Dragaera

weapons, games, and more

Wed Aug 7 15:47:55 PDT 2002

Below is a response from Steve, regarding rules in magic.

At 01:58 PM 6/7/2002 -0600, Anthony Tedjamulia wrote:
>  I've always been of the belief that magic must have a
>set of rules for people to be able to write books about it, pass the
>learning on to others, and master it.

I believe that magic, in fiction, needs to be poetically precise and
literarily elegant.

-Steven Brust

Honestly, I hope Steve reveals just enough about magic on Dragera to drive
the plots and make the structure of his books interesting (see, _Taltos_).

I'd really HATE to start seeing questions like: "In your last book Vlad had
thrown two knives, had cast a 'energy blast' spell, and pulled a sword
before his enemies reacted. Even assuming that Vlad had the maximum
initiative role, the casting of the EB spell should take a full turn
execute - how is it possible that he was able to execute what should have
been 2 turns worth of action in one?"

I mean really, that would suck.  (Heh, sorry Chris, I know you weren't
asking for that much detail.)

-Scott

----- Original Message -----
From: "Steven Brust" <skzb at dreamcafe.com>
To: "Chris Turkel" <zizban at adelphia.net>; <dragaera at dragaera.info>
Sent: Wednesday, August 07, 2002 5:47 PM
Subject: Re: weapons, games, and more


> At 05:36 PM 8/7/2002 -0400, Chris Turkel wrote:
>
> >>>5. Is Elder Sorcery very different from normal
> >>>Sorcery
> >>
> >>Yep.
> >>
> >Can you be specific?
>
> I can, but I shan't.
>
> <grin>
>
>