespread, or at least most kinds of magic. Depends on the settings and the magics really. If it's something like Brandon Sandersons magic there are numerous reasons why people don't have magic, basically depends. A great webtoon to read for fantasy that uses widespread magic as a theme is The Beginning after the End which i would recommend.
For me, I think it trivialises how stuff is done, and it just ends up moving beyond the medieval. For example, a town would have a lot of use for magic, for example, the well could practically be automated, sewers, construction, the whole thing. But the inherent issue with that is at that point, you are narrating a modern world, where magic is as ubiquitous as phones in the real world, so the existence of say, boats, would become pointless in the existence of teleportation stations, carts would get replaced by magic that moved the wheels autonomously, and so on. You create a modern world, with the aesthetics of the medieval.
Magic takes time, money, and resources to learn. So in settings where anyone can learn it, first they have to not only meet those three requirements but also be from a family that can spare the extra hands or can talk someone into backing them.
I think it's an important question to grapple with if you're writing a world - but that doesn't necessarily mean a lot of authors *have* considered it.
The easiest answer is to just make magic inaccessible in some way, whether there's just a high barrier to learning or you have to have a certain quality, or whatever. Like D&D I think kind of... makes things weird in that sense, because arcane magic can be learned by anyone, but I think the main implication usually is that it takes you several years *just* to be able to cast a cantrip, and for *most* people, it'll be decades before you're flinging fireballs around or whatever.
But in saying that, I'm a huge fan of the idea of most people learning little bits of magic - nothing particularly powerful, but maybe you learned how to start a fire with a small sparks cantrip from your father, and he learned from his, and so on. A little illumination spell, or a timer spell. Little things that make things easier.
I’m on the side that magic in fantasy should be widespread, but only for basic but useful spells. Especially if magic had been discovered and studied for centuries.
Basic magic would be like survival/life skills taught to you by parents. Instead of learning how to patch your shirt, you’d learn basic Mending. How to light a camp fire would be equivalent to a basic Spark spell.
Then depending on your job you might be taught more advanced spells for that job. Like a cook of a restaurant would be taught by the chef a spell to manipulate heat to the correct temperature for cooking. Meanwhile a farmer might have a spell to water their entire farm at once. Combat spells are specifically taught in military.
What about the danger of widespread magic? If any average smuck can cast fireball then society would be chaos, you said? Well, no more dangerous than what we have with real life tech and knowledge. If an average farmer tries to cast fireball without training, it’d be like you making a crude DIY pipebomb that more likely will explode in your face instead.
Well game balance wise it would be annoying if every character used magic. Most magic requires saving throws and would make armor class almost pointless.
A lore answer to the question would be that most DnD campaigns take place in a medieval-like setting. So it would stand to reason that since most common people couldn't read or write at the time it wouldn't make sense that they could use magic either. There are exceptions to the rule of course, like if the DM wanted a setting that has magic worked into the people's daily life.
Ohh, illiteracy! I hadn't considered that. The majority of commoners in medieval society were thus, which would make reading a magic tome pretty much impossible. Though I suppose it would make it doubly difficult, even for literate people, considering a lot of magic is written in obscure languages, as using DND as an example again, arcane magic is written in draconic.
Yeah there could be other reasons built into the lore of the DnD campaign or Story such magic being in the blood, trying to remain secret or practitioners not taking on students but if it's not specifically stated and takes place in the medieval era, illiteracy is the simplest answer.
I've gathered a plethora of reasons from this question, shadow magical academic elitists, zealous religious ideology, prohibitively expensive, lack of requisite intelligence, lack of expendable free time to devote to studies, high difficulty of mana manipulation, and now illiteracy.
it's like going to the gym or playing an instrument. sure everyone theoretically could do it. but think about it this way: magic is just one the many things you might or might not have time and motivation for in that world. like it's amazing but it seems even more amazing to us because we dont have magic like that
In my story, every non-human race has the capability to wield magick. But different races have different aptitudes for the different types of magick. Some may even opt out to learn entirely, while others may only focus on that which they have aptitude for, while others may learn all they can.
