C.R. Rowenson is back to finish the magic system we started. We talk about runic magic systems, the recent supernova shortage in the Milky Way, and how Sky High is an underrated superhero movie.
HOSTED by Dr. Moiya McTier (@GoAstroMo), astrophysicist and folklorist
GUEST
C.R. Rowenson is a trained chemical engineer who's passionate about writing and building magic systems. You can follow him on twitter @ClarkRRowenson, find fantastic resources on his website crrowenson.com, and check out his Youtube channel. If you'd like to support Clark's book/worksheet (and get early access to the book when it's done!) check out his crowdfunding campaign here.
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TRANSCRIPT
Moiya 0:08
Hello there friends. Welcome to Exolore, the show that helps you imagine other worlds with facts and science. I am your host, Dr. Moiya McTier. I'm an astrophysicist who studied pretty much everything in space from planetary orbits to the radiation leftover from the Big Bang to star formation and black holes and Galaxy evolution. But I am especially interested in the motion of stars and how that affects the habitability of exoplanets, which are planets outside of our solar system. I am also a folklorist who specializes in building and analyzing fictional worlds. And this podcast is my way of sharing those worlds and that knowledge with you. So let's get started. Let's just jump right in, Clark, it's part two.
Clark 0:56
I'm excited to be back.
Moiya 0:57
Yeah, this is my first Part Two episode - I think so.
Clark 1:02
Well, I'm flattered. That's awesome.
Moiya 1:05
Well, it's just that we had so much to cover in the first one. And I didn't want to leave the audience hanging without a fully formed magic system.
Clark 1:14
And I will try and keep it brief, because otherwise, I'll keep you like working on it for a while.
Moiya 1:18
Right, and I think we should probably say up top, we're not going to make a complete magic system in two hours over the two parts. But we will, I think, give enough detail that maybe the listeners will have some food for thought they can do some fun expansions of the magic system on their own. In the last episode, we went through your blueprint, the kind of high level more general ideation of the magic system. And now we're going to go through your seven stages to try and get more of the details worked out.
Clark 1:51
Yes.
Moiya 1:52
Awesome. So for those who didn't listen to the first episode, first of all, what are you doing? Go back and listen to the first episode; [and] second, you know, just in case, it's been a while and you don't want to listen to the whole thing again, Clark, who are you? What do you do? Why are you here?
Clark 2:08
Yeah, well, I am CR Rowenson. I am a developmental editor and a freelancing writing coach. Right now, [I] focus on nonfiction that is entirely centered on helping creatives craft and repair marvelous magic systems for their stories. And honestly, I don't care if you're a novelist, a graphic novel designer, a game designer, whatever. If you have magic, I'm down.
Moiya 2:33
And what do you consider magic?
Clark 2:37
Magic is anything that allows actions or capability beyond our current understanding, or our own current capabilities. So that does include advanced tech, monsters, strange biology, and your more traditional magic.
Moiya 2:54
Got it. I love that because any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic anyway.
Clark 3:00
Yes. And any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Moiya 3:06
That's a nice corollary.
Clark 3:07
Yeah, I found that on a webcomic called "Girl Genius", which is great. I call that "Agatha's law", because that was the character who said it.
Moiya 3:15
I love that. I'll look that up later. But I wanted to summarize briefly what we covered in the last episode, and also in the worldbuilding episode that is relevant to this discussion. So we, together are building a magic system [that's] set on a world with an ever changing night sky, which we just recorded with Dr. Lauren Esposito, we imagined a planet full of these giant arachnids, that I imagined them as being like three feet tall, like puppy sized tarantulas, pretty much and they live in caves, and they're very social, they crave physical touch, I imagine them as very emotional. So I would love in our magic system if a lot of emotions were important, or if they were incorporated somehow. Although, this is just like expansive thought. So that's the life form we're dealing with. The magic system from the top down, like the very general overview that we did in Part One, it's a soft, rational magic system. Clark, do you want to explain what that means?
Clark 4:15
Yeah, so the short version, soft and hard magic is how much of the system is known or understood. So because it's a "soft system", we're going into this with the understanding that whatever we develop is just going to be a piece of a much larger hole, much like you see in Stargate, for example. Or even in Harry Potter, where we see some of it and we know it's not the whole world or even Harry Dresden. That's a great example of that. The rational-irrational [axis] is all about what you can do with the information you have. If you can take the pieces you've seen and use it to extrapolate and use logic to progress forward and predict and understand parts of the system, it's rational. If you can't do that, it's irrational. And none of these are better than the others. But we're kind of going with [the] soft-rational one because between a doctor who studies exoplanets and a chemical engineer, I don't think we can avoid it being rational.
Moiya 5:13
So [we have] a soft rational system. I love your term, the seed crystal, this core idea of the magic system. For us, that's this constantly changing night sky. This changing constellation that you have every season and also every year, which is the real difference between this world and ours, we went through your blueprint system. And so I'm just gonna say what we decided so that we have that fresh in our minds. So we decided it's a low prevalence system. So there aren't a lot of people who can use magic, [and] that it's a low transference system. And please correct me if I'm wrong, but it will help me to go through and interpret what we said, a low transference system [makes] it possible to trade magic or for magic to go from one person to another. But it's difficult and it doesn't happen very often.
Clark 6:00
Stealing magic.
Moiya 6:01
Stealing magic, yes. Because you know, not everyone in this world is going to be a good spider person, we decided there would be neutral flux. So there's the same amount of magic overall being used. And I remember we had a discussion about, well, from the creator's perspective, it's neutral. But maybe from the magic users perspective, it feels like positive flux, because there are more magic users over time.
Clark 6:25
And the other piece about that is because in the entire world, the flux is neutral. As it's getting distributed across more people, the individual strength of those people-spiders, is decreasing. So if you looked in history, when there were only 100 magic users, they were much more powerful than the 10,000, or whatever that they had 200 years later.
Moiya 6:47
I'm imagining some consequences of this, where maybe some groups like if they use magic as a defense, or if they incorporate it into their society, then maybe there's a trade off between having lots of not very powerful magic users versus having a few very powerful users.
Clark 7:07
There's so many societal stuff that could get really messed up [depending on] what you wanted to do.
Moiya 7:13
I love when societies have different values like that, because it is really something where neither one of you is right, but you know that there's probably going to be some clashing between them because they have these different points of view. So neutral flux, we decided that the source of the magic is external. [This] magic comes from the sky - from these constellations that are constantly changing. And because of coming from the sky, the source is infinite, like the stars are always there. It's not something that's going to be depleted. It's a very natural magic system. It's not very easy to use, there are some things that you'll be able to do right away. But to get to the upper levels of this magic system, you will have to go through training or get a lot of experience and that magic use is more reliable for people who have more experience or training and maybe less reliable for people who are just starting out.
