Momentum Worldbuilding Info

[DanielH]

With weather specifically, I was thinking of the communication beads. If Kithabel’s mom called on her wooden bead and said that there was a drought in her part of the country, Kithabel would care approximately as much about creating rain there whether or not she flew there first. It looks like flying there might still be a good idea for the knowledge part, and to a lesser extent the distance part. The same can be true for sporting events or other human contests, but I don’t know enough about the relevant culture to ask.

I originally asked because I was wondering how difficult a scientific revolution would be for the world. It would obviously be much harder, enough so that they might never think of it on their own, but it seems like it wouldn’t be downright impossible even if there was no range-based weakening.

[Alicorn]

It's really hard to get science working in this world. It's also really hard to do fair sports contests, although you can try to evenly match the momentum of the cheerleaders and compensate for wildly disparate fanbases.

[ErinFlight]

One of the biggest problems I have world building is making magic systems powerful enough to do interesting things, while still including enough limitations so that it doesn't become overpowered and lacking challenges.
All your magic systems are fascinating and perfectly balanced.

How constant does the magic use need to be to build up momentum? Do you have to be using magic the entire time you're awake? Could you do several intense bursts during the day and use a constant amount of low-level magic the rest of the time?

[Alicorn]

You don't have to use magic the entire time you're awake to maintain your existing momentum, although it's not uncommon to just be flying all the time once you can. I don't have an actual graph of how much momentum you gain or lose from various benchmarks of performance or idleness, but as long as you keep up your variety you can definitely do small magic all day and a few big things and that works fine.

[DanielH]

If I were in this world, I would want to have feedback when doing magic, expect to gain momentum quickly, and feel entitled to have some sort of feeling for how much momentum I had instead of just having to try stuff and see if it worked. Would any of those make a difference?

[rockeye_stonetoe]

I bet most sorceren have those things.

[Alicorn]

Yeah, that's all pretty baseline. Feedback from doing magic and having momentum is moooostly a strict nope. You might be able to get it when you're at pull-moon-from-sky levels.

[Ezra]

No help from instantiating an object with, say, a readout of your current momentum?

[DanielH]

I don’t think it could be measured that precisely; that’s why I tried to make it a sense. Senses are relatively handwavy sometimes.

Did Kithabel just do what she thinks she did in the Milan thread? Could she do it reliably? Could other sorceren? I am guessing the answers are “yes”, “sort of, like Screwdriver”, and “maybe some others but not all of them” respectively. With Milliways you can’t really know; I wouldn’t be too surprised if the answers were somehow “no; it was pure coincidence”, “yes, now she can”, and “yes, but only at much higher momentum”.

[Nemo]

That definitely seems like the kind of thing where difficulty should vary. Doing it from the other end is strictly impossible sometimes, and it wouldn't surprise me if the entity controlling the door had astronomical amounts of specialist momentum about opening and closing that door.

That said, I had the same reaction you did and asked. Apparently it's currently planned to work reliably for the duration of the sandbox. So: best news ever.

Kithabel, Milan, and any sorceren they like enough to tell about Milliways all effectively get the ability to not sleep (for momentum purposes). Not to mention the free drink.