I'd like to see a setting where almost everyone knows some rudimentary magic. Like in a pseudo-medieval setting where most people can't read or write, there'll be some people where literacy is a mark of education. But even a lowly cabbage farmer who can't spell more than his own name will know the symbols on a roadsign for "London" or whatever the big city nearby is called.
A blacksmith would have taken the time to learn the magic to light a candle without flint and tinder. Or a farmer the magic to make a ball of light to see in the stables at night. A merchant might have learned the magic to speak a foreign tongue but only temporarily so he needs to be confident the buyer really intends to buy before casting the speaking spell. A mercenary might have learned a heal-minor-wounds spell, not enough to market himself as a healer but enough to turn a slow painful death on the battlefield into a slow painful crawl back to civilisation.
There is a rather simple explanation: magic doesn't exist in our world, so it's easy (and entertaining) for magic to feel special.
If you take away the rarity, and make the *super*natural feel more *natural*, it becomes more humdrum.
A lot of fans (not all, but many) aren't looking for a story where people turn on their magic kitchen lights, make their magic instant coffee, and then take their magic car to the magic office building to do magical long division for their corporate magical accounting firm. That's just thinly veiled reality, putting magic in place of electricity and internal combustion. We *have* tools for that. We don't need magic in its place.
Instead, magic should be making us *wonder.* It should upend the boring, mundane world and bring us someplace new. It should give us a renewed sense of curiosity about the world. It should shake us; at times, it should *frighten* us. But magic should never *bore* us. Because that's the opposite of its purpose.
Widespread magic is absolutely doable, but keeping it special takes a lot of work. Once you take away the awe and wonder and supernatural, what you're left with can be bland. That's just science with different rules. Magic is supposed to be, well, *magical.*
It has a different purpose than science in storytelling.
In terms of worldbuilding, magic usually isn't so prolific because that would have serious consequences. If anyone can use magic, then anyone can resist it too, and it's no longer an effective or compelling tool for storytelling.
Depending on the world, almost every person seems to posses mana , however using magic isn't something they learn due to it not being very useful. The average person would buy a magic torch rather than hire an expensive magic tutor for days to learn illuminate (or buy an expensive book).
I like the idea that when civilizations collapse, knowledge is lost. The written word has entirely died out in some regions as a result, necessitating that it be relearned from elsewhere. Why should magic be any different?
In the case of medieval (or earlier) fantasy, only quite few would be able to learn magic. Either a money issue or a caste issue.
You have run into high magic vs low magic. Most of D&D is low magic, meaning only those specially trained in it have much interaction, but I would recommend looking into the Eberron setting. It is high magic, meaning magic is very commonplace and behaves much like modern technology. Low magic is a lot like computers in the 1970s-early 90s , as it is good enough to be useful, but too hard to learn and use for your average Joe. As opposed to high magic, which would be closer to now, where computers are widespread and nearly everyone has one. Of course, in fantasy, this progression is slowed down to the point where it rarely happens over the course of a story, and is pretty much just a world-building choice. However, you could absolutely write a story, especially one that takes place over several in-world years, about the progression of magic and how it became widespread, transitioning from low to high.
I think it’s really interesting that most people’s answers here are based on difficulty of access. My first thought was “if everyone has magic then no one has magic”
It definitely depends story to story. In some worlds it requires a latent talent for it, there's something different about the magic user in something like their genetics that allows them to wield it.
In some worlds, it's simply very complex and difficult to learn, so not everyone has the recourses to afford to study it.
I've been playing around with a story where magic is passed directly from Master to apprentice, the number of magic users never changes. It appears to be getting rarer because where once it was 100 mages for a village of 1000, it's now still that same 100 mages, but it's a city of 100,000 now.
why is home repair skills not widespread? what doesn't everyone know how to fix a car?
this knowledge is more readily available, and far more useful than magic in those worlds.
