This is a perennial issue, and perhaps ties for first place with designing a combat system for rpgs. Since a large portion of the action in an rpgs revolves around conflict, and much of that conflict is direct physical conflict with pointy pieces of steel or high velocity lumps of lead or even higher velocity packets of photons, combat takes a lot of ink, digital or otherwise. Discussions on making magic systems in Fate on G+, for example never seem to be absent for long.
The other thing that takes up a lot of the page count of rpgs is magic. This is probably because a large proportion of rpg gaming is still essentially fantasy based in some fashion, and thus, magic systems take a lot of work. For purposes of discussion, I won't lump in rubber-science technology or superpowers or psionics in with magic, even though in play, there is often no real difference in use or function. That, though, is part of the problem in my mind. The second part of the problem comes from the first, in that, even though much of the function and use are the same across genres, there is in large part a materialist and particularly modernist flavor to all of it in a philosophical sense.
What I mean is this: the powers, whatever the game genre, are essentially analogues for the machines and systems that we are familiar with now; guns, cars, television, cell phones... On the flip side, magic ever since classic D&D has almost always had wizards as the back up toolbox that could do any number of possible things, but much of their use in a game that was rooted in tactical miniatures games, was to be the substitute for the artillery, which is why the majority of magic systems in rpgs have some form of blasting, zapping, incendiary, and explosive spell. Even some of the more interesting spells meant for nothing but killing your enemy (e.g. stinking cloud or cloud kill) resemble a mustard gas attack.
What is interesting, is how little of that I actually find in pre-modern literature...
Now it is not surprising that more recent games still carry over the tradition of the fireball and lightning bolt spells, since so many have D&D style adventure gaming somewhere in their design DNA, and thus a tactical war game idea about how magic works. Furthermore, it is not surprising that from the war game roots with budgets of points made to balance armies, you get balanced levels and wizards that (in a better or worse fashion) are likewise balanced with the rest of the troops in power. There have been many ways in which this power has been balanced either by equal levels and level matched numbers of spells, or scales of effect. Possibly the first major deviation from that was making the limiting factor some kind of "mana" system by whatever name, in which magic is more flexible, but limited like a battery, with the wizard being the battery and the spell using so much charge. But this is still essentially, a mechanistic, materialistic approach to magic, and thus I stand by my notion that this is really not very interesting as magic. I know, I know - Arthur C. Clark blah, blah, suitably advanced technology, blah. He was an engineer, and an atheist. Not a given, but a pretty fair bet that he would, as it turns out, think of magic like an engineer.
Once more, how little of that I actually find in pre-modern literature...
Now I am not suggesting that anyone cannot play with that kind of magic system, nor even that anyone can have fun doing it. Even I can, so that is not my point. My point is that there is a difference between a cheap pseudo-meat fast food burger, and a Red Robin burger, or a perfectly cooked fillet mignon. There are magic systems that merely fill a place and some that do much better than that. I can look at how some other games have tackled magic systems and discover ways that those designs feel very different, and the stand out. Call of Cthulhu feels much more authentic in how it does magic, and there is very little that prevents a perfect neophyte from using a spell of unspeakable power without understanding the cost, and nearly all magic has a cost beyond merely eroding sanity. This design approach makes magic feel like something other, and somehow more dangerous than a mere (yawn) fireball. Ars Magica of course has a lengthy intro to the philosophy of what magic is and how it works from a worldview that is feudal and spiritual rather than mechanical. Magic is not limited quite so much like a battery (though there is a bit of this in the design), and the capabilities have at least as much to do with the spiritual position of the magician to the object as with the mechanical effect. For instance, you cannot raise the dead with magic, since life and death are above the sphere of Man.
What it comes down to in my opinion, is that good fictional magic, just like good fictional science fiction, should bow to verisimilitude, and for magic systems in rpgs to have no relationship to pre-industrial thinking is to make poor fiction. So there are a few things that I think are essential to making a good magic system that makes for meaningful fiction in an rpg. For an excellent discussion on this elsewhere, go HERE. My take is in the same ballpark, and I certainly found it a useful discussion from the indi side of game design.
1) I think that Tolkien had a better view of magic in that he discussed it as arch-natural rather than super-natural. In other words, magic is the highest peak of nature, or the essence of a thing without flaws. This very much flies in the face of a Clarke assumption (held by many modernist worldview gamers who nonetheless still like magic in their games no matter the genre). Clarke could not reconcile magic as reasonable because he assumed that it was a force that broke the laws of nature rather than transcended the limits of a flawed nature.
So with that idea in mind, and linking it to the realization that magic in actual human history has been conceived to be present in the nature of things themselves rather than separate, in a game, I assert that magic should not be a separate force but a force intrinsic to what is meaningful about that thing. More specifically, if we are using a game like Fate, aspects give you bonuses because they are not only what you are about, but because what you are about is magical in that way. This kind of magic is not the flashy-bangy technologic magic of artillery wizards, but it has more verisimilitude to magical societies.
2) Magic should not be limited in a precise mechanistic fashion, run by energy like a battery, or interruptible like electricity or a radio wave. It should work on some much deeper and more potent level, and should be less about material constrain than moral or spiritual constraint on the wizard. Whether this is power granted by a more powerful force (a la Faust), or at a cost in ability (a spell may require the loss of an eye, a la Odin), or it may have a condition related to the spell (the sleep will be permanent and unbreakable except on condition of true love's kiss).
In fact, the same general kind of fire magic used by a wizard may have slightly different constraints based on the context of when and where it is cast. The basic effect may be for the wizard to summon a fire salamander out of a jar of burning coals, but the cost when cast inside a smithy may be very slight but that they cannot cross the threshold to the outside, while done in a tavern, the salamanders may light everything they touch on fire if you choose to summon them.
I will have to write up more later, but this at least, should give some kind of flavor to the magic in game that has more verisimilitude.
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