>Magic’s limits are often as important as the capabilities
>—at least, they are for making things interesting.
>Consider Unknown Armies. (It’s another game I worked on.)
>Magick in Unknown Armies (yes, it’s got that K) is versatile and powerful, but has severe limits, too.
>One of the principal ones is this: Magick cannot override human will. It just can’t.
>It can make you want something, or fear something, it can take over your body... but it cannot make you choose.
>Only you choose.
>The central issue of Unknown Armies is personal character, so having an inviolate character was essential.
>Acting under duress or having your body act against your directions—all that raises questions of identity. If my arms strangle someone, am I a murderer? Even if I tried to stop them?
>When you’re building a game, see if you can identify magic uses that are poison to your central
concept.
>If I’m doing an exploration game, I don’t want magic to take the trouble out of travel. For a game of revenge, I don’t want the PCs to level up, learn the Spell of Phantom Stalking Doom, cast it on the main bad guy, and then have a light supper while the magic flits off to what should have been the climax of the game. A quest game won’t be fun if there’s simple magic that leads the PCs where they need to go—or that leads their enemies right to them.
REIGN, p. 149