D&D lovers who hate Vancian magic

[Hussar]

It's interesting that you bring up the inspirational sources DannyA. Because, when you look at the list, it quickly becomes apparent that it wasn't just classic fantasy that makes that list. After all, Moorcock is on that list, and in 1973, Moorcock was the new, hot author, much like, say, China Mieville or any of the bigger New Weird authors are now.

Yet, people want to talk about D&D doing "classic" fantasy. Thing is, when D&D was written, about half of the inspirational works cited are published about a decade or less before D&D first hits the shelves. D&D has always been influenced by current trends in fantasy.

Yet, when we talk about adding something like, say, Harry Potteresque magic to D&D, the cry goes up that we cannot pollute our true sources. And it's utter ballocks. Celebrim, you talk about how D&D models "older" fantasy sources. Yet, David Eddings (a pretty well known genre author) was doing at will magic in 1982 with the Belgariad series. I'll admit, my tastes in genre works tend to be more SF than fantasy, but, the "Memorize, cast and forget" model of magic is not the only and certainly not the best, way to model a lot of genre fiction.

 

[pemerton]

when I encountered AE I found it to be only a very minor - very minor - variation on Vancian magic, and indeed so minor in its differences that it never struck me as being worth converting my houserules (which is about 80% 3.0e) over to what AE had done. I saw the tiny advantages of the system not being worth the effor or additional complexity and possible losses of balance. But you are seeming to say that this tiny advantage is to some people a huge improvement and sufficient to get them to accept the otherwise detestable and hated Vancian system. That I find really intriguing.

Here is Monte Cook on the AE system (from here and here):

As a designer, magic in Arcana Unearthed posed a huge challenge. I knew that I wanted to ditch the Vancian system (and by that, I mean the idea inspired by Jack Vance's books from the sixties, in which one prepares or "memorizes" a spell ahead of time, then loses the ability to cast it once it is cast). I didn't want to get rid of it because it was bad -- in fact, I fought for it to stay in 3rd Edition when some people wanted to get rid of it -- but because it was only one way to handle spells. Certainly not the only way. And Arcana Unearthed exists to show that there are alternative ways of doing things.

However, at the same time, I wanted the spells in this book to be as compatible as possible with existing D&D and d20 spells and spellcasting classes. That meant there still needed to be nine spell levels, pretty much balanced the same way . . .

[E]ach class has access to either simple or both simple and complex spells. You have a set number of spells that you can "ready" on a given day, based on your level and an ability score. "Ready" simply means that you've got the spell all set to go when you need it. (You don't lose the readied status of a spell if you cast it. It's more like how a sorcerer knows certain spells, except that your chosen readied spells can change each day if you wish.) If you can ready four 1st-level spells per day, they can be four different 1st-level spells from day to day. No spellbooks involved. No memorization and forgetting*. And the numbers of spells you can ready isn't so small that it forces repetition (and you can change them every day).

You also have a set number of "slots" each day to cast your spells with. So, if you've got three 1st-level slots, you can cast any three of the four 1st-level spells you have prepared. In any combination. So you can cast one spell three times, three different spells, one spell twice along with another, or whatever.

So far, it sounds like it's just a combination of the way sorcerers and wizards work, right? Well, that's intentional. I wanted to keep it both simple and not drastically different than what people are used to (and I wanted to keep the spells themselves pretty compatible with regular spells).

But I didn't stop there. The two really different aspects are:

1. Casters can "weave" multiple lower-level slots to cast higher-level spells, or a single higher-level slot to cast multiple lower-level spells. This adds a great deal of flexibility.

2. Spells have prescribed diminished and heightened effects in their descriptions to tell you what happens if you cast the spell using a slot one level lower or one level higher than the spell itself. This effectively makes every spell into three similar but different spells.​

I don't have any strong view on how different this is from D&D Vanican casting in some absolute sense. But it strikes me as clearly different in a number of practical features of the way it will play: a spell caster PC has access to a wider range of spells in a day (due to the readying rules plus the heightened/diminished rules) and in choosing that access has more flexibiilty as to which spells will actually be cast (due to the heightened/dmnished rules plus the weaving rules).

It strikes me as completely unsurprising that some - perhaps many - players would find that these practical differences would matter in play.

Whether this systems is a better or worse genre emulator I'll leave to others to work out.

 

[Hussar]

On the idea of obscurity.

I'm not sure, Celebrim, how you measure whether or not an author is obscure. For me, sales are largely one of the easiest metrics to use. Tolkien is not obscure because he's hit massive sales, been made into major motion pictures (more than once) and whatnot. He's a household name. Pretty much the opposite of obscure.