Clark 8:00
Yeah, that matches everything I have. I know some of the other quick things that we had tossed out were magic users are the ones who were born on the day of a full moon, which is part of why it was a low number of people, and the moon and the stars. Like, that's a big part of what the magic is and how it works. And we don't really know any more than that yet.
Moiya 8:21
Right? Yes. And now it's our job to figure that out.
Clark 8:25
So from the seven stages of creating a magic system, just to run through those real quick, there's INSPIRATION, which is where you find the seed crystal in your core, why your driving idea behind it. Stage two is IDEA GENERATION, where you just make as many random ideas as possible, you want way more ideas than you can use. Stage three is then ALIGNMENT, where you look at what you need your system to be, either from your story, or from the world or from themes or in our case, we're actually going to use the blueprint that we already lined up, and use that to help align any of the ideas. we come up with.
Moiya 9:03
That's smart.
Clark 9:04
Stage four is DEFINITION, where you start getting into the details of what the magic system can do, building out some of your rules, really picking and choosing the specific magical effects and how it all kind of ties together. Stage five is then RESTRICTIONS where you are putting limitations and setting boundaries on what can be done and how because limitations make for really interesting magic systems. And you can really feel your story if you come up with some good limitations. Number six is TESTING - stress testing, you just try and break your system and find the little ways that can be exploited, abused, overused, extrapolated - loopholes, feedback, loops, all that kind of stuff. And then stage seven is ITERATION where you go back to the beginning and you go through it again as many times as you need to to get to a complete system.
Moiya 9:54
And honestly, does the iteration ever end?
Clark 9:57
No, and just like with writing or any kind of creative thing, you have to decide when you're getting diminishing returns to [to decide] this is good enough. And that's a whole art in itself.
Moiya 10:13
True. What is that like for you? Do you typically go through a set number of iterations? Or do you just go through as many times as it takes to feel like you're done and what does "done" mean for you?
Clark 10:23
So those are great questions. And it really is kind of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff, because it comes down to whether you feel comfortable with it or not. So if you get to the end, and you feel that you have enough that you can work through the story, at whatever level you're at, then that's enough. Me, I want a pretty well refined and understood magic system before I actually start building out the plots or the characters or anything, different people work in different ways. So I've had some people I've worked with where we did a first draft of the magic system, we went through all seven stages once then she actually did the first draft of her book. And then we went back and reiterated the magic system before she did draft two of her book. It's really about finding what works for you. And as you get better, I don't always have to go through the entire process again. I can get to where I'm like, "well, I've done the stress testing. And because of what I've seen here, I like all my ideas. I like my inspiration, I like my alignment, all I really need to do is go back to definition and restriction and start tweaking those to patch some of these cracks and holes that I found". So it really depends, some systems will be easier to leave that way. And this is actually one advantage of soft magic systems is you can leave more of that in the air. Because even if you spot a potential problem, you can say, "Well, I never stated that this was the entire system. I tried to make it clear that pieces were missing. So this didn't work the way you expected because of these pieces that are missing". And as the creator, we honestly don't know what those pieces are yet, but the reader doesn't need to know.
Moiya 11:59
I found it really interesting that you said you like to build the magic system before you come up with plot and characters and story. Is there a reason for that?
Clark 12:08
That just comes down to what I'm drawn to, and really where all of my stuff started. So now we're kind of just getting into the psychology of Clark, which can be a scary place. But everything for me starts with the magic systems. And this is actually an interesting conversation related to the seed crystals. Everything starts with the magic system. For me, I didn't start writing stories. And I didn't start worldbuilding, I started building magic systems. And then I realized nobody wanted to listen to me talk for six hours straight about this magic system, I needed to wrap it in a story. And I started doing that. And I started seeing like, "oh, but this magic is gonna have all of these repercussions and how they handle their technology, how they handle their warfare, how they handle their family units." So everything I do related to fiction has grown out of magic systems. So when I go back to a clean slate, I generally start with magic systems.
Moiya 13:03
That makes a lot of sense. And I think that that's a good lesson for creative people out there. I think that this is a good lesson in start where you're most comfortable and where you're most excited, because I personally like to build worlds and stories and magic systems, when they're relevant - when they're useful. I build them in order of what I think naturally would have happened. Okay, so if it is a magic system that's based on nature, like here, then I think it for me would make sense to build the magic system before the creatures and we did that in this instance. But if it was a magic system that was maybe created by people on the world, then I probably would build the world first and the people and then build a magic system. And so there's no right way to do this, do whatever makes you most comfortable.
Clark 13:03
And something I just realized that we didn't talk about is when you should start building your magic system. And that also changes, and that relates to the seed crystal. So I had the one person, we did the first draft with magic than the first draft of the story. I've had other people where they needed the first draft of their book before we could even touch the magic.
Moiya 13:51
Do you mean that they needed it because there was a deadline or like personally, they just wanted to have the book in place first?
Clark 14:15
They had a mental block. We tried to sit down and do the magic system, and no ideas were flowing. And I was trying to give prompts and trying to work because I like helping people and help them discover their magic. That's why through all of this, I'm mostly asking Moiya questions, cuz it's her magic system, and I'm just helping her find it. But it just wasn't working. And it wasn't until we stopped and did the first outline of her book that she was able to then come back and be like, "Oh, I now have all of these ideas for magical effects." And that's actually where the idea for the seed crystal came from. As I realized my seed crystal is always the magic itself. I can build a magic system in a vacuum. Not everybody can do that. [To] some people, it's a character, some people it's their plot. [To] some people, it's part of their world, [and for others], it's a specific conflict. But that's why the seed crystal is so important as it really harkens to who you are, and what you need. Basically, if something has you stuck, then you need to do it a little different[ly], and find what will get you unstuck. That's my whole thing as a writing coach. I don't care what it is, but what are we going to do to get you unstuck? Because that's the most important thing.
Moiya 15:23
Oh, sounds like you're a good writing coach. That's nice. All right, should we go through the seven stages?
Clark 15:30
Yeah. And let's see what we can do. So for those who are not benefiting from the video feed, I'm sharing a mindmap that I like to use when we're doing this kind of stuff. And when brainstorming, there's so many options, just because of how my brain works. I categorize things and then sub categorize things and then sub categorize things,
Moiya 15:50
Nice, categories all the way down.
