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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Deuce Traveler" data-source="post: 6046518" data-attributes="member: 34958">Appendix N- 2: Vancian Magic and the Dying EarthWelcome to Appendix N, where I take a look at the literature that influenced some of our favorite roleplaying games and comment upon their gaming legacy, evocativeness and utility for today’s game masters.  Gary Gygax often stated that Jack Vance was a favorite author of his and a strong influence on Dungeons and Dragons.  In an article titled “Jack Vance and the D&D Game”, Gary Gygax stated “Need I say that I am not merely a Jack Vance fan, but that he is in my opinion the very best of all the authors of imaginative fiction?”  There were many odes to Vance in Gygax’s Dungeons and Dragons, to include the magic system, spells lifted straight out of the Dying Earth books (such as Prismatic Spray), the use of Ioun stones, and the anagram of his name for a legendary villain named Vecna.I’ve read quite a number of stories by Jack Vance and it is obvious why a man such as Gygax was such a devout fan.  These two men are similar in many ways, both having large vocabularies, a love of fiction, and a soft spot for roguish characters.  Jack Vance can be a challenge to read as the man is economical in his sentences and full in his diction.  Because of this he was never as accessible or popular to mainstream audiences as authors like Burroughs, Howard or Asimov.  Oddly, Vance had a love of cultural diversity, even portraying cultures that would be repugnant in a whimsical light.  I say oddly since Dungeons and Dragons has a more straightforward “It’s an orc! Kill it!” approach and Vance has a more enlightened view on foreign cultures than many of his contemporaries.The Vancian magic system of Dungeons and Dragons is one of the games most unique aspects.  Most other roleplaying games have magic systems where spell use is limited by magic points, or that allow characters to cast any spell that they want as long as they can continue to roll successful magical skill checks against some arbitrary difficulty.  This wasn’t going to work out as well for Gary Gygax when he was creating Dungeons and Dragons, as he was looking to use spellcasters like one would use artillery in a wargame.  Gygax wanted a system where magic would be very powerful, but have constraints in its usage.  The older editions of Dungeons and Dragons require a spellcaster to memorize a limited number of spells a day, and once he uses the spell it disappears from his mind.  If he wants to cast two of the same spell, he has to memorize it twice, but can only do so if he is high enough level to retain the spells in his mind.  To the average reader this doesn’t make much sense.  If you study all night how to work out a calculus problem, and the next day use what you learned to resolve a calculus problem, the ability to do calculus doesn’t just leave your head until you can study again.  Also, spells could be called forth from scrolls, but after the spell was used, that passage on the scroll would become blank.  This perceived lack of realism is what turns a lot of people off to Vancian Magic.But Vancian magic does make a lot of sense if you take the time to read the Dying Earth series, and this is where Dungeons and Dragons failed to make proper use of its magic system.  This is how magic works, according to the story Turjan of Miir:“The tomes which held Turjan’s sorcery lay on the long table of black steel or were thrust helter-skelter into the shelves.  These were volumes compiled by wizards of the past, untidy folios collected by the Sage, leather bound librams setting forth the syllables of a hundred powerful spells, so cogent that Turjan’s brain could know but four at a time.  Turjan found a musty portfolio, turned the heavy pages to the spell the Sage had shown him, the Call to the Violent Cloud.  He stared down at the characters and they burned with an urgent power, pressing off the page as if frantic to leave the dark solitude of the book.  Turjan closed the book, forcing the spell back into oblivion.”Spells in the Vancian Magic system aren’t just words to study, but instead they are act as if alive, and when a wizard memorizes a spell he has the words to it rattling around in his head.  In the series, a wizard starts being able to hold only one of these living spells caged in his mind, but as he becomes more experienced he finds he can hold more without going mad or harming himself.  Vancian Magic is quite evocative in the Dying Earth series, but comes across as being formulaic in the rulebooks.  This is understandable in the first few editions of Dungeons and Dragons, as the creators of the game supposed people would create their own game worlds and adventures.  It was up to TSR to supply the rules.  However, Vancian Magic doesn’t get the added fluff it deserved with the popularity of the first campaign settings such as Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms.  If magic is a living thing where a wizard is struggling to hold the spells in his own mind it should have stronger cultural effects in the game world.  Granted there are some broader implications in the rules, such as through spell mishaps and spells simply fizzing out and being lost if a spellcaster is struck as he is in the middle of his casting.Yet, I feel an opportunity in utility was lost which would have given magic an even stronger flair in Dungeons and Dragons.   However this flair can be adapted by dungeon masters and players today with some agreed house rules.  If magic is a living thing, how attentive is a wizard who has just memorized a dozen dangerous spells?  Does he take penalties to his skill checks because he is constantly distracted; always attempting to keep the separate living spells from being entangled in his own mind?  Because a wizard must appear distracted, does he need servants to help him keep up with simple tasks such as keeping his home clean and food cooked?  Is a wizard creating life when memorizing a spell, and committing an act of murder every time he pushes it out of his mind?  If the wizard is so cavalier about wielding the essences of life and death in his mind, does it affect his outlook on his fellow living neighbors?  How does the surrounding populace take to even the most benign wizard if he is always an aloof weirdness magnet?  Because of the fear brought on by such strangeness, are there rules governing the use of magic, do wizards have to become licensed, or have the seemingly absent-minded wizards taken over as rulers who can’t be bothered to rule?  Dungeons and Dragons is a wonderful game, but I can’t help but wonder what kind of opportunities for greater utility were lost by not delving further into the nature of arcane magic.May the Dice Be Forever in Your Favor,Deuce TravelerNext Up: The John Grimes Series and Traveller’s Character Creation</blockquote>

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