Well, different videogame spells work in different ways, but almost all of them involve Mana, so that should be included, along with drinking water giving you more Mana, and possibly being able to drill for it or find it in springs.
In addition, some games, like the original final fantasy and a few of the sequels, involve you buying spells and equipping them like regular items. Others, like world of war craft, have spells that are trained, and several spells have cool downs and casting time so you can't just spam fireball.
Basically, little things like that. Also, in most games, magic is very Vancian in that if you use fireball, it always casts a fireball, and you can't just use it to, say, light a ciggy. Well, not without difficulty.
In terms of schools of magic, you could have assembling, which could be divided in making something from nothing, make nothing out of something, and making something become something else.
edited 13th Feb '11 2:31:29 AM by doorhandle
The school of Changing: Destruction (reducing things to their base elements), Alchemy (changing the properties of a thing or condition), and Creation (assembling elements to fabricate something).
the school of Shadows: Enchantment (manipulating the mind and senses), Wyrding (manipulating luck and fate), and Voiding (manipulating time and space).
Level 3 Social Justice Necromancer. Chaotic Good.

I've been toying around with the idea of a story taking place in a world following videogame rules, and one of the things I want to nail down before working on the setting is the magic system. Since it's supposed to be like a game, the concept should be simple, but vague and flexible enough to get away with feats that you normally couldn't in an actual game.
So far everything (ideally) works according to the Rule of Three. There are three schools of magic which each get expressed in three different basic ways. The only school I've worked on is Movement, which is divided into Summoning (moving an object or creature to your location over a vast distance), Telekinesis (directly moving an object about your immediate surroundings), and Teleportation (moving yourself with or without others over almost any distance).
I've kind of hit a block trying to come up with the other two schools though. Any thoughts, hints or nudges?
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