Monthly Make-A-Magus Contest

[You]

Well as it turns out, sadly we don't have neough people for this months contest.
Therefore, I hope that you'll join me next month in participating in a workshop to gather feedback on how to make this contest not only more accessible and to increase participation but also more fun.

[Daneel Rush]

My kokoro is broken.

[You]

Sad as it is, it has been a year since the contest started.
Just think of this as the path of Make-a-Magus 2.0

[Sunny]

Hyuuu... I like this contest just as much as the servant one so that's distressing.

I started sitting out of both creation contests due to, um, anxiety and not really being comfortable doing things for competitive reasons (I enjoy making characters but tended to feel terrible if I did win one). But I do want them both to be successful..!

[NMR-3]

I had something about burning books but it was subpar even by my standards so I didn't get much work on it done.

[SirGauoftheSquareTable]

I'd just like to know where to start in order to actually get enough knowledge for good ideas about magi.

[Bird of Hermes]

I had an idea about a half-mad homunculus attempting to horde everything he could to recreate the "Library of Alexandra" (or at least their perception) and it would have revolved around a cursed, almost sentient mystic code that was using them to its own ends - slowly taking over until the already weak mind was washed away and direct control was assumed.

I enjoyed the idea but work has been killing my productivity for the past two months, not just here but elsewhere, and I've been to exhausted to make barely any progress which is kinda unfortunate.

[SleepMode]

I believed I could juggle college projects and two different ideas at the same time. I was wrong.

One had to do with the Grimoire of Honorius and imitating Daemons, while the other was literally a mage who shortened ten-count spells with the power of quick keys.

[Leftovers]

This pertains to the feedback workshop but I personally find it easier to make a magus out of a character prompt than a magecraft prompt.

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plus i'd used the book idea already, rip

[Daneel Rush]

Can you please explain what you mean by "character prompt"?

[Leftovers]

An enforcer, someone designated for sealing, a faculty head, a Lord, a vampire, a spellcaster, an Estray magus, an ancestor of a canon character; prompts that set a character background to work with and consequently broad parameters for abilities and characteristics according to their status or origin.

[Bugs]

Something something magic cookbook something

Also yeah gonna have to agree with Leftovers. Magecraft is fun to make up around the character instead of working backwards.

Also schoolwork and what not

[SirGauoftheSquareTable]

This will be much easier to break into if that is the case. I've been wanting to try for a while, but the prompts always stymied me for I didn't feel I knew and know enough.

[Balthizar]

Most of my creative writing priorities have gone to DM-ing a D&D campaign for the last few months, so I haven't had much time for anything else outside of work.

This pertains to the feedback workshop but I personally find it easier to make a magus out of a character prompt than a magecraft prompt.

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plus i'd used the book idea already, rip

Also this.

[You]

Make-a-Magus Workshopping

For this month we’re going to try to address some of the issues and weaknesses of this contest to make it a better experience for all participants. I’ve looked through the entire thread and have complied some of the comments.

The purpose of this is to get some feedback and possible ways to implement that feedback. So if anyone has anything they would like to see, things that should be taken away, things that should be streamlined, please don’t hesitate to comment below.

How this ideally works is if you would like to comment. In your post, state what you believe would like to be changed and then propose a solution if you have one or if you agree with someone else’s solution then just say “I agree with XXX.” If you’re not sure how to solve the issue that you have, that’s fine too.

So, what I’ve gathered, the major issues people have with the contest thus far:

1) That its difficult to make a magus because of the opaque nature of magecraft and what makes a good entry.

2) Prompts seem to centered around abilities rather than time period, status, or character. This makes for dry prompts that are difficult to inspire ideas.

3) Too busy with other projects.

4) How to increase participation/outreach?

And this is my attempt to address these issues.

1) I’m not really sure how to decisively address this. It’s very clear from how Servants are made and their templates what to put in and the TMwikia allows for one to essentially “plug and chug” with a majority of the skills. Therefore, the process of creating at least the skeleton of a Servant is essentially streamlined. I’m not sure that we want to replicate that mass production model.

