6.1 KiB
[D] Combining physics, branched causality and archetypes to create magic.
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Author: u/Carduus_Benedictus *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/6wtj06/d_combining_physics_branched_causality_and/
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Score: 11
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Created: 2017-08-29T19:17:11
Post:
In my world, reality is made up of three worlds:
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The world of physics, the 'Material'. Every scientific law we can think of and a few we haven't yet. This was why I was trying to 'categorize' science last week.
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The world of personal causality/choice, the 'Ethereal'. The many-worlds theory has been proven on an individual scale, and here is the depiction of infinite choices laid out in ever-expanding branches starting at birth and ending at death, with these branches often entangled with those of others from moment to moment.
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The world of disentropy/archetypes, the 'Subliminal'. There's an old Gnostic tale where the fallible creator of the universe saw only a reflection of the true and perfect reality and tried to create the material world based on it, as if through a glass, darkly. This is the world of molds and templates, the 'base model' for every type of thing in the world. It is the hidden force of disentropy that allows for complex systems to arise. This also feeds into Jung's whole collective unconscious idea, that somehow we're all connected by certain broad archetypes pre-programmed into our minds. Or perhaps all of our minds are directly connected to this one thing?
Extending from that, evolution would be the interaction of these three worlds: The template (Subliminal) given boundaries/rules (Material), and given some choice in its destiny (Ephemeral). The successful breed new templates or expand the existing ones, and the process begins again.
Likewise, Fae creatures are what comes about when the Subliminal archetypes 'escape' without being tempered by physics and causality. They are creatures of rules, but no rules that stem from having a flesh body and living only a few dozen years.
Alright, enough with the setup. I'm trying to create a rational magic system off of this premise, in which combining elements of these three worlds in different orders and amounts creates different outcomes. I'm trying to make it be difficult to exploit, but eventually the protagonist is able to do so.
The low-hanging fruit would be making a deal with a Fae being. If they have only a limited tie to physics, they can be used to work around physics.
Second, by finding some way to steal matter/energy from a potential future in the Ethereal (but in turn, limit our choices in the future), we could subvert thermodynamics to some degree.
How else could we turn the existence and possible manipulation of these two additional 'worlds' to create a cogent magic system?
Comments:
u/Timetech01 [+4] (3 hours later)
I would say that stealing from potential futures to limit your possible futures could get overpowered unless it's an unwieldy process. If you could prevent futures in which you act lazy, you've not only gained resources but also ensured you're going to use them according to your attempts at optimization.
Perhaps when you remove from a given future it becomes "thinner" and spreads outwards, causing multiple futures to interfere with each other? The resulting actualized future would have a higher rate of coincidences, especially if you're anywhere near the future you stole from. I'd also suggest that whatever is stolen from a given future both cannot be something already stolen from the future, and its original will disappear at the same time it was stolen, to prevent item replication.
u/Carduus_Benedictus [+1] (5 hours later)
I figure you don't get to choose. You might be stealing a great future or a terrible one. To gamify it, I'm pondering a reduction in overall luck. I love the second paragraph, though, because yeah, item replication would break it very quickly.
u/AnonymousAvatar [+2] (a day later)
You describe the Fae as Subliminal archetypes without Materium or Etherium. Are there also Materials without archetype or Etherium (something like indescribable pure mechanical matter No-Things acting and reacting autonomously without choice) and Ethereals without archetype and Material (something along the lines of genie-like beings that have no form or substance that can affect causality)?
Combine any two: M + E = puppeting things/people E + S = predicting things based on primal patterns and probabilities S + M = changing the form or properties of things
u/Carduus_Benedictus [+1] (a day later)
Makes a lot of sense! How would you categorize the Subliminal and Ethereal to make for a more rules-driven system?
u/AnonymousAvatar [+1] (18 days later)
Idk, what kind of game are you making? What rules do you already have?
u/donaldhobson [+2] (21 days later)
If you have real laws of physics, they always hold and they completely describe reality. There is no room for anything extra that breaks or avoids the rules. Any concepts such as "person" are approximations, not the stuff of reality its self. You seem to misunderstand the many worlds theory, it is a mathematical theory that does not give any significance to ambiguous, human centered descriptions such as "birth", "death" or "person".
u/Carduus_Benedictus [+1] (21 days later)
I understand the broad swaths, and I realize that focusing on personal perception is one of those armchair refutations people tried to do with Schrodinger's experiment. The fiction is that the armchair critics were right. Just as time becomes effectively 'personal' with the bending of gravity, probability is 'personal' as it follows an atom through time.
u/DerSaidin [+1] (4 days later)
Your "three worlds" reminded me of this.
In the case of the second diagram there, the cases of difference between the first and second diagram could maybe be called magic.