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Date: Sat, 03 Aug 2002 09:38:04 -0400
From: John Colagioia <JColagioia@csi.com>
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Subject: Re: IF library licence / game licence
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Dan Schmidt wrote:
> John Colagioia <JColagioia@csi.com> writes:
> | Would you *really* want to see another twenty uninspired games that
> | use the Enchanter-like spellcasting system...?  In one of my first
> | forays into Inform, I actually dropped Graham Nelson an e-mail,
> | asking if I could use it.  His response was basically, "sure, but
> | why would you want to?  It's already been done."
> It was already done in Enchanter, Sorcerer, and Spellbreaker by the
> time that Graham did it in Balances.
> And it had already been done in all four of those by the time that he
> did it again in The Meteor, the Stone and a Long Glass of Sherbet.
> I'm glad all five used it.  It's a good magic system.

Indeed it is.  Without a firm story to back it up, however (something
that most new authors--myself certainly included--lack in the
extreme; and I can produce the relevant sources, if anyone wants to
see such horrors...), it's just another bland rehash.

I would argue that supplying source for such things too early
*encourages* such bland rehashes, because there's less thinking
and programming involved.

> I wouldn't want to see twenty uninspired games using any system
> (although it's not a big deal, since I wouldn't play them anyway).

It's kind of hard to detect that early enough, some time.

> I don't see how the spellcasting system itself would be at fault in
> particular.

And it's not.  I thought I was fairly specific on that point.  It's
the fact that, any "cool gimmick," made easily accessible, is more
likely to wend its way into all sorts of corners it shouldn't be
found in.

