Magic is Cheap!

I came in on a discussion yesterday about magic. In part, it was about certain applications looking too technological for a fantasy setting, but it got me thinking well beyond that.

My comments at the time:
The good/bad of magic is that it's magic. By definition (or lack thereof) it can accomplish anything you can think of, unless there are some sort of hard limits in place. So the inventor spends his years learning aerodynamics and says to his mage pal 'I've had a contraption that lets a person fly like a bird!' The mage takes a few minutes with all his arcane knowledge and whips up a spell that... makes someone fly like a bird. The mage doesn't need to understand the technical points because magic itself is a shortcut/plot point/fiat that makes it possible. Unless, of course, the setting's magic has some other requirements, but it usually doesn't.
I'd also add that the only way I see to keep magic from doing certain things or looking a certain way (say, too techy) is to place hard limits in the system. Though some people don't like being confined, that really is a benefit of having a set spell list - you know what you're going to get, so you can make sure it fits. As long as magic can do anything you can think up, people are going to do... whatever they can think up.

Now, as I said, that got me thinking about more than just the focus of the conversation itself. Magic is... "The art that purports to control or forecast natural events, effects, or forces by invoking the supernatural." However you seek to explain it, it's outside the normal understanding of nature. Various settings have different "rules" for it, but at the core, magic does things that otherwise couldn't be done.

At one point in the discussion, someone drew comparison between a magical copier machine versus a printing press. They were largely arguing, I think, that a technological inventor can be just as effective and have as much impact as a mage. I tend to think that's not true, especially in a "magic can do anything" setting.
While both people can produce a similar effect, the inventor of the printing press has probably spent years getting a working device. The magician has spent years studying magic. But magic can do infinitely more. The inventor has discovered how to make a printing press. The mage can make copies magically, teleport them to far-away towns, toss explosives, fly... everything. Really, one would have to have some powerful philosophical opposition to magic to spend years learning anything else when magic can do the same thing and so much more.
Perhaps the most common system-based limitation I see is one on permanence. RPGs often put in some form of cost associated with permanent magical items/effects in order to limit them. XP, prohibitive amounts of gold, whatever. But even that can usually be overcome in time and making a new "temporary" copier every month is probably not as bad as real mainentance on a mechanical press.

As far as the look of magic... well, as I said, there's little you can do to rein that in without spelling out limits in world-buildling.
Modern players carry a certain amount of bias with them, naturally, but it's not so hard to imagine airships made to look like birds, with wings fixed instead of mobile - instant airplanes. When you can make armor and you can make golems, mecha of varying sizes would be a very short leap of imagination. firearm-like ergonomics could easily develop out of crossbows, though they might not even be necessary if wands and rings can zap people just as well.
And it gets even "worse" if you have a setting where there's actually some technological background (like the Rym influence in Furryfaire). If you don't want that flavor to spells and artifacts, then you'd better head it off at the pass. Once you allow people to have their imaginations run wild, it's pretty well too late to put things back in the box.
Any sufficiently imaginative (or in some cases, unimaginative) magic is indistinguishable from technology.

It's probably my D&D background as a roleplayer (core 2E-3.5E, I never got into make-your-own magic additional material in play), but I really do have a preference for spell-list-based systems rather than wide-open ones. They're a pain in the tail to put together and balance, but they're infinitely easier to deal with after completion. As a player, you can see what can be done. As a GM, you don't have to worry about judging spells on the fly.
I appreciate the room for creativity and imagination in a system that allows free-form casting, but I don't think I've ever had a net-positive experience with it in any game. Mage in both past and present incarnations has given me a headache trying to work non-rote spells. With sufficient practice, I'm sure it comes more naturally, but sometimes it's just hard to define what you even want to accomplish in the same terms as the construction set.
Is the freedom worth the effort? Sometimes.

And through this all, I've developed a little theory that goes like this: Magic is good for the story, but bad for the world.
Magic is a neat little shortcut that makes for interesting novels and even campaigns at times. It works in those scenerios because of the limited scope and application. Those limits are there simply by the nature of the medium. Even the most detailed of books can't, won't, and doesn't need to get into all the rippling effects magic would have. It is enough that the heroes/villains can do whatever they need to do with magic.
When you actually try to spill that out into a world, there are problems. Furryfaire has been a wondrous example of this as players have been around for years with an open magic system. Logic starts breaking down of why aspects of the world even remotely resemble our own when magic could make them so much different. Jets are useless when you can teleport from place to place. In fact, so are roads. And the more powerful and/or common magical effects become, the paler any "realistic" technologies seem in comparison. Magic can leapfrog ages of tool development to provide an end product that's often better than what technology could whip up. No one in their right mind would pass up the benefits of such advancement.
And when you couple that with a few thousand years of typical fantasy history that magic has been around, the structure or any imaginary world spins wildly out of resembling anything close to reality.
Magic itself is about that which transcends or defies reality. And the more you introduce into a setting, the less "realistic" it will become.

That which goes does not go.
That which comes does not come.
The moon is the sun.
The birds are the fish.
The living are the dead.
Steel becomes brittle.
Reality becomes a dream.
All fantasy becomes reality.
That which is, is not.
That which is not, is.
Creation will be rendered false.
- The rote of Magical Deliberation in The Book of Bantorra used to break down a would-be caster's sense of reality and allow them to work magic.