Magic & technology

Designing magic systems and speculative technology that create stories instead of dissolving them: Sanderson's laws, the hard–soft spectrum, a step-by-step design method, Clarke's laws, science-fiction hardness and extrapolation, the real physics that constrains common SF tropes, and how magic and tech become game mechanics. The general ripple method is on worldbuilding fundamentals; societies that live with the magic are on societies and cultures; game-specific design continues on game worlds. Invented examples are marked.

Sanderson's laws of magic

Brandon Sanderson's essays are the most-cited modern framework. They are advice for storytellers, not physics.

Sanderson's Second Law essay splits the limiting factors into three kinds:

The First Law's corollary: soft magic should create problems, not solve them. Mysterious power can threaten, tempt, complicate or awe; if it rescues the heroes, the reader feels cheated.

Hard vs soft magic

A spectrum, not a binary. Sanderson's First Law essay uses Tolkien as the model of soft magic and describes his own writing as mostly hard; his Mistborn allomancy (specific metals, each granting one defined power, burned and used up) is the usual example of the hard end.

Mixed approaches work: hard rules for what the protagonists use, soft for gods, ancient powers and antagonists; or magic that starts soft and hardens as the protagonist learns it.

Designing a magic system

1. Start from the story's need

   Decide what the magic is for: theme, conflict, wonder, a heist mechanism, a game verb. A magic system that doesn't serve story or play is a hobby.

2. Pick the source

   Where does the power come from? Gods, spirits, bloodlines, a substance, words, emotions, the environment, the magician's own life, a bargain, technology misunderstood.

3. Set the cost

   Something must be spent: stamina, blood, years of life, memories, sanity, money, rare materials, time, social standing, risk to others. Costs that bite are the source of drama.

4. Set limits and weaknesses

   What can't it do? What stops it? What counters it? Where and when does it fail?

5. Decide who and how

   Who can use it (anyone, a bloodline, the chosen, the trained, the wealthy)? How is it learned (apprenticeship, school, scripture, pact, trauma)? How long does mastery take?

6. Run the ripple method on society

   Economy, war, religion, law, medicine, class, family. If a spell can heal wounds, what happens to surgeons, armies and life expectancy?

7. Write the rules down

   Put every rule in the rules ledger. Hard rules the reader sees must never break without a paid-for reason.

Design questions by dimension

Worked example: tidebinding (invented)

Premise, in the Saltmarch setting used across these sheets: some people can move liquids by will, drawing on the pull of the moon.

Three hard rules (moon strength, bodily cost, sky sight) generate a calendar, a class, a prison design, a crime and a political conflict, and give the climax clear stakes: the heroes must act at neap tide, underground, or at the cost of a binder's life.

Clarke's three laws

From Arthur C. Clarke's essay "Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination" in Profiles of the Future:

Worldbuilding use of the Third Law: the line between magic and technology is the observer's understanding. Advanced tech treated as magic by characters (lost ancient machines, alien artifacts) lets you write soft-magic mystery for the characters while keeping hard rules in your notes.

Science fiction: hardness and extrapolation

Hardness

"Hard" SF keeps to known science; "soft" SF bends or ignores it for other interests (society, psychology, adventure). TV Tropes' Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness is an informal, fan-made scale for this. A simplified ladder:

Choose a level deliberately and hold it. Readers accept almost any level; they reject inconsistency within one.

The novum and extrapolation

Darko Suvin's novum (Metamorphoses of Science Fiction, 1979) is the novelty that sets an SF world apart from ours (more on worldbuilding fundamentals). The extrapolation method:

1. Take one change (a technology, a discovery, an event).
2. Trace consequences through economy, family, war, law, religion, status, everyday life.
3. Go past the first-order effect. The idea that SF should predict the traffic jam, not just the car, is usually credited to Frederik Pohl; Quote Investigator traces its core to Isaac Asimov (1953).
4. Ask who adopts it first (militaries, the rich, criminals, teenagers) and who is harmed.
5. Ask what new crimes, jobs, slang, etiquette and fears appear.

Common SF technologies and their implications

Numbers that constrain

The rocket equation (Tsiolkovsky, 1903) links the velocity change a rocket can achieve to its exhaust velocity and mass ratio:

where $m_0$ is the fueled mass and $m_f$ the dry mass. Because the mass ratio grows exponentially, needing $\Delta v = 3 v_e$ means a fueled rocket about $e^3 \approx 20$ times its dry mass. Cheap spaceflight in a story needs either a much better engine (higher $v_e$), a way to avoid carrying fuel, or a lower $\Delta v$ requirement (smaller planet, space elevator, launch from orbit).

Time dilation (special relativity): a clock moving at speed $v$ runs slow by the Lorentz factor

Relativistic travelers come home to a world that has moved on: a built-in source of estrangement and tragedy.

Light-speed lag applies to communication even without travel: about 1.3 seconds each way to the Moon, minutes to Mars, years to the nearest star. Real-time control of distant fleets is impossible.

