@Cave Troll Roflmao!!!!! Isn't that the truth! My characters are very much alive and talking back... all of them!!!!!!!! This would prove most useful. -----Scene----- [Characters]: "I don't wanna and you're not gonna make me!!! $#@$@#% you! In your dreams you feckin' ass! Nay I shalln't. " [Me]: The author pulls out her Beat stick of Memory Loss and proceeds to play whack-a-mole with her rebelling and slightly psychotic characters. ----End Scene----- Yes indeed. That would prove to be quite therapeutic.
I just started an Urban Fantasy novel, and what I'm going for with my system is "What you put in to it determines what you get out of it" : 1) Magic is as much of an art as a science, and the mage's personal touches in a given ritual are as important as the parts that everybody has to do precisely 2) There are both rituals that are highly developed and rituals that are far more basic, but the first are far more powerful than the second 3) The more times that you use the same spell, the more that it becomes a part of you that you can call on without the rituals that you used to need 4) If you are homebrewing a spell that nobody has tried before, then committing yourself to adding weaknesses will make it easier to achieve the strengths that you're looking for (even if the two don't necessarily relate one-to-one) ... I actually didn't realize that these all shared a theme until about 30 seconds ago, but now I'm running with it
@Cave Troll Ooohhh and Megamind is pretty amazeballs too. Love the bad guy turn... well.. semi-bad guy lol. Talk about professionalism.