Conversation
Most implementations of magic in fiction boil down to:

"But how does it work? How wouldn't it destroy the whole world, this would be so easy to exploit?"
"Don't worry kitten"
"Okay ❤️ Yay ❤️ "
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@volpeon i have seen one case where magic almost destroyed the whole world which is why it got banned for a long time

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@volpeon one of the elements wasn’t used by none of the major schools of magic so there was basically massive elemental imbalance towards that element

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@volpeon Tbf: Some would need to have a big lore and ruleset, just like physics, to be consistent what it can do and what not.
Doing the old “just accept ist” thing might fel like the easy way out, but in many cases it keeps the pacing up und make the story more fluent.
I think the best middle ground is to include some of the rules in the lore building sections without explaingin everything in great detail. keep a hint of misteray to it, but at least make it understanable what works there.

It’s like the difference between “Hot stuff can hurt you” to “The added energy makes the atoms wiggle really fast and if that wiggle gets physical contact to your skin it can change the material significantly”

I don’t know if there is a “right” way to do it. Probably not, so in some cirumstances it is an okay easy way out.

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@Erpel Oh yeah, I'm usually fine with some handwaving of details as long as there aren't obvious problems. But I do appreciate works a lot more if they put in the effort to ensure fictional things are realistic and consistent, not just with magic but also creatures, vehicles and so on.
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@volpeon I think it can be quite hard to find the sweet spot between “not too much hand waving” and “It is consistent in itself.

I just have a similar experience by writing the SciFi stuff. How much do you explain and how much “it just works, bitch” do you put in there so it feels right for the settings and characters, but not to make it completly unrealistic or kill your pacing in writing site long details about some physics phenomena.

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@Erpel @volpeon Here, I feel like the best ones so far just use knowledge/experience like if it would be some sort of craft, and maybe equivalent-exchange type of thing, while the magic-power stuff in video-game-like ones while fun always seem pretty off.
Meaning that for me it doesn't needs to be explained, specially as sometimes explaining it makes it worse.
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@lanodan @volpeon you can explain the rules through world building, dialogue or examples, without resorting to page long details.

It depends a little bit on how much your protagonist can know from it’s POV and how much you can assume with the reader.

I think you don’t need to explain someone that when you hit the light switch, the light will turn on, but if you assume everyone knows how an electric curcuit works, you might lose some people.

They learned it way back in school but if they never used that knowledge, they will not understands what happening there. Of yourse they will be able to tell you about voltages and currents, but from my own experience for a lot more people than i am cormfortable to accept “Electrics” is just another magic thing. “TV”, “phone” and “internet” are just more complex layers on top of it.

My point here is that building too much on readers knowledge can backfire really hard.

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@volpeon that, or the exploit becomes a core story beat, like in The Magic Goes Away.
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@volpeon Isn’t that the point of magic? Because otherwise it would be science fiction instead?

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@Erpel @volpeon Reminds me of Jules Verne books, where things like electricity (20 000 leagues under the sea) and space exploration were both pretty much science-fiction at the time.

And well I'd quite do the difference between demonstrating it and explaining it. Like I'd even say that most people don't really know about current (hence the mantra of "don't plug everything on the same wallsocket" instead of doing the math) and voltage at best it's just to match with adapters.
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@volpeon then there is the Foundryside series, which is just magic fantasy hacking

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