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"This post was fact-checked by true Tawantisuyu patriots ✅️"

So I was polishing the lore document for my main kingdom last night. I had everything down to the exact dates: three hundred fallen dynasties, a fully fleshed out military system with fourteen thousand ammo types, a constructed language for the nerds, and tectonic fault lines that explain why the rivers split.

Then I looked at my world map and froze. It was a planet made for billions. There are no air, not a single breath, no oxygen what so ever.

I caught myself trying to handwave it with "they have air mages filling people's lungs every morning" before I stopped and felt ABSOLUTELY disgusted with myself. That is the cheapest cop out in fantasy writing. I should of figured out basic medieval air breathing before inventing twelve different religious holidays and a salute that looks strangely like a fuck you. Now I either have to redraw six separate battle maps or accept that my majestic ancient kingdom would have declared war on Druidia to steal all of their fresh air and drink PeriAir cans in the mean time.

How do you guys stop yourself from falling down the useless lore rabbit hole before fixing basic survival infrastructure?

Alright this is our world in the planet earth and these are my 2 countries Manjan(red) Frifrenchof(blue) And obviously I have nothing else to do so I want to do Something else different so you guys will decide the fate of this world So comment your ideas and I will create a scenario and And if that scenario happens that means the next comment would be in the same situation What the previous comment done

So, I've got this #gritty #realistic magic system, but it seems I've forgotten to add constraints. We can't have that, without B a L a N c E, nobody will want to read about it.

Let's add some Mana!

Ok, so magic needs to come from an energy source, and that energy source must obey the conservation laws of both thermodynamics and broader physics. To throw a fireball, you must expend the exact caloric value of energy from your Mana or convert your own body fat.

Actually, let's not call it Mana, it's overused, but also, we can't just call it "magic" or something simple that people can pronounce. Let's call it a X'itan'it'xhil instead. The apostrophes are mandatory.

Let's add cost!

So, right now, anyone can access magic, because incidental or hereditary magic is #yucky and how will our hypothetical five year old english major be able to identify with a character if they aren't exactly like anyone else?

But if everyone has magic, noone has magic/I can't be bothered to actually deal with my system how will I differentiate its users? I know; by adding a C O S T!

To use magic, one needs to literally tear off a part of their own soul and sacrifice it to the old gods. This should give a good 20-200 uses for an average person over their lifetime before their soul is consumed by the old gods.

This way, not many of them would want to use it, ever, leaving us with the usual 1-3% (that could've been a hereditary or incidental user base) and I no longer need to write a society that actually uses magic daily.

Ok, but what about B a L a N c E?

The average magic user (no, not the actual average non-user, the 1-3%-er that bothers to pay the costs) should - obviously - not be able to deal with an average thug with a sword or gun (especially a gun, since, y'know, guns are much less costly than sacrificing parts of your soul to the old gods), so, in order to balance it, we'll have to remove any utility limit its power level and range.

Throwing a fireball (after consuming your body fat for the energy, and losing part of your soul for the opportunity) now only does about as much damage as throwing a lit oil lamp at someone. It also can reach about as far as you could throw a lit oil lamp, so everything is #balanced.

But how will people know who to hate fear if there isn't a visual component?

We all know the most uncalled for uses of magic happen from stealth. Let's make this impossible so the mages that want to use magic can't hide in a strategic location without giving themselves away immediately.

As a solution, magic is both extremely loud and highly visible from miles away, alerting anyone within that radius to the fact there is magic being done. Oh, it also horribly disfigures its user so that even when they aren't using it, they can be safely identified for extermination and avoided by those that don't want their souls consumed by magic.

Yeah, but what about when a mage gets really old and powerful?

Worry not, my friend, as magic also reduces the life expectancy of mages by about half, so none of them can amass enough knowledge to do anything bad, ever.

Oh no! Evil McLichface has raised an army of the dead and is turning everyone into zombies!

(Mind you, this is an entirely elemental system based on the bending in Avatar bc I saw it once twelve years ag~~~~o Doodle God and Pocket Alchemy, but evil McLichface has invented necromancy out of thin air somehow)

So it turns out you can offload the soul-sacrifice bit to your victims if you're evil, take care of the caloric/mana cost by ignoring it, and dealing with the rest by simply forgetting them. Evil McLichface has discovered this by spending 5 minutes centuries looking at the rules 3000 years ago.

But despair not! Out comes to the battlefield our dashing hero, born with a rare type of magic unique to him, which bypasses half of the costs and ignores the rest! His battle with Evil McLichface will be epic and interesting and good and-

...

He's shot the lich with a gun.