Poll of the Day > Are there any games (stories) about the invention of magic?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Games with magic tend to have had magic for, like, forever...

Sometimes at best a new form of magic will be invented based upon the current rules (such as the invention of Metal Bending)...but that's about it

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The Mana (secret of mana) games are like that. ALso perhaps Final Fantasy VI in a sense.

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Chrono Trigger/Cross go into it a bit.

Trails in the Sky (and the rest of the Trails/Kiseki series) also discuss the development of the setting's equivalent of magic (orbments) at some length.

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isn't that like the entire plot of FF6?

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Sahuagin posted...

isn't that like the entire plot of FF6?

Kinda not really?

There was a "war of the magi" set before the game's events, and the way you acquire magic is from other already magical creatures.

I think TC is looking for a game where you invent/discover the first instances of magic in the world.

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Sahuagin posted...

isn't that like the entire plot of FF6?

Sorta, but not in the way I meant. The magic in FF6 already pre-exists and is merely granted to the player characters through the magicite and minor grind.

Contrast this to something like https://store.steampowered.com/app/1210320/Potion_Craft_Alchemist_Simulator/ where you are constantly growing to perfect your craft

...but that's for, like, potion making

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T0ffee posted...

There was a "war of the magi" set before the game's events, and the way you acquire magic is from other already magical creatures.

k but it's still being re-discovered and implemented in society

Lokarin posted...

Sorta, but not in the way I meant. The magic in FF6 already pre-exists and is merely granted to the player characters through the magicite and minor grind.

well magic has to exist in the world in some way to begin with. it can't be introduced from nothing. magic is a force of nature, and spellcasting is harnessing that force. (right, like you could talk about "the invention of electricity". that doesn't mean we created electricity from scratch; rather, we discovered its existence, the rules about how it works, methods to harness it in useful ways, etc.)

FF6 (and some other square games as well) is specifically about the society discovering magic as a force of nature (albeit from an alternate dimension) and coming up with ways of harnessing it.

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Anyone remember really old Dungeons and Dragons?

It has weird spells like "Spoodly's Fantastical Phantasmal Hand" or something like that (actually, let me google that)... Bigby's Interposing Hand

Hornung's Guess - a spell that lets you 'mostly' accurately guess the number of things in a group... but it's not THAT accurate so it's kinda pointless as a spell

Then there's Nahal's Reckless Dweomer - which is a "fuck it, DO ANYTHING!!!" spell

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These spells seem like things that the creators and their friends would invent to solve specific problems while playing their games and they were so creative or monumental to a jolly good time when they were playing they deserved to be codified.

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I guess Vesperia technically. Spoiler for the ending and game itself. What they had before was technically the blastia that gave them "magic". After the spirits were created and all blastia destroyed then they would have probably discovered magic through the spirits similar to Tales of Phantasia.
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