META: Magic in Fenspace

[Ace Dreamer]

Although there is a small moral question that invokes.

A mage and a mundane have an argument. The mage decides the mundane's not getting it and needs to have some understanding shot into them. If a mage fires off a non-lethal spell that'll knock out a mundane like a punch to the face, and the mundane fires back with a decent handgun that'll probably kill the mage..... has the mundane used excessive force to defend themselves?

If someone aims what I believe is a loaded gun at me, and I'm sitting behind the wheel of a car, am I entitled to try and run them down?  What if it's a baseball bat?  A clenched fist?
If the mage was a martial artist who launched a KO blow at a non-martial artist, is the other entitled to pull out a gun and shoot them?
Or, does the mundane shout "Witness!" and their mobile goes into full record-and-streaming mode, with all sensors including magical ones, and the mage knows the whole situation is likely to appear in their court case?
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

[HRogge]

Putting body, mind and soul or spirit together into something which can live a normal life is often glossed over. There may be issues of fate or destiny that may make the process more difficult. Tricking the world into believing this is a conventional birth might suit some approaches. Or the "still has unfinished work to do" may be used. If the soul or spirit is unwilling to be resurrected then they may get a veto - continuing a resurrection after this (which may not even be possible with the simpler 'packaged' resurrection approaches) may give you the body and mind you want, but a new person, who will likely develop over time their own new purposes and motivations ("free soul with every new incarnation"). Producing an 'instant adult' like this can really upset the natural process of life and death, or the guardians of this, in some settings.

Then there are wonderful issues of AIs and souls or spirits - these are often assumed to be equivalent to biological beings, with a soul or spirit as long as you're dealing with something more than a glorified expert system. Resurrecting an AI may be quite feasible, but need a slightly different approach.

So, resurrection can be a thoroughly explored area of magical engineering! Not like these 'cast and pray' approaches!

IF there is something like a soul, I wonder what was happened with victims of Quattros memory tech... if you kill/erase the "mind", does the soul leave? If you copy a mind from one body to another (Vivio became a shallow copy of Cathy), does a new soul appear or does the original one split?

[ECSNorway]

I don't know. I like the dichotomy between inherent and technological mages.

Inherent mages are really limited only by training, nerve and practice and what they want to attempt. Can generally pull anything out of a hat in a desperate pinch. Can be a bit 'wild', but much free-r and more able to experiment. They can choose their magical system. Or eventually invent their own. They've basically got a lot more freedom.

Technical 'mages' are always limited by the quality of hardware they use, power source, and the quality of design work gone into it. They're more rigidly stuck to what known manatech can work. But, pull the trigger, get your spell. Get technology that can be programmed on the fly with new 'spells', or even autogenerate based on the user's specific intent and the line between natural archmage and technomage starts to blur to the point where manatech is just another magic system with it's own inherent restrictions and requirements in places on users. (Like maintenance, programming, understanding the technology and the device to program it, etc.)

I'm trying not to go Nanoha on it. Someone elses fandom. But that sort of looks like where this train of thought's ending up.

My fandom, among others. (My avatar in this seems to be primarily Browncoats + Macross, but I can expand.)

I like your model. I'm excited to be a part of it.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[HRogge]

If we go by the 5/90/5 model someone suggested the reaction of the 90% might be different, depending on faction.

At the Wizards you got a "Its possible... I KNEW IT... lets get to work!"

In some other factions the 90% might be looking into "technical magic"... or ignoring magic at all until they can buy it.

[M Fnord]

1. The people cried out to Mod: “Why have you left us perplexed?”
2. And the LORD looked up bleary-eyed from his throne and beheld the people.
3. Said the LORD Mod: “Allright, allright, I’ll get to it. Damn!”

On Retcons And Secret History: Nobody - and I mean nobody - knows this; any hints that somebody does will be persecuted with extreme prejudice. Clear? Okay, good. So. The big retcon/secret history is that magic existed in Fenspace but at a level nobody could really use or even experience. That changed on whatever the whateverth, 2008, when interdimensional traveller Doug Sangnoir used his magic on a sample of handwavium. The feedback loop from this acted as a catalyst, causing an exponential spike in the local background count that spread outwards.

