Magic System Rules and Costs
Define limits so magic creates tension.
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Design a magic or technology system with limits. Story needs: [STORY_NEEDS]. Tone: [TONE]. Who has access: [ACCESS]. Define: the source of power, how it is used, the cost or limit, what it cannot do, who is better at it and why, side effects, how society organises around it, and how it could be countered. Present the rules in a table and then test them with five stress scenarios: a villain breaks the rule, a hero needs a solution, a child discovers it, an economy forms around it, and a war uses it. Identify contradictions and plot holes the rules create. Rank the rules by how much conflict they generate. Keep the rules short enough to explain in two sentences to a reader. Add a section called What Readers Will Ask, listing ten likely reader questions about the system and a short, consistent answer for each. Include a fairness test for climaxes: the solution must use rules established earlier, and the cost must be paid. Add guidance on how to introduce the rules gradually across the first third of the story. Add a worked example of a rule set for an invented system, in which magic is drawn from memories: the source, the limits, the cost (the memory is lost), who can use it and how that is taught, three consequences for society, and two exploits that clever characters might find with the corresponding limit to close each. Label it an illustration and do not reuse it. Add a stress-test exercise with ten questions (what happens in war, in a courtroom, in poverty, in a pandemic, at a funeral), a rule about how much the reader must know before the system solves a problem, and a list of ways the system produces story conflict rather than solving it. Provide a one-page rules summary for readers or players.
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