[The Willful Wanderer]

That's right, this was supposed to be about making these energies and the use of them believable. So, let's start.

What the hell is this stuff?

My, I hardly know where to start. There are so many different forms of inherent personal energy displayed in various fiction media....

Chi/Ki/Qi is, of course, the most common. Renowned in martial arts manga and anime, appearing in various roleplaying games (sometimes predating translation of anime and manga to western culture’s comprehension), and used widely as a reference in real-world martial arts.

More recently, the manga/anime Naruto has displayed something similar but different- which they call chakra. Given that chakra are originally referred to in reference to lifeforce or qi, clearly there’s relation there.

Then there’s the other things- one of the most notable being Wyborn’s ‘Light’.

Despite a number of fundamental differences in origin and manner of manipulation/function of these different (or not so different) energies, there are a number of things consistent across all of them. For one, these energies are all around. Qi and Chakra are present literally everywhere, it is just a matter of developing them to the point of ‘expression’- being able to display and/or use them to achieve effects. Light, from what I understand of what Wyborn has communicated to me, is limited to living things (I may be wrong on this)- which still leaves it spread over most of everywhere.

Regardless, these energies are energies inherent to a character, that are expressed directly- that is to say, a character using one of these energies to accomplish something is literally doing just that (or at least, is most of the time). This is an important distinction between these energies and those such as magic- where magical energy is used to cause, say, a bolt of lightning or a ball of flame to strike a target, the energies I am discussing here will be striking the target directly.

Though, of course, the term ‘energy’ is being used very loosely here. After all, you can’t have a ball of energy. It’s simply not physically possible. It might be more appropriate to call these things semi-energies, in that they can and frequently do have physical form, even if that form is usually highly malleable and capable of occupying the same space as matter.

Additionally, a character using these energies, if they drain themselves completely of them, is typically left dying or dead (assuming they were truly alive in the first place). In each case, these energies are composed of something vital to life, be it spiritually or psychologically (ref: dissertation above).

So, given all of that, I’m done, right?

Not hardly, unfortunately.

There are a number of problems with the uses of these energies that I have seen, both here and in various writings- usually fanfictions. Not too surprisingly, professional and semi-professional writers tend not to overdo things with these ‘powers’, and manage to keep things within the suspension of disbelief. Tend. Not always true.

First off, there is the problem of amounts. Since these energies are, for the most part, continually replenishing, not only in characters who wield them but in those who do not, they are theoretically infinite power sources- over time.

Theoretically infinite over time. YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO REST AT SOME POINT. All too often, a character with the ability to use these powers will simply keep using them, and using them, and using them, with absolutely no downtime no matter how much and how often they expend the resource.

This is, quite simply, stupid. Especially as sometimes these characters, in an attempt to make them more believable, will suddenly run out of ‘juice’ in the middle of some extremely heavy-duty use, and then be ‘dry’ of the power for a significant time. This s *not* how these abilities were originally defined as working, which is a major hit to suspension of disbelief right there. It is also *not* consistent, which is the ‘two’ of a very killer ‘one-two’ punch that will quite happily let you use it to destroy the believability of your writing.

If a character is constantly generating a power by nature, they are constantly generating it, no matter how many times they ‘run dry’. On the other hand, you will pretty much never see a character able to use such a power only as quickly as they produce it, which only makes sense- all of these powers are capable of being stored by a being proficient in their use, and why bother doing that if you can’t use the buildup for something?

An excellent analogue to this is found in most real-time strategy games. There are resources you gather, to construct your base and your units. As time passes and your gathering increases, you will become able to spend larger and larger amounts of the resources to increase the effectiveness of your units, or to create units that are basically stronger or more capable or more interesting. But if the resources are limited, you have to stockpile- to save up- for later purchases of expensive things. A player who cannot spend more than they gather has no reason to stockpile.

A character who cannot use more of these powers than they generate has no reason to have any ‘reserves’.

A player who gathers so much that it is impossible to outpace the gathering with their production is either playing an imbalanced game with no real thinking involved, or cheating.

A character who generates so much that they couldn’t possibly need to have ‘reserves’ is either fundamentally ‘broken’, or ‘godmoding’.

It’s a hard thing to cope with. What game-player doesn’t want to be generating SP/MP/Gold/whatever faster than they could possibly spend it? But if that happens, it destroys game balance. This is a fundamental difference between designing a game, and playing it. In writing a freeform RP like is done here, or a novel or story as is done in other areas, you have to maintain balance to maintain both believability, and a sense of challenge for the character.

So, there is the biggest thing to do to make these powers believable. Give your character a limit to the maximum they can ‘stockpile’ and a limit to how much they can ‘generate’, and *maintain that*. Inconsistency is a very big enemy of suspension of disbelief- and an enemy of fun in most games, as well. A game where rules are constantly changing only truly works if all or most of the rules are constantly changing (Calvinball, anyone?).

There is one other major thing.....

An exploding mass of chi will not generate smoke. This is a chronic problem to be found with people who are used to the Dragonball series by Akira Toriyama. Chi does not catch fire. It explodes, it bursts away from the centerpoint- I guess what is needed here is a bit of defining.

When something explodes, what you have is a certain volume of material (say, that of a marshmallow) expanding to a much greater volume (say, that of a medium-sized television) so quickly that it forces everything around it away very intensely- likely sending some of it flying.

A balloon popping is a form of an explosion. The container (the balloon) resists the expansion of its contents until that outward force exceeds its capacity. Then the container bursts, and the contents expand in all directions until they reach a neutral state.

Smoke has nothing to do with this.

The reason smoke appears with a lot of explosions is that a lot of explosions involve burning things- and burning things converts them from a solid (which is a lot of matter packed together) to a gas (which is a lot of matter spread way way far out)- expanding them. Gunpowder, T.N.T, phosphorous- these things are all frequently made to burn quickly enough that it causes an explosion.

Burning can cause explosions. Explosions rarely (but sometimes) cause burning.

Chi semi-energy explodes not because it is burning, but because it has been released from being very heavily compacted. The explosion may kick up dust if there is a lot of dust, or turn something solid into dust and kick that dust up into the air, but it will *not* create smoke when it happens midair with nothing around to be turned into a dust cloud.

There are a few other things, but they are largely particular to one or another form of energy.

In the end, semi-energies such as chi, chakra, and Light are all very much more flexible in terms of how you use them without breaking suspension of disbelief. However, you have to always keep in mind the rules you or whoever else has already laid out for them, and you have to maintain consistency above all.