Clark 15:51
Yeah, pretty much. I like to call these the pillars of brainstorming. And there are these large areas that your ideas are going to kind of fall into. And the main ones we've got to deal with right now are going to be the magical effects, themes, like themes and mediums. Like if there's a specific thing you want it to channel through or relate to, or something like that. So like I already kind of put emotion down as something you mentioned.
Moiya 16:14
Yeah, I did. Is this "theme" like in Avatar: The Last Airbender, the magic systems are element themed.
Clark 16:23
Yeah, it's usually visual or tactile themes, rather than like story, philosophical themes. But you can do that as well. It's just the kind of stuff that you sort of want to resonate throughout, if you want anything. And you can have as many of those, or as few of those as you want. Another one that I really like to pull in is just spending some time pulling up some of your own favorite magic systems and using those as inspiration. And the last one, I just call "really cool hats." And that is anything else related to your magic system, a cool moment, character concept, character conflict. It's just a really cool hat that you might want in your story.
Moiya 17:01
Nice. And now I also just want like actual very cool hats.
Clark 17:07
For the spiders? Yeah.
Moiya 17:08
Yeah, like, you know, wizards in some folklore here on Earth get to wear really cool hats. I want our magic spider users to have cool hats.
Clark 17:18
So now is where we just get to cut loose and start coming up with tons of ideas.
Moiya 17:24
I have some. Because they're spiders, and they have eight limbs instead of our four. But really, just to because it's hard to use our feet when we're standing. I am inspired by the magic system in The Magicians, the book series turned TV show on Syfy, where one way to use magic is through making your fingers and hands into very specific shapes. It looks like tutting - the dance style that some people use here where you're like dancing with your hands. And I think that they would just be able to do even more cool stuff with all of their eight legs in that way.
Clark 17:59
Yeah, that is both a great theme and an awesome example system for your favorite.
Moiya 18:04
And also, I'm inspired by Runic magic systems where you have to channel your magic through intricately detailed drawings or shapes. And they're spiders, so they can make webs. And it would just be really nice if they had to, like use their webs and design certain shapes to get their magic to flow in a certain way.
Clark 18:26
Okay, cool. Anything else?
Moiya 18:30
I'm wondering what this magic is going to be used for like, they live in caves. They do a lot of architecture within their caves. So I don't know.
Clark 18:42
So right now -- it's really hard to do -- but at the moment, we want to use the pieces that we have just as inspiration. We don't want to use them as limiters. So if something like that is being like, 'I'm not sure what this is going to do, and maybe that'll cut out these factors." Don't think about that. [Just think], "Okay, if they did do this, here's a whole bunch of things that would be useful or cool." And another thing that I want to point out if you haven't listened to the previous episode, with idea generation, we are going to be trying to generate way more ideas that are going to end up in the final system. So there's gonna be stuff that doesn't jive and doesn't flow together. And that's okay. You actually want a bunch of that because the more you have of that, the more you can intentionally select what you keep.
Moiya 19:25
Okay, then maybe I'll put a time box on this because it's just a pure idea generation, then we could go forever. So let's do like four minutes. And you should also feel free to like add in ideas. This is our magic system, not just mine.
Clark 19:42
Well, let's see. So I think we're good on themes. Are there any other favorite systems that you really like and they don't even have to be related to this, just some that you really enjoyed?
Moiya 19:53
I do like when magic systems are based on stories, I think the magic system in The Mermaid, the Witch and the Sea was really beautiful in that way. I like when magic systems are based on how much you can control yourself. I don't have an example of this, but just like being able to really manage your emotions and behavior - almost like Vulcan in a way.
Clark 20:17
Okay. Well, another thing to note is at this phase, especially at this phase, everything is going to feel pretty generic and stupid. And that's okay.
Moiya 20:28
I do feel stupid right now. Yeah.
Clark 20:30
And that's part of the process. So I like having these little pithy quotes, because they helped me process stuff. Another one that I have is that creativity is in combination and distinction is in the details. So right now, it doesn't need to feel unique, because we're not at that stage yet. So with that in mind, we're going to have some pretty generic effects. Like one of the things that I'm thinking of is enhanced building material, because you did mention building that kind of stuff. So just enhanced and maybe enchanted webs, right.
Moiya 21:00
Yeah, that's nice. Psychic abilities like telepathy and empathy, like the magic version of empathy?
Clark 21:11
Okay, so I'm going to list those as two different ones, telepathy, and motional control/sharing. So this is an old dying world. So some other stuff that I think would be really important is probably some survival based stuff. So in that we could have things like living without food, without air, some stuff that would just help them survive in some pretty harsh climates.
Moiya 21:39
Temperatures.
Clark 21:40
Yeah, so temperature resistance is a good one.
Moiya 21:43
Something about body control. They do some dancing in their culture, like mating dances, but I think that that can easily extend to just like social dancing. And they'll need to be able to like crawl around these caves. So just like body control, if that makes any sense.
Clark 22:02
Body control, I'm also going to put in body morphing. Because I imagine that could be really relevant in a number of ways, because you had so many different types of arthropoda listed in this world, like not all of them are just spiders, you had the scorpions and the pseudo-scorpions and that kind of stuff. So doing that morphing could be super advantageous, if you were going into Scorpion lands, and you just wanted to be a scorpion for a while. So that that could be really cool.
Moiya 22:32
Seeing the future, especially since these stars are so unpredictable, it'd be a big advantage if someone could see what's coming.
Clark 22:39
Oh, I love that because that's a twist on standard astrology type stuff. I am going to put into like, reading someone's soul. You know, just the concept of astrology, right? where you're supposed to be able to look at this piece about when they were born and determine these things about them. I like the idea of that being an effect where somebody can analyze you and be like, "this one here, that is a bad spider".
Moiya 23:06
Yeah, almost like a Minority Report type of thing where you could see who the bad spiders are going to be ahead of time.
Clark 23:14
Or even if it really was just like peering into the quality of who they are. And being like, "this person is rotten, and I can see why they are and maybe one day, they'll fix it. But right now, it's safer to stay away."
Moiya 23:27
Or maybe we can put policies in place in our society so that they don't have to deal with that struggle, and we as a whole can fix it.
Clark 23:36
All of that would come from the ability to see that. Other standard stuff - energy projection, which is any of your fireball, ice control [sort] of stuff that is often used more aggressively [like] lightning, that kind of thing [is] always a staple to have in here. You know what would be really cool, is just the ability to make things grow.
Moiya 23:59
That would be cool.
