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Bookwyrm
Great Reader
USA
4740 Posts |
 Posted - 18 Feb 2004 : 06:40:19
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I've run across the this lable, given to the normal D&D spellcasting system -- the "fire and forget" system, as I've heard it called someplace. What I want to know is where this name came from. Did a guy named Vance come up with it?
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The Sage
Procrastinator Most High
Australia
31701 Posts |
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Bookwyrm
Great Reader
USA
4740 Posts |
Posted - 18 Feb 2004 : 09:26:26
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It's been used at least twice in the library; it's a recent find for me, but when I made a search for it on the Internet, all I found were references to D&D as having a Vancian magic system. Nothing about where the term comes from.
Mostly I was wondering if this is a system that predates D&D, or if Gary Gygax's friend Vance dreamed it up for him.  |
Hell hath no fury like all of Candlekeep rising in defense of one of its own.
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The Sage
Procrastinator Most High
Australia
31701 Posts |
Posted - 18 Feb 2004 : 13:11:05
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Hmm...it's actually starting to ring a few bells in my head now, although I'm not sure where I heard it from. Maybe Faraer has something on this, hopefully he'll stop past this scroll and enlighten us.
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Icewolf
Learned Scribe
USA
214 Posts |
Posted - 19 Feb 2004 : 00:55:50
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I did a quick search for you Bookwyrm.
This should help
While it is not a clear explanation, it at least tells us that Vancian magic is not a term associated exclusively with D&D.
Note: This doesn't mean that Gary's pal Vance didn't inspire the term... |
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The Hooded One
Lady Herald of Realmslore
5056 Posts |
Posted - 19 Feb 2004 : 03:22:39
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| This term comes from Jack Vance's Dying Earth fantasy novels. Gary Gygax borrowed (with Vance's permission) the "style" of some spell name's (Otto's Irresistable Dance is one example of this style) and more importantly the concept that a spellcaster memorizes spells at great effort, and can only hold so many at once in his/her mind...and that they're forgotten, when cast. |
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Faraer
Great Reader
3308 Posts |
Posted - 19 Feb 2004 : 13:54:29
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Ed Greenwood also read the Dying Earth stories as they were published: The Dying Earth (1950) (OK, probably not this one as it was published), The Eyes of the Overworld (1966), Cugel's Saga (1983), and Rhialto the Marvelous (1984) -- now collected in Tales of the Dying Earth. Jack Vance is a nonesuch giant of 20th-century fiction, and he's Gary Gygax's favourite author. Cugel the Clever is also one of the main sources of the D&D thief. The Encyclopedia of Fantasy passes on this quote: "For the twenty terces I phrase the answer in clear and actionable language; for ten I use the language of cant, which occasionally admits of ambiguity; for five, I speak a parable which you must interpret as you will; and for one terce, I babble in an unknown tongue." There's a Dying Earth roleplaying game (www.dyingearth.com) worked on by the great Robin Laws.
What's it like to play a spellcaster (as different from any other character) in Ed's campaign, o Hooded One? |
Edited by - Faraer on 19 Feb 2004 13:57:47 |
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The Hooded One
Lady Herald of Realmslore
5056 Posts |
Posted - 19 Feb 2004 : 22:15:43
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Hello, Faraer. Let me begin by saying that I’m not going to tell you whether or not I play Jhessail. Or Illistyl. Or Sharantyr.
I can confirm that I’ve played several spellcasters among the more short-lived members of the Knights (such as the cleric Eressea Ambergyles).
As for what it’s like: neat. Really neat. (I suppose today’s generation says cool or “kewl.”)
To begin with, Ed created literally hundreds of spells. Many of them (like his monsters and magic items) are now “standard” D&D elements, albeit changed to suit new rules editions. Yet they were new to us when the Knights started, brand new, some of them not even published in the pages of The Dragon when we first encountered them, so we really DID have to roleplay.