On Mana Levels: In GURPS terms, Fenspace mana levels were Very Low to None until things were catalysed into action in 2008. Since then the level averages out to Normal, but in practice it’s very chaotic. There are hot spots and cold spots, some are stable but others drift and change shape over time, like weather fronts.

On Availability: As of 2022, very few both a) have it and b) know what it is. Manadynamics is the talk of the science journals and the press has gotten hold of some of it, but there hasn’t been a huge upswing in wand-waving accomplishing anything.

On Magic and Handwavium: They’re related. That’s not to say they’re the same or even all that similar, but they are related.

On Magic and Genetics: A genetic basis for magic makes some sense to me (also it makes my Perpetually-Threatened Shadowrun Crossover easier to swallow) though I’m not sure of percentages. It’s only in the mid/late-2020s that natural affinity for magic should start appearing, though - manufactured affinities (like say, Honami Ambler or Jade Hasegawa’s abilities, or Noah’s magegift activated via his interactions with the Girls) can show up earlier but the background count’s only been high enough to ‘trip’ the genetics in the last couple years. As the man once said “it’s your kids! Somebody’s gotta do something about your kids!”

On Technomagic: In my initial rambling screeds on the Soviet manadynamics project this is where I was focusing. Because inherent magegifts are only just starting to show up (and even then ~all the new mages are, like, toddlers) the majority of work on magic so far has been aimed at poking at it using modern scientific & industrial tools. Which makes sense if you think about it in a historical context, but that’s a rant for another post. Anyway, while it won’t get to the level joked about in the thread for a good while (the Soviets have been laboring away with a Giant Space Brain and so far have achieved 1% of an enchanted ENIAC. This is gonna take some time) I think the close integration of magic and technology is the way most Fenspacers will go.

On That Old-Time Religion: The main difference - and thus the main problem - between Fenspace’s magic theories and Warrior’s World’s UTM is Warrior’s World had working magic traditions for umpty-ump years before the UTM was even formulated. So they knew magic was real & could be accessed in a dozen different ways going into the project. Fenspace was up until less than two decades ago a very-low-to-no-magic world; while there’s a lot of traditions floating about, none of them actually worked. So it’s an interesting reversal, instead of starting with dozens of traditions and reconciling them into the UTM we’re starting with the UTM and trying to sift through dozens of traditions for the functional bits.

On the Perpetually-Threatened Shadowrun Crossover: Ha. Ha ha. Ha ha ha ha hahahahahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! [/joker]

On Nerfing: I’m against it. Handwavium was nerfed because it was extremely useful out of the box, and starting a nerd arms-race was never the intent. Magic on the other hand is just starting out as a phenomenon people can research and understand, let alone utilize in any productive manner; there’s no need to nerf it right off the bat. That means that yes, in the fullness of time all sorts of bad people can use magic to do bad things, but all sorts of good people can use it to do good things too.

On Rules: Sky’s the limit. Bear in mind that these are early days and nobody yet has the ability to get really gonzo. People sussing out the operational envelope for their particular system is encouraged and expected. Also expected are headlines along the lines of “researcher accidentally implodes self.” Paradox can be a right bitch.

On Rules in a Meta Direction: I don’t want to tie Fen magic down with a lot of hard and fast guidelines, because I know that if I do agree to hard lines they’ll a) be in the wrong direction, b) get rules-lawyered to uselessness, c) eventually become obsolete, d) spark dozens of fun-killing arguments or e) all of the above. If necessary, I’ll make summary judgements, or I’ll delegate summary judgement duties to somebody I trust.

On Dichotomies: To be honest, I’m not a fan. I think magic as a concept gets wrapped up in that sort of dualism far too often. I prefer a more holistic approach.

On Spirits, Souls, etc: I’m not touching that livewire for all the tea in China. If it becomes important we can figure it out later, but assume a bland spirituality and then kick it to the background.

