This is release 1.0 of a spell list system for GURPS, a variant magic system. The document won't make much sense without the GURPS Basic Set (third edition) and GURPS Magic (second edition, but the first edition could be used in a pinch.) I had a terrible time trying to figure out what format to release the document in. The tables are too broad to fit in 80-column net ascii, so plaintext was out. So unless you're a UNIX site with tbl, troff and a laser printer or a 132 column line printer, just reading the fool thing is going to be tough. All you low-end Death Star sites and VMS-heads, sorry for wasting the Net's bandwidth. =============================================================================== This directory, SpellLists, contains a few random files, a Makefile, and the following subdirectories: Documents: contains .ms source for certain random documents. Grimores: contains scripts that produce grimores for the spell lists. Hardcopy: contains skeletal files that are soelim'ed into .ms files for the description of the magic system itself. Lists: the spell lists themselves. Type `make' in this directory. Many things will happen. If they fail, you can always read the .ms files themselves; it'll be pretty non-linear, but you'll get the gist of it. If everything works, print out the document Hardcopy/MagicSystem.ms. (Or look at it with a previewer-- I'll swear that xprev on a Sony works, but I don't know about others.) I don't have any luck reading it at a terminal with nroff... Remember, tbl code is all over. So use a command similar to tbl MagicSystem.ms | troff -ms to print out the file. Possible problems: 1) 14-character filename Sys V sites are hosed. Long file names are used here. Unpack on a real computer. 2) The Grimores subdirectory uses a tiny C program to break up files. If you don't have a C compiler, trouble. I should have written it in perl but I didn't have perl at the time... and I didn't want to THINK about doing it all in awk. 3) If you don't have make at all (poor sod) you'll just have to read the raw .ms files. 4) Upon making the directory tree bloats from ~161K to ~587K. Much redundancy in the Hardcopy directory; the idea is a number of subject-specific files are created, ready for printing. (This is an artifact of .so's weakness when including tbl code.) Typing `make clean' will delete everything but the source. 5) By default, the Makefiles try to set up a plethora of SYMBOLIC links. If this is bad, edit them. 6) There is an extra field in the spell list tables themselves. It's included for future expansion but makes the tables wider than need be. If anyone can think of a use for it, let me know... =============================================================================== To quote from the introduction: "This system stems from the assumption that the basic principles behind, say, fire magic and air magic are very different. Although both are characterized as secular elemental magic, a mage cannot blithely go off and learn spells from both fields. On the other hand, it is insufficient to simply restrict mages to a single "College" from GURPS Magic. Each college has too few spells to make an interesting character. Furthermore, this approach would neglect special cases-- how would one model a magic user with power over shadows? Such a magic user would find learning to cast Darkness a trivial task, but couldn't understand Fireball for beans. Also, the current prereq. system is hard to manage. I can't count the number of mages I've seen who had Seek Plant as one of their spells to help fill out the "One Spell from Each of Ten Colleges" prerequisite. Finally, there are no earth-shattering or highly idiosyncratic spells in GURPS Magic. Somebody who is good at fire magic can throw three fireballs at you and run away. Somebody who is really good at fire magic can throw fireballs at you until the people you're with fill him with arrows. A person doen't get called Wizard because he can throw 2d6 fireballs for free-- a Wizard isn't just efficient at doing what an apprentice can do. A Wizard can do things that lesser mages just plain cannot. So, out of irritation, I drafted the spell lists." Even if you think magic should be partitioned differently than I have done, you may find the prerequisite system I propose useful. You will note that `he' is usually used to refer to a generic person. If you decide this makes me a sexist pig, sue me. =============================================================================== Feedback craved. Don't incorporate any of this material into anything you sell, unless you're Steve Jackson Games. (Consider it my part to compensate for the fact my tax dollars went into raiding your company. But remember, this text is going to remain availible to anyone who wants it. Don't expect to gain title to it just by publishing it.) If you do incorporate anything into anything you release, whoever you are, credit me. Distribute everything in this document to anybody you like. -Stephan Zielinski ...!uunet!lurnix!stephan -or- stephan@lurnix.com 1239 17th Street, San Francisco, CA, 94107 (Anybody in the Bay Area need a sysad or tech writer? Damn recession.)