Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I was thinking about harry potter, and i was wondering. If magic turned out to be real, along with other magic and fantasy elements(dragons, Gryphons, giant monsters) existed. But they where hidden from society for year, but recently got discovered by non magical humans across the world. Im wondering what the reaction would be. This is assuming that you can LEARN to use magic, but have to be born with it. Im assuming there would be mass fear from people, like x-men, where those who have power greater then you can have can possibly rule over you. Do you think there would be massive resentment towards the magic users?
Discuss.

I predict it would be something like what Magneto always figured was gonna happen. But I'm cynical.

The average person would probably be largely unaffected by it, as it probably would have little direct effect on their life. But those people who are already in power? This would be a threat to that power, and history has proven that those in power do not suffer threats to that power. The potential impact of such a thing would largely depend on the magic users themselves and how they treat the non magic users. For instance, in the Harry Potter setting, the magic using world doesn't truly understand much of the nonmagic world, is condescending, rude, and sometimes downright racist to nonmagic people.

I would assume that if magic were real, and learnable, it'd be more like Game of Thrones type magic.. .where it is more in line with dark arts, and following less than favorable gods, etc.



Nearly all fantasy series that I have read or seen have either directly said, or greatly implied that blood magic is the strongest, so things from a legal standpoint would get extremely hairy.

3 Possibilities:

Magic Powers are small in scale and really don't rise above the level of minor amusments. Being a magic user is sort of like being born with naturally attactive features and maybe you can land a job in the entertainment industry.
Magic Powers are powerful but magic users are either too few in number or are readily noticeable in the general population and are quickly annihilated - no more magic.
Magic Powers are powerful and magic users can "pass" for normal, or are large in number. Magic users quickly rise to power and subjugate non-magic users as slave race inside of 1 century.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I was thinking about harry potter, and i was wondering. If magic turned out to be real, along with other magic and fantasy elements(dragons, Gryphons, giant monsters) existed. But they where hidden from society for year, but recently got discovered by non magical humans across the world. Im wondering what the reaction would be. This is assuming that you can LEARN to use magic, but have to be born with it.

So, basically what you're asking is "What if Harry Potter was real?"

My guess is that the government would try to get as many people in the military as proficient as possible so that when someone decided to pull a Voldemort or something, they'd be ready.

Shadowrun.

Will there be Butterbeers and "Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans"?

 Breotan wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I was thinking about harry potter, and i was wondering. If magic turned out to be real, along with other magic and fantasy elements(dragons, Gryphons, giant monsters) existed. But they where hidden from society for year, but recently got discovered by non magical humans across the world. Im wondering what the reaction would be. This is assuming that you can LEARN to use magic, but have to be born with it.

So, basically what you're asking is "What if Harry Potter was real?"

My guess is that the government would try to get as many people in the military as proficient as possible so that when someone decided to pull a Voldemort or something, they'd be ready.

Well no, I have a story floating around my head, and Harry potter was the easiest example, a world where only those born to use magic can use it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Chongara wrote:
3 Possibilities:

Magic Powers are small in scale and really don't rise above the level of minor amusments. Being a magic user is sort of like being born with naturally attactive features and maybe you can land a job in the entertainment industry.
Magic Powers are powerful but magic users are either too few in number or are readily noticeable in the general population and are quickly annihilated - no more magic.
Magic Powers are powerful and magic users can "pass" for normal, or are large in number. Magic users quickly rise to power and subjugate non-magic users as slave race inside of 1 century.

More like the third one is what im thinking would happen.

Anyone seen that anime Straight Jacket? I forsee similar, with a helthy dose of Magneto.

The cold hand of science will explain it's mysteries in time and it will cease to be called magic.

I would cast spells to make women fall in love with me.

I find it really weird that people just assume that we couldn't possibly tolerate someone else being more powerful/having power over us. We do that daily. We all have bosses and governments and the like, and we accept that these people have power of us and just get on with life. The alternative, a constant struggle for supremacy against anyone with power, is something humanity does everything it can to avoid.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
The average person would probably be largely unaffected by it, as it probably would have little direct effect on their life. But those people who are already in power? This would be a threat to that power, and history has proven that those in power do not suffer threats to that power.

The powerful adapt to one another all the time. The landed nobility was directly threatened by the rise of the merchant class, they didn't fight them until one or the other was destroyed. Each adapted to the other, used the other to expand their own private interests.

I think a key part of understanding how and why that works is to realise the powerful in the current world, like the nobles and merchants and this hypothetical group of wizards, are not hive minds all acting for their group's benefit. They're individuals who can gain power and status outside of their own kind, if they make the right deals with the right people.

Wizards won't replace the current power groups, they'll simply move into their ranks.

Of course it's real!