Clark 24:00
Especially given how old and decaying everything is. That would be super valuable.
Moiya 24:09
Yeah. [That] reminds me of the movie Sky High, and the girl who could make plants grow. I feel that her power was severely underrated. And I'm also thinking because this is like a weird cooled down, probably not very geologically active planet [that] something like in N.K. Jemisin's The Broken Earth trilogy where they can manipulate geological activity.
Clark 24:33
Yeah, [and] by the way, Sky High is a great movie. Being able to shape shift into a guinea pig way underrated.
Moiya 24:42
All of the sidekicks' powers. I've loved that the point of the movie was to show that these underrated powers are also really cool and can save the day.
Clark 24:49
So making things grow. Yeah, that's really cool. What other kinds of effects could we do?
Moiya 24:55
It's also been way more than four minutes, it's been about seven, [but] that's fine. Do we want to come up with some really cool hats?
Clark 25:03
I think we do. And one of the ones that you pointed out that I really liked was [this one and] I apologize for my spelling.
Moiya 25:12
That's okay, they can't see it.
Clark 25:14
So a societal analysis of the quality of being and collective improvement systems. So kind of like what you had said, of like, this person is getting kind of dark. And it's up to all of us to come together and help nurture and regrow those good parts. I think that's a super cool hat and a really awesome way to end up using the magic system.
Moiya 25:35
Yay. So that's what the hats are for, like, potential consequences, or uses of the magic system
Clark 25:41
Consequences, character conflicts, really cool moments where it's like. So for example, just a visual of a spider on its back, drawing four sets of glyphs simultaneously. That's just a cool hat. We have no idea what they're doing or anything like that. But that's a cool visual. And it's a cool hat.
Moiya 26:00
Nice. We talked a lot in the worldbuilding episode about interesting [things like] sex relationships between different types of arachnids. And there was just so many different mating rituals. Maybe if you're pregnant, you can tap into some of these powers - they do this in The Magicians too, if you're pregnant, and your child has power, then you can also tap into that power.
Clark 26:33
Yeah, that was closer to 10 minutes, wasn't it? All right, so we have a lot of stuff. And this is the nice thing about soft magic system is if we wanted, we could keep all of that. There's a bunch of stuff here that kind of clashes with some of the other things, and that's totally fine - with a soft magic system, it makes it easier to do that. Also, with irrational magic systems, it becomes even easier because you don't need any continuity between the different pieces. So that is the idea generation.
Moiya 27:02
I think, on that note, let's take a little break, and then come back and do the alignment.
Clark 27:07
Awesome.
Moiya 27:11
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Moiya 28:10
You obviously have great taste in podcasts if you're listening to Exolore, which is why I think you would also enjoy Join the Party. Another awesome show from the Multitude collective. Join the Party or "JTP" as the cool kids call it, is a collaborative storytelling and role playing podcast powered by the rules of Dungeons and Dragons. They have an impressive backlog of episodes spanning lots of different campaigns, but the current story finds the players in Laketown City, which is like a fictionalized New York, and they're tackling superpowers created by semi successful science experiments. That's really cool. But JTP goes beyond role playing with their after party episodes where they break down the game and answer questions about how to play D&D and other role playing games at home. So you learn not just about the story that they're creating in real time, but also how you can do that on your own with friends in your own lives. Really, it's a great show. It's one of the first podcasts I really listened to regularly. And the entire cast is just and I'm not going to use this word lightly, but they're just delightful. So search for "Join the Party" in your favorite podcast app or go to jointhepartypod.com. There's a link to that in the show notes, you will not be disappointed.
Moiya 29:28
Welcome back. I'm interested to see how we do the alignment here because we don't have a story or a character or a plot in mind.
Clark 29:36
Right, and those are really good time[s] where if you don't know when you need to be building your magic system, and you aren't really sure if you're getting stuck on this, now is a great time to stop and do the first outline of your book, or outline of your story. Just a rough concept of, "I want it to be about the impermanence of all things" or whatever, and that will help you a lot with the alignment. What we do have, is the entire blueprint. So we can look at some of this stuff and see if any of it kind of breaks too far away, feels too far off from the different settings that we had on the blueprint. Which I didn't mention before in case anybody is out there Googling for "The Blueprint", it doesn't currently exist out in the world yet. That is my next book in progress. So please don't Google in frustration as you can't find it.
Moiya 30:27
That's a good note.
Clark 30:29
Let's see here, we have low prevalence that I don't think really is going to change anything here. We forgot to put something in really cool hats, which is stealing power during an eclipse. High naturalness? I think we've already done a lot of that, because a lot of this ties into who they are and dealing with the natural world. Some of the weirdest things there are the Runic aspects that is going to make it feel less natural and more constructed, unless we want to pull in something where there are these natural patterns that are occurring throughout the world?
Moiya 31:06
Oh, well, there always are. Like the Fibonacci sequence, pi - there are numbers and patterns that do occur.
Clark 31:14
Another thing we could do, because it is it has some super cool visuals, because I like it. And I'm trying to think of how to word this. So with magic systems, there are patterns that exist in reality that we can match the magic system to. And then we can fabricate patterns that make it feel rational, even though it's completely made up. And I think this is a place we can do that. So what if [with] the Runic system, the runes are the symbols for specific stars?
Moiya 31:40
Oh, yeah, cuz you can tell when stars come back, you can identify individual stars, they might just come back in different patterns.
Clark 31:50
So in this case, the rune itself isn't natural. But it is something that the society built over who knows how long so that they have a quick association between these symbols and the stars. And that may be enough of a connection. It's one they had to fabricate. But that keeps it natural, where it was very much, man or spider kind, having to impose their will to forge a connection with nature. And I think that works. How do you feel about that?
Moiya 32:17
Yeah, I mean, even if it started as a type of recording system, we talked in the worldbuilding episode about how they moved from the sea to the land, and there was a migration period. And during that time, like maybe they started navigating by the stars, but they would have to write these things down. And with their webs was one of the ways that they recorded the identities of stars.
Clark 32:40
Yeah, I think that works. That'll allow us to keep the naturalness high, especially this, I'm going to add this in as a cool hat, if the stars that are in the sky, actually impacts the world around them. So if the magic is coming from the star, it would make some sense that we see this star shining, that means these kinds of things are gonna start happening in the world around us.
Moiya 33:02
I love this.
Clark 33:03
We know it's a good growing season, because that star is there.
Moiya 33:07
Yeah. So one thing that these stars do that we touched on in the worldbuilding episode was that they are emitting radiation. And each one has - maybe not totally, but almost unique signature of the radiation that they're emitting. And spiders and scorpions, arachnids, because they molt, they're really good at withstanding this radiation.