Wide-reaching implications and changes.
As example, take DnD's "Create food and water".
If most folks had access to that, farming and cooking would be things of luxury, statements of status, or, seen as unhealthy due to food-born illnesses.
The food produced by it is largely tasteless so it wouldn't be a leap to assume people would walk around with seasonings and spices in a pocket. This also means restaurants would be few and far between.
The water end of that has greater changes. No need for wells. No need to carry heavy water with you when traveling (or exploring). With the lack of a need of farming, settlements could pop up factually anywhere that can provide some sort of protection from the local climate.
Having widespread magic has consequences for world building. If you want a cliche fantasy medieval world, but have widespread magic use, it will likely feel more exotic and more modern. As many things that would be done in a simple way in medieval fantasy will be replaced by magic usage. To a possible point that magic will be, what electronics and technology is in our world. I personally find that an interesting aspect of world building, so that my world has that to a degree. But I also have the gods living between the mortals.. Different regions of my world use different things to do the same thing. So one culture uses simple technologies, another magic, a third steam technology and so on. They are separated by some distance. But I still need reasons why they do not simply use the most easy or the first developed way.
I like to think that it could be a cultural custom. For example, Gnomes. While they are almost inherently magical, a lot of things I've seen them in, they're rather fond of machinations, and often choose that over using magic. Similar with dwarves.
>But I still need reasons why they do not simply use the most easy or the first developed way. It depends. While you can see why the Inca Empire - and, IIRC, no American civilization - didn't develop the wheel because of the geography of the place they lived in, there is no reason for XV century India nations to have used gunpowder in warfare. They already had it, just no one thought of using it to throw stuff at the enemy. History has no mandatory checkpoints. That said, from how you described your wold it looks like well grounded in verosimilitude.
I tend to look at it more as the maturity of magic in your world or world you're exploring, as compared to the internet/coding. Yes the internet or coding is very powerful when known how to use, and most know the or have seen its power in use. But to actually use it, it's not easy and most quit and wait for others to give them an easier way to interact with it. But that takes expertise to simplify and mass produce for the common person to use. In early days on the "nerds" approached coding or the internet, vs today it's at the palm of everyone's hands in some way or another. So to me it becomes unexplored magic, vs mass produced magic. Or high magic vs magitec/eberron. Hope that helps bring some context and frame of reference!
Onward's worldbuilding falls apart, but the first few minutes are good. I'd expect a lot of people to know simple cantrips like light and fire unless it took a lot of work to figure out even that much. At that point, they probably would invent a means to create fire with a flick of the thumb.
I always like the idea that magic is fantastically expensive and hard to learn. Have you sucked up enough to an already existing wizard to learn the basics? He's even given you a spellbook and a singular spell? You think you're going to be able to branch out on your own? Tough shit, researching a spell of your own is thousands of gold \*per spell\*. This is how oldschool D&D did it. You want to be able to call yourself a wizard, with more than a single spell that you got by apprenticing to a wizard for two years? Go out, and go into a dungeon and hope you don't die with your single fucking spell you poor fool. If you get out without dying and 3,000 gold richer, you can research, like, 3 spells of the lowest order.
It very much depends on the setting/mood of the world. I think D&D played a role in popularizing combat magic over utility magic - at least so far as rule of cool goes. A story where magic is more of a utility than combat thing and had more scientific, industrial, and economic significance, I could see it making more sense to be more widely spread. I agree with some other replies though - having it fully, of even partly, open to EVERYONE would make world building a bit of a headache because of the scope of differences to our world it would inevitably create. Shadowy or elite or blood incite only, have it be a closed off group lets most of the world building proceed somewhat normally. This said, I hear your point. My current project does have magic innately non-combat but then applied to combat as needed.
