(TFT) The philosophy of writing Tightly defined spell effects

["rsmith" <rsmith@lightspeed.ca>]

Hi all,
	Replying to Erol's question about his control
weather spell got me thinking about the philosophy
behind the TFT spell descriptions.

	Steve Jackson when he wrote TFT deliberately
chose to carefully define all game effects of his
spells.  As opposed to D&D where may spells had very
vague descriptions.


	(Steve Jackson writing about D&D magic...)
quote:
	"What do you mean, the dragon is an illusion!
I disbelieved it."  
	"Oh yah, if you disbelieved it, why did you 
shoot an arrow at it?"
end quote


	Partly this was because TFT was first created
as a board game where they spells HAD to unambiguously
describe what happened to your opponent.


	In Robin's Laws, Robin talked about 'crunch bits'
that tightly restrain the GM's power.  By Darn, I have
a character sheet and it says I can do THIS!  Some
game systems, so loosely define the powers that you
gain from spells / talents / technology / etc. that 
the GM remains very powerful.  Other games like D&D,
and TFT have tightly worded descriptions of what the
crunchy bits do. 

	
	Now if you were running a campaign with heavy
emphasis on story telling, and the GM wanted lots of
leeway to describe effects, loose and vague spell 
descriptions are ideal.  Why the spell does what the
GM says it does.

	If fact this lack of control could explain a 
low casting cost.  This is the main reason why I 
hesitated to jump in and offer an opinion about what
the fST cost should be for Erol's spell.


	I see two questions that relate to this point.
First, do we want both tightly worded and loosely
worded spell descriptions in TFT.  Second are the
TFT spells TOO tightly defined?


	Addressing this second question, I could 
argue that TFT spells are TOO predictable.  TFT 
magic feels like an especially well debugged 
technology.  (Read the old posts on gates and 
relativistic effects for what I feel is the anti-
thesis of how magic should work.)


	A friend of mine, Steve, played a home brewed
game where spell casting was VERY unpredictable.
The same spell would behave in a wildly different 
way in very similar circumstances.  It captured a
different feel for magic, but the PC's disliked the
lack of control (and bitched about it).

	One thing is if nature is unpredictable, you
just have to take it.  But if the GM is being 
'unfair' you have someone to resent.

	
	What I've done in my campaign, is I've kept
REGULAR TFT magic fairly weak, and tightly defined.
There are other forms of magic (blood magic, 
environmental magics, existential magics, name
magics, etc.) where I can experiment on less
predictable effects.  Since these are 'weird' magics
and PC's are not allowed to start with them, they
can't really bitch if things are hard to understand.

	One point I would like to preserve in TFT is
how both Story Tellers and Gamer type groups can
enjoy it.  Extremely powerful, poorly defined spell
effects, can strongly undermine this balance I 
think.


	Anyway the following questions would be
interesting to me if the gentle readers would like
to tender some opinions:

1)	Is TFT magic too predictable / mechanical?

2)	In what ways would it be best to make it 
more flexible?

3)	How do mechanical spell / talent descriptions
interfere / affect story telling campaigns?

4)	How can we have weakly defined or vague spell
descriptions with out pissing off the PC's (who 
went to some trouble to get this spell)?

5)	Are there any points that relate to the
questions that I've raised that I've not addressed?


	Rick
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