From: Alex Ferguson (alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk)
Date: Thu 22 Sep 1994 - 22:42:39 EEST
Paul Honigmann takes a three-point swipe at Rune Power:
> 1. I always find that half the fun of Rune Magic is agonising over what to
> sacrifice for with *this* year's hard-won 2 spare POW points, and
> rejoicing / cursing later when you find you have spells appropriate, or
> not, to a problem. A pool of programmable magic would be too easy.
It may be fun (and nutritious if you're a masochist on a diet?), but is it Correct? Do Gloranthans really sit around agonising about what to do with those last two points of POW? What they do do, I think, is quest for spells that they don't yet have (so for people with small amounts of rune magic, no practical difference), and otherwise just participate in the general worship, including sacrificing POW.
> 2. If everyone could fire whatever spells they wanted whenever they wished,
> - assuming they have recharged their pool - then EVERY Orlanthi will use
> almost EXACTLY the same spells in a given situation. Ie: commit everything
> to a huge Shield, Thunderbolt or Teleport out of there.
As to this latter problem, Rune Power Too has a fix for this; the maximum number of points that can be stacked in a single spell is the number of points that you sacrificed for that particular spell. So if you have Shield III and Rune Power VI, you can cast three Shield III's, but not a Shield VI or Shield IX. I think you exaggerate the same spell syndrome; if there were clearly a Best Spell for each situation, sacrificing for spells would be fairly stereotyped too.
Does anyone share my belief that the concepts of MGF and Powergaming are asbout as dualistic as those of Nysalor and Gbaji, only much, much less interesting and useful?
"It's MGF!"
"It's Powergaming!"
"Tis!"
"Tisn't!"
Alex.
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