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<blockquote data-quote="Oofta" data-source="post: 8620686" data-attributes="member: 6801845">You're trying to make a narrow focused discrimination based on motivation and thought process for the origin of fiction.&nbsp; I don't see the point, it's still total fiction.&nbsp; In addition D&amp;D's magic is called Vancian magic because Jack Vance came up with the concept first. Gygax and Arneson may or may not have picked it because it also served their purposes, but they did not invent the idea.Most authors up to that time didn't really explain all that much how magic work or what limitations there were. Magic was generally dangerous and only used by the bad guys who had virtually unlimited power or by novices who endangered others and themselves with their mistakes.&nbsp; Like many things in any game, it was a combination of borrowing from preexisting work and adjusting it to suit the needs at hand.&nbsp; Very few fictional tropes are created completely from scratch, whether for a novel or a game.In a more general sense, because D&amp;D grew out of war games magic was viewed as ammunition.&nbsp; So you could say that memorizing spells was simply modeled after the closest real world analogy making it more &quot;reality based&quot; than some other systems.&nbsp; I personally prefer more of a mana based, finite resource capability, but that's kind of where we've gotten with 5E.&nbsp; Also not particularly pertinent.I think D&amp;D does a lot of simulation of the real world.&nbsp; Everything from armor to weapons to exhaustion to how long you last in a fight to how far you can jump are all trying to simulate the real world.&nbsp; Whether you believe they're good or accurate simulations is a different issue.&nbsp; But making up new things for a work of fiction for things that do not exist?&nbsp; That's just kind of how it works.&nbsp; Even if there was some accepted fiction established at the time other than Vance that detailed how magic worked for ordinary humans (Gandalf for example isn't human) they had to invent all sorts of things.&nbsp; Is D&amp;D less of a simulation because we have beholders?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Oofta, post: 8620686, member: 6801845"] You're trying to make a narrow focused discrimination based on motivation and thought process for the origin of fiction. I don't see the point, it's still total fiction. In addition D&D's magic is called Vancian magic because Jack Vance came up with the concept first. Gygax and Arneson may or may not have picked it because it also served their purposes, but they did not invent the idea. Most authors up to that time didn't really explain all that much how magic work or what limitations there were. Magic was generally dangerous and only used by the bad guys who had virtually unlimited power or by novices who endangered others and themselves with their mistakes. Like many things in any game, it was a combination of borrowing from preexisting work and adjusting it to suit the needs at hand. Very few fictional tropes are created completely from scratch, whether for a novel or a game. In a more general sense, because D&D grew out of war games magic was viewed as ammunition. So you could say that memorizing spells was simply modeled after the closest real world analogy making it more "reality based" than some other systems. I personally prefer more of a mana based, finite resource capability, but that's kind of where we've gotten with 5E. Also not particularly pertinent. I think D&D does a lot of simulation of the real world. Everything from armor to weapons to exhaustion to how long you last in a fight to how far you can jump are all trying to simulate the real world. Whether you believe they're [I]good[/I] or [I]accurate [/I]simulations is a different issue. But making up new things for a work of fiction for things that do not exist? That's just kind of how it works. Even if there was some accepted fiction established at the time other than Vance that detailed how magic worked for ordinary humans (Gandalf for example isn't human) they had to invent all sorts of things. Is D&D less of a simulation because we have beholders? [/QUOTE]

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