On Reconciling Metacontinuity Magic Systems: Not our job. We’ll leave that one to the philosophers and sperglords.

On Fenspace and Amber: No, non, nein, nyet, nix, nuh-uh, not happening.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[Dartz]

Speaking of Technomagic, I'm picturing a crate or three full of arcane hardware, all wired up to a to something that looks like a Faraday motor, about 5-6cm high, slowly revolving around itself.

Some of this stuff looks suitably arcane and mysterious
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[robkelk]

On Retcons And Secret History: Nobody - and I mean nobody - knows this; any hints that somebody does will be persecuted with extreme prejudice. Clear? Okay, good. So. The big retcon/secret history is that magic existed in Fenspace but at a level nobody could really use or even experience. That changed on whatever the whateverth, 2008, when interdimensional traveller Doug Sangnoir used his magic on a sample of handwavium. The feedback loop from this acted as a catalyst, causing an exponential spike in the local background count that spread outwards.

Supplementary: There are only six people who have the necessary data to possibly make a stab at guessing this might be the case. Of those six, Doug Sangnoir and Yoriko Nikaido are long-gone, and Noah and Yayoi aren't analysts. That leaves Sora and Kohran... and by Word of Principal Authors, they never put two and two together.

So, yeah. Nobody gets to figure out why magic suddenly started working in Fenspace.

On Magic and Genetics: A genetic basis for magic makes some sense to me (also it makes my Perpetually-Threatened Shadowrun Crossover easier to swallow) though I’m not sure of percentages. It’s only in the mid/late-2020s that natural affinity for magic should start appearing, though - manufactured affinities (like say, Honami Ambler or Jade Hasegawa’s abilities, or Noah’s magegift activated via his interactions with the Girls) can show up earlier but the background count’s only been high enough to ‘trip’ the genetics in the last couple years. As the man once said “it’s your kids! Somebody’s gotta do something about your kids!”

Supplementary: Not very many people get to interact with The Girls, either. And most of the ones who do - the Boskonians on Ganymede and in Crystal Paris - aren't mana-sensitive. (Or, in some cases, alive.)

If you really, really, really want your character to be one of the exceeding-rare people who get to interact with The Girls in a non-fatal context, PM or email me and I'll see whether I can squeeze you into an already-tight storyline. But prepare to be disappointed unless you've got a really good idea for a cameo...

On Technomagic: In my initial rambling screeds on the Soviet manadynamics project this is where I was focusing. Because inherent magegifts are only just starting to show up (and even then ~all the new mages are, like, toddlers) the majority of work on magic so far has been aimed at poking at it using modern scientific & industrial tools. Which makes sense if you think about it in a historical context, but that’s a rant for another post. Anyway, while it won’t get to the level joked about in the thread for a good while (the Soviets have been laboring away with a Giant Space Brain and so far have achieved 1% of an enchanted ENIAC. This is gonna take some time) I think the close integration of magic and technology is the way most Fenspacers will go.

Hello, Nanoha... And you know that Safety's going to be mistaken for an Intelligent Device even more often than she was before magic became known, ne?

On Rules: Sky’s the limit. Bear in mind that these are early days and nobody yet has the ability to get really gonzo. People sussing out the operational envelope for their particular system is encouraged and expected. Also expected are headlines along the lines of “researcher accidentally implodes self.” Paradox can be a right bitch.

So we're going with Kohran's suggestion from a few months after A.C. ran The Gauntlet, and everybody can have his, her, or its own magical paradigm?

On Fenspace and Amber: No, non, nein, nyet, nix, nuh-uh, not happening.

Thank you.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[M Fnord]

So we're going with Kohran's suggestion from a few months after A.C. ran The Gauntlet, and everybody can have his, her, or its own magical paradigm?

There's probably a fancier way of saying it, but I think that's how it'll boil down. My current estimation is that the Black Mesa UTM (1.0 and beyond) will be the core, and everybody bolts on their own concepts to that and creates their own operating envelopes. Sort of a chaos mage hodgepodge of stuff.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[KJ]

What I'm thinking of, in order to contextualize this in my own head, is the Laundry books from Stross, minus the ugly bits. I can also see my characters... well, the reactions are interesting in my head.