One thing that I can do is to take the template that we have and explain the function and well as the general expectation of what goes in what portion so that contestants have a better understanding of what to look for. However, what this approach does not address is building incentive to participate. For the Servant contest, a framework in terms of “a historical figure” is present and where one’s ideas can be grounded; whereas here, its literally making an OC.

Another thing that might help people understand what makes a good entry is a detailed breakdown of one of entries. Probably one of the winners. Go through the entry, point out what makes it good and post that on the front page so people can see “what makes a good character.” Two weak points that challenge this would be that it may serve as too rigid of a guide intimidating people who want to enter and that a single person would be doing the breakdown. A “good” character is subjective.

2) It’s been agreed upon that the prompts that we’ve been having are too centered around “abilities” rather than character or setting aspects. I want to look at the evidence that we have. I’ll be using the results of Season 1 only because Season 2 has been bad.

In Season 1, the topics were:
Sealing Designated – Character based
Spellcaster – Character based
Mixed Species – Character based
Curses – Magecraft based
Unconventional – Magecraft based
Angels – Magecraft based
Familiars – Could be both?

I’ve uploaded an analysis of the data done with some elementary stats. You can find it here with the raw data and everything.

****************************file/mp3i87...Data.xlsx/file

The sample size isn’t great, but the conclusion is that at least for Season 1, it did not matter whether the prompt was Character based or Magecraft based, there were statistically the same number of entries and voters. Which makes me think that the decrease in entries might be more of a time fatigue thing. It would be interesting to compare results with the Make-a-Servant contest.

With this being said, I do think it is a good idea to endeavor to make the prompts more character based in Season 2 and let that be known when making prompts since it adds specificity while giving the winner a broader range of ideas to choose.

3) People are busy with their lives. It takes a lot of effort and time to make a character. The only thing I can think of that might help this is having the contest be 2 months, but there might a large amount of fatigue and it just drops from people’s radars.

4) This is pretty big issue. The hypothetical ceiling for voters is “everyone on BL.” But the “people who care enough to vote” is very niche. If you look at the data the number of voters is usually around the amount of entries which is intuitive. The people who vote are the people invested. Therefore, outreach should be focused on getting more people to participate.

So that is my current take on the issue. So what are we going to do and what else are we going to do to make this contest a successful BL staple? Or is there not enough interest for this type of contest?

[JetKinen]

I'm just going to level with you guys.I'm just not creative enough to create a Magus.
With Servants I have at least the historical figure anchoring my creative process. Even the prompts were too vague for me to able to create something that I deem worthwhile.

Of course this is probably just my very own personal problems, and it feels silly to write about a workshop for something that i was never part of, but just giving my very own 2 cents.

[Spartacus]

About number 1, this is not a fix, but I think for people who mostly familiar with Servant making, you can just choose an existing IRL magic and work around that. There are many OC abilities in TM as well as real life-based. Stuff like Theosophy, necromancy, fortune telling, and even any religions can be used as a material. However, I do find searching such a thing on the internet is harder than searching historical figures. Actually, try searching for IRL magic practitioners on the internet that is not part of the Witch Hunt on the net, they also harder to search.

I don't believe number 3 (being busy) is affecting that much. If we compare Monthly Servant always have a lot of entry, under an assumption Monthly Servant contestants has IRL life just like Monthly Magus's, the same thing should happen there too, which factually didn't.

Talking about my own experience, number 4 is more about interest and familiarity to Magus more than anything else. Judging from the exposure of Servants and how the Magi sides of thing hardly get a spotlight in accessible TM media (translated media, anime, wiki and FGO), most of the current TM fans love the franchise for Servants. Frankly, I think Magus lack the attractive premise that Servant has. A Servant pretty much guaranteed to have a fan no matter how well written or not they were, people will be attracted to the premise of 'I know this guy!' alone. Magus in comparison, sounds have an unnecessarily convulated system that hard to get to, while it is factually untrue, it has that image. Which as I identify myself as an average reader (ie: only interested in otaku things, doesn't have any interest nor knowledge about books with literary value), I need to reread FSN twice and Case Files to grasp how the system works until I found out it actually not that convoluted and interesting.

