It’s hard to deny that magic is foundational to the entire genre of TTRPGs. First commercially available roleplaying game - Dungeons & Dragons - very heavily revolved around magic. Current trends in what TTRPGs are popular, as seen by this roll20 industry report
I'd like to point out that in Call of Cthulhu, casting magic is extremely difficult and usually dangerous. It is also quite uncommon for a PC in most campaigns. On a lark I once allowed players to spawn in knowing one spell, but they almost never got to use them. It quickly became a running joke, such as the PC who knew "Brew Space Mead": his ONLY character trait was his insatiable desire to acquire the ingredients to brew the spell. Even this proved virtually impossible.
But CoC was always an odd duck compared to the other popular tabletops.
I haven't played CoC, but I would guess it still has some magical elements that aren't used by the players - for example, whatever their adversaries do. Those effects still need to be handled consistently, so I think most of the same arguments should apply.
It's true though that the less explicit magic is used in a particular system the less critical it is to handle it consistently.
I'd like to point out that in Call of Cthulhu, casting magic is extremely difficult and usually dangerous. It is also quite uncommon for a PC in most campaigns. On a lark I once allowed players to spawn in knowing one spell, but they almost never got to use them. It quickly became a running joke, such as the PC who knew "Brew Space Mead": his ONLY character trait was his insatiable desire to acquire the ingredients to brew the spell. Even this proved virtually impossible.
But CoC was always an odd duck compared to the other popular tabletops.
I haven't played CoC, but I would guess it still has some magical elements that aren't used by the players - for example, whatever their adversaries do. Those effects still need to be handled consistently, so I think most of the same arguments should apply.
It's true though that the less explicit magic is used in a particular system the less critical it is to handle it consistently.
A strong start! I'm eager to read this series