Three Problems

what is fiction's representation of magic and how does it hold up to player expectations?

there's also cosmology and alchemy mixed in of course

cant have magic without those things

Cosmology and alchemy - The Soul

spoilers: descent into avernus

- ey yo your town had a lot of paladins, those paladins didnt do a very good job so now your town literally gets sent to hell.

Where is the magic in that? There aint any wizard who done it so how did it happen? Are paladins suddenly important to the plot?

spoilers: descent into avernus again

- ey yo the protector angel of your town turned evil bcuz she was too zealous

Aren't gods and angels supposed to be creatures of belief? What kind of thing "in real life" would have lead to them seeing the protector angel of the town as evil? How is she evil if their clerics still believe that she is good, and had no reason to stop thinking that?

Aren't the gods and the angels all made up of souls? Where is the moral agency of those people (/ things) if the angels and the gods can just get up and decide to go live in hell? How can an intrinsically good thing turn evil?

spoilers: descent into avernus

- eyyy we just found the last fragment of the dark angel's innate goodness that was discarded on her descent

The way that that "redemption" goes has nothing to do with the shard of innate goodness. She just decides not to be evil anymore after looking at some random ass sword.

spoilers: descent into avernus

Was descent into avernus wrote poorly, then?

Not really, but it treats angels and devils and souls as figures, where they should be ideologues. An ordinary fallen angel would not be an issue in this way, but in this way of writing, some random ass angel, the guardian angel of an irrelevant town, is one of the mightiest defenders of humanity. She then ends up ruling Avernus, one ninth (the .. second most important one ninth) of one ninth of the entire multiverse.

Hell and the abyss are only terrifying in so far as they are infinite. Infinite in all directions - older than all society, larger than all that are conquer them, greater than the designs of the mortal realm. Conglomerations of many worlds, once mortal.

Heaven and nirvana are only glorious in so far as they are infinite.

When the mortal realm has all these demon lords running around and super jacked up angels in a single town, these other worlds don't seem so big after all.

Cosmology and magic - Works of Nature

Simple math problem. If there is a wizard who can summon one angel every day, and there are ten angels leading the offense on the abyss, then how many angels will be left after ten days?

Then, the cosmology is as large as the people using it. The second category grows every day, at least, it grows over here. If it only takes 70 years for a human to summon (and perhaps destroy) the strongest angel, but it takes 1000 years for the strongest angel to come forth, then how are there even any angels left?

Heaven and hell are infinite because they are the extensions of the mortal world. They are not bounded because they grow as you grow towards them.

Heaven and hell are infinite because they are of the symbolic, of the order of numbers. Angels are as infinite as the numbers between 0 and 1. The jail cells of hell are as numerous as the irrational constants.

Heaven and hell are nothing without the mortal world. They last as long as the light in a mirror lasts, when the fire goes out.

Magic - Improvement of the self

How much magic should there be in the world? Is magic of this world, or is it of another world?

spoilers: descent into avernus

magic is made by making deals with the devil. infusing the ancient strength of giants into men. whipping angels until they bleed

Magic is also made by wizards. That old broom that's 100 years old might have magic in it. It might be alive.

Magic is the story.

spoilers: descent into avernus

Magic is how shakespeare wrote a midsommer's night dream. Kinda weird.

But if you're playing a tabletop game then magic worms its way into that too. Wizards are not wizards but rather great men that were forgotten to time. Solomon David. King Arthur. Leibniz and Euclid. So how do they act in the present tense? Where do you write in the legends of still-living men?

Probably by using magic.

Maybe every town should have a wizard. Greater, middling, lesser. But each one of them, a true wizard on his own - a wizard always has secrets to treasure. Between holding a true slice of the fruit of the tree of knowledge to knowing certain things about the rocks outside of town, there is a space for wizards of all sizes.

spoilers: descent into avernus

anyways thats it. think about what brand of fantasy you are selling and whether it holds up to dnd.

although, you can still play dnd without dnd's specific brand of fantasy

just make sure that it's worthwhile