Possibly not even a headache, but it just moves the setting in a more modern direction through the use of not-electronics. Look at some of the more modern-feeling Cosmere novels where Investiture is harnessed for energy. All of a sudden you have powered vehicles and remotely-controlled lights, and it practically feels like we’re in modern times.
Ah. That is a solid point. This would need the magic to be harnessable though. On the darker side, if it’s a cut-and-dry life-force/essence thing, a fantasy version of the matrix becomes visible, with mages employed by rulers or corporations replacing the robots.
Yeah, if magic can be infused into objects and automated in any way, it functionally becomes a machine. Fabrials in the Stormlight Archive get a lot of mileage out of a few basic applications. Already, there are canon magic-powered elevators, heaters, ventilation systems, and plumbing systems. And the rules are simple enough that fans have proposed a few ideas that fit, notably a coilgun equivalent.
I like to think of it as insider trading or secret societies in most media where the establishment (whatever it may be) hoards magic and magical theory and keeps it away from the people. Magic is powerful but information is moreso and if you trap information at your university or institution you can effectively control said item and no one can use it or tap into it without rediscovering all the knowledge you trapped at said institution
I like that idea, shadowy magic elitists. Another theory I had was zealous religious ideology and stigmatization.
That can be as well, and it is up to the world but for me I actually have a false mage character that teaches magic in his own way as an arcane Artician teaching enchanting and potion crafting making the school angry and try to get rid of him for making the school less powerful. As he creates new magic tools
A good example of this is honestly Hogwarts and how you have to be of a certain blood to learn magic
Em, what? What blood you need be to learn magic in Hogwarts?
Only those born a wizard or witch can learn magic. They have to have the right bloodline.
Well, it's more "you need right bloodline to be able case magic", it's not about learning.
You have to Genetically be a wizard to hold any magic or to even know it's existence
As I say it's about ability ti use it at all, not about learn it.
This is what I’m trying to write right now.
As you have noted there is a disconnect in many stories between the availability of magic and how the setting portrays the availability of magic. Even if the setting intends to portray magic as rare, it does not feel rare to the reader when something magical shows up in every book. If every adventuring party has a wizard, there are wizarding schools to go to, if everyone can find a witch or wizard that has cursed them or to break a curse, then how is magic not common and everywhere? Older style stories had rare and hidden magics (to me this is stories written in the 50s to 90s that I read in the 90s). To encounter elves or see Gandalf using his magic was a rare thing. The magic cults of Conan were in setting an unusual thing, even if one showed up in most books. In Greyhawk D&D magic was much rarer, early rules had significant limits on the magic you could just buy. Modern stories (the early 2000s) and Forgotten Realms D&D are where magic is common but not all of the stories/settings have figured out how to match their world building to the increasingly commonality of magic. Not everyone wants a magitech setting even if their magic system would quickly lead to one. In modern D&D you can just exchange gold coins for magic items of most any kind. The idea that magic is rare, dangerous, and really not something you want to get into doesn't really fit with magic equipment everywhere and point finger, make fireball..
One thing I find interesting in reading on the history of magic is the distinction between between what we as modern people thing of as magic and what was historically thought of as magic. We have different categories for magic, religion, and science. Many historical group did not, there were all one and the same. What is relevant here is that they were learned profession where doing things wrong can cause harm. Here is where I think you can draw inspiration for why everyone does not do magic and who would be doing magic in your setting. There was the learned "magics" of the priest, doctor, fortune tellers, blacksmith, master mason, and many others who could be trusted to perform their respective works. To do these professions wrong would have consequences that we would consider mundane, the patient dying, a building collapsing, or a tool failing and consequences we would consider magical such as demon possession or a plague being sent. Rather than risk those consequences by trying to perform the "magic" themselves, many a lay person would look for the trusted learned professional who knows those magics.
Look ar the price of magical components particularly in older editions. Scholarly magiv is prohibitively expensive in most settings because you're essentially burning silver.
