[MUD-Dev] The Best Guy on the Mud Thing

[Travis S. Casey]

On Fri, 17 Sep 1999, Wes Connell wrote:

> On Thu, 16 Sep 1999, Adam Wiggins wrote:
> 
> > Hmmm - were people aware that if they shared this knowledge, their spells
> > would start to suck?  If so then their players were either a) way too
> > generous for their own good, or b) not too bright.
> 
> Well it could work out pretty well. Bubba finds the 'Summon Meanthing'
> scroll. He scribes it into his spell book. He then makes other scrolls
> from that spell and gives the scrolls to his fellow guild members. The
> guild then has something secret amongst them. That could bring in all
> kinds of other topics: espionage, spell collecting, spell marketing, etc.
> New spells would be worth an arm and a leg. If a warrior found the scroll
> he would have no use for it. If it is a new spell then he would be a rich
> warrior.

Why would he be a rich warrior?  The warrior almost certainly doesn't know
whether it's a new spell or not -- the only thing he can do is take it to
some mage to get it identified.  At that point, the question becomes
whether the mage is going to be honest.

  "Ah, yes.  This is Four-flusher's Spell of the Lesser Flame.  Quite
  common, I'm afraid.  However, I did want to give a copy to one of my
  apprentices, and this would save me the trouble of writing it down.
  Tell you what -- I'll give you ten gold for it."

  [the warrior leaves]

  "Tobar, come in here quick!  Look, some idiot warrior found this scroll
  with the spells to both summon and bind T'Shraak demons -- we'll make 
  a fortune from this!  The warrior?  Oh, I gave him the standard line
  of BS about the Spell of the Lesser Flame..."

I've done this in the past to AD&D groups who didn't think to have one of
their mages take the Identify spell (used to identify magical items).  A
mage would tell them it was some fairly common magic item and offer them
what would be a fair price for that item, when in fact it was something
much more valuable.  Of course, I didn't do this all the time -- it
wouldn't make sense for all mages to be dishonest, any more than it would
for all mages to be honest.

--
       |\      _,,,---,,_        Travis S. Casey  <efindel at io.com>
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
      |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-'
     '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) 




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