Clark 33:32
And that can easily be also pseudo magical radiation, which is part of what is going on there. I'm actually really digging that because then they would have the runes where they'd be like, "okay, these are what's in the sky. We know from our old records that these are going to be sticking around for at least a couple months. Which means we need to plant food now".
Moiya 33:50
Yes. Oh, and another really cool hat. We talked about when they molt, they go through this special secret spa like ritual to dispose of their old exoskeleton. And I remember reading this book about djinn when I was younger, like genies, but like djinn, and parts of your body hold your essence. And so if other people catch, or like, get ahold of parts of your body, they can control you through magic, but they have really careful destruction rituals for their exoskeletons, maybe in part because they don't want other people to be able to use those for bad.
Clark 33:52
And what's happening now is is very natural, where you want to start with as many ideas as possible. But as you're going through the other stuff, new stuff is going to come up. So I outline it as seven stages. But it's a web, you're jumping here and there and all over the place. It's just important.
Moiya 34:47
Pun intended.
Clark 34:48
Oh, yeah, it is now, especially when you're starting out it's important to try and focus and be deliberate. But as you get better at doing this, you can jump over because you'll understand like, "oh, I'm building a limitation real quick. I'm just going to drop it in this bucket over here for when I get there." So yeah, I really like that. I think we're actually in line with the rest of this - medium ease of use. It sounds like there's going to be some factors in terms of the phase of the moon, which stars are in the sky ,when you were born, which is going to be which powers you naturally have in which runes, you know. So that altogether, is gonna make it pretty complex to do things that you want. Low reliability, I think we can manage. So I'm just gonna, [write these] under themes, this is something that had been niggling in the back of my head is just the idea that the stars and the sky impact what magic can be performed at a given time?
Moiya 35:40
Yeah, that's what I had in mind at first.
Clark 35:43
Yeah, so that definitely makes it harder as people think, "I've seen you do this before I need you to do it." "I can't!" "What do you mean, you can't?" "It's not up there."
Moiya 35:53
I know, in the last part of this interview, we talked about the importance of perspective, and from an audience perspective, that might make it seem really irrational and really inconsistent, but we, as the creators know, given this limitation that it is totally consistent with our system.
Clark 36:08
Awesome. Okay. So I actually think we're pretty good with the blueprint. So we have it set up where it's very primed to be soft, rational, because we'll need to do the rational piece in the next bit. But we have enough here and enough leeway in different directions, we could go that it can be very clear that it's a small piece, right? You could easily tell a dozen different stories where you see all different types of magic. And through it, they're just like, "Yeah, all of this magic was done using six stars. Look how many stars are up there."
Moiya 36:40
Oh, is it possible that families hoard runes or specific stars?
Clark 36:47
Absolutely, or hoard sequences or patterns?
Moiya 36:50
Yeah, because over time, [and] through generations, they would have been able to notice those patterns.
Clark 36:56
Writing would be so important [especially] historical records, because you would need to go back like, "I've never seen that star in my life. But maybe somebody in my family has." And they have to look up [how] this star effects magic in this way. "I can do all of this stuff now. Here I go."
Moiya 37:10
Right, [it] really creates a class divide, like the people who have access to this information and these historical records, the ability to like interpret them, which probably means [how] magic [is] passed down through your family.
Clark 37:23
Yeah. Okay. So we actually kind of skipped through alignment pretty quick, which is good, because that leaves us some time to go into definition. So we already kind of have some, and this is where we will need to work to start making things a little bit more rational. And I think the core thing here is going to be that each star has a unique magical effect, or modifier. Now with this, I know we wanted to do soft rational. So all of the rationale here is going to have to come from a couple of places, it's either going to have to come from, "if the star does this, I can extrapolate all of the ways to use it and always be correct," or we're really going to need to dig into stars and identify the type of stars and use that as the structure of the magic. That would probably take a lot more time. And though I would love to pick your brain and hear about all of that and be like, "well, these are probably a bunch of things that are in the globular cluster, and we can group those and be like, these types of suns are gonna do this," that's gonna take a little longer.
Moiya 38:28
Right, that's like a whole season's worth of episodes.
Clark 38:32
Though, that would be super cool. And that would make the magic super rational, because then you would just have this index. Rationality is all about perceived patterns, this is likely going to end up closer to the middle, simply because what we need to do in a hurry, there's not going to be a pattern in the stars themselves, just a pattern once you know the magic. So knowing the effect of one star won't tell you anything about the effect of another star at the moment.
Moiya 39:05
Yeah, I'm very okay with that. And I even think I love it in the world, because the non magic users might not realize that it's about individual stars, and not about the patterns.
Clark 39:17
But I do think this is still going to be more rational than irrational because when it comes to the use, it's going to be all of that. So each star has a unique effect or modifier. Honestly, that may be all we need to do.
Moiya 39:29
Yeah, and then just like, that's the water star, that's the seeing the future star when they're both in the sky at the same time, you can predict tides or heavy rainfall.
Clark 39:43
Yes. So if we had more time, this is where we would really want to start mapping that out. And I think honestly, for the first pass, that's all we need is understanding each star is going to be a unique effect or modifier.
Moiya 39:57
And because it's a soft system, we don't have to know all of the individual stars, and part of what we're baking into this is that the system is bigger than we're telling you.
Clark 40:07
Right. That brings us to limitations and restrictions. So obviously, we already said that they can only weave magic from stars that are in the sky. That's a big limitation and an awesome limitation.
Moiya 40:22
Yeah. And I think the further away the star is, the less you can draw on its power. Especially if it's like magical radiation that these stars are giving off, the farther away the star is, the less of that radiation [is] going to reach you.
Clark 40:41
So I have an important question. And that has to deal with aggression.
Moiya 40:49
Okay.
Clark 40:49
Do we want magic to be able to be used offensively? Like casting fireballs - really obvious offensive applications? We could build in a limitation where magic is not well-suited for combat?
Moiya 41:03
What would make that the case? Or do we just get to make that decision and not give a justification?
Clark 41:09
That's something we would just state and that would come across in the story of how they use it, the nature of the stuff that they're able to weave how long it takes to cast and weave the spell. All of that would really factor into like, "yeah, this isn't great for combat, [because] it's so unpredictable, that you can't really train as a battle mage."
Moiya 41:27
That's a good point.
Clark 41:28
I think we could just sort of state that.
