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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8191580" data-attributes="member: 18">Agree.And specifically here I think we can blame the decision to ape Vance's weird-ass magic specifically for causing this situation. In Vance, as I understand it, each individual spell is pretty powerful and stored like a coiled spring in the caster's mind. This is very different to other roads he could have taken - for example Ged in LeGuin's Earthsea books would have been a viable model. If they had gone with Ged/Sparrowhawk the mechanics would be very different. Putting &quot;true names&quot; aside, there would clearly be more in the way of success/failure in casting, and things could go awry and so on.Actually, did they really have anyone else to model as a wizard apart from Ged and the guy in Vance's books? Like, all the other wizards I can think of who were in 1960s books or earlier, so could have influenced Gygax in time for D&amp;D in 1974, either basically don't cast spells (Gandalf) or are &quot;evil sorcerers&quot; who basically only do rituals/summoning, usually which take an extremely long time to cast, or maybe throw the odd bolt of energy at people. Who am I missing from that pre-1974 (preferably pre-1970 because it was so much harder to come across stuff back then) list of potential wizards to model D&amp;D's wizards on? T.H. White's Merlin maybe?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 8191580, member: 18"] Agree. And specifically here I think we can blame the decision to ape Vance's weird-ass magic specifically for causing this situation. In Vance, as I understand it, each individual spell is pretty powerful and stored like a coiled spring in the caster's mind. This is very different to other roads he could have taken - for example Ged in LeGuin's Earthsea books would have been a viable model. If they had gone with Ged/Sparrowhawk the mechanics would be very different. Putting "true names" aside, there would clearly be more in the way of success/failure in casting, and things could go awry and so on. Actually, did they really have anyone else to model as a wizard apart from Ged and the guy in Vance's books? Like, all the other wizards I can think of who were in 1960s books or earlier, so could have influenced Gygax in time for D&D in 1974, either basically don't cast spells (Gandalf) or are "evil sorcerers" who basically only do rituals/summoning, usually which take an extremely long time to cast, or maybe throw the odd bolt of energy at people. Who am I missing from that pre-1974 (preferably pre-1970 because it was so much harder to come across stuff back then) list of potential wizards to model D&D's wizards on? T.H. White's Merlin maybe? [/QUOTE]

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