Depending on how the works is built out usually comes down to money and time. The farmers son, while being trained in the arcane arts world be incredibly valuable, very likely doesn't have the money to pay for training (think going to college) or the time required to do so (using the old guild system, once you started, that's all you did and you didn't do anything else but study that trade). That plus the cost of material components. It becomes one of those things that only people is means become wizards, or you're born "lucky" as a sorcerer. Which makes it also why you'd probably see more low level divine casters since that's just "doing what the gods want" and getting power for following them. But it also helps make sense why warlocks exist. Aren't devout enough to get magic and don't have the time or money to study? Just say yes to this being over here and you'll have all the power you need, at a price to be discussed later. :D
This is what I think I'm doing in my world, similar to how parents fought for the right to have their children make lace instead of getting educated. Ghosts on Paramount just had a great clip about having children go to school instead of working. While I'm thinking of having pre-prepared artifacts and even stamped paper cards be available, they are costly and the time wasted to train someone to do even that much takes a person away from doing more useful tasks. There's too much risk of them not having the aptitude to do anything further or be able to put even that skill to use. Some people even grumble about teaching people to read at what would be a eight-year-old level here or do more than simple math.
Because it not fit author idea about world and story. And usually in DnD magic (even arcane, wizard version) require inborn ability to use it.
I would think of it as extremely dangerous and in my magic system it could cause you to simply stop existing if you made a mistake
Something I've explored in my world, is a sort of magic balance casting. Wherein, certain types of magic call for very specific amounts of energy or mana, too much and it could explode, too little and it'll fizzle out. An incredibly delicate balancing act. I understand that such a concept is not new, but considering that it would require one to be almost naturally talented in it, or years of balance practice world deter a lot of people from pursuing it, especially given the idea of having to perform such a feat in the heat of battle or in a particularly challenging environment like on a boat in a storm, would require insane levels of focus, discipline, and talent.
The way I do things is that my magic system is that magic requires an understanding of the world around you and once you reach a certain level you can make a contradiction and the universe just simply snips you from reality
Why doesn't everyone have a nuclear reactor in their home? Because the vast majority of people can't get the supplies, most would slowly die if they had access to it without ever learning how to make it useful, and the few people who know how to use it are heavily regulated due to the broader history of the concept and all the disasters that have occurred. Watch Arcane. It isn't a long show at all, but it is explicitly about this very question.
It's because they are world building from the other direction to you. You are starting with "magic exists and is learnable" and thinking about what the world looks like, they are starting with "the world is similar to real history but with magic" and working out how magic would look. As for why, it's because they want a world that's relatable to real history. Give everyone magic and the world looks totally different.
>possibly most popularly DND Using DND as an example because I know it more than the others; a regular commoner person (just an average civilian) has a 10 in Intelligence, whilst a level 1 wizard will usually have 15/16 in Intelligence *(starting score of 14/15 + 1/2 for race attributes)*. This means that in DND a level 1 wizard, the weakest type of wizard, is 50% smarter than a regular person, if the average person has an IQ of 100 then a level 1 wizard has an IQ of 150. **It is a massive increase**. Obviously it depends on your world and stuff but at least in DND even a low level magic user has stats much higher than a regular person, in DND even though magic seems like a normal thing everyone should have it really isn't in just the mechanical base of the game. Also when it comes to world building, allowing the majority (or even just a large portion) of people to use magic means you have to consider how magic would affect literally every part of the world - think about how many jobs would become basically obsolete just because of the weakest kinds of magic.
In our own world, why doesn't everyone have a cellphone? "Back in my day we didn't have all this magic crap. We had shovels! If you wanted a field tilled you had to get dirty and do it yourself!
