RE: Re: No spell lists

From: Stephen McGinness <stephenmcg_at_...>
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 20:38:59 -0000

> Of course, as soon as that book hit the shelves, dozens of detailed
> spell lists were created detailing hundreds of spells, which were
> downloaded and used by the majority of players, most of whom will be
> glad to get the more detailed and player-friendly rules to be
> included in 'The Magic Box' suppliment. It was the newcomers to RPGs
> who wanted the lists, they wanted details of how to do 'spell X from
> episode Y'.

I'm not against the creation of such lists for people that want them but I think that perhaps this particular want would be better provided through a fan base rather than being official.

Fans LOVE to tinker and argue about all this stuff. I think Issaries should say they aren't going to provide this kind of thing but if some _was_ interested then they might go and look at websites such as herowars.spellists.com etc etc.

I was a bit freaked at first but I'm starting to like the lack of laid down rules about the use of the magic. It has its drawbacks but the advantages outweigh that for me. Which isn't to say that I wouldn't look at such spell lists for hints!!

I think I've had too many bad experiences with Champions where I found that when people saw they had a 12D6 Energy Blast written on their character sheet - it didn't matter what the description was - they used it like any other 12D6 Energy Blast.

To get people to play the powers creatively I had to remove the mechanical details from their character sheets and give them a Flame Strike or Ice Bolts or Ion Stream (and change the way I played comabt so they didn't have a real clue to the actual mechanics behind the power). Suddenly I had heroes using powers instead of players using mechanics. Sure they wanted to use the powers in ways that I hadn't designed them for but I allowed the use because it made for better fun. In the same way I think the lack of a spell list actually improves teh use of the magic.