Do fantasy books with magic need to have rules?

Do fantasy books with magic need to have rules?

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Even if left unspoken.

No, they need thematic and narrative consistency like anything else in a work fiction. This often manifests as rules but not always.

Check out youtuber "Hello Future Me". He did a whole series of videos on worldbuilding and creating a magic system which would not suck and be both entertaining and narratively consistent

Not at all. Magic systems are like power levels in battle shonen, they're only there for children to fantasize and argue about.

Not really. Power levels are more for people impressed with big numbers, regardless of if they map to anything meaningful. Magic systems are more an autism bait, it is about wizards as engineers rather than wizards as mystics.

Power levels are shorthand for "who would win in a fight" there are not necessarily numbers attached. They speak to the same autism

It doesnt need to have rules, just a power cap.

Any explanation why and how there is a power cap would probably result in a few rules.

Earthsea had the best magic system

Is that the one where you learn the secret name of things?

yes

>listening to a namefag
It’s good to have in mind the boundaries the magic ”system” might have. It’s better to have an understanding of what it is as the writer/creator of the magic “system” even if you don’t expound on it.

Well put.

This is what I said. A lot of anons agree.

Oh! I know where that idea came from.

where do you think Le Guin's true-naming magic idea come from?
I could have sworn it was based on some french lit. or linguistic theory but never managed to support the idea, closest I found were parts of Benjamin's (wonderful) essay on translation

Her mother wrote a famous anthropological biography about this guy named Ishi. Last of his tribe. This wasn’t his name though. He refused to tell anyone

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Fuck rules. The only time when magic rules are okay is in video games and d&d. Magic should be unknowable and fickle. Not some insert for technology that conveniently solves all your characters' problems. Giving your magic some internal system just makes it simple and boring. Even Tolkien doesn't get too into his magic system because he knows that's retarded.

Checkout Mother Of Learning, it has magic rules done right

Depends entirely on the plot, environmental, or character development purposes of the magic.

No. But it should follow the logic of Chekhov's gun when magic is used to solve a problem. As long as the audience understands the mechanics of, for example, a spell or magical item, you've done your job properly. This could be done with a general rule based system but it doesn't need to be. On the other hand, if magic creates the problem rather than solves it, more mystic elements are acceptable.

kabbalah