I mentioned David Eddings in my last post. Now, I am in no way commenting on quality, but, here's an author that's hit the NYT best seller lists, both in genre and in mainstream. If I walk into any book store in North America, I'll likely find at least one title with his name on it. Heck, I can walk into bookstores here in Japan and still find books with his name on them.

Now, name three best selling Jack Vance stories. Two? One? If I walk into any mainstream bookstore, not specialist bookstore, but a mainstream one, what are the odds that I will find any titles with his name on them? Or Roger Zelasny for that matter. Michael Moorcock? Sure, no problem. Can't swing a dead cat without hitting something he's written. REH would have been a bit dicey in the 80's, although the De Camp versions would have been an easy find, but, today? Reprints are booming.

You might find a few Vance reprints currently, mostly because the reprint market is so huge right now. And, Subterranean Press just did a really great collection of stories in the Dying Earth tradition. But, Subterranean Press specializes in that sort of thing.

Vance is an author's author. He's one of those authors that people refer to, but, rarely ever read. If D&D hadn't used him as an inspiration, I daresay that the vast majority of people here on En World would never have heard of him. As it is, they might have heard of him, but, again, I'm willing to bet dollas to donuts that not that many have actually read him.

That's why I call Jack Vance obscure. Fantastic to be sure. One of the great authors in the genre. But, unfortunately, not very widely read.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

sales are largely one of the easiest metrics to use.

Part of the problem with sales as a metric is that it can lead into a conceptual death-spiral.

You can't sell a product if you don't have it on your shelves. But you won't put it on your shelves if you don't have a way to judge its sales potential.

Example: I'm a Mac user with spare cash that I spend rather freely. I can't tell you of how many products I would have bought had I been able to find them when they were actually available for sale. Some places I shopped would have Product X, while others had never heard of it. Some products I didn't find out existed until years after they were obsolete.

Translate that into books. If I go into B&N, I can find JRRT's entire output in 6 different editions. B&N knows they will sell. If I go looking for new writers, I can find them with ease.

But if I go looking for veteran writers, it's hit or miss. Fritz Lieber's Lankhmar books come & go. I can find Asimov, Heinlein and Niven, but only a few of their most famous books- some of their better works I only find in used book stores. And sometimes not even there.

They get no love from B&N because they are not JRRT or new...so they can thus not generate decent sales figures.

 

[Gentlegamer]

*has a grand plan of supplying every public library in the United States with Vance's complete works*

 

[1Mac]

Part of the problem with sales as a metric is that it can lead into a conceptual death-spiral.

You can't sell a product if you don't have it on your shelves. But you won't put it on your shelves if you don't have a way to judge its sales potential.

That may be true, but I don't see how that prevents us from judging that Leiber or "Product X" are obscure. If Hussar says "Jack Vance is obscure," and you respond, "that's because Barnes and Noble doesn't carry him," that's not an actual argument against Hussar's proposition.

 

[Celebrim]

That may be true, but I don't see how that prevents us from judging that Leiber or "Product X" are obscure. If Hussar says "Jack Vance is obscure," and you respond, "that's because Barnes and Noble doesn't carry him," that's not an actual argument against Hussar's proposition.

Let me take a different tack then.

Jack Vance is reasonably obscure.

Roger Zelazny is not, and certainly not with in the fantasy/science fiction community. He won both the Hugo and Nebula for 'Lord of Light' in 67/68, and 'Chronicles of Amber' was at one time one of the most renowned fantasy series ever. It would have been the hot series at the time D&D was being forumulated, and its spells are of the 'fire and forget'/'prepare and trigger' type.

Moreover, both Zelazny and Vance were much less obscure at the time that D&D was written, and D&D's target audience would have been extremely familiar with their works.

Post D&D fantasy series are often explicitly or implicitly inspired or influenced by D&D or actual D&D campaigns. These would include among many others Fiest's 'Riftwar' novels, The Chronicles of the Dragonlance, and Moon's The Deed of Paksenarrion. All contain either explicitly Vancian magic, or magic that is inspired by Vancian magic and given looser narrative form.

Therefore I utterly reject the notion that the mechanic is unique to an obscure and largely forgotten text. This is just my casual off the top of my head list of examples. I'm sure there are more.

Prior to D&D, magic is usually presented in ways drawn from mythology and legend, and is so less accessible, more arcane, and less comprehensible than in post-RPG fantasy novels. Therefore, its often not at all explicit how magic works in these stories and wizards are more usually mentor/helpers or antagonists than protagonists. When magic doesn't work as deus ex machina and have the apparantly limitless power of plot, Vancian magic is as reasonable of an approximation as any for what is going on in these stories, and certainly does as good of job as any at approximating the pacing and use of magic within the narrative. Where magic does have the apparantly limitless power of plot, it's unsuited in my opinion to a D&D style game.