Moiya 41:30
Okay. If I were making this decision myself, I am a fan of aggressive species in fiction, but I want to stay true to the world that I built with Dr. Esposito. And I think that they would maybe prefer a system where it can't be used aggressively for offensive purposes.
Clark 41:50
So I'm just gonna say it's hard to use in combat. And that doesn't mean that they can't be an aggressive species, the species can still be aggressive, it just means they aren't going to be casting magic in the heat of battle. Or at least most of them won't. They'll have to get creative, which there's some super cool stuff where like, imagine if they actually wove a glyph in advance, because they knew what was in the sky. And they knew they were going into combat that day. And then they come out and they slap the glyph on an opponent, ane it does a thing.
Moiya 42:18
Or even hiding the glyph. Under ground like a magic mine.
Clark 42:23
Yes. And that's more of the rational aspect of being like, "Well, I know I can do this. And I know how it works this way. So in theory, I should be able to do that." But that's not as easy as somebody just running in and chucking fireballs around all the place that takes more planning and more prep.
Moiya 42:37
Right and more skill.
Clark 42:39
Yes. So I think we can just put down a general limitation here, if it's harder to use in combat, we already have a bunch of limitations in terms of the number of people. So when looking at limitations, we talked about this a little bit last time, it's very useful to look at a couple of key factors. Well, this goes into stress testing, and limitations, which connect really well together. But we talked about combat. Another one is dealing with like omnipotence, omnipresence, or omniscience.
Moiya 43:05
The god factors.
Clark 43:07
And I'm seeing a little bit of that here, with seeing the future, and telepathy. But again, I'm just gonna say it sounds like magic is slow to use.
Moiya 43:20
Yeah, you have to either get your body into a special configuration or make a web which takes time.
Clark 43:27
And actually, here's something else that we could put in. So fortune telling, or future telling is difficult because the stars are all moving rapidly.
Moiya 43:36
That's true.
Clark 43:37
You could just make a thing where like, if the stars were set and in a fixed position, that would increase the accuracy of their predictions.
Moiya 43:44
Yeah, but they're not.
Clark 43:45
Yeah, everything's changing so fast. Like, "this is what I'm seeing, understand there's a lot of flex in here."
Moiya 43:50
I love that. That just brought me back to a conversation I had with my advisor in my third year research project where she was like, "okay, but how fast are these stars moving?" And I was like, "I really don't know." But it was necessary to know how fast they were moving to see the [gravitational] effect that they would have on the system that they were passing by. So speed of stars, they're moving. It's important.
Clark 44:11
And I really like that just the idea that stable stars lead to more accurate predictions, because there may be a season where they're like, "we have four future stars, and from what we know, they're all going to be in the sky for the next six months." Everybody starts crying.
Moiya 44:28
Yes, and you calling them the stable stars... on Earth in the past, ancient astronomers would call those "fixed stars". And those are going to be stars that are very far away. Except we've already determined that the farther away a star is, the less power you can draw from it. But not all stars are created equal. Some stars are much bigger and more powerful than others. So even if they're further away, you can still get a lot of that.
Clark 44:52
That's super cool, because now we have some really cool interplay where you have these fixed stars, they're going to be there for the next six months, but they won't let you do as drastic scrying as you could with a fast moving star that is closer, so you won't be able to look 100 years into the future. But you could look into two days and be very accurate with what you're predicting. I love this kind of flex, this is the soft part. And this is also what drives it towards the irrational side. But the logic is all there of "I see these stars, therefore I can do these things." And given what we know, it's like, "that's a fixed star, that's a rapid moving star, I should be able to pull on those and predict out maybe a week with probably 60% accuracy." Like that is very rational stuff that we could put into these characters. I am loving this magic system. That's how it always ends up. Just start on a magic system. And then partway through, you're like, "Oh, this is amazing. I want to do so much stuff with it." Let's see. So I think for the sake of time, that's probably good with limitations, so the next stage is testing. This is where we're just going to try and run in a bunch of different directions and come up with "what if" ideas and try and find ways that people could abuse, overuse, take advantage, or just use the magic and grand world and story shaking ways?
Moiya 46:21
I love it. The question that immediately comes to mind is what happens if one of these stars goes supernova and explodes and is no longer there?
Clark 46:31
Interesting.
Moiya 46:33
Is this the first time you've ever had the word "supernova" in one of your magic system mind maps?
Clark 46:37
I think so.
Moiya 46:40
Yeah, I mean, in my mind, a supernova explosion should mean if you catch it -- which maybe you can't, because these are very fast, transient events -- If you managed to catch it, then that I think should boost the power that you get from it.
Clark 46:57
I think there would be a rapid outpouring of magical power. For sure. So possible to harness it. I think the other thing is, that's definitely going to have a large impact on the world. I think if the star went supernova, normally, the magic has to be channeled to your magic users, right? I think when something goes supernova, it just starts happening.
Moiya 47:17
Oh, nice.
Clark 47:18
So if it's a prescient star or something like that, everybody just starts seeing snippets of the future. And they may not be right. Like they could just be random stuff, and then just chaos as people are acting on things that aren't actually going to happen. And because everybody's getting it all at once. None of it's correct, because everybody's changing what they would have done.
Moiya 47:37
Yeah, so you don't know how accurate it is. And maybe you don't know how far in the future it is either.
Clark 47:42
Right. Yeah. So that's a really interesting test case. Because now that we know that, that could be a really awesome part of any kind of story, whether you wanted that to be the inciting incident, a turning point, it could be something that like somebody knows is coming, and they're trying to harness it in order to stop the big bad or deal with this climate change or maybe even like revive their planet. Because if one of those growth stars goes supernova, you're like, "I can rebirth my planet!"
Moiya 48:11
I love this too, because right now, I have a few friends who study supernovae. And I know people who carry pagers around so that they get alerts about these explosions. But right now, we're in kind of a lull for supernova explosions, like they're much rarer now than they were, like, 10 years ago, like, we aren't getting as many as we expect to get. And so I love the idea that they get used to some regular frequency for supernovae in this world. And all of a sudden, there's like a drought, or something, a supernova drought,
Clark 48:43
That's just amazingly nerdy in general that people have pagers to monitor supernova. And I love it. "Oh, I'm sorry, I have to go. This is urgent. Well, what is it? Well, a stars blowing up and I need to see it."
Moiya 48:59
I remember one time, we were in class and my professor like his pager beeped, and he was like, "oh, gotta go a supernova just went off have to get the data."
Clark 49:08
Oh, that's terrific. So with a lot of this, there's a lot of things already built in with the types of effects that we picked and what we already know about the unreliability about the system. That that is doing a lot of our management for us.