Technology-level consistency

• Tech clusters: capabilities come with prerequisites and consequences (see the table in societies and cultures). Gunpowder without changed fortifications, or printing without pamphlets, reads as wrong.
• Uneven distribution: the future (or the past) is not evenly spread. Capitals, militaries and the rich get new things first; frontiers lag.
• Legacy tech persists: horses alongside railways, swords alongside guns, paper alongside screens.
• Lost technology needs a reason it isn't rediscovered: missing materials, lost knowledge, taboo, dependence on infrastructure.
• Magic and tech interact: if a spell does a job, the tech for that job may never develop (why invent the pump when binders exist?), and vice versa.

Tech trees

A tech tree (popularised by strategy games such as Civilization) is a dependency graph: each technology requires others. For worldbuilding, sketch one even if nobody will see it:

Bronze working -> needs copper + tin (trade)
Iron working -> needs furnaces + charcoal
  -> cheaper tools -> more farmland cleared
  -> cheaper weapons -> larger armies
Writing -> scribes -> tax records -> bureaucracy
Tidebinding (invented) -> sluices -> reclaimed land
  -> dyke economy -> Dyke Wardens' power

Magic and technology in games

In a game, magic and tech are verbs the player uses. The design priorities shift from reader understanding to player understanding and fairness. Broader game-world design is on game worlds.

Design principles:

• Readability: the player must be able to see what a power will do, what it costs and why it failed. Clear visual and sound language (color per school, consistent silhouettes) is the game equivalent of Sanderson's First Law.
• Limitations create choices: a cost or cooldown forces the player to decide when, which is where skill lives.
• Agency over randomness: failure should be traceable to a decision, not a hidden roll.
• Consistency across world and mechanics: if lore says fire magic is forbidden, NPCs should react when the player uses it (otherwise it is ludonarrative dissonance).
• Balance against content: a flight spell breaks every level built on walls. Decide which verbs the world must resist.
• Systemic interactions: fire burns grass, water conducts lightning, ice freezes water into bridges. Consistent interaction rules let players invent solutions, which feels like the hard-magic payoff.

Common mistakes

Templates

Magic system sheet

SYSTEM NAME:
STORY/GAME PURPOSE: (theme, conflict, verb, wonder)
HARD-SOFT POSITION: hard / mixed / soft
SOURCE:
METHOD: (words, gestures, materials, will; time taken)
COSTS: immediate:        delayed:       cumulative:
LIMITATIONS (cannot do):
WEAKNESSES (can be countered by):
ACCESS: who, how many, by birth/training/purchase
LEARNING: how taught; institutions; secrets
VISIBILITY: can others see it and trace the caster?
RIPPLES:
  economy:
  warfare:
  religion:
  law:
  medicine:
  daily life:
HISTORY: discovered / lost / changed when?
RULES LEDGER IDS:
CAPABILITIES LIST (check against every plot problem):
OPEN QUESTIONS:

Speculative technology sheet

TECHNOLOGY:
HARDNESS LEVEL: known science / speculative / one big lie
REAL-PHYSICS CAVEATS:
PREREQUISITES (materials, energy, knowledge, industry):
FIRST ADOPTERS:
WHO IS HARMED:
CONSEQUENCES:
  economy:
  family:
  war:
  law:
  status and fashion:
  crime:
  everyday life:
NEW WORDS, JOBS, ETIQUETTE, FEARS:
WHAT IT MAKES OBSOLETE:
WHAT STILL DOESN'T WORK:

Game ability sheet

ABILITY:              SCHOOL / TYPE:
VERB (what the player does):
RESOURCE: mana / cooldown / charges / ammo / health
COST:                 COOLDOWN:         RANGE:
CAST TIME:            INTERRUPTIBLE? y/n
TELEGRAPH (what player and enemies see and hear):
SYSTEMIC INTERACTIONS: (fire + oil, water + shock...)
COUNTERS:
LORE HOOK (why it works this way in-world):
LEVELS IT COULD BREAK:
PLAYTEST NOTES:

References

• Brandon Sanderson, "Sanderson's First Law" (2007) (opens in a new tab): the First Law; hard and soft magic; Tolkien as the soft-magic example
• Brandon Sanderson, "Sanderson's Second Law" (2011) (opens in a new tab): limitations, weaknesses and costs
• Brandon Sanderson, "Sanderson's Third Law of Magic" (2013) (opens in a new tab): expand before adding
• Brandon Sanderson FAQ: What are Sanderson's Laws of Magic? (opens in a new tab): the three laws in one place
• The Coppermind: Sanderson's Laws of Magic (opens in a new tab): fan wiki reporting the "Zeroth Law" from lectures and signings
• Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future (1962; revised 1973): "Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination" and the three laws
• Clarke's three laws (Wikipedia) (opens in a new tab): wording and publication history
• TV Tropes: Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness (opens in a new tab): informal, fan-made hardness scale
• Darko Suvin, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction (Yale University Press, 1979): the novum
• Quote Investigator: predicting the automobile vs the traffic problem (opens in a new tab): Asimov 1953, Pohl 1968
• Tsiolkovsky rocket equation (Wikipedia) (opens in a new tab): the equation, symbols, history
• Albert Einstein, "Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper", Annalen der Physik 17 (1905): special relativity, the origin of time dilation