There is magic involved! Ours will be mana-based. Mana is a bit sparse in the world, so the people here have adapted to that reality. A typical mage will usually spend the better part of their day collecting mana from diverse sources and imbuing it into various objects, usually tokens or coins, so they can access large quantities of it when the need arises. Their staff serves as a gathering instrument for the mana, and their wand serves to direct the mana into actual spells. You can technically do without any tools, but casting will be very slow and arduous. Identifying leylines will be a useful skill to develop.

In battle, magic is a tad visceral. You get a standard-issue steel wand and mana collector staff, and when battle starts, you'll impale the butt of your staff into, ideally, a mana-rich source like a leyline, and use your wand to direct where you want your spells to go. Your wand has a magazine for your mana tokens, and you reload it like a gun when it runs out of charges.

Magic itself works simply. Describe in plain English what you want your spell to do, and the universe will do it, provided you have enough mana to pay for it. You can also use somatic (hand) signs if you want to be quiet.

Why isn't everyone a mage? That's where mana's other function comes into play: leveling up your Authority Ranking. To even get started as a mage, one has to spend several years meditating and attuning to the spirits of mana. Then, you start collecting it. Gather enough, and you can choose to either hold onto it (bad idea; requires focus and effort), imbue it somewhere, or level up with it. If you choose to level, the variety and power of spells which the universe authorizes you to cast increases, and all collected mana returns to where you got it.

That's a rough outline of the magic system I'm working with.