"Cheating?" Meghan asks Ellie. "This isn't a test. I was hoping we could game the system a bit with a more controllable Assimilation, but it doesn't sound like we can."

"Anyway. Do we want to buy Magic 4? It sounds like we could get most of the benefit of both Species 2 and Metahuman Population, as well as what Meghan wanted to do with Assimilation. Personally, it would be nice to be able to make my whole family immortal if they want, but also let them visit me without being immortal if they'd rather not." 

"That was more or less what I was thinking. Well, I just wanted to figure out how much control over Assimilation we could get to avoid future headaches. I would rather if the entire process was entirely controlled and consensual if we could swing that way."

"More control over the process sounds good to me," Millie agrees. "It seems like Assimilation is too limited for what we want to do with it, but we can achieve the same goals with Magic anyway. Are we buying Magic 4 and not Assimilation or the Species options, then?

"Works for me! I've already got ideas for how the magic system could work, but you guys will have to tell me more about yours first in case I'm missing something obvious." 

"Okay. Me first then? My world magic has two sides. One is people with natural gifts, which have some kind of magic power that can be anything from turning things blue, hearing a bit better, to flying and healing. The other side involves rituals where you say specific words, do hand gestures, burn incense or whatever to get a magic effect. Unless you do a lot of complicated math, you might get a dangerous magical effect. So, someone that wants to do magic professionally needs to get an engineering degree. Being a natural gift," she gestures as herself, "helps a lot with make it safer, but there is still a lot of math. I vote our system doesn't require too much math."

"Huh, how do people get natural gifts?"

"Oh, you are born with it. And it runs in families, but not, like, reliably. I have a grandmother, an uncle, and a half-sister with natural gifts, and that is a very high number in terms of close-ish relatives."

"That seems like an inefficient system. You'd get people who'd love to have magic but don't, and people who have it and don't do anything with it. I think we should design our system so that anyone who wants to can have magic. Preferably without having to do degree-level math, like you said." 

"Perhaps more like my magic system, then? Anyone can learn, and it isn't all that difficult unless what you're trying to do with it is complicated. The main limitation is that using magic costs lifespan, either one's own or someone else's. I suppose that wouldn't be such an issue if everyone was immortal."