Magic by design

[TonyLB]

Garbanzo, I see the line you're drawing, but I don't know that this topic can be discussed on just one side of that line.  So I'm fine with the discussing sprawling into religion, as long as the central focus remains on magic.

[Silmenume]

Hey Tony,

I have this notion that you need to have the mechanics, but have them be so thoroughly obfuscated that the players only grip them on a subconscious level. Then they become proficient in gaming the magic system, and can recognize and create things that clearly fall into it, but have little or no ability to consciously describe why it is that they do what they do.

…

Okay: Can a system that (on some level) simulates and rewards the observed anthropological patterns of magic evoke the uncanny feeling of the wondrous and magical?

Yes.  Its called Bricolage.  As far as a “published system” that facilitates in the evoking of this “uncanny feeling of the wonderous and magical” I might suggest Chris’ Shadows in the Fog.  Without trying to get too promotional, Sim is ideally suited creating “feelings” of such things in the players.  Why?  Because Bricolage, which is how the cultures who “believe” in magic, create their magic systems.  The key is that they don’t believe that they are “creating” a magic system, but rather exploiting some already existing facet of nature.  These peoples thoroughly believe what they are doing is having a real effect and this “feeling” is created via the thought process of the mythic form of Bricolage.  IOW such a wondrous feeling comes not through the employment a fixed, cold and essentially predetermined “scientific” system, but rather through a “clumsy” and intimately interactive process of player input.

The mythic form of Bricoling creates mindsets, informs world views in people.  A game that employs the mythic form of Bricolage (Sim) is ideally suited, if performed properly, to create the feelings you are looking since it is the very means by which such mindsets are created in non or preliterate real world cultures.

[TonyLB]

Jay, give me a concrete example of a way that you would design a system to do this.