Does anyone know any stories that have a hard magic system, as Brandon Sanderson would say. I am especially interested in runes or other detailed magic systems used in a fanfic. I do not have a specific story in mind, but I really liked lung's Wizard of the Kaleidoscope.

 

That makes one of us that likes Lungs' The Wizard of the Kaleidoscope.

 

By "hard" and by mentioning Sanderson I assume you mean a magic system where the reader knows all of the rules, just as well as the characters do, and the system has very clear mechanics and limitations?

In which case, no, I don't know of any fanfic that does that. The HP magic system is far too broad in usage and mysterious in mechanics for such a magic system to work.

The closest you'd get, I imagine -- and I mention this fic very reluctantly -- is Methods of Rationality, which does all it can to destroy the HP magic system and replace it with something much more limited.

 

That (Taure's post) would be, of course, the strength of HP's magic system.

It's simple in a way that almost anything's possible, and any "addition" can be seen as an additional constraint.

The magic system in my fic and the much better fic that follows it (which has a better, updated, more well thought out magic system, by the way), tries to place limits on human imagination rather than on magic itself in a kind of "you would not be able to have the right mindset without this or that other thing" to cast this otherwise.

That, in its own right, opens some doors, I guess - but the major problem, of course, is that human imagination is awesome - in all senses of the word.

 

Thanks Lungs and Taure. Lungs, I've read the updated version of the story and I really liked it. Well, if there are no fics similar to what I'm asking, it might be time to roll up the sleeves and get cracking on a new story.