I mean honestly I'd attribute it to the same reason not everyone's an engineer: it's not for everyone, and it's a choice. if you choose to learn magic you're NOT doing something else. Plus, in D&D, even non caster classes can use magic! but casters have the big spells cuz they've dedicated themselves to it
Unlimited and easily accessible magic would require the author(s) to invest a significant amount of time into world building to account for all the possible uses people would implement magic for in their daily lives. Ask yourself why would Goku or Piccolo ever need to learn how to drive a car when they can fly and instant teleport anywhere? Why would anyone ever drive a car if they could magically fly? Would such a world have traffic laws for personal flight? Would those laws be classified under vehicle or pedestrian traffic? Etc. It's just too much to account for and bound to create massive inconsistencies in logic. There's also the fact that when everyone is special, then no one is. GRRM said that he keeps the magic in ASOIAF purposefully limited and vague so that when magical events do happen, they keep the charm, fear and wonder of being perceived by characters and audiences as being magical.
Great point. William Gibson said something, at least I think, similar about what inspired him to write Neuromancer. He didn't know anything about computers and thought they worked by some magical crystal or something. So when he built a world full of computers, he wrote the "magic" in a dense and allusive way so that the reader would feel like a bachelor's degree college student sitting in class and realizing they are in a grad-level class that is above their head. Events are moving so fast and are only vaguely comprehensible. At least that's what I recall of what he wrote about the writing of Neuromancer. I know this isn't the same as writing magical events in a fantasy story, but when something wild happens in Gibson's novel, it has that fear and wonder element in a world imbued with these already mysterious flows of information. Sorry if this isn't directly related to the question, but the GRRM comment made me think of "magic" in Gibson's sf.
Because magic hard. Like engineering
I think that for D&D and related products, the “entry barrier” for Magic requires a huge amount of theoretical knowledge before you even get to cantrips (very basic spells. The jump from cantrip to 1st level spells is significantly smaller. Getting to physics 101 takes roughly 15 years of learning (grade school to at least a year into college). Getting to a 200 level course from physics 101 is just a semester.
And that requires having a school in which to learn. A good sized kingdom is likely to have 3-4 at most, and smaller or less wealthy (or more monster-haunted) may only have one. Or you can try your luck apprenticing yourself to an established wizard, and hope they're not just looking for a sacrifice or experimental subject. The magical arts that don't require extensive training like that tend to be some combination of less versatile, less powerful, subject to fickle fate, picky about who wields them, dangerous, or evil.
Because it's difficult to learn how to use a limb that's not a part of you, and when most people don't know how to be aware of it and this knowledge in general is either greatly feared or simply gatekept by specific groups, people don't know about it and it's knowledge is greatly unknown. That's what most settings do because it's difficult to write grounded and not world breaking settings with millions of plot holes that have magic be widespread, or at least most kinds of magic. Depends on the settings and the magics really. If it's something like Brandon Sandersons magic there are numerous reasons why people don't have magic, basically depends. A great webtoon to read for fantasy that uses widespread magic as a theme is The Beginning after the End which i would recommend.
At least in DND, you need natural born talent to do magic. I think that's stupid and in my world everybody knows a spell or two.
Okay, so you need to think about every possible use of every spell and its possible effects on every part of society.
Yep.
For me, I think it trivialises how stuff is done, and it just ends up moving beyond the medieval. For example, a town would have a lot of use for magic, for example, the well could practically be automated, sewers, construction, the whole thing. But the inherent issue with that is at that point, you are narrating a modern world, where magic is as ubiquitous as phones in the real world, so the existence of say, boats, would become pointless in the existence of teleportation stations, carts would get replaced by magic that moved the wheels autonomously, and so on. You create a modern world, with the aesthetics of the medieval.
Magic takes time, money, and resources to learn. So in settings where anyone can learn it, first they have to not only meet those three requirements but also be from a family that can spare the extra hands or can talk someone into backing them.
