Yesterday I made some questions about outlining your world to a basic minimum.
Today we will focus on magic and magicians.
Magic
- What can magic do? What can it not do?
- Is the ability to do magic based on your race or gender? Can it be inherited? Learned? Is the ability achieved through a ritual? How likely it is to happen to one? Is one chosen by a higher power?
- What must one feed his magic with? Sanity? Life? Mana? Intelligence? Hunger?
- When is the ability taken away, if at all? Does it cease with age? If it was originally achieved with an item, does taking away the item result in him or her losing the ability?
- When is it strongest in one’s life? Puberty? Youth?
- Does regular use of magic have gains on a person? Do magicians live longer? Are they smarter? Can they go months without eating? Do they have lots of white hair?
- What types of magic exist? Does one use wands or staffs to fire spells? Does he read out of a scroll? Does he make a charm? Does he brew a potion? Are these based on solely one person, or does it sometimes take multiple people to perform certain rituals?
- What types of magicians are there? Wizards? Sorcerers? Herbalist? Alchemist? Summoner? Magi? Fortune teller? What can each kind do?
Magicians
General
- How common is it to be a magician? What is the ratio? Does this depend on your race? Your gender? Your country? Your wealth?
Magicians and Law
- How do magicians fit into society? If your world is an anarchy, do magicians have their own set of laws, or vice versa?
- How does law effect magicians? Do they have their own set of laws? Additional set of laws? Less laws? No laws??
- Does being a magician require a license? How common is it to get ahold of this license? Must one go through training before he may earn his license, or is the license a permit to start learning?
- How does apprenticeship work? Does one go to the library and learn from books/scrolls, sign up at the local Wizard Community Center for tutition, or travel countless miles, through seas to find a suitable teacher?
- What general type of government do wizards have? Is it a dictatorship? A monarchy? Something you made up?
- How is magic considered? A job? A political position? A hobby? Does this vary from place to place? Can one’s skills be employed? Which? Are magicians generally poorer or richer than most people? If richer, do they wear all the great clothes and live in nice homes/castles? If poorer, are they constantly begging to be employed to do magical work?
- How does normal society view magicians? Do people know about them at all? Are they seen as evil? Strange? Animals? Gods? Bad omens?
- What kind of magic is illegal and where?
More to come soon. Next time I’ll be elaborating about magicians and perhaps get a little bit more into types of magicians. Please digg this article and sign up for updates!
