[MUD-Dev] Waving Hands -- Debian's Spellcast for Linux

[Dan Shiovitz]

On Sat, 18 Dec 1999, J C Lawrence wrote:
> 
[..]
> Mage2Mage still seems much more promising.

The problem I have with mage2mage and that kind of "let's make magic into
a programming language" system is it seems biased towards simple spells,
like "CREATE + FIREBALL" and not more interesting stuff like "MEND +
NONMAGICAL + METALS + LESS THAN + 3 + GRAMS". To a certain extent this
balances out, since "CREATE + FIREBALL" is easily countered by "SUMMON +
ICE" or "DESTROY + FIRE" or whatever, while the more complex stuff has to
be countered in a more complex manner, but what are the non-spellcasters
supposed to do? 

I guess the right literary ref here is the Vlad Taltos books -- more
or less everyone can cast spells in that series, so they use magic to
accomplish the heroic and adventurous tasks of protecting themselves from
the rain or teleporting to the grocery store. Given that kind of situation
I'd raher just call it 'technology' and have magic users stick to the cool
stuff.

--
Dan Shiovitz :: dbs at cs.wisc.edu :: http://www.drizzle.com/~dans
"He settled down to dictate a letter to the Consolidated Nailfile and
Eyebrow Tweezer Corporation of Scranton, Pa., which would make them
realize that life is stern and earnest and Nailfile and Eyebrow Tweezer
Corporations are not put in this world for pleasure alone." -PGW




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