As for why I never took part except for the first contest, it's more about I finally found out that I lack the grasp to write a Magus before, so I back out as I didn't find myself has a chance. So does why I didn't vote, as I think a vote from someone not knowledgeable about the subject will ruin something. It's also one of my reason to start reread FSN.

[You]

Good feedback
Anyone else have stuff to add?

[Bird of Hermes]

Some people had said they were stuck for inspiration so I'll dig through my old stuff, polish it up and put it in the regular CaM thread like I did last time if that's any help to anyone else.

[LeadDemon]

Since the Servant contest has started, there have been over seven hundred pages posted across both the old and new Create-A-Servant. Recent average seems to be about 1-2 per page based on a really quick sample I took. So let's be conservative and say there've been ~700 Servant sheets made since the contest started, which comes out to a little under one a day.

Since the magus contest has started, there have been seven pages in Create-A-Mage, averaging at closer to 4-5. Let's be liberal and put that at 6, meaning we've got ~40 sheets made since the contest started, which comes out to less than one a week.

So you've got way, way more discussion of sheets going on in Create-A-Servant, and sheets are getting made over seven times as often on top of that. Honestly, in light of those figures, it's impressive this contest is doing as well as it has been, but I think that's because the contest has basically been what people funnel their magus-making stuff to, as opposed to the Servant contest where it's more of a supplement.

Of course if I had time I'd like to the actual data and bring in things like number of unique posters in each and how that skews stuff, but leaving for work soon so I can't.

Either way the point is that there's a marked difference between Servant-making and magus-making. I think that with You's points, 3 and 4 (and to some extent 2) are nonunique, so while it could be worth trying to figure out how to improve 4 and the proposal on 2 is worth a shot, the reason the contest hasn't been doing so hot is probably more underlying.

I'd say the biggest issue is just making a magus itself. You see this in stuff like cup war roleplays too, how four out of five times everyone'll just app their Servants first and churn out their Masters later. A lot of that ties into what You already mentioned. Off the top of my head, some possible reasons for that could be:

-A Servant's a more grounded existence, whereas a magus is just someone's OC fundamentally, even if you're pulling from history.

-A Servant has a standardized, easy to follow format. Five parameters, set list of Class Skills, a few Personal Skills that there's a canon list of if you don't want to make your own, an NP or two. Add some character stuff if you're so inclined, extra stuff if you want, and you're good to go. A magus doesn't have that sort of formula where it's easy to plug stuff in, even if you have things like Circuit info, Origin, history, family history, mystic codes, etc. For a Servant, a lot of the creation process is already done for you, and the class system makes codifying themes comparatively easy.

-Servants have lower bars for research. That's not to say you can't have Servants with a ton of research put into them or magi with low research, but that's the general trend. This both means within Type-Moon and outside of it. For a magus, you need a much better understand of how magecraft works in the setting than for most Servants, even in the cases if a lot of Casters, and you're also probably having to do research into the magus's own magic foundation. Conversely, for a Servant, you can more easily get away with 'I had an idea, went on wikipedia, and was able to churn this out in an hour'. That’s not to say all or even most Servants are like that, but it is just generally easier to make Servants than magi imo, even if I’d say magi are way more fun for me to make personally.

-The difficulty of defining what makes a good magus. A lot of this was already covered by You.

-Similarly, it seems like it's more intimidating for people to make a magus if they don't have the best mechanical knowledge for similar reasons. This is especially bad in the structure of a contest, where it feels like you need to put your best foot forwards, but given the figures in the two non-contest threads, this might be a bit more pervasive than that. This also ties into voting. And, even if you’re confident in all of that, getting that fundamental inspiration to make a magus is still net more difficult because of the points on format and research.

-For a good chunk of people, making Servants is just more fun than making magi.

I’m sure we could come up with more, but off the top of my head, those are some of the things that cause this sort of Master v Servant discrepancy.

As for actually positive comments on how to try and change this, I’ll think on that when I’m off work.