To set the scene: 1st Edition, heavy roleplaying, which for PC spellcasters meant this:
* if you were a cleric, (I’m stepping into character here, not confusing player and character) Ed roleplayed “key moments” in temple life with you (getting personal instructions or missions from superiors, the major daily, monthly, and festival rituals, and how to pray to the god). If you prayed eloquently enough, AND had behaved fittingly for a servant of the deity, the god implanted spells in your mind, either while you were sleeping or when you were praying or in vigil before an altar. This really meant Ed handed you little typed slips with three paragraphs on them. The first was casting time, duration, area of effect, and so on, including any trigger or incantation words. The second was a description of the spell. The third was what using that spell meant to your faith, the deity’s expectations, your alignment, and so on. When you cast the spell, you handed back the slip. When you were trained to the next level, you had to perform tasks for the church, and were shown exactly how to cast certain new spells (Ed handed you more slips). The more you memorized, the more you knew what to ask for, and precisely how the spell would work. If you’d been “bad” (according to the god, not alignment or the church), you might get lesser spells than you asked for, or the right spell but with a minimum duration, damage, or effect, or even no spell at all, but a mental reprimand or an order to perform a task.
* Ed always had sorcerers in the Realms (only they weren’t called that), but never any PCs. Any sort of PCs could have little personal powers (what ended up being called “wild talents” in 2nd Edition), often things like faerie fire (of part of one’s own body only), feather fall or spider climb or levitate (self only), or message. Magic users (ahem, wizards), however, REALLY got to have fun. They all assembled actual spellbooks by stapling slips of paper Ed prepared for them (often sloppily or cryptically handwritten on mottled brown “parchment” paper from a nearby paper mill) into a little notebook. Each slip was a single spell, and Ed prepared variants of most spells (the different versions depending on who taught you). When PCs seized spell scrolls or spellbooks as treasure, they got slips and even sometimes little books of runes, symbols, notes, unfinished spells, processes for creating golems or helmed horrors or achieving lichdom. I remember players almost fighting over these little scraps, desperate to get them from each other. When you got tutored up a level, your tutor taught you a new spell and some small trick or other (what came to be called “cantrips”), and that of course meant that Ed handed you more slips. Wise players left room on the pages their slips were attached to to jot down notes (like “Don’t cast this near mirrors” or “Didn’t work on black dragon - - why?” or “Zhentarim out of the Citadel using a similar spell”). And on at least two occasions, evil wizards ransomed themselves out of PC captivity by arranging to give the PCs spells through a third party. You could never cast a spell you “didn’t know,” so even when new rulebooks appeared that were crammed full of spells, you could only drool over them. The Forgotten Realms adventures included a lot of Ed’s spells (though Jeff Grubb put in all the “Snilloc’s” spells, which came from Andy Collins; the derivation of Snilloc should be obvious).
You can tell that this approach really makes treasure MEAN something to players running magic users, and points at an ongoing Realms campaign really being a careful accumulation of magical knowledge and spell rosters. If you did magical research, Ed would sometimes “replace” your slips with better versions of existing spells, or variants that used easier to get material components, or give you PART of a spell, to be slowly assembled (literally over years of playing time). And sometimes -- rarely enough for it to be a cause for celebration around the gaming table -- you could successfully create a new spell. Mostly, to be effective, you learned to take an existing spell and modify it to do something slightly different (that you wanted it to do), hopefully :}). And, as Elminster never tired of reminding us, you learned: “When NOT to use that spell.”
(In other words, not only should one never waste magic, and always be mindful of the responsibility that goes with wielding magical power, but also --as a matter of style-- one should never do by ‘brute blasting’ what one can achieve by reputation, manipulation, and subtle threat of possible magic use.)
This achieved two ends: it made us think of implications and consequences all the time when adventuring (hmm, sorta makes you wish all politicians should be forced to play D&D, doesn’t it?), and it made meeting Manshoon and other powerful evil wizards truly terrifying. I mean, a table of gamers trembling, feeling sick, struggling not to cry or run to the bathroom: THAT scared. Then, when you do manage to hold together and fight, you go home after the play session feeling that really ARE heroes. Laid off from a job? No problem; as a Knight of Myth Drannor, you’ve handled far worse. Friend or relative dying or dead? You know how to act strong, regardless of how you really feel, and that someone needs to do the right things, and it’d better be you. Lose a fight or rivalry at work? No problem; you learn to play nice, never forget, think of the team first, and how to REALLY get even, if that’s the best road to take.
And I look up from the keyboard and see I’m thundering along again. Time to act ladylike (and shut up :}). Hope this covers things, Faraer. Ed said he has fond memories of meeting you, even if his time in the Orc’s Den (did I get that right? Or did he say Orc’s Nest?) had to be short.
The Hooded One
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Bookwyrm
Great Reader
USA
4740 Posts |
Posted - 20 Feb 2004 : 16:29:10
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Thanks, all.
