From: hall@bcstec.ca.boeing.com (Robert J. Hall)
Subject: Re: net.rpg - eliminating mundane magic
Organization: Boeing
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 22:48:54 GMT

carl@gergo.tamu.edu (Carl D. Perkins) writes:
>This sounds like a lot of bookkeeping. You have to keep track of every
>component every wizards has ever researched and how many times it has been
>used by each. So Clunk the Competent knows Fire Production 117, 221, and 437
>and has used them 9 times, 5 times, and just 1 time respectively...
>Now immagine that each wizard knows 3 or more  different components in each of
>3 or 4 different component type categories...

Since components are difficult to find, I hadn't pictured it being quite as
bad as you say. Certainly some amount of book-keeping would be required. I
figured there would be a Fire1, Fire2, Fire3, ... components. The spell for
Fireball would then be listed as:                                 

  Fireball (Fire1+Create2+Sphere4)    47

Where 47 is some current rating for the spell. However, your point is well
taken.

 > This gets even worse if the number of people knowing a specific component
 > also has an affect on the effectiveness.

WHen I tried putting this into a magic system for a game world, I simplified
it two four categories:

  Unknown  - As yet undiscovered component
  Private  - Component known by a few Wizards
  Public   - Component known by a huge number of Wizards
  Lost     - Component previously known, then lost for some reason.

If a component is shared among party members, then it is a Private component.
When it is given (or stolen) to outsiders, it quickly becomes a public
component and rapidly loses it's effectiveness.

>Particularly annoying if you've just spent a lot of time and money
>researching a new component and it turns out that it is, conincidentally,
>a component that the 87 members of the Cult of Zippity-Do-Dah on the
>southern continent happen to have been using extensively for the last 6       
>months - and you didn't even know there *was* a southern continent.

Since there are an infinite number of components, any newly discovered
component is highly likely to be original. (Although I threw in a rule that
a failed research reveals a 'public' component that is all but useless.)

>I'm not saying this is unworkable, but it could get a bit bothersome to
>keep track of. I might be willing to do it in the case where the effectiveness
>is independant for each wizard (the number of wizards knowing it has no affect
>on how effective it is for each) or maybe even if the number of wizards knowing
>it has an effect, but how often the others have used it has no additional
>effect on how well it works for you other than the general "commonly known
>component" penalty.

A simplification can be included that uses spell research instead of component
research. The spell starts at a given level and diminishes thereafter. A new
copy of the spell can be researched when the onld one gets too rusty to use.
The only thing you lose is the ability to use the component in multiple spells.
You'd have to make spell research easier to compensate.

>It occurs to me that this could actually work quite well for a computer game
>system, where the computer can do all the bookkeeping of who knows what and
>how often it has been used and whatnot. If the GM use a computer to do the
>bookkeeping for the RPG it could also work with a bit of software to maintain
>a spell component database.

Probably true. Computer-Aided RPGs are one of my favorite "Want to see" items
for the future.


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