Emotion-Based Magic System

[Observer]

As of late I've been bouncing a story idea around, and the magic system I came up with is based in emotions, as one would guess from the title. Chenneling an emotion uses it up in the process, so a way to perpetually fill yourself with what you need and good willpower are good traits to have in it.

Unfortunately, I have, as usual, hit a bit of a roadblock with the idea, in the sense that I don't rreally know what to use everything for. Anger would probably be more of a destructive power by simple nature of the emotion, but simply deciding to assign categories to individual emotions forces me to pick a handful of "Primary" emotion from which all others are composed. If you go with current theories, this means I have anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise to work with, which leaves me with only one "positive" amung five "negatives".

In short, I'm stuck, so instead of butting my head against it for a week to come up with something, I'm taking to (likely more productive) shortcut and asking for help.

Any ideas?

[FlashWrogan]

You could try looking at developing a more of a spectrum type system where you classify emotions along a spectrum (and I would probably avoid classifying emotions as positive or negative, as that would tend to limit you). You could use something like the four temperaments and classify each emotion and power under a specific category, but then you can say it leans toward another category. It would be like having 4 points on the compass, but having points in between them where your different choices are.

[Haradion Drogon]

Emotion based Magic sounds awesome!

Anger, Wrath and Hatred would produce awesome affects...

I would pick a group of Primary Emotions which produce distinctive effects,

Anger

Fear

Sadness

Neutrality (Random idea: The Power attained from complete calmness. Powerful, but almost impossible to maintain except by a secluded order of monks. An idea?)

Compassion

Happiness

Excitement

Hows that?

[Observer]

Crap, I get a perfectly good sliding scale idea from flash, and then in comes another equally good idea to throw me off.

(Thanks for the help, it's really nice!)

Random idea: The Power attained from complete calmness. Powerful, but almost impossible to maintain except by a secluded order of monks. An idea?

In a world where emotions give you power, I imagine being able to control them well is a general skill, like writing. People can make themselves furious at any moment, or green with envy for almost no tangible reason. When not using any particular state of emotion, most people would probably just keep all emotion from themselves. Basically what I'm saying is that calmness is kind of like colorless for Awakeners. There's no emotions to use.

Also found this:

Edited February 22, 2013 by Observer

[Haradion Drogon]

Well the Emotion Spectrum also sounds good. Its easy to see how greed and envy can slide into anger...

In this world, does all emotion produce effects without being called upon so to speak? Does feeling happy always produce a certain effect? Do all of the people in the world have this, or only a select group? Is it a born thing or a learned process?

These are important to consider when designing the system.

[Observer]

When not specifically directed, the emotion tends to vent itself. The emotions themselves are the power, and could theoretically be used for anything, but it's difficult to use it for anything beyond its purpose both because of the nature of the magic and because it's hard to make rainbows and ponies when you're a burning ball of hatred.

Edited February 23, 2013 by Observer

[Sarkimo]

What if the person hates ponies and rainbows?

[Shaidar]

Is the plan to associate particular emotions (e.g. anger) with particular magical effects (e.g. "Fire")? Or is it a bit more complex?

[Comatose]

On the topic of cost, if emotions are the "cost" for this magic system, what happens when they are used up?  Does a person who uses this power become increasingly emotionless until they are unable to produce any effect at all, forcing them to wait until they can work themselves up or down again?

 

That has interesting therapeutic implications.  People who have trouble dealing with their emotions could continually use magic until they were ready to deal with their emotions, or problematically continue to avoid their emotions.

 

Also, are people who are more emotionally-driven more powerful?  That could be interesting, having the hyper-rational, detached, or logical thinkers be less powerful than passionate, impulsive, or overly dramatic people.

 

It would also be cool to think about how emotional disorders factor into things.  What happens to a bi-polar person who has this power?

 

Back on the subject of costs, there could also be some long term effects from over-use of the magic.  Perhaps long term use might result in the ability to feel anything at all, or a loss of touch from one's emotions, so that even if one is feeling happy or sad, they lack the ability to understand or comprehend their own feelings.

 

Just some thoughts

[andyk]

I've also been writing a story using emotion based magic, but I took a different angle, where the magic users pulled power from the emotions of others. This can make a great orator or master manipulator very powerful even if they themselves are dead inside. It also created sources of conflict, due to the potential for abuse, as mages reduce other people to emotional husks.

