Hi! I need some help sorting through some concepts I have for a world I'm working on for a series of settings that may move on to becoming a fully fledged book. I feel that the world mechanics may make an impact on what kind of world I make, so let me explain those briefly: Essentially, there are people known as mancers (tentative name) who can pull power from their most dominant emotions and use them to fuel their magic. There are different schools for the different emotions, the most common being anger, with subsets such as wrath and fear, and mixed schools like grief. What I'm stuck on is coming up with rules for the magic, societal rules, and general world building things. Any help would be appreciated! And if I'm forgetting to add anything to my world, please let me know! This is my first big project in a while, so I'm bound to forget something.
This seems like a very broad question. What details do you have already? What restrictions do you have over how this must work? What sort of things would you rather avoid? What sort of things would you rather include? Give me something here.
One possible way to look at it. There are dominance hierarchies inside different emotional tribes. And tribes are competing about dominance between tribes. Competition leads to intentional misunderstanding and underrating inside and between tribes. Common toolbox could be defence mechanisms, specially projection, regression (inside tribes), reaction formation (between tribes), sublimation (to deal with loosing confrontations and going down in hierarchies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_mechanisms Comical tension could rice from immature nature of masters of emotions. (Like in Unseen University of Terry Pratchett or Frazier or...) Rules.... "If you magic an outer impact you will be targeted as an similarr/opposite inner impact of same amount. There is always a balance. Magic works as a lever, not as a generator." Societal rules... Inner circle always unites against outer enemy. Otherwise only rule is there are no rules but alliances.
World building: I'd use the real world for inspiration. Either a part of it (like medieval Europe, feudal Japan, etc.) or the whole thing and then rearrange it like puzzle pieces. Physically I'd take a piece of paper, tear it into pieces, and then try to reassemble it. They ought to look like they could fit a square (like "Pangaea"). Magic is tricky. Too much and its a world of madness. No such thing as too little, as that's how miracles are made. Given how insane and unstable the magic system you're trying to build is, I'd take inspiration from the Shivering Isles since a world where feelings actually do trump facts is a world built to be destroyed. The only rule being "don't hurt the feelings of that brooding, extremely emotional, 'misunderstood' wizard living in his mom's basement"--assuming magic power=emotional instability.
