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Old 10-24-2010, 01:59 PM   #11
Christopher R. Rice
 
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Default Re: Spells written down are how many pages?

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Originally Posted by Captain-Captain View Post
OTOH, a scroll is a single page.
Yeah, that got me thinking too. But I suppose it's just a magic item/focus so that could be fairly ignored.

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Originally Posted by weby View Post
In the fantasy campaign I play in, the spell takes 1 page/paragraph in the spell description.
How do you justify that? Whats the in game assumption for this?

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Originally Posted by Anaraxes View Post
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.
Well yes, as a member and disciple I am aware of the 10% savings...but I need this for a *game* of GURPS not for real life :P

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Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company View Post
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.
Hmmm. I think I remember this article, a Omniscient Eye installment wasn't it? I will take a look for that in my archive files.

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Originally Posted by Bruno View Post
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.
Isn't that hard though Bruno? Keeping track of what spells are in what book? Wouldn't that just get annoying? Still that might work too, so either 10k a page or 0.25k per prereq per page.

Side question, how many pages would the Blank Book in High Tech have? 200 or so?

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Old 10-24-2010, 02:37 PM   #12
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Default Re: Spells written down are how many pages?

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Hmmm. I think I remember this article, a Omniscient Eye installment wasn't it? I will take a look for that in my archive files.
Look for the file 0615.6.html in your 2007 archive.
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Old 10-24-2010, 02:50 PM   #13
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Default Re: Spells written down are how many pages?

I don't believe in any theory that makes spells even a single full page long. Remember, GURPS spells are intended for combat use! The normal assumption is that you cast a spell by concentrating for one second, and indeed, any longer than that is pretty crippling in combat. I'll stipulate that "concentrating" can mean speaking words. But as Shaw pointed out, a classic method of counting seconds is to chant "hackertybackertyone, hackertybackertytwo, hackertybackertythree" and so on. You can get out about seven syllables, or roughly 15-20 phonemes, in a second. So that's how long spells are in the standard mana-based magic system.

It's how long they are in a lot of fantasy, too; think of Gandalf chanting spells at the gates of Moria. He wasn't taking any two minutes to recite an opening spell. He refers at one point to speaking a "Word of Command," in fact.

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Old 10-24-2010, 03:09 PM   #14
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Default Re: Spells written down are how many pages?

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
I don't believe in any theory that makes spells even a single full page long. Remember, GURPS spells are intended for combat use! The normal assumption is that you cast a spell by concentrating for one second, and indeed, any longer than that is pretty crippling in combat. I'll stipulate that "concentrating" can mean speaking words. But as Shaw pointed out, a classic method of counting seconds is to chant "hackertybackertyone, hackertybackertytwo, hackertybackertythree" and so on. You can get out about seven syllables, or roughly 15-20 phonemes, in a second. So that's how long spells are in the standard mana-based magic system.
What are you learning during those 400 hours of study, if it isn't whats written in the book? It doesn't take 400 hours to learn 20 phonemes well enough to recite them under stress.

Last edited by sir_pudding; 10-24-2010 at 03:26 PM.
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Old 10-24-2010, 03:20 PM   #15
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Default Re: Spells written down are how many pages?

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What are you learning during those 400 hours of study, if it isn't whats written in the book? It doesn't take 400 hours to learn 20 phonemes well enough to recent them under stress.
Maybe it's like physical skills in which the basics can be told in under a minute but can take a lifetime to master.
Or maybe it's like learning a new form of chess for every spell. Again simple rules, but countless books written about the subject.
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Old 10-24-2010, 03:25 PM   #16
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Default Re: Spells written down are how many pages?

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Maybe it's like physical skills in which the basics can be told in under a minute but can take a lifetime to master.
Or maybe it's like learning a new form of chess for every spell. Again simple rules, but countless books written about the subject.
Wouldn't either imply that there is more than a single page per spell?
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Old 10-24-2010, 03:31 PM   #17
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Default Re: Spells written down are how many pages?

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Wouldn't either imply that there is more than a single page per spell?
Not if you write really small. Don't you think you could put the basics of chess on one cramped page?
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Old 10-24-2010, 03:36 PM   #18
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Default Re: Spells written down are how many pages?

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Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
What are you learning during those 400 hours of study, if it isn't whats written in the book? It doesn't take 400 hours to learn 20 phonemes well enough to recite them under stress.
My personal theory is that it's like medieval class lectures. Part of the class is devoted to the instructor reading the text aloud, sentence by sentence, so that you can copy each sentence into your own blank book. Thus a student compiles a grimoire by sitting through lectures. But a much bigger part is spent on the instructor and the class discussing the actual meaning of the sentence, and how it relates to what has been said previously in the book and to the rest of their knowledge.

Compare mathematics. You can learn "the bottom times the derivative of the top, minus the top times the derivative of the bottom, over the bottom squared" in freshman calculus. But if you haven't already learned to take a derivative, and a bunch of earlier math such as algebra, that formula's useless to you; it's just words that don't tell you how to do anything.

It's also possible that the spell has components that are not written down in the book, such as gestures to be made while reciting it, and that you have to learn those from a trained instructor, and practice making them. That seems to be implied by the Potter books, where the verbal part of a spell can be as trivial as "wingardium leviosa!"

And, finally, it may be like learning a musical piece. You may have the notes memorized pretty quickly. But until you get the intonation, the rhythm, and so on exactly right, it may not really be music. A band may practice the same piece dozens of times before being ready to play it.

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Old 10-24-2010, 03:47 PM   #19
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Default Re: Spells written down are how many pages?

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
I don't believe in any theory that makes spells even a single full page long. Remember, GURPS spells are intended for combat use! The normal assumption is that you cast a spell by concentrating for one second, and indeed, any longer than that is pretty crippling in combat. I'll stipulate that "concentrating" can mean speaking words. But as Shaw pointed out, a classic method of counting seconds is to chant "hackertybackertyone, hackertybackertytwo, hackertybackertythree" and so on. You can get out about seven syllables, or roughly 15-20 phonemes, in a second. So that's how long spells are in the standard mana-based magic system.

It's how long they are in a lot of fantasy, too; think of Gandalf chanting spells at the gates of Moria. He wasn't taking any two minutes to recite an opening spell. He refers at one point to speaking a "Word of Command," in fact.

Bill Stoddard
Also, real-world instructions on spellcasting are rarely pages long. Of course, those ones don't work!

Describing the gestures, intonation, and mental states to cast a GURPS Magic spell might add length to the description. Or they might be left implicit because a typical spellbook is an aide memoire not a beginner's textbook.

Especially for Path/Book Magic spells, I can imagine a setting where each spell is a collection of redundant approaches to the same effect which work in slightly different circumstances. Like chess or mathematics or deep knowledge of a craft. And some traditions may embed the specific instructions in long philosophical texts. But one GURPS Magic spell per page isn't hard to envision ...
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Old 10-24-2010, 03:52 PM   #20
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Default Re: Spells written down are how many pages?

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...
Especially for Path/Book Magic spells, I can imagine a setting where each spell is a collection of redundant approaches to the same effect which work in slightly different circumstances. Like chess or mathematics or deep knowledge of a craft. And some traditions may embed the specific instructions in long philosophical texts. But one GURPS Magic spell per page isn't hard to envision ...
Big books for each path, but only one page per "spell" which assumes you already know the path.
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