AMOUNT OF MAGIC IN FANTASY

author=Desertopa

author=Sooz
Given how LL2 is basically saying, "Anything that isn't just normal attacks counts as a thing magic users can do to beat a warrior," I can't see that interpretation. Your own statements have been all over the map, to the point that I can't tell what you're trying to say, other than "I like when games are made good, also magic."

My point is: in videro game mechanics terms, there is no such thing as magic user vs. not-magic user. There is only "character that uses a command that does this thing." It does not matter one jot whether the "hit all" command is magical lightning, a hail of bullets, or a really fast guy punching the shit out of the enemy's stupid faces. It does not matter whether the "heal" command is woogety, potions, or candy. This is all flavor, and doesn't make a difference to the point of game balance.

In terms of story, there's plenty to be covered, but in the majority of cases, it doesn't matter a lot to the core narrative, and too much focus can leave the player feeling confused and bored. I'm all for faffing about with flights of worldbuilding fancy, but you don't always need to show your work, at least in the narrative itself.

Basically, I just don't see why anyone feels like there needs to be more focus on magic anywhere; it seems pretty popular and thought out in just about any pro game I've seen.

Okay, honestly at this point I'm not entirely sure what point LightningLord2 is trying to make either, so I'm content to leave that out of the discussion. But I'll try to sum up what I've been trying to say more clearly.

There's a well established tradition in RPGs of including fantastical elements, but employing a system where the usefulness of outright magical elements is kept balanced with the usefulness of nonmagical elements. Like, in every one of the games LockeZ brought up as examples of settings where fantastical elements are common, there's a system of balance in play where hitting stuff with a sword is a viable component of strategy alongside blasting stuff with spells. And I think this suggests a significant gap in the genre that could be filled in an interesting way, by creating settings that don't work like that. Settings where magic is strictly dominant over things like hitting people with swords, and the story and gameplay are designed to reflect that, are underexplored in the medium. Like, if the set of fantasy works were all invariably set in a medieval world, someone could notice "hey, we could make a fantasy story that's not set in a medieval world," and start exploring the potential of urban fantasy.

In terms of game mechanics, you're right, at a certain level of abstraction, there's no real distinction between "magic" and "not-magic." But story elements affect how players interpret that gameplay, and provide a framework that helps designers shape their gameplay decisions. In pure gameplay terms, there's nothing in particular that says that Manifest is a game which features both magic and physical attacks, and The Logomancer is a game which doesn't contain either. But the fact that The Logomancer was written to be an RPG "without fighting" gave a novel character to the story, and also gave incentive and justification for a more unorthodox "combat" system. If The Logomancer had gameplay which were more or less identical to games like Manifest, players would probably have felt more shortchanged by the premise.

I think that, like the idea of RPGs where conflict is resolved through discourse rather than combat, which has led to some interesting and original games (another example here,) the idea of fantasy RPGs where magic is strictly dominant over mundane skills like swordsmanship or thievery, and conflict mostly occurs in the context of magic vs. magic, is one with a lot of unexplored potential.