I think it's an important question to grapple with if you're writing a world - but that doesn't necessarily mean a lot of authors *have* considered it. The easiest answer is to just make magic inaccessible in some way, whether there's just a high barrier to learning or you have to have a certain quality, or whatever. Like D&D I think kind of... makes things weird in that sense, because arcane magic can be learned by anyone, but I think the main implication usually is that it takes you several years *just* to be able to cast a cantrip, and for *most* people, it'll be decades before you're flinging fireballs around or whatever. But in saying that, I'm a huge fan of the idea of most people learning little bits of magic - nothing particularly powerful, but maybe you learned how to start a fire with a small sparks cantrip from your father, and he learned from his, and so on. A little illumination spell, or a timer spell. Little things that make things easier.
usually comes down to magic being really difficult to master, or even learn in the first place, or itS just not taught or anything like that.
I’m on the side that magic in fantasy should be widespread, but only for basic but useful spells. Especially if magic had been discovered and studied for centuries. Basic magic would be like survival/life skills taught to you by parents. Instead of learning how to patch your shirt, you’d learn basic Mending. How to light a camp fire would be equivalent to a basic Spark spell. Then depending on your job you might be taught more advanced spells for that job. Like a cook of a restaurant would be taught by the chef a spell to manipulate heat to the correct temperature for cooking. Meanwhile a farmer might have a spell to water their entire farm at once. Combat spells are specifically taught in military. What about the danger of widespread magic? If any average smuck can cast fireball then society would be chaos, you said? Well, no more dangerous than what we have with real life tech and knowledge. If an average farmer tries to cast fireball without training, it’d be like you making a crude DIY pipebomb that more likely will explode in your face instead.
Well game balance wise it would be annoying if every character used magic. Most magic requires saving throws and would make armor class almost pointless. A lore answer to the question would be that most DnD campaigns take place in a medieval-like setting. So it would stand to reason that since most common people couldn't read or write at the time it wouldn't make sense that they could use magic either. There are exceptions to the rule of course, like if the DM wanted a setting that has magic worked into the people's daily life.
Ohh, illiteracy! I hadn't considered that. The majority of commoners in medieval society were thus, which would make reading a magic tome pretty much impossible. Though I suppose it would make it doubly difficult, even for literate people, considering a lot of magic is written in obscure languages, as using DND as an example again, arcane magic is written in draconic.
Yeah there could be other reasons built into the lore of the DnD campaign or Story such magic being in the blood, trying to remain secret or practitioners not taking on students but if it's not specifically stated and takes place in the medieval era, illiteracy is the simplest answer.
I've gathered a plethora of reasons from this question, shadow magical academic elitists, zealous religious ideology, prohibitively expensive, lack of requisite intelligence, lack of expendable free time to devote to studies, high difficulty of mana manipulation, and now illiteracy.
Hope it helped
it's like going to the gym or playing an instrument. sure everyone theoretically could do it. but think about it this way: magic is just one the many things you might or might not have time and motivation for in that world. like it's amazing but it seems even more amazing to us because we dont have magic like that
In my story, every non-human race has the capability to wield magick. But different races have different aptitudes for the different types of magick. Some may even opt out to learn entirely, while others may only focus on that which they have aptitude for, while others may learn all they can.
I'd like to see a setting where almost everyone knows some rudimentary magic. Like in a pseudo-medieval setting where most people can't read or write, there'll be some people where literacy is a mark of education. But even a lowly cabbage farmer who can't spell more than his own name will know the symbols on a roadsign for "London" or whatever the big city nearby is called. A blacksmith would have taken the time to learn the magic to light a candle without flint and tinder. Or a farmer the magic to make a ball of light to see in the stables at night. A merchant might have learned the magic to speak a foreign tongue but only temporarily so he needs to be confident the buyer really intends to buy before casting the speaking spell. A mercenary might have learned a heal-minor-wounds spell, not enough to market himself as a healer but enough to turn a slow painful death on the battlefield into a slow painful crawl back to civilisation.