Really we'd just lump it in with all the other things around us we personally don't understand. Gun to their head most people couldn't explain how an internal combustion engine really works.

Open the doorway to the Great Wiener Dog.

Alternatively start the zombie games.

There was a show sort of like this.

It completely destroyed the existing society, eventually they genetically altered humanity to have a nicer temperament and to die if they killed another human to counter all the killings it had brought. Slowly the normal humans died out and humanity had to more or less start again.

It's kind of like giving people a really powerful weapon for no reason. Will they manage it or will it corrupt them, make them snap and lash out on the world with it? Especially if they have pressure on them from those in power at the time to try and control them or simply suppress them to keep their own power.

I imagine things would change quite dramatically. Portable artifacts that could inflict grievous injury upon someone at hundreds of meters, the ability to create great and destructive bursts of flame and force, sorcerous means to animate great warmachines or artificial birds, and arcane methods to bring a man back from the verge of death itself! Or perhaps semi-intelligent servitors created with esoteric diagrams and incantations, animated to provide organization or entertainment, or two facilitate communication over vast distances, perhaps even to assume menial tasks like production or cleaning. Why, I imagine we could even reshape living creatures to better suit our purposes!



To actually address the thread: Science would document and shed light on the apparently causality-breaching powers, and then engineering would harness this, making it just another form of technology. Or, if it couldn't be harnessed or controlled, technology would provide sufficient overkill by way of its godlike power to just up and eradicate the existential threat posed by something which genuinely breaches causality. "You can fly and turn people into chickens by screaming at them? Cool, this anti-materiel rifle can tear you in half at a mile."

Relapse wrote:
Shadowrun.

I'd immediately grab all the meat I could round up, my rifle for any crazies and head for Cherry Creek Lake to wait for Dunkelzahn to wake up. It's just an 45 minutes to an hour north of here.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:

Relapse wrote:
Shadowrun.

I'd immediately grab all the meat I could round up, my rifle for any crazies and head for Cherry Creek Lake to wait for Dunkelzahn to wake up. It's just an 45 minutes to an hour north of here.

Hmmm... Cherry Creek Lake? So, you live in the Colorado Springs area? (wild ass'ed guess).

If ya'll want see some magic in CO, go to the "Garden of the Gods"... cool ass place.

Yep I live in the Springs and I've rock climbed the Garden of the Gods, worked right across the road at a country club too.



Hiking Pike's Peak is another good way to see some magic, especially if you go half way and spend the night at Barr Camp, then start the ascent around 0300, if you keep good pace you'll hit the

Wow that is beautiful, also by magic do you mean there's hallucinogenic plants there?

No just that it's pretty. You can find peyote if you look hard enough in some of the open spaces, but the rangers in the various parks have killed it off on a lot of trails.

Let's be realistic here.

If magic did exist, we'd just ruin it. I don't know exactly how, or why, but if there's one thing humans are good at it's spoiling things for the rest of us, and magic would be no exception...

Well. It matters are we talking insanely overpowered magic like in Warcraft 3? OR dumbed down crappy magic like in Harry Potter? Or awesome and fantastic power from Merlin (the old film) Where i can summon dragons from rock formations and then make a sword from just about anything?

If it is merlin, I would probably go rouge, summon an army, learn how to use magic to burn away someone's conscious defenses and then take control of entire nations through manipulation, then take over the world with people that have similar dreams and claim the world in the name of the Blood God I mean the Ancestors (I have Normand descent what you expect?)

If it was Harry Potter, i will take a staff get it infused and then start hitting people that claim they are the chosen one. Am i Voldermort nope. I'm just here to beat people that think they are the 'chosen one'. Then I will shout at them as i cut off their head. "THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE!"

 sebster wrote:
I find it really weird that people just assume that we couldn't possibly tolerate someone else being more powerful/having power over us. We do that daily. We all have bosses and governments and the like, and we accept that these people have power of us and just get on with life. The alternative, a constant struggle for supremacy against anyone with power, is something humanity does everything it can to avoid.

It's not just a shift in the power structure though. It's a complete shift in how the world is perceived (and in the opposite direction of where it is currently going). While I suppose for the sake of our entertainment we tend to cast such a hypothetical as hell on earth humanity is doomed (cause for some reason we humans are fascinated by our own destruction ), I think that there would be blood. The revolutions that brought down the landed elites were not pretty in a lot of countries after all, and people love to hate on others who have what they don't (or may never have if magic is genetic).

We should have a writing contest for who can come up with the best "If Magic was Discovered to be Real" story

Set the parameters, lordofhats, and let's do this thing. Reward should be some sort of stylish signature, or pure bragging rights.

We need a wordcount limit, and some sort of judging system- I suggest you, as sole dictator judge.