[Ace Dreamer]

Putting body, mind and soul or spirit together into something which can live a normal life is often glossed over. There may be issues of fate or destiny that may make the process more difficult. Tricking the world into believing this is a conventional birth might suit some approaches. Or the "still has unfinished work to do" may be used. If the soul or spirit is unwilling to be resurrected then they may get a veto - continuing a resurrection after this (which may not even be possible with the simpler 'packaged' resurrection approaches) may give you the body and mind you want, but a new person, who will likely develop over time their own new purposes and motivations ("free soul with every new incarnation"). Producing an 'instant adult' like this can really upset the natural process of life and death, or the guardians of this, in some settings.

IF there is something like a soul, I wonder what was happened with victims of Quattros memory tech... if you kill/erase the "mind", does the soul leave? If you copy a mind from one body to another (Vivio became a shallow copy of Cathy), does a new soul appear or does the original one split?

Souls tend to be indivisible and tamper-proof in most settings, even the higher powers can't (directly) affect them in most cases.  The few settings where this isn't the case can be very, very, messy.
Usually the soul is assumed not to forget - there is on some level a record of all previous lives there.  Without a soul the mind/body combination doesn't tend to be too functional.  Normally it takes physical death to detach a soul from an individual body.
If there is no mind in the body, and so its not functional, that might count as a 'death'.  It might be the decision of the soul as to whether to hang around in case there is some future prospect of 'living', say by a mind being inserted into the empty body.  Or, the soul might leave, and printing a new mind into the empty soul-less body might count as a new incarnation ("free soul with each new incarnation").
As for the Vivio example, either the original soul hangs around, or a new one is incarnated - I don't think soul splitting will occur in the Fenspace setting, at least in this case (or, in fact, in almost any case).
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

[Ace Dreamer]

robkelk wrote:

---

On Fenspace and Amber: No, non, nein, nyet, nix, nuh-uh, not happening.

Thank you.

I think you'd have to be a bit mad to think Drunkard's Walk and Fenspace fit into a 'classic' Amber setting.  About the only way it might be workable would be to say an Amber-Shadows-Chaos set isn't the only thing that can exist, and that there can be multiple of these sets, and in fact whole multiverses that don't work that way.  Fenspace would be a universe in a multiverse that wasn't 'Amberite'.
If an author wanted an Amberite to appear in Fenspace they would have had to have left their native Amber-Shadows-Chaos set behind, which is theoretically possible.  They wouldn't be anything like as powerful in Fenspace as in some sort of Shadow.  If they were lucky they might be able to bend reality in their immediate area, but the odds are that would be a temporary effect, and might just look like some strange magic to a lot of people.  So, a sort of 'reality mage', or 'really lucky'.
An Amberite in Fenspace would likely still have the superhuman physical abilities, an indefinite lifespan, and a certain 'personal energy' or charisma.  Not to mention all sorts of skills.  They wouldn't be bullet or vacuum proof.  They'd probably find it difficult to enter Fenspace or leave it except in some formal, ritual, way; no turning a corner and changing your current universe.  Amberites are more used to the idea of travelling between different worlds, which are in different universes, than most characters in most settings.  But, using an Amberite character who claimed that Fenpace was "just another shadow" would be a recipe for one who is due to find that reality is much. much, stranger than they thought.
I'd also suggest avoiding direct mixing of "Callahan's" with Fenspace:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w...han%27s_Crosstime_Saloon
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

[HRogge]

*reading through the whole list of points and the supplements*

Interesting...

So if I get this right end of start of Season 3 (and maybe end of Season 2) will be "looking for the basics of Manatech and Manaphysics" for some Fen... and late Season 3 might become "oh my god, a you are a Mage!".

---

I think CI's reaction to the Soviets papers will be try reproducing a simplified version of their experiments... something that converts "local mana" to some amount of measurable energy (doesn't need to calculate anything). Because being able to measure "something" is the first step for doing some very basic experiments themselves (most likely be done at their LBBL facility at Nostromo).

