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It's all Jack Vance's fault
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<blockquote data-quote="chaochou" data-source="post: 8805184" data-attributes="member: 99817"><p>I've only read a couple of Dying Earth stories (not books) - they were idiosyncratic, and not my cup of tea particularly. The magic of the books is strange and unintuitive, which is fine.</p><p></p><p>But what D&D takes is not strange and unintuitive - it's a fire and forget system where the authors then took every magical thing they could think of and like diligent book-keepers assigned them a level and some components and a range and area of effect and packaged them up and stacked them on the supermarket shelves for purchase.</p><p></p><p>So petrification is no longer the preserve of the dreaded and mythical basilisk or medusa - it's in aisle 7. Need a wish? You don't need a genie in a lamp, you need aisle 18. You might need the stepladder. This, for me, is the worst aspect of the system - the spell list doesn't respect the uniqueness of myth, magic or legend, it commodifies it.</p><p></p><p>(And this, as an aside - may help explain its popularity. What the magic system represents isn't magic, it's consumerism).</p><p></p><p>I find the magic of Runequest, and later HeroWars and Burning Wheel - and in fact other systems which don't turn every last heroic, mythical or magical thing into a spell - to be more satisfying and evocative, even if people will tell me they were less commercially successful (yawn).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="chaochou, post: 8805184, member: 99817"] I've only read a couple of Dying Earth stories (not books) - they were idiosyncratic, and not my cup of tea particularly. The magic of the books is strange and unintuitive, which is fine. But what D&D takes is not strange and unintuitive - it's a fire and forget system where the authors then took every magical thing they could think of and like diligent book-keepers assigned them a level and some components and a range and area of effect and packaged them up and stacked them on the supermarket shelves for purchase. So petrification is no longer the preserve of the dreaded and mythical basilisk or medusa - it's in aisle 7. Need a wish? You don't need a genie in a lamp, you need aisle 18. You might need the stepladder. This, for me, is the worst aspect of the system - the spell list doesn't respect the uniqueness of myth, magic or legend, it commodifies it. (And this, as an aside - may help explain its popularity. What the magic system represents isn't magic, it's consumerism). I find the magic of Runequest, and later HeroWars and Burning Wheel - and in fact other systems which don't turn every last heroic, mythical or magical thing into a spell - to be more satisfying and evocative, even if people will tell me they were less commercially successful (yawn). [/QUOTE]
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