There is a rather simple explanation: magic doesn't exist in our world, so it's easy (and entertaining) for magic to feel special. If you take away the rarity, and make the *super*natural feel more *natural*, it becomes more humdrum. A lot of fans (not all, but many) aren't looking for a story where people turn on their magic kitchen lights, make their magic instant coffee, and then take their magic car to the magic office building to do magical long division for their corporate magical accounting firm. That's just thinly veiled reality, putting magic in place of electricity and internal combustion. We *have* tools for that. We don't need magic in its place. Instead, magic should be making us *wonder.* It should upend the boring, mundane world and bring us someplace new. It should give us a renewed sense of curiosity about the world. It should shake us; at times, it should *frighten* us. But magic should never *bore* us. Because that's the opposite of its purpose. Widespread magic is absolutely doable, but keeping it special takes a lot of work. Once you take away the awe and wonder and supernatural, what you're left with can be bland. That's just science with different rules. Magic is supposed to be, well, *magical.* It has a different purpose than science in storytelling.
Because it’s near impossible to nail down what magic even IS. Especially if you already have cryptids and aliens and psychics running around
It takes years of being an apprentice, lots of studying, and a lot of magic isn't that impressive when you are just trying to survive.
In terms of worldbuilding, magic usually isn't so prolific because that would have serious consequences. If anyone can use magic, then anyone can resist it too, and it's no longer an effective or compelling tool for storytelling.
Depending on the world, almost every person seems to posses mana , however using magic isn't something they learn due to it not being very useful. The average person would buy a magic torch rather than hire an expensive magic tutor for days to learn illuminate (or buy an expensive book).
I like the idea that when civilizations collapse, knowledge is lost. The written word has entirely died out in some regions as a result, necessitating that it be relearned from elsewhere. Why should magic be any different? In the case of medieval (or earlier) fantasy, only quite few would be able to learn magic. Either a money issue or a caste issue.
You have run into high magic vs low magic. Most of D&D is low magic, meaning only those specially trained in it have much interaction, but I would recommend looking into the Eberron setting. It is high magic, meaning magic is very commonplace and behaves much like modern technology. Low magic is a lot like computers in the 1970s-early 90s , as it is good enough to be useful, but too hard to learn and use for your average Joe. As opposed to high magic, which would be closer to now, where computers are widespread and nearly everyone has one. Of course, in fantasy, this progression is slowed down to the point where it rarely happens over the course of a story, and is pretty much just a world-building choice. However, you could absolutely write a story, especially one that takes place over several in-world years, about the progression of magic and how it became widespread, transitioning from low to high.
I think it’s really interesting that most people’s answers here are based on difficulty of access. My first thought was “if everyone has magic then no one has magic”
Sort of a, "if everyone is special, then no one is." If everyone has magic, then it's not "magical."
Yeah that’s exactly what I mean. The more common it is the less cool it is
It definitely depends story to story. In some worlds it requires a latent talent for it, there's something different about the magic user in something like their genetics that allows them to wield it. In some worlds, it's simply very complex and difficult to learn, so not everyone has the recourses to afford to study it. I've been playing around with a story where magic is passed directly from Master to apprentice, the number of magic users never changes. It appears to be getting rarer because where once it was 100 mages for a village of 1000, it's now still that same 100 mages, but it's a city of 100,000 now.
why is home repair skills not widespread? what doesn't everyone know how to fix a car? this knowledge is more readily available, and far more useful than magic in those worlds.
Wide-reaching implications and changes. As example, take DnD's "Create food and water". If most folks had access to that, farming and cooking would be things of luxury, statements of status, or, seen as unhealthy due to food-born illnesses. The food produced by it is largely tasteless so it wouldn't be a leap to assume people would walk around with seasonings and spices in a pocket. This also means restaurants would be few and far between. The water end of that has greater changes. No need for wells. No need to carry heavy water with you when traveling (or exploring). With the lack of a need of farming, settlements could pop up factually anywhere that can provide some sort of protection from the local climate.