 

[Neonchameleon]

What you are ignoring, Celebrim, is that if you want to go effects based in that way D&D "Vancian" casting doesn't even resemble the works of Jack Vance. This is ultimately a problem with the wizard class rather than the spellcasting system.

If I were trying to use the works of Jack Vance, I'd use 4e with the explicit spells being the Daily powers. Meaning you have a number of spells you can cast counted on the fingers of one hand, generally competent heroes, and spells having a huge narrative effect - with half a dozen being a very high number of spells. Oh, and ritual casting. Rather than a wizard who will probably come out second best in a scrap to a housecat (or rather domestic cat) and has dozens of spells.

The Deed of Paksenarrion - I'm trying to think of anything that resembles Vancian casting. But then it's about a Paladin and the casters are NPCs. Yes, Paks gets Lay on Hands. But AEDU is a better fit than Vancian for her IMO.

AEDU in general has all the advantages of Vancian for modelling narratives - and very few of the disadvantages. As I said, it's a better model for the works of Jack Vance than so called "Vancian" casting.

 

[Celebrim]

What you are ignoring, Celebrim, is that if you want to go effects based in that way D&D "Vancian" casting doesn't even resemble the works of Jack Vance. This is ultimately a problem with the wizard class rather than the spellcasting system.

I completely agree. The system is completely unsuited to high simulationism. If you're primary goal in system creation was emulate the tales of dying earth, you'd use a completely different system. As a generalist mechanic for a wide range of simulation, it's a good mix of versimilitude, mechanical simplicity, and gamist resource management.

And I'm not ignoring it. I mentioned and anticipated this exact complaint in the related 5e thread.

If I were trying to use the works of Jack Vance, I'd use 4e with the explicit spells being the Daily powers.

???

You mean, you'd let spellcaster fill up a small number of daily power slots with the power of their choosing? I may be being clueless here, but isn't... that... Vancian... spellcasting...???

Rather than a wizard who will probably come out second best in a scrap to a housecat (or rather domestic cat) and has dozens of spells.

By the time that a wizard has dozens of spells, he fears not a housecat in melee combat even without his spells. Besides which, the 'housecat problem' is a specific problem with hit dice based systems that is completely unrelated to whatever magic system we adopt and has separate solutions. So this is a total red herring.

The Deed of Paksenarrion - I'm trying to think of anything that resembles Vancian casting. But then it's about a Paladin and the casters are NPCs. Yes, Paks gets Lay on Hands. But AEDU is a better fit than Vancian for her IMO.

Ok, now you are reaching. The Deed of Paksenarrion is based on 1e AD&D in detail. Up until the last 20% of the book, you can pretty much see the hit points, class levels, and other mechanics through the text. The text only seems to depart from the game in that in the last portion of the book, the character appears to level up very quickly. Otherwise, it's one of the finest accounts ever of the style of adventuring advocated by the 1st edition PH and DMG. Moon wrote the story based on 1e AD&D rule books as source material in response to the complaint that Paladins were always 'lawful stupid'. The research done for the book is completely clear to anyone with good knowledge of 1e AD&D right down to the layout and NPC's in the 'Village of Homlet'. When she recruits the spell casters to help fight bandits in the abandoned moat house... I mean keep, they cast 1e spells that use 1e mechanics.

AEDU in general has all the advantages of Vancian for modelling narratives - and very few of the disadvantages. As I said, it's a better model for the works of Jack Vance than so called "Vancian" casting.

That is absolutely ridiculous to the point that I think you are trolling. It's reasonable to suggest that the dying Earth RPG is better high simulation for 'Tales of Dying Earth' than D&D's more generic Vancian spellcasting. It laughable to suggest that at non-Vancian spellcasting better emulates Vancian spellcasting than ... Vancian spellcasting.

 

[1Mac]

I completely agree. The system is completely unsuited to high simulationism. If you're primary goal in system creation was emulate the tales of dying earth, you'd use a completely different system. As a generalist mechanic for a wide range of simulation, it's a good mix of versimilitude, mechanical simplicity, and gamist resource management.

Here you admit that "Vancian" spellcasting is ill-suited to simulating magic in the writings of Jack Vance.

That is absolutely ridiculous to the point that I think you are trolling. It's reasonable to suggest that the dying Earth RPG is better high simulation for 'Tales of Dying Earth' than D&D's more generic Vancian spellcasting. It laughable to suggest that at non-Vancian spellcasting better emulates Vancian spellcasting than ... Vancian spellcasting.

Here you deride the claim that "Vancian" spellcasting is ill-suited to simulating magic in the writings of Jack Vance (compared to other systems).