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[Adonthell-general] Journals and Spellbooks
From: |
Andrew Michael Phillips |
Subject: |
[Adonthell-general] Journals and Spellbooks |
Date: |
Tue, 15 Feb 2005 17:46:42 -0600 (CST) |
As I was on the road today (my new job has me driving quite a lost) I was
thinking about the way journals have worked in the games I've played and
what I wish they did differently.
Of course, I did my research first. I searched the savannah archives of
this list for Journal, but the exact url of the search is so long that it
would probably be mangled by textual mail readers, so I won't include it
here. Besides, I've had rather poor luck with urls of late...
Anyway, I'll start by suggesting the one thing I wish one could do in
journals: jot down texts that you find. In IWD and Planescape, for
example, some of the journals and scraps of paper are integral to the
plot. One cannot afford to leave them behind. But, they take up inventory
space and weigh down characters who in some cases need all their strength
for core weaponry and armor.
Or, alternately, a bard who has or wants to acheive a high score in
entertain can add stories or poems to his journal as a way of expanding
his repertoire. Later, when he needs to earn a supper or free lodging, he
can choose to tell a story from his journal or try to make something up on
the spot. If it works, he can record that as well.
One thing I disagree with from the previous discussions on this subject is
the grand, unified journal/character sheet. I think that party-wide skill
availability would run counter to one of the basic tenets of the
gameworld: individual power is a product of individual learning. In some
respects, the open source spellbook idea seems right on the money. What
one member of a party knows, others may learn very easily, but I think it
would be a mistake to say that every skill or spell known to one member of
a party is immediately known by all the others. In view of how personal
magick is for Elves, for example, I think it would be a much better fit to
make free teaching and learning of spells possible within the group.
Teaching or learning spells might even by a way of gaining experience.
However, I may have misunderstood Nils' comments.
--
Andrew Phillips
God Bless Our Troops
cptlogic at endor dot hsutx dot edu
"Let the Prince win his spurs"
-C.S.Lewis: The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe
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