[MUD-Dev] Focus on Hocus Pocus

[Troy Fisher]

After Reading this thread for a while, I decided that this was a
good direction to run with a magic system.  But I have run into a
snag, and goodness knows that I don't have the mathmatical know-how
to pull this off, or even if it is possible/probable, so I decided
to post it to the list and see what we can come up with after
thrashing around with it for awhile.

On Thu, 14 Jun 2001, Hulbert, Leland wrote:

> First off, magic is a language.  Mage-2-Mage is a good
> representation of a mgaic language, but you can also make up your
> own.

> Second, though magic is a language, no one know that language.
> Each mage has his own 'language', that translates into the
> Language of Magic(LoM).  Thus, you cannot simply copy your friends
> spells, say the same words, and get the same result.  It takes
> translation.  You have to figure out which magic words your friend
> is speaking, then figure out what those words would be for you.

This is the basis for my system.  But I've fleshed it out,
Characters use an action word to describe what kind of spell it
is(Create/modify etc...), and then an affect word to describe how it
is, (Fire/Water, Hot/Cold, etc...) then a modifier (Big/Small,
Quick/Slow) to the spell, and then a target.

So my plan is to follow the 'true magic' way of doing things.
Create a list of 'true magic' words to describe those 'hard' words.
Words that describe what magic does.  But the problem that I run
into is this:

I want the players to be able to 'detect/discover' the magic name of
diffferent items/locations/players so that they can use those as
targets.  It is infeasible to create a list of true magic names for
every item/person/location and would not allow me to modify the
world on the fly and have it maintain the integerity of the spell
system.

So I figured that I would create a way to translate the name to true
magic, and then from that to the indiviualistic magic language.
BUT, by doing this it becomes possible for a player to simply figure
out the converting mechanism, and do it on his own!  This will give
immense powers to those who figure it out because they will be able
to affect things that only high powered mages should know the magic
name of!

Are there any mechanisms that can be used to make the conversion
more oblique, and hard to follow for the player?  Or a way to
dynamically convert it?

One of the ways that I thought of doing it would be to generate the
magic name of the item/location/person and store it on the player,
but that would create a huge player file.  Any Ideas?

--Lord Ashon


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