[Ace Dreamer]

Doing survey of the mana field across Fenspace, including on Terra, would seem to make sense. Initially this would likely just be collecting a few data points, then finding if the field changed over time, and with what pattern. A way of predicting the 'mana weather' would be a longer term aim.

M Fnord wrote:

---

On Mana Levels: In GURPS terms, Fenspace mana levels were Very Low to None until things were catalysed into action in 2008. Since then the level averages out to Normal, but in practice it’s very chaotic. There are hot spots and cold spots, some are stable but others drift and change shape over time, like weather fronts.

There will be people looking for patterns in the 'mana weather' as early as mana detection instruments become available. Some, with various axes to grind, will be doing long-term studies of places like Stonehenge, Ayers Rock, and anywhere on Terra which history, myth or legend suggests 'strange things' are connected with. There will also be attempts to see if population density affects mana levels, and how, and again that means Terra, to check the high end of the spectrum.

Questions will be asked about how mana varies across Fenspace, if it is (on average) strongest near the Sun, weakest out in the Oort Cloud, whether interesting things happen near the Limit. Probably there will be manned and unmanned interstellar probes, some of which quite deliberately don't use an FTL drive in case that interacts with mana in some way. Some probes may be as pure as possible hard tech, with only the array of mana detectors using handwavium (I'm assuming pure hard tech mana detectors take time to arrive, if ever possible).

Assuming that mana patterns seem to be anchored to the Solar System, then how being on a planet, or being in the lowest mass density, affects mana levels will be checked. Also, the bottom of deep holes in Terra and other planets, and as deep in the atmosphere of the gas giants as can be managed. Bore holes have the virtue of humans having never been there, which if (some) humans interact with mana could be highly relevant.

There will be attempts to see if humans interact with mana levels, probably scanning the humans as carefully as possible as well as the mana. Then, use of things like fNMR brain scans and bio feedback techniques, to see how people can be trained to at least affect mana levels. I'd expect some of this to turn up 'talented' people...

Quite early on, there will be theories chucked around about the patterns of mana changes. All sorts of mathematical models will be tried, and math that no one has yet found any scientific use for considered. There will be lots of attempts to tie mana levels to other natural phenomena, and scholarly papers about 'long term periodic fluctuations', and speculations of all sorts, including the interaction of mana with human evolution.

Among other things the interaction between handwavium and mana levels will be checked. Likely places on Terra and in Fenspace where handwavium has been used on a large scale will be investigated, like around and in the holes left by Unreal Estate. It's likely that attempts will be made to find the first places, or at least as many early places as possible, where handwavium was used and find out if the mana levels are doing anything interesting there. And if mana does interesting things around current large stores of handwavium.

This will be a moderately insane period of scientific research, with people blaming each other for "contaminating the results". There will be, of course, people trying to figure out ways of becoming rich out of this, so expect a big upward swing in the sale of mana dowsing rods and pendulums, mana focusing and storage crystals, and books on "How to Control Your Personal Mana". Some of these (5%? 0.25%?) might even be useful!
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

[HRogge]

(I'm assuming pure hard tech mana detectors take time to arrive, if ever possible).

The soviet manatech is based on the Catalog... which did NOT know about Handwavium.

So I don't think the SSV used Handwavium in their manatech.

[Rakhasa]

I undestood that the soviet detector was not Hard Tech but rather Hard Techmonagic (for lack of a beter name...) -magic was somehow or other involved in its constuction, even if it was not of the dribbly candle variety.

[Foxboy]

How about ironically the first highly-visible full mage was also a stage magician? So a lot of traditional stage props, regardless of their actual effectiveness, get pulled into the "world of mind" for Fenspace Mages?

"Ebony and bleached celluloid, twelve inches, rigid."
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

[Rakhasa]

It they go by the stage name of "Zatanna" many will not mind...

