D&D General D&D magic inspired by...

[Cadence]

Vance had a couple powerful attack spells from the stories I have read, but I don't recall straight on lightning bolt type of stuff.

Prismatic Spray was the go to.

 

[Blue Orange]

OK, I was looking for this Gygax quote, because it's relevant, and while I posted this elsewhere I'd say it's even more relevant here. From an older ENworld thread:

TSR - Jack Vance's Forgotten Contributions to D&D

Renowned and influential fantasy author Jack Vance passed away at the age of 96 on May 26, 2013, but his books were highly influential on several aspects of Dungeons & Dragons in more ways than just spellcasting. Picture courtesy of Pixabay. Co-creator of D&D, Gary Gygax, explained Vance's...

www.enworld.org

The Dungeons & Dragons wizard is actually inspired by the wizards of Jack Vance's Dying Earth series. Gygax explained the four cardinal types of magic in literature: those systems which require long conjuration with much paraphernalia as visualized by Shakespeare in Macbeth and Robert E. Howard in Conan, those which require short spoken spells (like Jack Vance's Dying Earth series), ultra-powerful magic typical of DeCamp and Pratt in the "Harold Shea" stories, and "generally weak and relatively ineffectual magic (as found in J.R.R. Tolkien's work)." Taking into account the need for speed and balance, Gygax chose the most expedient form of spell casting, Vancian magic.

So Gygax was actually picking from (what he saw as four) options. Basically, Elizabethan was too slow, DeCamp/Pratt too powerful, and Tolkien too weak. The Vancian system was fast and intermediate in terms of power.

So if he'd picked one of the other options we might have a slow, coincidental-type system (a la Liber Ka and I genuinely can't think of any others), a more powerful system (Mage: the Ascension might actually fit here, or its predecessor Ars Magica), or a weaker system (a la some low magic games--some of the Conan games might fit here; MERP actually made magic more powerful as I recall).

Interestingly, he doesn't bring up Moorcock, Howard, or Leiber, which are listed as Appendix N inspirations. Which has all kinds of possibilities open.

 

[Arakhor]

David Eddings used The Will and the Way for his Belgariad/Malloreon books. You imagine what you want to happen and it happens, but if you do it too often or to too great an extent, it fatigues you (even to the point of unconsciousness). There is also an absolute prohibition on "unmaking" anything with the Will and will destroy any mage who attempts it.

Learning how to use the Will also meant that you no longer died of old age. It was never explained why this happens, but since only about 20 people could do so, it didn't really matter that much! Foresight/hedge magic also existed, as did demon summoning, which was an unrelated ritual magic system with its own complications, neither of which granted incidental immortality.

 

[Jer]

Let's imagine that Gygax and Co. were heavily inspired by someone other than Vance for the creation of the D&D magic system. Who might it have been? And what would that have looked like in OD&D and how might it have evolved all the way to 5E?

Realistically, I think Gygax knew he was making a game and his framework for Magic-Users was from a resource management angle. That's why the fire-and-forget framework is there IMO - because he wanted MUs to have a limited resource to track for their spellcasting and the "you have to prepare it beforehand" idea of Vance's magicians gave him a way to do that. (I also think the "having to prepare" part of being a MU played into his idea of what MUs were in the game - I don't remember where, but I remember a quote from him about MUs being a "thinking man's class" where if you weren't careful you were dead.)

So looking at it from a game mechanical perspective, if Jack Vance hadn't written his book and he and Arneson didn't come up with the fire-and-forget idea on their own, there would have been some other resource to track. Possibly spell points would have developed earlier. Possibly each MU would have just had some tricks they could cast at will that got better as they leveled up (a more Dr. Strange style MU).

 

[Ancalagon]

For those looking at "real world inspired" magic systems, I have 2 I know of:

COMMANDMENT: Magic-User Spells Based Off Egyptian + Mesopotamian + Grecian Magic Marquis has this list of spells with a very strong bronze-age flavor

My alchemist is based on spells and feats that alchemists were believed to be able to achieve: The GLOG alchemist (scroll down to see the spells)

 

[Baron Opal II]

I think Gygax specifically picked Vance because it didn't match any real-world magic system.

Um... such as?

Well, Chaldean Pyromancers, Assyrian Astrologers, Egyptian Talismongers and Truenamers, European Hermeticists, English Theurgists, Evenki Shamans, Chinese Alchemists, Yoruba Channelers, Scandinavian Galdrmann, Finnish Runesingers, and the marvelous hot syncretic mess that was the Mediterranean Hellenistic magical culture.

If you're not going to have a fatigue or magic point system, what we call "Vancian" these days is very gameable.

Furthermore, The Raven was a very fun movie. No idea it was the inspiration for those spells! Cool!

 

[Arakhor]

For those looking at "real world inspired" magic systems, I have 2 I know of:

COMMANDMENT: Magic-User Spells Based Off Egyptian + Mesopotamian + Grecian Magic Marquis has this list of spells with a very strong bronze-age flavor

That is a really interesting page. Thanks!

 

[Dave Goff]

For those looking at "real world inspired" magic systems, I have 2 I know of:

COMMANDMENT: Magic-User Spells Based Off Egyptian + Mesopotamian + Grecian Magic Marquis has this list of spells with a very strong bronze-age flavor

My alchemist is based on spells and feats that alchemists were believed to be able to achieve: The GLOG alchemist (scroll down to see the spells)

These are amazing!

 

[Charlaquin]

I think Gygax specifically picked Vance because it didn't match any real-world magic system.

He said that he picked it for game balance reasons; because magic could potentially be incredibly flexible, having to decide ahead of time which spells you would be able to cast that day was, he thought, a necessary limitation on that potential flexibility.