Re: (TFT) Magic: illusions, cities

[kevin perryman <kevinperryman@gmail.com>]

Brain-Fart is when you can not come up with anything.
Brain-Burp?  You brought it all up at one time.

Kevin
On 5/6/2012 11:55 PM, Meg Tapley wrote:
> Who thinks that Illusion, at IQ 11 and ST cost 2, is overpowered? 
> Sure, it can be disbelieved, but opponents have to lose their action 
> while doing so, and can be engaged by illusory figures, meaning that 
> illusions can create a huge tactical advantage - not to mention the 
> constant use as scouts. Solutions could be bumping the ST cost to 3 
> and/or increasing the IQ level.
>
> Another question: Is it better to have lots of specialized spells, or 
> a few general ones?  For example, Illusion could be split into 
> "Illusory Scout" (you can see through its eyes, but it can't do any 
> damage), and "Illusory Opponent" (can do damage, but you can't see 
> through its eyes). Or, you could make Stone and Iron Flesh the same 
> spell, except that the better version costs more ST/turn.
>
> Regardless of gameplay advantages or disadvantages, from an "in-world 
> logic" perspective, there should be lots of specialized spells. Think 
> about it: Wizards have been studying magic for hundreds, probably 
> thousands of years, and for a lot of that time, the Wizard's Guild has 
> been encouraging and rewarding the development of new spells. Spells 
> are hard to invent, but not that hard, so there are going to be a lot 
> of them, and many will necessarily be pretty specialized.
>
> On the other hand, wizards would also be interested in learning to do 
> the greatest possible number of things with a single spell, which 
> would lead to generalized spells. There are probably adepts looking 
> for the Unified Spell of Everything ("Change Reality") the same way 
> physicists are looking for the Unified Theory of Everything...
>
> Also: I got my hands on a copy of "Guns, Germs and Steel", by Jared 
> Diamond. I'm probably not the first on the list to stumble across it, 
> but for those of you who haven't, it's a pretty cool resource. It 
> deals with the question of why some societies developed better 
> technology (and nastier germs, and more complex social structures) 
> than others. Neat stuff, and useful for worldbuilding.
>
> It occurs to me that magic must have developed after agriculture. In 
> order to have a wizard per the TFT system, it seems that you have to 
> have a special wizard school, which means a social structure that 
> supports that kind of thing, which means a city, which means agriculture.
>
> One final item: What's a good name for a long, piecemeal post like 
> this one? A shotgun post? Brain dump? J-rant? ;-)
>
> - Meg
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