And by the way, I'm not really all that interested in who the Hooded One actually is. Leave her alone, okay? |
Hell hath no fury like all of Candlekeep rising in defense of one of its own.
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Faraer
Great Reader
3308 Posts |
Posted - 20 Feb 2004 : 20:54:09
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This is what the Realms is to me: a process, technique, sensibility, that the best source material conveys, rather than an accumulation of facts. That's why Realmslore not informed by that sensibility reads like dead useless matter. No question The Kingless Land is more Realms than FR14 The Great Glacier.
It's funny how Ed's campaigns give the Realms a sort of moral authority, for me, just from reading scraps (including long and entertaining ones!) about them, that it wouldn't have as a purely published world. Whereas I have no particular connection with the official 1370s timeline.
That third paragraph on the spells, their context, is a whole tier of lore that never saw print -- one of many aspects of the Realms you have to read with some care to pick up, and that missing information leads to confusion that for instance the novels 'don't obey the Player's Handbook rules on resurrection'.
I think cool is different from neat. I legit don't want to know which your character is, it's entertaining to leave it open. Yeah, that was a fun lunchtime at Orc's Nest -- I think it was an hour or so, me trying to fade couthly when each person came to get stuff signed. I didn't ask Ed how he reads so fast, that may be one of the real secrets. Curious if he liked The Knight, I love Wolfe but haven't read his newest yet. |
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Bookwyrm
Great Reader
USA
4740 Posts |
Posted - 23 Feb 2004 : 01:50:43
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The main reason I asked about it when I did was I’d recently finished reading Thraxas and its sequel, Thraxas and the Warrior Monks, both by Martin Scott, a British fantasy author. In it, the magic system works like a combination of preparatory and spontaneous magic. Basically, simple spells are so easy that once a sorcerer (the standard name for magic users in the book) learns them, he can keep casting them. Major spells are different, and have to be memorized again and again. The main character, Thaxas (a lazy, fat private detective that reminds me vaguely of Mirt) is a minor sorcerer, and can keep one major spell in his head at a time (usually sleep). He actually doesn’t use much magic; as I said, he’s a minor sorcerer.
But the idea stuck in my head, and I remembered this term, so I asked about it. The way major spells were described was rather similar to D&D magic (and I suppose even closer to Vancian magic). I’m going to have to look up these books. |
Hell hath no fury like all of Candlekeep rising in defense of one of its own.
Download the brickfilm masterpiece by Leftfield Studios! See this page for more. |
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The Hooded One
Lady Herald of Realmslore
5056 Posts |
Posted - 23 Feb 2004 : 19:27:44
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Yes, Faraer, Ed liked the Wolfe book, and said this series looks like it could end up being Wolfe’s biggest and most important, for pure fantasy fans. However, he recalled with amusement a long chat he had with Tom Doherty (the founder and head of TOR Books, who publishes both Gene Wolfe and Ed), standing in a crowded suite hallway during the TOR party at Worldcon this year, wherein Tom said this book should be “more accessible” to the general public than most of Wolfe’s work. Ed agrees that it is, but that “accessibility is obviously a relative term: the lyrical writing sweeps you along, but an easy opening it ain’t. It starts with a dramatis personae told “in character” by the main character/narrator, and then plunges into a chapter wherein said character is bewildered by new surroundings, and groping his way along. And then it gets MORE complicated. :}
Through me, Ed’s talked elsewhere in these forums about enjoying a wide variety of writing genres and styles. He just received a new manuscript in the mail, which he says he’ll identify here only if the author wants him to, that’s a very simply told, but hilarious and insightful, “dungeon crawl” book. He told me: “When it wasn’t making me laugh out loud, it was making me grin wryly and think, ‘Uh-huh. Been there, saw that coming. Pity the adventurers didn’t.’”
Oh, and he says to tell you he forgot to mention one book in the weekly list, because he didn’t really “read” it, so much as looked at the pictures: SPECTRUM 10, the annual glossy collection of beautiful fantasy artwork (and sculptures). Ed says he drools over the latest SPECTRUM every year.
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Bookwyrm
Great Reader
USA
4740 Posts |
Posted - 25 Feb 2004 : 16:35:16
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Ooooo . . . now I'm dying to know what that book was. Please let us know as soon as you have permission to do so . . . .  |
Hell hath no fury like all of Candlekeep rising in defense of one of its own.
Download the brickfilm masterpiece by Leftfield Studios! See this page for more. |
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Vancian magic?
