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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6420651" data-attributes="member: 42582">These paragraphs are slighty odd, because they attribute a causal power to a non-existent being, namely, an imaginary person in an imaginary world.The spell lists exist in the real world. They were written in the real world, originally (in Chainmai) by Gary Gygax, a real person. Decisions were made about how to rank the spells in order of level. And those decisions were made in order to facilitate a certain sort of gameplay.In Book 1 (Men &amp; Magic), Gygax and Arneson write (p 19) &quot;The number above each column [in the character class charts] is the spell level (complexity, a somewhat subjective determination on the part of your authors).&quot; The word &quot;complexity&quot; is borrowed from the earlier Chainmail, in which Gygax writes (p 33) &quot;Each listed spell has a complexity value, and this value indicates how difficult it is to use such a spell. . . . The table below gives the scores necessary [on 2d6] for immediate, deferred (1 turn) and negated [ie non-effective] spell effects by the various levels of magic-users&quot;.These are the sum-total of the original discussions of spell level and its significance. It is not until the DMG that you get any sort of detailed discussion of ingame considerations around spell casting and spell complexity. That inworld stuff, about &quot;varying amounts of skill and power&quot;, is all written up after those decisions had been made. The decisions in Chainmail weren't made with the aspiration of modelling some already-given fiction: they were made for the purposes of building a playable wargame, and the fiction was simply read of the wargame design.In other words, we have no way of knowing the it is harder for a magic-user to cause a creature to fly than it is to create a permanent ball of light except by reading the spell lists and seeing that one is listed at 3rd level and the other at 2nd. And that listing was driven by gameplay considerations. That's what [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] means when he says that the whole thing is a metagamed contrivance.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6420651, member: 42582"] These paragraphs are slighty odd, because they attribute a causal power to a non-existent being, namely, an imaginary person in an imaginary world. The spell lists exist in the real world. They were written in the real world, originally (in Chainmai) by Gary Gygax, a real person. Decisions were made about how to rank the spells in order of level. And those decisions were made in order to facilitate a certain sort of gameplay. In [I]Book 1 (Men & Magic)[/I], Gygax and Arneson write (p 19) "The number above each column [in the character class charts] is the spell level (complexity, a somewhat subjective determination on the part of your authors)." The word "complexity" is borrowed from the earlier [I]Chainmail[/I], in which Gygax writes (p 33) "Each listed spell has a complexity value, and this value indicates how difficult it is to use such a spell. . . . The table below gives the scores necessary [on 2d6] for immediate, deferred (1 turn) and negated [ie non-effective] spell effects by the various levels of magic-users". These are the sum-total of the original discussions of spell level and its significance. It is not until the DMG that you get any sort of detailed discussion of ingame considerations around spell casting and spell complexity. That inworld stuff, about "varying amounts of skill and power", is all written up [I]after[/I] those decisions had been made. The decisions in Chainmail weren't made with the aspiration of modelling some already-given fiction: they were made for the purposes of building a playable wargame, and the fiction was simply read of the wargame design. In other words, we have no way of knowing the it is harder for a magic-user to cause a creature to fly than it is to create a permanent ball of light except by reading the spell lists and seeing that one is listed at 3rd level and the other at 2nd. And that listing was driven by gameplay considerations. That's what [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] means when he says that the whole thing is a metagamed contrivance. [/QUOTE]

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