[ECSNorway]

Another possibility. I'm sure there are Mads among my Macross folk. I can see a Dr Chiba type arising and influencing some of our musicians... a Spiritia Amplifier is not beyond the realms of handwavium and magic mixing. A full-up Bard manifesting on stage would be about how I'd expect my people to discover what's going on.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[Ace Dreamer]

Something entirely as popular with most people as a wand, that helps use of magic, might be the Mage Crown.

The Mage Crown is something which on one side can feed imagery and sensations into the sensory parts of the brain as well as pick-up intentions of action that might want to be carried out. This side of the system was developed for medical purposes to allow those with blindness and/or deafness to receive sensory input and those with locked-in syndrome to interact with the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked-in_syndrome

There is probably cross-over in Fenspace with brain implants used by cyborgs.

The second half of the Mage Crown is the magical detection and analysis side combined with the magic effectors allowing mana to be tapped and converted to produce magical effects. This system does not claim to follow any magic tradition, it just provides a way for someone to implement their understanding of a tradition or system of magical logic. The Crown isn't as good at precise focus and direction of magical effects as a specialised tool like a wand or staff, but there is no real reason why you shouldn't use one of these as well.

Originally Mage Crowns developed from training tools for mages, but it was found that those without a magegift could use a Crown to provide them with the magical senses that they lacked, and the magical limbs that they'd need to effect magic. Later, those who could have trained to be mages but didn't want to face the long period of developing their magical 'muscles' often used a Mage Crown.

Most of those who are 'naturals' and start with an active magical talent don't see the point of using a Crown, though some of these find using a Crown actively messes-up their use of their magical talent. A few 'naturals' find that using a Crown actually helps them develop magically. Mage Crowns have been used to help re-train mages who have somehow injured their magical abilities.

Some historians of technology compare the history and use of the Mage Crown to the television remote control. That was originally developed for use by the physically disabled (or 'differently abled', if you'd prefer). Later, it became something used by almost anybody, to the extent that a television couldn't be fully used without one.

Why wouldn't you incorporate all the functionality of a Mage Crown into a general purpose brain-computer interface?

http://en.wikipedia.org/w...%80%93computer_interface

The reasons might range from technical to cultural.

Mixing magic effectors with other varieties, such as an Interwave interface for Virtual Reality interaction with Virtual Worlds might risk disorientation and dissociation from reality. Magic effectors do things with the real world around you, VR interfaces could be interacting with bits of the world spread over an immense area, some of which are just simulations. Confusing the two could be very, very, unhealthy.

People who walk around running VR without there being any sign could be accused of risking becoming 'VR zombies'. The even more drastic step of letting a low-grade AI 'drive' your body through the more boring bits of life, while you have fun using full sensory interactive VR... Things get a bit confused when you start talking about Augmented Reality, as different people moving around might be seeing the world in quite different ways. Culturally this risks a fragmentation of society. Mixing a Mage Crown in with this is probably best avoided.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End

Mage Crowns might have a 'remote interface' mode. This would allow their interface capability to be used for VR without risking using magic on things around you that only exist in a VW.  The simple form of this might be a mode switch, though this has a number of downsides.  Alternatively, only using the VR side while not physically active (at least sitting down, with closed eyes) might allow maintenance of passive magical effects while interacting with VR.

This is part of a 'magic used by everyone' future tech approach.  I know this could go in a host of different ways, but I thought a few ideas potentially useful in writing stories might be useful.
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

[HRogge]

@Ace: This sounds like 2030 or later tech... maybe even 2040+...

[Ace Dreamer]

@Ace: This sounds like 2030 or later tech... maybe even 2040+...

