Tuesday, April 12, 2016

J is for Jamming

Jamming is a magical technique used to prevent another mage from using magic.  It is a feature in many magic systems.  The concept aids any magic system by creating a limitation for it, as discussed in Sanderson's Second Law.  When jamming is added to a system, very powerful magics can be present without as much worry of them becoming too strong for the setting to conceivably handle.

Sometimes certain mages are only able to jam.  Other times all mages can both jam and perform typical spells (or whatever).  Both are valid approaches.

If you would like to make a magic system more interesting and balanced, try adding jamming.  It has been used by such authors as Brian McClellan to great effect.

4 comments:

  1. This is really interesting. It's making me think of space and solidity, matter and anti-matter. "Where do vanished objects go?" "Into nothingness, that is, everything." (That's from Deathly Hallows, if you are not familiar.) Jamming, I guess, is the opposite of magic, the negative space that sucks magic up, the void. Worth thinking about.

    (I also really need to read Sanderson!)

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    1. Thanks! It's been eight and a half years since I read HP7, so I don't remember that quote, but I think it fits with this. (Yes, you do!)

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  2. All I could think of the whole time was "jamming" as like jamming to music, because my brother is a guitarist! This is very interesting, and thank you for visiting my blog :)

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    1. Haha, yeah, I thought of music jamming at first too, but decided to make it about magic jamming instead. Thanks! No problem! You've got some good stuff.

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