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The Old Hack

Story Friday June 22, 2018

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<Wild speculation>

With most of the limitations on spells gone, the entries for newly overpowered spells are very short and simple e.g. "Assume any female form" or "Develop. superpowers".

</Wild speculation>

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Regarding Ellen having spell associated with being trans if she would be ... yeah. Seems very obvious in hindsight. Although Magus might not know how magic work in this world ...

27 minutes ago, partner555 said:

Before I panic, I think it just that the Will of Magic simplified the explanations after Tedd mentioned they were hard to understand.

24 minutes ago, Haylo said:

With most of the limitations on spells gone

The explanations MIGHT've been intentionally more verbose ... or more complicated due to limitations ... but regarding the "Tedd mentioned they were hard to understand", it's not like telling it to Will of Magic would give it ABILITY to explain it better, would it?

This count as Friday cliffhanger, right?

Did Elliot's book also lost weight? I mean, maybe the weight loss is actually related to dragon, not to magic not-a-reset ...

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Uh-er, my idea is flourishing (sort of, 1/2, albeit negatively). But hey, easier bag-stuffer?

Thine reset, thine reset. When we shut down our computers after using web browsers for so long.

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3 hours ago, partner555 said:

Before I panic, I think it just that the Will of Magic simplified the explanations after Tedd mentioned they were hard to understand.

What do you think are the chances that it oversimplified?

"New spell: Dragon energy"

Ellen: "What does that mean?"

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18 minutes ago, showler said:
3 hours ago, partner555 said:

Before I panic, I think it just that the Will of Magic simplified the explanations after Tedd mentioned they were hard to understand.

What do you think are the chances that it oversimplified?

"New spell: Dragon energy"

Ellen: "What does that mean?"

I looked at what exactly Tedd said, and she JUST said "Spellbooks are so difficult for us to understand". I really don't see how Will of Magic could get WHAT it needs to change. Unless, of course, it got some OTHER help. Like, how long did she talked to Van? Could Van explain it how to make simple spellbooks?

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Just now, hkmaly said:

The explanations MIGHT've been intentionally more verbose ... or more complicated due to limitations ... but regarding the "Tedd mentioned they were hard to understand", it's not like telling it to Will of Magic would give it ABILITY to explain it better, would it?

This count as Friday cliffhanger, right?

Did Elliot's book also lost weight? I mean, maybe the weight loss is actually related to dragon, not to magic not-a-reset ...

Just now, hkmaly said:

I looked at what exactly Tedd said, and she JUST said "Spellbooks are so difficult for us to understand". I really don't see how Will of Magic could get WHAT it needs to change. Unless, of course, it got some OTHER help. Like, how long did she talked to Van? Could Van explain it how to make simple spellbooks?

I don't think the spellbooks were always written like that, that how they were written probably changed along with system changes, and might have been based on the WoM's perception of how people talked and wrote at the time of the change, with a chance of overexaggeration. Maybe it skimmed over D&D rulebooks this time around? If so, I guess the question would be which editions did it look through? ;)

Also if Ellen's book loosing weight isn't isolated to Ellen's current situation of having been infused with "Dragon" power, I can't wait to see Nanase's reaction to seeing how thin her spellbook got, cus remember it gained 15 pages for just one spell, and if Nanase's description of it is any indication, those 15 pages should probably be 1 page now. I still think it might have more info than what Nanase says, like range, duration, amount of energy used, but I don't think that would need more than one page, unless there's stuff I'm not considering.

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7 hours ago, partner555 said:

Before I panic, I think it just that the Will of Magic simplified the explanations after Tedd mentioned they were hard to understand.

This was my first thought.

But then I had another.

Ellen's hair turned Green.  The first "R" of the Green movement is "Reduce".

Her spell book is now written in microtype.

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My guess is that the reason her spellbook is thinner is because spells combined. Like, she used to have several different beam spells, and the listing for each one had details on the limits on what it could do - so now she has a smaller number that can do all the same things the old ones could do plus a bunch of stuff that formerly fell between the limits of different spells.

As an analogy, imagine that formerly you had a little propeller plane that had a top airspeed of 60 MPH, and a jet that has to hit 180 MPH before it can even take off; now you have a single plane that can fly as slowly as the propeller plane AND as fast as the jet AND at any speed in between. And you have operating instructions for just the one plane, instead of two planes.

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32 minutes ago, Haylo said:

.... or maybe dragons can only get a few simple but powerful spells, so Ellen no longer qualifies for most of hers.

If the Dragon should sneeze, it would incinerate everything in a one mile radius.  It doesn't need a lot of other spells.

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9 hours ago, partner555 said:

Before I panic, I think it just that the Will of Magic simplified the explanations after Tedd mentioned they were hard to understand.

I'm hoping that is the case.

 

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1 hour ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

If the Dragon should sneeze, it would incinerate everything in a one mile radius.  It doesn't need a lot of other spells.

At a minimum, a temporary dragon morph to be in the right form to use its incinerator sneeze spell.

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2 hours ago, Haylo said:

At a minimum, a temporary dragon morph to be in the right form to use its incinerator sneeze spell.

Unless the Temporary part is not available.  To use Dragon abilities, it may be necessary to become a Dragon.  Permanently.

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57 minutes ago, weirdee said:

...next time somebody asks me a stupid question about my gender.

There are certain medical questions about gender that are not stupid.  There are certain legal questions that are mandated by various regulations and should not be seen as an indication of the intelligence of the person asking those questions (even though the questions themselves may be stupid).  And there are a few questions that may need to be answered to establish how the involved parties should address each other.

But if the context isn't obviously a "Need To Know" situation, aren't all questions about an individual's gender "stupid"?

