Dragon Magazine #18 by The Childhood & Youth of the Gray Mouser (Dragon Magazine #18)

Author:The Childhood & Youth of the Gray Mouser (Dragon Magazine #18)
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: The Childhood and Youth of the Gray Mouser; Insanity in D&D; Beginning GAMMA WORLD; Campaign Mixing
Published: 2011-12-30T21:48:17+00:00

Vol III No. 4

Design Forum

have a fixed amount of mana per day, which is used up as spells are cast, but then renewed by rest.

Magic:

In my own dungeons I will be using the Law of Artistry: “Mana derives from art.” By art I mean “the quality, production, expression, Governed by Laws of Theory

or realm of what is beautiful, or of more than ordinary significance.” Note that art may be good or evil. In C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous

by Thomas A. McCloud

Strength, the use of art both sinister and bizarre is quite chillingly portrayed. In Niven’s Warlock stories killings in war produce no mana, In most dungeon adventures magic, or at least its detail, is treated murders produce some, and ritual sacrifice produces the most. But art rather casually. A player says: “My magic user casts sleep on those need not be evil. In deCamp and Pratt’s The Compleat Enchanter it orcs.” The dungeon master replies: “All right, six of them fell asleep, seems to be poetry which powers the spells, and the works of major the other ten are still coming.” But what words did the magician speak?

poets produce more mana that those of minor poets. Nature is full of What gestures were made? Why did it work?

art, and much mana is sometimes derived from it, as in the star magic Of course for the vast majority of adventures the simple rules in in Joy Chant’s Red Moon and Black Mountain.

use are quite enough. But for special occasions (such as the magic con-Another closely related law is the Law of Obscurity: Potency is test I will be hosting on my birthday) it is worth while to know more proportional to abstrusity. This is the theory presumed behind the about the theory and practice of magic.

strangeness of ingredients found in many magic formulas. For example Surprisingly it is not necessary to invent an imaginary theory of in The Golden Bough Frazer quotes Bacon’s description of a salve to be magic. A theory has been developed to explain the “logic” used in smeared on a weapon to cure the wound made by the weapon. The salve magic spells throughout the world. Descriptions of it may be found in includes among other ingredients “ . . . the moss upon the skull of a such places as the article “MAGIC” in the 1960 Encyclopedia Britan-

dead man unburied, and the fats of a boar and a bear killed in the act of

nica, and Sir James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough. It is a system generation.” The Law of Obscurity is also presumably involved in the which has already been adopted by more than one author of fiction.

fact that magic spells are very often in obscure and arcane languages.

Additions can of course be made to the theory, and the theory is incom-Finally there is the Law of Harmony: The balance of the universe plete without a discussion of the practice of magic, but the theory as must be maintained. Basically this means that there is a

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