Developer’s Notes on Lenga

In thinking about the design of magic and those that use magic for Lenga, much of my thoughts were fairly standard. I first imagined a person using magic casting a spell. Like many, my mental image is similar to recent Harry Potter® movies: a spellcaster thinks of the spell, waves a wand, says the magic word or words, then a greenish light appears and performs the desired effect.

Then the thought stuck me, “What if someone said the words without a wand?” I must admit that the idea that words have palpable power is an appealing concept. However, if learning magic is a matter of only using the right words, it appears that magic study is simply an exercise in vocabulary. Learn the right phrase, and ‘presto!’ the desired effect occurs. It reminds me of a cartoon where the main characters happens upon a book a magic words and phrases. While making up a song about them, he is able to defend himself against a vampire by accident. When the vampire confronts him, he uses the same phrases to produce completley different effects. At the end, he uses the name of a city to be able to fly home. The thing is, he had said the name of the city three times before but nothing happened. I know it was a cartoon, but it generated a different perspective on the whole mechanic of magic and casting spells in general.

With that in mind, it seems reasonable that casting a spell required an unobservable step. This would be something that occurs on the inside before the saying of words, waving of arms, and lighting the end of a wand. For Lenga, I called this internal step, the invoking. From the mechanics standpoint, the invoking opens a mental connection between the spellcaster and the source of energy used to create the desired effect. Once this connection is made, the external things serve to shape and channel that power.

I also imagine that this internal step can only be learned from another spellcaster and that it would take some time to learn and master. This seems necessary to make users of magic less common. It also allows them a certain amount of elitism as well as a sense of ‘otherness’ as compared to non-magic using people. This is fairly traditional, but important. People that can use magic are seen as having a mystical connection with the universe. In some ways, they are usually perceived as understanding more about the true nature of the universe than scientists. Besides, those that use magic should be different and distinctive, even in a world where magic is commonplace. The best analogy that comes to mind centers around those that are considered experts with computers. Computers are everywhere and we rely on them to do just about everything from measure how much gas we pump into our cars, to maintain financial records of multi-national companies. The fact that they are commonplace doesn’t remove the mystique around the ‘geeks’ that we know. Demand is high for those that are expert with ERP systems, but the supply of qualified people is pretty low.

So if it is established that a person must make a connection with their source of magical energy before casting a spell, interesting possibilities appear. The most striking one is that anyone can use magic words and phrases in everyday conversation without anything happening. They can even know what those words are supposed to do in the hands of a spellcaster. This allows everyone to have a certain knowledge of magic without being able to use it. Magic can be everywhere while the vast majority of people are limited or prohibited from using it.

To make this distinction more obvious, I decided that Lenga should be its own language. More on that in another post.