Moiya 49:21
Nice. Good job us.
Clark 49:22
Yeah. I'm looking at this, [and] I'm trying hard to think of ways that somebody could abuse some of this. And it's pretty tough, actually, because it's so sporadic, and so few people can do it.
Moiya 49:34
Oh, I do have a question.
Clark 49:35
Yeah.
Moiya 49:36
Do all of the stars have magical properties?
Clark 49:40
That is an excellent question that we would need to decide. That could be part of the complexity of it.
Moiya 49:46
I think logically, there's no reason why some stars should have it and others shouldn't. So I think all of them should. But what if most of the stars are doing magic that just like keeps the planet together and like, keeps the natural systems running on the planet.
Clark 50:02
I like that. That was something I was wondering like if this planet is so old and the stars are dying, how've they survived, [and] how are they not freaking out about like, "what do we do? Like do we need to get off this rock?" And that's amazing that there's just stars out there that are keeping the planet habitable.
Moiya 50:19
Maybe a big collaborative spell cast by old spider magicians, like they saw that the planet was getting into an uninhabitable situation.
Clark 50:32
Just so that any of the listeners don't feel that we're taking the easy path out, I want to explain some of what I mean about how we've already protected ourselves against a lot of these breaks.
Moiya 50:41
Yes, please.
Clark 50:42
So like some other stuff is rapid growth or growth control, things that come to mind is like blighting an area, which could kill off nations, if you just made it where it's like, "Okay, this area is dead." And you have to wait until the star of growth comes along. Good luck, that could wipe out people. So that can be abused. Seeing the future, depending on how far you can see, and with what accuracy and how quickly you could produce these effects, you may be practically invincible, because you always know what's going to happen right before it hurts you. And you can just get out of the way. Or you would be able to look far enough in the future and do the whole Butterfly Effect thing where in this case, they eat the butterfly. And that causes some dictator way in the future to just die randomly. You know, there are a number of ways that this can be exploited, like body morphing, and body control. We didn't talk a ton about that, like, how big and how small can they get? How much can they change their bodies? Can they change from arthropods and to something else? Are you starting to see some of the breaks that could happen with just the effects themselves?
Moiya 51:39
Yeah, I am.
Clark 51:40
So we have protected against that, mostly because of how fast everything changes, and the dependence on knowledge and how hard it is to use this magic system. Because the stars need to be in the sky, which is changing every day to every couple of months. And maybe if you're very, very lucky, there could be a star that is fixed for a year, maybe.
Moiya 52:07
If this planet, let's say it does, has the same orbit as Earth does around the sun, so it's year is also one Earth year, the star will only be in the night sky for six months, because when you're on the other side of the sun, you can't see it. Maybe there's something where like, if the magic radiation from the star has to pass through the sun to get to you, maybe its effect is reversed.
Clark 52:25
Yeah, there could definitely be stuff like that.
Moiya 52:27
That was a tangent not related to these restrictions.
Clark 52:30
With how all of that is moving. And the fact that the further away they are, which means the more fixed it is and the more reliable it is, the weaker it is, that alone is a big deal in terms of abusing the magic system, because like it's there, and I'm going to be able to use it for a while. But what it does is pretty minimal. And there's so much about needing to know what each star does that makes that even more complex. I think we may have dropped our ease of use from medium to low in doing this, but I think it's pretty cool. And I think that's okay.
Moiya 53:03
I do too.
Clark 53:03
But yeah, I just wanted to outline some of that. So it wasn't just, "oh, no, we're awesome. And we did it great".
Moiya 53:08
But we are awesome. And we did do it.
Clark 53:10
And we did do it great. But I want you to understand, like what I'm talking about with some of those game breaking things, and why what we have is preventing that.
Moiya 53:18
Yes, thank you for that.
Clark 53:19
So at this point, word to iteration, which I honestly think this is the fastest I've ever gone through all seven stages.
Moiya 53:28
Yay, sometimes timeboxing helps.
Clark 53:30
It does, I generally like to allow plenty of time because it lets your brain move around and really explore and you start to build momentum in different areas. But yes, time boxing can help a lot. So at this point is where we would need to do another pass because things are still fairly generic. And that's where we would jump back and do some more idea generation around some of these specific effects and really [ask] what are some specific use cases? Like what exactly can they do? And we'd start jumping around between idea generation and limitations and definitions. So body morphing, let's do a bunch of ideas of what they could do with body morphing. Which of those align with the blueprint in the world? What do we need to define? Let's settle on this. Are there any limitations that need to be in place based on this type of thing? That's where you're kind of just jumping around until you get everything you need.
Moiya 54:23
I wonder if maybe we should leave the iteration for the listeners causes we're at an hour. We've filled in a lot of these blanks, but there are still more blanks for you to fill in.
Clark 54:36
Yes, absolutely.
Moiya 54:37
Yeah. Can you send me this mind map?
Clark 54:41
I can.
Moiya 54:42
And we can share it out when the episode comes out. So are there any steps after the many iteration cycles, any other words of wisdom you have for us for how to build and incorporate magic systems into fictional worlds?
Clark 54:57
Yeah, and this is I know I frustrate some people because I go through all of this stuff. And then I'm like, but wait, there's more!
Moiya 55:05
I love more, I always want more.
Clark 55:08
So everything that we have done has just built a system, it still needs to be implemented. And that's where it becomes a lot more closely tied to the individual craft that you're trying to present the magic system through. So the way you tell a story through a movie, or through a graphic novel, or anything like that, is going to be important. So this is where your other skills are going to really come into play. And you take this magic system and you try and marry the two together to actually tell the story the way you want and present the magic system the way you need to, that's something I definitely want to explore in the future is talk more about those implementations. It's just so varied and dependent. I'm still trying to work through in my own head, how I can genericized some of it enough to be useful, because that's something I do a lot with some of the one on one coaching is they have a story in mind. And I work with them to tweak it to really enhance that specific story. So there is stuff you do, I'm still working on finding a way to turn it into broader rules, patterns, and hopefully, eventually a tool that can be more broadly applied.
Moiya 56:16
Yeah. And a lot of that touches on the culture of whatever world you're building, which, of course, is influenced by biology and environment now of all of the other parts of the world that you come up with. But we haven't talked about, like, okay, there are these magic users [but] are they well liked? Is there is there like a guild of magic users? Are they ostracized by [society]? We didn't touch on any of that.
