I Fucking Love Wizards
Ever since I learned to love to hate Raistlin Majere as a child, I've been utterly fascinated with wizards as a concept. As a formerly avid reader and repressed child, the idea of being able to dive into dusty tomes and ancient manuscripts to gain actual physical power has occupied a great deal of real estate in my head. I always gravitated towards mages in games, and would dream up worlds with fantastical magic power just waiting to be unearthed (usually by my blatant self-insert, of course). There was something about the sense of discovery, the feeling of growing knowledge and mastery that called out to me on a deep, primal level. As I got older, however, I found myself repeatedly disappointed by many portrayals of mages. To me a wizard was not just someone with innate magic abilities or a guy with a stick who can create explosions. I was deeply underwhelmed by Harry Potter, for example, and the "Mage" classes in most games quickly lost their luster. I was ever-drawn back towards Dragonlance and the Morcyth Saga (which I've recently revisited and have more complicated thoughts about as an adult), as well as Wizards as portrayed in Dungeons & Dragons. It wasn't until much later, through a Minecraft mod of all places, that I was able to grasp what it was that drew me in.
I Love (and miss) Thaumcraft
Thaumcraft is a Minecraft mod last updated in 2018, so there have been many new versions of the game without it. The mod has had several different iterations with drastically different mechanics, but the core vibe was maintained. In essence, you have a book called the Thaumonomicon, which acts as a guide, reference, and progress tracker; and you have a magical lens called the Thaumometer, which scans items for their magical "aspects." Scanning items gives you information abstracted as resources that you use to fund research. The mod's gameplay loop is effectively Scan Items -> Perform Research to Unlock Items & Reveal New Researches -> Use Researched Items to Advance and Gain New Things to Scan -> Repeat. The beauty of it is in the presentation and execution of these researches, which are split into several "Schools" like Golemancy, Artifice, and Alchemy, and all feed into one another organically. Artifice lets you perform rituals and craft objects that need particular aspects, and Alchemy lets you distill the aspects from items to minimize waste, which can then be used to further advance your rituals, and so on. All in all, it creates the sensation of slowly unraveling and mastering the mysteries of the world around you. And that is the good shit that I was looking for.
The Point of the Whole Thing
As much as I'd love to continue with the exposition, I'm going to cut to the chase. I have had ideas for how to capture that sensation of Wizardly discovery in game form for the longest time. And as I lack the time and motivation to learn all of the many skills that go into the creation of video games, I've instead decided to devote myself to the many skills that go into Tabletop RPG design.