On page 18 of The Pendragon Campaign, 1st ed. (link), Greg Stafford writes:
Pendragon has no magic system. All magic is within the hands of the gamemaster, and is used to imitate traditional effects rather than to make comic-book flash-bang nonsense spells.
At the time I read that I was in the first year of college. I thought to myself something like, Wait, I can do that?
In the same year, GURPS Man to Man and its adventure Orcslayer had just come out. As a player of The Fantasy Trip – and a longtime fan – I was excited about that. But MtM had no “magic system” at all. The adventure justified this lack by stating Orcslayer’s setting, the nation of Caithness on the fantasy world of Yrth, was a “Low Mana Zone” where working magic was harder. Thus, the region had few wizards. The desert next door, where the Orcs lived, was a “No Mana Zone” where no magic worked at all.
Doing without magic sounded intriguing. I read on:
Magic should never dominate the game. The gamemaster should feel free to make palaces glow from a warm internal light, to serve exotic wines imported from Cathay, and to mark trails through forests with ancient stones. A magical event or curse can form the basis for an adventure. Magic can be used to save villains or characters. But never should the plot rely upon a magician to do something – this is an example of the gamemaster working versus himself, which only occurs at the players’ expense.
More relevant to this discussion, RuneQuest 3rd edition had come out at about the same time. I’d never owned 2nd edition, about which I’d heard so much. Imagine my dismay when the older students around me complained bitterly and long about what a disaster Avalon Hill had made of their favorite system, in particular how Sorcery was just plain broken.
In subsequent years I soured on magic systems:
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In the aforementioned TFT campaign I played a wizard who at one point used illusions of birds to scout out a castle. The rules said I could see out of their eyes, right? The GM permitted it.
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For a year I ran a GURPS 3rd Edition campaign. Every PC was a mage, and they tended to run roughshod over all my plans. But my fault, right? That’s what players do.
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A guy name John Kim wrote a series of essays exploring, in part, the thesis that many extant magic systems encourage a mechanistic, quasi-technological approach to magic. “Spend this many Magic Points for this strong an effect.” “A fireball expands to this volume, doing Xd6 damage.”
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From D&D I learned the phrase “glass cannon”. In literature the people who do “magic” are gruff but wise Gandalf, curséd Elric, the interchangeable evil priests that Conan plunges a sword through, the barely trained Gray Mouser who relies more on wits and sword, the Odyssey’s Circe and Calypso who are magic more than they do magic, Terry Pratchett’s wizards and witches who seldom cast actual spells, or Neverwhere’s Door who can open doors from here to there without knowing how or why. In D&D low level “Magic-Users” are useless tagalongs; at high enough level they become living artillery whom other characters exist to guard, lest they reap less loot or die horribly.
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In the past 35 years, King Arthur Pendragon has gone through several editions and publishers. The 4th Edition from Green Knight Publishing in 1993 (reprinted in 1999) allowed Magicians as player characters and thus included a “magic system”. Each Magician belonged to a tradition that determined their specific talents, and had to “raise power” in a slow ceremony before casting a spell. White Wolf’s 5th Edition in 2005, written by Greg Stafford once again, removed the magic system and incorporated some material from older works. Editions since then, from Nocturnal Media and (once again) Chaosium, have mainly clarified rules, fixed errata, and refreshed art.
So maybe in some settings it’s better not to define a “magic system”. Maybe magic isn’t for the hands of mortal men. Maybe having a well-defined system kills awe and wonder. Just maybe defining and quantifying the unknown makes it less, well, “magical”.
Or, more to my point, maybe not letting player characters solve problems by magicking them away will put the fear of me into them.