In regards to OP-
The first thing to answer is the simple question- are magic-users covert or overt?
Do they need training or are they intuitively able to use their powers, mutant style?

Overt and powerful generally leads to the extinction or enslavement of the human race, except in rare 'Superman' cases, where the gifted individuals are colossally naive or adverse to using their powers for personal gain. Covert, whether powerful or not, leads to more of a Harry Potter world, where there is a secret shadow world moving in tandem with humanity, perhaps influencing it but never controlling it- this is the White Wolf solution- all powerful Vampires, must keep hidden from revealing their existence to humans, for some reason. If they require serious training and study, then they will need a training center or school, like the X-mansion, or Hogwarts. Intuitives are much more frightening to normals, because you cannot isolate them, or limit their powers realistically.

It would be like Shadowrun.

Has anyone seen the movie Chronicle? This is a pretty accurate portrayal of what happens when the abused gain untold power and think only of revenge.

Humans getting magic would easily turn out the same way, imagine that weedy kid in school who gets beaten up every day by the school bullies, imagine what he would do if he discovered he could fill their stomachs with spiders, or boil the blood in their veins, or throw them about like rag-dolls using his mind. He won't see the difference between right and wrong, in his mind he's just getting his own back for the years and years of torment, and now he has the power to fight back, he's damn well going to use it.

I can assure you that during my school years, if I had the use of magic a'la your common fantasy tropes things would have been a lot different. And I could honestly say that despite how cool it would be, if magic was real I should not be allowed anywhere near it, I would also say that the only human beings responsible enough to wield magic are those that have absolutely no use or motive to use it, ever

 LordofHats wrote:
It's not just a shift in the power structure though. It's a complete shift in how the world is perceived (and in the opposite direction of where it is currently going).

Which perfectly describes the rise of the merchant class. It was a total change in how the world was perceived.

But guess what? Individuals adapt. Those who already had power work with those who've newly acquired it, for the benefit of both individuals. New factions form up, that are a combination of the old power and the new.

I'm not saying there won't be conflict (after all there's conflict between power groups now, why would that change?), I'm just saying that the idea that all the magic users would group together in one faction, and all the old power groups being in another is the kind of lazy writing that works well enough for penny dreadfuls and RPG settings, but nothing beyond that.

While I suppose for the sake of our entertainment we tend to cast such a hypothetical as hell on earth humanity is doomed (cause for some reason we humans are fascinated by our own destruction ), I think that there would be blood. The revolutions that brought down the landed elites were not pretty in a lot of countries after all, and people love to hate on others who have what they don't (or may never have if magic is genetic).

Note, though, that the landed elites still existed. They lost political power but outside of the USSR they didn't lose economic power. It took the slow and steady rise of industrial power to make agriculture (and therefore those who owned the land) no longer an economic power. So the idea magic users would seek to utterly wipe the old order from the Earth, or even just to remove it from power entirely, just doesn't make sense. People don't work like that. They stake out a new position that is good enough, the old order moves in to a new position that is good enough, and a new power balance is found. The actual eventual decline or disappearance of one faction or another is driven by systems, not the deliberate actions of individuals.

And I agree that for the sake of entertainment we might look to make it much more exciting, show our destruction or at least the destruction of our society. But the point is not just to assume that's what'd happen and show it, but to understand how things really work, and then create reasons within the story for why this actually does produce lots of death and destruction. That's one of the differences between good and bad writing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Leigen_Zero wrote:
Has anyone seen the movie Chronicle? This is a pretty accurate portrayal of what happens when the abused gain untold power and think only of revenge.

Humans getting magic would easily turn out the same way, imagine that weedy kid in school who gets beaten up every day by the school bullies, imagine what he would do if he discovered he could fill their stomachs with spiders, or boil the blood in their veins, or throw them about like rag-dolls using his mind. He won't see the difference between right and wrong, in his mind he's just getting his own back for the years and years of torment, and now he has the power to fight back, he's damn well going to use it.

That makes sense to the extent that we assume these newly powerful people are all highschool kids, of which a significant proportion are victims of bullying. Which makes perfect sense for a movie narrative, but is a pretty silly thing to assume when talking about word building.

 sebster wrote:

That makes sense to the extent that we assume these newly powerful people are all highschool kids, of which a significant proportion are victims of bullying. Which makes perfect sense for a movie narrative, but is a pretty silly thing to assume when talking about word building.

The movie reference was merely a means to provide an example. The environment remains constant but the motive and people change. The 40-something loser who gets pushed around at work, the heroin addict, the guy who survives by commiting petty crimes, the zealot, the prison bitch, etc. Where there is resentment and anger there is a chance that should the power balance be inverted then a monster will be created, and quite frankly I think that human beings are morely to become Sith than Jedi...