From: Jim Ogle (Ks. Jim) <jogle@aoc.nrao.edu>
Subject: Re:  some general questions
X-Gated-By: The Black Marble Wombat@morticia.cnns.unt.edu
X-Gated-From: torg mailing list
Organization: University of North Texas
X-Gatemail-Version: 1.0b
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1993 23:14:39 GMT

Snooze writes:

> I've just started running a TORG game and have a few minor questions.
> 1st... is there any limit to the number of miracles someone knows? Or is
> it just assumed that someone knows all the miracles for their religion?

There are several possible answers, all based on several different
things that WEG has said.  One answer is yes, you have access to all
the miracles of your religion.  Another is that you are limited to a
number of miracles equal to the number of adds you have in Faith and
Focus.  And if you are a ravagon priest, you have a number of miracles
equal to your adds of Focus+1.

I generally play it by the kind of religion involved.  Something as
all-encompassing as Lanala in the Living Land gives you access to all
miracles if you are a priest of Lanala (optant) whereas in the
Cyberpapacy, there is a limit on what you can perform ("God only
grants miracles to the devout, and the more devout, the more you
get.")

> 2nd.. In the various mentionings of magic in the Asyle books it says that
> the only spell that begining players shouldhave is somethingl ike arm of air.
> And says that any storm knight who wishes to know other spells must find them
> int he course of playing or by finding someone who can give them the spell
> or something like that.  How do other people out there handle this? Do you
> just let your beginning players choose whatever spells they wish? Or do
> you tell them they have to only choose a few.

The comment about Arm of Air is regarding apprentices, which most PCs
probably will not be when they start adventuring.  During character
creation the PC can (within reason and GM permission) take whatever
spells he wants provided he has the points for it (out of those extra
13 points mages get for AKs and spells, plus any starting PPs they
want to spend) and can cast the spell in the first place.  After that
point, a character either has to create all his own spells, buy or
take them from someone else, or learn them from another mage.

I do limit the selection of spells a character can start with, as most
people immediately jump on the biggest and most bad-ass spells they
can get their hands on.  I have a collection of those little blue
composition notebooks that I call "My First Spellbook", which contains
the spells I generally let beginning spellcasters choose from.

> 3.. at what point in the wars down tharkold invade LA?  I'm trying to order
> events in my mind.  I just got the delphi council book and tharkold has
> invaded in that book <but not in the Nippon Tech book>.  <sometimes I
> wish WEG would give some indication of the ordering of events so that
> someone jumping in later on in the war can figure this stuff out...>

It was almost two full years into the invasion (22 months, something
like that).  The NT sourcebook came out at the beginning of the second
year so it doesn't contain much 'up to date' information (we're
getting close to starting year three.)

The sourcebooks came out in this order, usually about two months
apart:

Living Land 
Nile Empire
Aysle
Cyberpapacy
Nippon Tech 
Ororrsh 
Land Below
Space Gods
Tharkold 
Infiniverse Update
Delphi Council Worldbook
Ravagons

Kansas Jim (jogle@aoc.nrao.edu)