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3 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:
5 hours ago, Haylo said:

At a minimum, a temporary dragon morph to be in the right form to use its incinerator sneeze spell.

Unless the Temporary part is not available.  To use Dragon abilities, it may be necessary to become a Dragon.  Permanently.

She already changed from more dragon to less dragon once.

7 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

My guess is that the reason her spellbook is thinner is because spells combined. Like, she used to have several different beam spells, and the listing for each one had details on the limits on what it could do - so now she has a smaller number that can do all the same things the old ones could do plus a bunch of stuff that formerly fell between the limits of different spells.

Yeah, in her case, combining those spells would really simplify them a lot. However, why it happened now? It seems likely the change is related to her becoming part dragon, the magic not-reset or both, because something randomly happening at same time would be bad storytelling.

10 hours ago, Scotty said:

I don't think the spellbooks were always written like that, that how they were written probably changed along with system changes, and might have been based on the WoM's perception of how people talked and wrote at the time of the change, with a chance of overexaggeration. Maybe it skimmed over D&D rulebooks this time around? If so, I guess the question would be which editions did it look through? ;)

CAN WoM actually skim over something? If yes, it was more likely based on written laws or something than on how people talked.

9 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Her spell book is now written in microtype.

Wait, I have another idea: her spellbook is now written in Dragon. She will look inside and praise how it's much easier to read now, then Elliot looks and would by like "What? Is that chinese? You can read chinese?"

(Which reminds me: Is Nanase's book written in english, japanese or french? Why?)

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1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

CAN WoM actually skim over something? If yes, it was more likely based on written laws or something than on how people talked.

WoM perceives the world through magic, meaning that it knows about every use of magic. If anyone has a spell for rapidly scanning a book to skip needing to read it, which seems pretty likely to me, then wouldn't WoM know the contents of every book that spell has ever been used to scan?

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3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

CAN WoM actually skim over something? If yes, it was more likely based on written laws or something than on how people talked.

If that last system change was around Shakespear's time, it would certainly explain things.

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4 hours ago, Douglas said:
6 hours ago, hkmaly said:

CAN WoM actually skim over something? If yes, it was more likely based on written laws or something than on how people talked.

WoM perceives the world through magic, meaning that it knows about every use of magic. If anyone has a spell for rapidly scanning a book to skip needing to read it, which seems pretty likely to me, then wouldn't WoM know the contents of every book that spell has ever been used to scan?

If THAT is what "perceiving the world through magic" means, then Sarah is feeding WoM lot of books.

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I don't think Dan has ever made it explicit whether different people see the same thing when they're reading a given spellbook. We know now that spellbooks can grow and shrink. That implies that the text and the illustrations can change. And, of course, they're magical, and we already have characters who use illusion magic (Demonic Duck and Nanase).

We don't know yet that Ellen has lost any of the spells she had before Sirleck hijacked her body and Magus blew up the so-called diamond that created Ellen. Maybe she doesn't need to study them now because they've become innate. Maybe the only thing in her spellbook now is: "You don't need a spellbook," We've established that Tedd is a Wizard, that he's fully awakened--and he doesn't have a spellbook, does he? Why? Does he need one? Does Ellen?

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9 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

We don't know yet that Ellen has lost any of the spells she had before Sirleck hijacked her body and Magus blew up the so-called diamond that created Ellen. Maybe she doesn't need to study them now because they've become innate. Maybe the only thing in her spellbook now is: "You don't need a spellbook," We've established that Tedd is a Wizard, that he's fully awakened--and he doesn't have a spellbook, does he? Why? Does he need one? Does Ellen?

I don't think Ellen's lost any spells, as was pointed out on Discord, t wouldn't make any sense for Dan to have done the "Ellen Demo" NP if he was planning on Ellen losing, or even changing any of those spells, simplifying their descriptions in the spellbook would seem most likely and that would be a global change for all magic users with spellbooks.

She's most likely gained a new spell or two (or more) from her experience and absorption of energy, but those would also have easier to read explainations for them that they wouldn't have expanded the book  back to the size it had been..

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1 hour ago, Tom Sewell said:

I don't think Dan has ever made it explicit whether different people see the same thing when they're reading a given spellbook. We know now that spellbooks can grow and shrink. That implies that the text and the illustrations can change. And, of course, they're magical, and we already have characters who use illusion magic (Demonic Duck and Nanase).

They DO however have weird titles which apparently are weird even for owners.

1 hour ago, Tom Sewell said:

We don't know yet that Ellen has lost any of the spells she had before Sirleck hijacked her body and Magus blew up the so-called diamond that created Ellen. Maybe she doesn't need to study them now because they've become innate. Maybe the only thing in her spellbook now is: "You don't need a spellbook,

Unlikely.

1 hour ago, Tom Sewell said:

We've established that Tedd is a Wizard, that he's fully awakened--and he doesn't have a spellbook, does he? Why? Does he need one? Does Ellen?

Tedd doesn't need spellbook because he CAN'T get spell of his own - any spell he gets will be learned, so he already knows how it works.

1 hour ago, Scotty said:

I don't think Ellen's lost any spells, as was pointed out on Discord, t wouldn't make any sense for Dan to have done the "Ellen Demo" NP if he was planning on Ellen losing, or even changing any of those spells, simplifying their descriptions in the spellbook would seem most likely and that would be a global change for all magic users with spellbooks.

Yes, the Ellen Demon NP story was always big argument. First against magic reset, now this ...

27 minutes ago, Southern Cross said:

So Elliot also needs to check his spellbook...

Yes, definitely. Also Nanase, but we will likely see THAT in flashback later, when they will be discussing what happened.

Also Justin but he still didn't get one ... and Rhoda but that probably wouldn't be shown at all.

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