 

That said, after reading this thread, I'm starting to think that I'd taken the wrong approach. The idea of connecting this magic into emotional disorders and therapy has great potential for a modern setting. If you can avoid your own emotional traumas by turning anger into fire or grief into a snow storm, what happens to your personality? And if someone counters that spell, what does the backlash do to you?

 

Shaidar's idea of connecting particular emotions to particular effects seems like the obvious limitation and why of adding flavour. Maybe you could do this by looking for a core quality each emotion has, and using magic to transfer that to the physical world, for example:

- anger - destructive - fire, explosions, and so on, the obvious one

- happiness - energetic - moving quickly, flinging stuff around, maybe wielding electricity (though I'm stretching my own logic there)

- grief - turmoil and confusion - creating storms, scrambling people's thoughts, stirring cake mix (not all magic need be big and showy, right?)

 

But the other thing that occurred to me is the wider implications if only real emotion is a power source. Does that make it more obvious when people are faking, because it doesn't provide power? Does it mean magic users become more honest, because their colleagues can spot their lack of power if they're faking? Or does it mean they sometimes go to great lengths to fake emotions, to bluff people about how much power they have? What does a psychiatrist or mind healer's job look like when people have even more interest in hiding their emotions, but even less ability to do so?

 

Like Comatose said, just some thoughts, but ones that mean I'm going back to re-write my own story now.

[Observer]

I always imagined there being two basic groups of people. Those who manifest their emotions reflexively, which would either make them easy ot read or just completely emotionless, and those kinds of people who are emotional enough that using a little here and there won't get rid of it all. Those kinds would be the "mages" per se.

 

It's kind of like how flinching or twitching is mostly reflexive, but can be controlled with effort, or used to a greater capacity if needed, provided you have the excess emotion to do so and aren't using up anything vital.

 

As for the emotionally/mentally damaged, they're used to their fullest extent. Handicaped rights probably don't exist in this story thanks to how useful the emotionally wrecked can be for society as long as everybody looks the other way.

[benaddison]

I have been working on developing a magic system very similar to this. Mine is based around eight "core" emotions.

 

Love and Anger

Joy and Sadness

Hope and Fear

Pride and Shame

 

I think I will keep them grouped in pairs for now. Although, I don't really know the limits or actual powers and abilities for different emotions. I am also having trouble figuring out the downside, as well as how severe it should be. Where my mind is going at the moment is possible colors for different emotions. I think in mine, you will have to have complete control over the emotion you are trying to conjure.

 

Just an FYI. In my world, magic has almost completely died. It is extremely rare and forbidden. Those who do possess the ability keep it hidden.

Edited May 4, 2014 by benaddison

[WriteNowDave]

Why not copy(Steal)/edit(own) the colors used by the Green Lantern Corps.

 

http://io9.com/5314908/what-are-the-different-lantern-corps-and-what-do-they-want

Edited May 5, 2014 by WriteNowDave

[el_warko]

Some thoughts.

 

Don't feel trapped in your writing by only being able to accessing a particular power set based on a particular emotion.  If you do this, you are removing part of what makes people people.  You could also end up typecasting characters - this isn't neccessarily a bad thing, just something to watch out of.  Couple this with the fact that people rarely truly feel one emotion at any given time.  e.g. if you've (a character has) won a game or something, you (they) may feel both happy and satisfied in the victory.  If there was someone in particular you (they) beat in said game contest, you may also feel vindicated or malicious in victory.

 

In fact you could assign available power determined by the strength of emotion.  On top of any preclivity to a particular field / type of magic, fire, wards, summoning - whatever. This would also avoid having to feel scared and determied (for example) to produce a force field bubble to protect against a lava flow or magical death rays or something.

 

If you do go with one emotion one effect remember that an emotion can be used positively as well as negatively.

 

e.g.  someone is being bullied; you feel angry.  You could

 

a ) hurt the bully(ies)

b ) protect the person being bullied.

 

or:

 

e.g. you are (a character is) bullying someone.  You (They) feel happy doing this.  You (They) could:

 

a ) use you power to crush them (like a paper cup) to bug dust

b ) heal them so you can hurt them again.

Edited May 6, 2014 by el_warko

[MrMeeseeks]

I know I'm years late, but I would try to avoid making emotions either positive or negative, rather I think it would be better to make it that if an underuse or overuse of emotions