Clark 56:41
We haven't done any worldbuilding. I mean, we did some, but like, we haven't done any societal worldbuilding. I suppose one thing that I do a lot of, and I would really recommend people, which I feel like a jerk recommending because the book isn't out yet. But once you've gone through all of this, it's really valuable to go back and map out more blueprints. So we did all of this, like last episode, all of that was from the creators' perspective, we now have an understanding of what the magic is, and what it can do. Now would be a great time to explore other perspectives.
Moiya 57:12
I love that.
Clark 57:13
So pick a specific spider nation and map the system from their perspective, pick a specific protagonist, map it from their perspective, pick your readers or viewers or whatever you want a specific demographic - specific person you want to share the story with, [and] map it from their perspective. What experience do you want them to have?
Moiya 57:31
If you have a hard time getting into the head of like one of your friends, another reader, another audience member, maybe like explain this system to them and have them fill it out. See, what they remember, see what resonates with them and, and where they think the holes are.
Clark 57:46
That's a really good idea.
Moiya 57:47
Which doesn't necessarily mean that they are the holes, like sometimes you intend for the audience to be missing pieces of information.
Clark 57:55
That's a really good idea. Yeah, just hand it to your beta readers, [and] be like, "when you're done with the book, fill this out".
Moiya 58:01
Yeah. What do you think the magic system rules are here?
Clark 58:04
Yeah. Oh, that's a cool idea.
Moiya 58:06
How done do you feel like this is? Like, could you put a percentage on it?
Clark 58:11
I would say that we are probably 60-70%. Done.
Moiya 58:15
Oh, yeah, that's nice.
Clark 58:16
Yeah, cuz we're at the point where I have enough experience and enough practice that I would feel comfortable diving into a story and doing some of this stuff on the fly, and then tweaking it afterwards. I'm in a place here where I feel like I could at the very least outline a story like the main next steps would be listing the stars, and actually listing the effects that go with them, probably outline the story, and then map which stars will be in the sky and will be important at different parts of the story.
Moiya 58:48
Yeah, come up with a frequency for each of the stars, like how often they are in the sky, and for how long. And there's a lot of fun math that you could do in this world, and the spider magicians would have to do in this world to figure out how and when they can use the stars in the sky.
Clark 59:04
Yeah. And you could get really down a worldbuilding rabbit hole with building your own star charts and stuff like that. My advice with all of that is do as much as is useful and no more. Do what you need to do to get unstuck and then get back to work.
Moiya 59:18
Yes, absolutely. This is a bit of a tangent, but I feel like there would be a lot of folklore in this world about the stars, stories that we get passed down through families to help them remember which stars do what and then those stories in a cool telephone type of way would leak out into the general population and probably morph in really interesting ways.
Clark 59:38
Yeah, not quite fables, but your own type of story where it's like, these are the stories that teach you magic. And the writing could be really important, right? Because how it's written would tell you what sigils and runes you need to use to produce some of those effects or even tapestries that would be really cool - stories told through tapestries where it's like, this glyph when the hero did something and you're like, "Aha!"
Moiya 1:00:02
I love that. Yeah, we talked in the worldbuilding episode about how when people go on long trips, they would make travel quilts and magical tapestries that weaves nicely into that. Okay, well, it's been an hour. I love this system. I've really enjoyed building this with you. I usually like leaving guests with prompts, creative prompts. So do you have any maybe general magic system building prompts or something that could be specific to this world?
Clark 1:00:32
Yeah. So one is I want you to go in the direction that Moiya is talking about and build a culture and define how they are connected and how they revere or don't revere and use and value the magic system. So use what we've told you and build a piece of the world. The other thing that I would say would be to dig in and define some specific stars and try and build your own limitations.
Moiya 1:01:00
Yes. I'll spin off of that a little bit. Define a couple of your own stars and what types of magic they do. And then maybe come up with your own spells? If you want to draw some webs -
Clark 1:01:16
Draw some of the runes - just make some stuff up. That would be super cool to see.
Moiya 1:01:20
Yeah, absolutely. I would love to see that. You can share it on Twitter or Instagram and tag @exolorepod, or maybe also Clark, I'm sure.
Clark 1:01:28
That would be awesome. Especially if you do art, let me know, like, email me or you can tag me on Pinterest as the 'Magic Engineer". That would be great. That'd be so cool.
Moiya 1:01:39
Clark, you talked about your one on one writing coaching sessions. How can people get access to that? How can people get you to help them build cool things?
Clark 1:01:53
So I have some general pricing and guidance on my website, which you can find I believe it's "crrowenson.com/coaching". You can find it through there if you look for it, or just email me because those prices are just a starting point. And I don't want that to be a barrier to people where I can avoid it. So if you are interested in talking with me, getting my help building magic systems, looking at your story, let me know. And we'll talk it out and see what we can do, because I want to help people. And it's just unfortunate that I have to find a way to pay the bills so that I can help people fulltime.
Moiya 1:02:27
Capitalism is getting in the way of creativity. That's really awesome. I'll put the link to your website for sure in the show notes so people can follow that and get some of your wisdom.
Clark 1:02:38
I love hearing from people. If you just want to learn more about magic systems. You can also find me on YouTube as "the magic engineer." If you don't like watching stuff, I transcribe those into articles that go up on the website as well so you can choose to watch or read.
Moiya 1:02:53
Nice one for everyone. Any any last thoughts?
Clark 1:02:57
Just thank you for having me. This has been a ton of fun.
Moiya 1:03:01
I agree wholeheartedly. I did not expect to get so interested in spider magicians a month ago, but I'm invested now and I hope the listeners are too. I would really love to see some stories, some web rune designs, whatever you got. I want to see what you create with this world because we did a good job building something out.
Clark 1:03:25
It's super cool.
Moiya 1:03:29
This episode of Exolore was edited by Mischa Stanton, the cover art is by Steven J. Reisig. The transcript is by Iesir Moss, and the music is from purple-planet.com. Exolore is a member of Multitude Productions, an independent podcast collective and production studio, I highly recommend checking out the other Multitude shows, all you have to do is type "Multitude" into the search bar of your favorite podcast app. If you want to support me and my worldbuilding work. The first way to do that is to rate and review the show on Apple podcasts. It's free, you don't need any sort of Apple device, and it really does make a difference and help the show grow. Second, you can support me on Patreon. Your monthly support would make it possible for me to continue working on this passion project of mine. So if you're able, please head on over to patreon.com/exolorepod if you can. Be sure to follow Exolore on Twitter or Instagram @exolorepod, and if you like this episode, share it with your friends and subscribe to the show because that way you can catch me next time on another world.