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We Lost

Featured Answer: Blackheart595

Do you have a favorite magic or power system? Tell us about it!

Oh hell yeah. Gotta pull beyond the animangas sphere for Reverend Insanity, though. It's a cultivation story whose world is contained within the Great Dao or the magical aether or whatever you want to call it. The most common way of interacting with this Dao is via a mythical kind of insect, the Gu. The Dao is also categorised into a wide range of different paths or elements, like fire path or strength path to more unorthodox ones like food path or painting path.

There's just so much I love about it. For example, dao marks (i.e. magic particles) of different paths negatively interfere with each other. This isn't all that relevant at the lower power levels, but higher level cultivators are strongly incentivised to specialise in just one path in order to avoid this interference. Moreover, lower level Gu contain mere traces of the Dao while higher level Gu contain full fragments of the Dao, making them unique. This ensures that even high level cultivators of the same path approach things with a different style. While these things aren't exactly uncommon in stories with magic systems, I find them to often come across as crippling overspecialisation for no good reason, which these mechanical incentives avoid.

The system is also incredibly vast, flexible and creative, yet still feels thoroughly well-defined regardless. If you can think of an ability or effect, then it's highly likely that it can be realised in Reverend Insanity—and even when not, the setting contains sub-worlds and extreme areas that are capable of slight mechanical variations that may very well enable the idea. This flexibility can also be seen in how even when a desired path doesn't exist, it's possible to establish an entirely new one. An alternate history could very well lead to an entire different set of existing paths within the setting.

The story also made me aware that a commonly ignored issue in settings with vast power scaling is that moral ideas would very likely differ in such a world compared to our own world with its rather flat power scaling. Specifically, in a world with one-man-armies, there's just no incentives for the most powerful individuals to care about the well-being of the powerless ones. Reverend Insanity's solution to this is human path, making the human experience itself into a magical element and a coveted one at that, cultivation of which benefits from just having lots of humans around.

I also love how higher level cultivators get their own private pocket dimension attuned to whatever path they're cultivating, that they have to manage to prosper like their own country, or perhaps like a very oversized garden. This ensures that cultivators can't just focus solely on fighting but also have to concern themselves with management and development. Similarly, essence stones serve as both mana reserve and currency simultaneously, disincentivising cultivators from engaging in avoidable combat in order to not waste their resources.

Ah, I could just keep on and keep on writing about this—I've easily spent months just thinking about this setting, counting only the active thinking time. I've even started translating the system into a TTRPG ruleset. It's a work in progress, but one of my favourite details is how concrete rules for railroading just fall directly out of the setting, in a way that hypothetically even allows players to wrest that priviledge away from the game master and take control of it themselves. I also like how the isekai elements are thoroughly integrated with both the world building and the narrative. Ah, I just love it so much…

Whoa… I can feel the passion through my screen, this just had to be the featured response!

Featured Prompt: AndytheBro97

Yesterday’s TWP

Oh no, Fujoshi alert! Sound the alarm! I'd say this is forshadowing, but there has only been a single male in the whole show so far, and I somehow I doubt that this is in Shirou's future.

Never give up hope, dear rewatcher, surely all of our wildest BL dreams can come true!

Question(s) of the Day

1. Can you name any magical girls who can’t fly?

2. Who is your ideal magical girl?

The Writing Prompt

TWP

Tomorrow’s QotD and The Writing Prompt

[1)]We’re a few episodes in now, what are your general thoughts on the main cast?

[2)]Any particular thoughts on the supporting cast?

[TWP]TWP