I'm pretty sure you could build all but the magical parts of a Crown, as a lab prototype by 2020.  This would be mushy tech, as much hard tech as you can get away with.  You then need the sensors and effectors - those depend on how research into magic goes.  Then you need to build a standard version that can be mass produced, even given help from wave tech at least 18 months.  Finally, you need to get them out and accepted in wide use by the public, which could take three to five years.
Yes, some time in the 2030s sounds credible, unless something pretty amazing happens.
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

[Rakhasa]

You could build the crown in 2020... if you knew what it needs to do. First you need to understand basical magic skill before you can build a machine that uses those skills. I suppose the 2020-2030 decade will be spent learning those things, and the first truly useful magical and technomagical items will appear after the 30's (except possibly one or two one of a kind accidental artifacts and such)

[M Fnord]

So I was reading yet another oMage argument elsewhere & had this minor brain dropping, maybe it has some application to the thread:

"The good news is you can get away with almost anything without Paradox ruining your shit. The bad news is 'almost anything' doesn't equal to 'anything.' The really bad news is because there's no consensus, we don't know what will trip Paradox. Your job as loyal and expendable grad students is to figure that out. Good luck."
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[Ace Dreamer]

So I was reading yet another oMage argument elsewhere & had this minor brain dropping, maybe it has some application to the thread:

"The good news is you can get away with almost anything without Paradox ruining your shit. The bad news is 'almost anything' doesn't equal to 'anything.' The really bad news is because there's no consensus, we don't know what will trip Paradox. Your job as loyal and expendable grad students is to figure that out. Good luck."

Hmm.
Paradox implies that there are some 'rules' that are risky to try and break, due to some sort of 'reality feedback'.  In M:TA this was due to mages mangling the consensus reality, and on some level getting caught doing so.  As I understand it, Fenspace isn't a consensus reality where the physical laws are based on the expectations of all intelligent beings, it has solid, underlying, physical laws.
On the other tentacle, I could see M:TA magery being one of the most flexible of the new traditions which runs on top of the UTM of Fenspace.  And, if Paradox is part of their tradition, just because it doesn't bite other flavours of mage (who they might dismissively refer to as doing 'hedge magic'), it doesn't mean that it couldn't be really, really, nasty for them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mage:_The_Ascension
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Darkness
http://whitewolf.wikia.co...e:_The_Ascension#Paradox
I'm referring to the 'classic WoD' here, by the way.
Re-reading your post, I've realised I may be talking about something totally different to you, for example (a setting I'm not familiar with) the Nanoha-verse:
http://nanoha.wikia.com/wiki/Magic_system
Edit:  Added links.  Then added Nanoha bit.
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

[HRogge]

Something I came up with yesterday...

###########

Mikaja was looking around in the magical wonderland of Lisa’s private lab. Their Kindergarten group on Jenga had organized a trip with their parents through a few labs on the space station today.

“And this here is one of my Tesla Coils” Lisa said and pointed to one of the smaller devices, which was crackling with small lightnings. “Its a small Ball lightning model which I built for party fun a couple of years ago. Pretty harmless, but you should still be careful... it produces Static Cats!”

They all chuckled and of course everyone wanted to get a closer look on the crazy machine. A friend of her got to the machine fast and a small lightning jumped over to her, making her hairs suddenly standing on end.

“Static Cat!” someone shouted and everyone laughed loud as the machine produce the next small lightning. Mikaja was mesmerized by the look of the small balls of lightning running up and down the machines coil.

“I want to take one of the balls home with me!” Mikaja stated and reached out with her hand to grab one of the balls.

“Oh no” Lisa said and laughed, “you cannot take a ball of electricity with...”

She stopped in mid sentence in shock as Mikaja carefully plucked one of the small Ball lightnings from her machine and held it between her hands. Mikaja floated the electrical sparks back on forth over her hands as it slowly grew in size.

“Can I keep it mama” the little catgirl asked happily and looked for her mother, only to have the considerable sized Ball lightning to hit her hands. The electricity discharged with the smell of burned fur and flesh.

“MAMA!!!!” she cried out in pain and her mother quickly picked her up to comfort her little girl.

“Mika, what has happened?” she asked worried as she hold the catgirl tightly. “Don’t worry Mikaja, it will stop hurting in a moment.”

Mikaja quiet weeped in her mother’s arm as the pain already began to disappear. She blinked a few times, then she looked curiously at the machine and Lisa, who was still speechless.

“Again!” she suddenly cried.