Spells written down are how many pages?

[Christopher R. Rice]

I plan on using spellbooks for my current campaign, so far I've sort of handwaived them (all magic-users have one) you don't them to acutally cast the spell, you don't study them, and so on, but if you are casting magic ceremoniously they can give a bonus, and if you are researching spells they can give a bonus. Also, you can learn from them (a obvious feature), but I hit a bit of a snag, Technomancer suggests a spell is about 20,000 words long (doubled for a VH) which sits alright with me, but how many pages would this be? Could I somehow use the resources from the new Low-Tech to figure out spell to page length. I thought I was in about the right area as a standard scroll size is about 5,000 words or so, but I really don't know and I've sort of hit a wall here.

So my question is basically this: How much space should a spell take up (assuming a spell is a self-contained entity, regardless of pre-req's)? Pages/Wordcount's would be useful, so would something like modifiers for TL (if they count at all).

thanks for any help (and I apologize if none of this makes any sense, sleeplessness sucks)

Ghostdancer

[roguebfl]

Well Thuamtology, and DF Sages have rules from the tomes.

But remember it a spell has the same difficulties as an entire science.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Ghostdancer

So my question is basically this: How much space should a spell take up (assuming a spell is a self-contained entity, regardless of pre-req's)? Pages/Wordcount's would be useful, so would something like modifiers for TL (if they count at all).

This ought to be GMs choice. Depending on what you think justifies spells being individual Hard skills it could be an entire volume (I certainly wouldn't let you learn any the first point of most other IQ/Hard skills from a text shorter than an introductory textbook). Or it could be a couple sentences and the skill is all in handling the strange sensations, such that unskilled people who attempt to even pronounce these words become dizzy and pass out, or have their tongue suffer a muscle cramp, in the middle of the first phrase.

[Captain-Captain]

Originally Posted by Ghostdancer

I plan on using spellbooks for my current campaign, so far I've sort of handwaived them (all magic-users have one) you don't them to acutally cast the spell, you don't study them, and so on, but if you are casting magic ceremoniously they can give a bonus, and if you are researching spells they can give a bonus. Also, you can learn from them (a obvious feature), but I hit a bit of a snag, Technomancer suggests a spell is about 20,000 words long (doubled for a VH) which sits alright with me, but how many pages would this be? Could I somehow use the resources from the new Low-Tech to figure out spell to page length. I thought I was in about the right area as a standard scroll size is about 5,000 words or so, but I really don't know and I've sort of hit a wall here.

So my question is basically this: How much space should a spell take up (assuming a spell is a self-contained entity, regardless of pre-req's)? Pages/Wordcount's would be useful, so would something like modifiers for TL (if they count at all).

thanks for any help (and I apologize if none of this makes any sense, sleeplessness sucks)

Ghostdancer

OTOH, a scroll is a single page.

[weby]

In the fantasy campaign I play in, the spell takes 1 page/paragraph in the spell description.

[Anubis]

from what i have seen magery 3 max you need to cast any spell. so what im thinking of doing is a spell will take up 1 page per level of magery need to cast and might branch out by even say take base fp to cast take away magery level then plus 1 give you number of pages needed

[Anaraxes]

Rule of thumb is 250 words per page. (That modern number is of course English, double-spaced 12-point Courier on an 8.5x11" sheet of paper.) 20,000 words is roughly the length of a chapter in a textbook.

I'd vary the word count based on the prereq count, as the spell text has to recall those "basic" points and talk about the ramifications in the current context. More complex spells take more space. You might want to weight Magery prereqs as well.

Mages that worship Kromm can communicate in less page count, thanks to His Beneficiant Editorial oversight. 10% savings for being a disciple, plus another 10% for each level of Power Investiture in SJG.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Ghostdancer

I plan on using spellbooks for my current campaign, so far I've sort of handwaived them (all magic-users have one) you don't them to acutally cast the spell, you don't study them, and so on, but if you are casting magic ceremoniously they can give a bonus, and if you are researching spells they can give a bonus. Also, you can learn from them (a obvious feature), but I hit a bit of a snag, Technomancer suggests a spell is about 20,000 words long (doubled for a VH) which sits alright with me, but how many pages would this be?

I would ignore this guideline. I would not have a book for every single spell. Instead, I'd go with one to three pages per spell. Bearing in mind of course that the real essence of a spell, is that which is not written down.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by Ghostdancer

Technomancer suggests a spell is about 20,000 words long (doubled for a VH) which sits alright with me, but how many pages would this be?

I wrote an article for web-Pyramid answering this exact question at some length. Alas, it's no longer available, but I'll summarize: it depends. For comparison, a 128 page 3rd edition GURPS book contains about 100,000 words (that is, 5 spells following Technomancer's guidelines) and a King James Bible about 750,000. Historical scribes could hit the same information densities as modern books, but rarely did, and it was on purpose. Most historical manuscripts left large margins for aesthetic reasons and to leave room for people to make their own notes, so an historical manuscript frequently takes ten times as many pages (or, at least, ten times the total page area) for the same information as a densely printed modern book.

[Bruno]

For DF, I'm personally inclined to say "One page, plus one per prerequisite spell; Result doubled for VH spells". Use the shortest chain of spells to get the prereq count, advantages and attribute levels don't count for this purpose.

One page defined as 250 words, as per my sainted grade 7 English teacher's guidelines for handwritten essays (250 words per double-spaced Letter sized page).

This has nothing to do with medieval handwriting, writing systems, shorthand, or paper size and everything to do with something my players can visualize.