00:00In Dungeons & Dragons, it's not impossible to write an intrigue plot, but Zone of Truth,
00:06Detect Thoughts, and Detect Evil in older editions where it affected humanoids make
00:12it easy for players to get to the bottom of any whodunit mystery.
00:16Dungeon masters have to specifically write around divination magic, in the same way that
00:22anyone writing a mystery in the information age needs to account for the fact that everyone's
00:28carrying a GPS and camera in their pockets.
00:31There's a first-level cleric spell that allows them to screen any person or object for any
00:37disease in 10 minutes without even spending a spell slot.
00:42This would make setting up a quarantine easy in the Forgotten Realms, and plagues wouldn't
00:46pose a fraction of the risk they did in the real Dark Ages, to say nothing of the fact
00:51that it only takes a second-level spell to remove any non-magical disease.
00:56And divination isn't even the second-biggest game-changer.
01:00Voice of the Chainmaster allows a warlock to telepathically communicate with their familiar
01:05at an unlimited range.
01:09A warlock could function as a telephone, and, if you get enough people to sign away their
01:14souls, they could build a global communication network, establishing instantaneous two-way communication
01:21between any two cities in the Forgotten Realms.
01:25They could have had the internet without even having to invent the transistor.
01:30How's that for forbidden knowledge?
01:32Finally, the biggest potential game-changers that leave the game unchanged are Clone and
01:37Reincarnate.
01:39Other resurrection spells specify that they can't bring back people who died of old age, but
01:44Clone and Reincarnate don't.
01:46Clone even says that the target's new body can be younger than the old one, while Reincarnate
01:52has more ambiguous wording, creating a new adult body.
01:56Worst case scenario, you reincarnate into a human body age 40, not exactly young, but not
02:02elderly either, and this new body will die of old age again at 70.
02:071,000 gold pieces for 30 years of life is a little over 33 gold pieces per year, while
02:13living in squalid conditions for one year costs more than 36 gold pieces.
02:18A member of the middle class could save up 1,000 gold pieces by dropping from a comfortable
02:24standard of living to a modest one for three years.
02:27Now I can imagine druids sitting on Reincarnate instead of exploiting it, because making people
02:33immortal for a fee would probably disrupt the balance of nature or something like that.
02:40But, you can't say the same thing about the 8th level wizard's spell, Clone.
02:46Why would anyone use 9th level magic to become a lich anyway when an 8th level spell would
02:51let you truly live forever?
02:52For that matter, why would the people who can cast these spells keep going on adventures
02:57when they could make more money just charging people for age regression and working as time
03:02dealers?
03:03Is magic missile a mind affecting spell?
03:06Well, it can kill the target, and getting killed will certainly have an effect on the
03:11mind.
03:11But, by that definition, everything in the world is mind affecting, and the tag just loses
03:17all its meaning.
03:19But what if it isn't all savistry and pedantry?
03:22Let's take a closer look at what happens when a wizard casts magic missile.
03:26One day, a level 1 wizard with 18 intelligence decides to cast magic missile.
03:32In 3.5, she would have to
03:34Read her spellbook for 1 hour
03:36Place magic missile into 1 or both of the slots in her head
03:40One of which comes from class and level, while the other comes from raw intelligence
03:45Select a target and spend 1 standard action to perform the spell's stomatic and verbal components
03:51Once the spell has been cast, it leaves the hole in her head, and she must re-read her spellbook
03:56to put the spell back in her head hole.
04:00Now, did any of that sound like how information works?
04:03My scripts don't leave my mind the moment I'm done speaking them into the camera.
04:07It happens the moment I sit down in this chair.
04:13And written text.
04:15Does written text usually disappear after being read aloud?
04:18Okay, fine, I guess spell scrolls are realistic.
04:21While information wants to be free, spell knowledge doesn't behave like information.
04:27It behaves more like a collection of objects or a substance.
04:32Perhaps the game uses the word knowledge as a metaphor for this weird metaphysical thing
04:37that has no real-world counterpart.
04:39Like how the Dungeon Master's Guide has a section on flavors of fantasy
04:43when the D&D novels all taste the same.
04:47These examples have set a precedent.
04:50Any spell, regardless of its written effect, can also have memory-erasing properties that
04:56are poorly documented in the rare event that they're even documented at all.
05:01And therein lies the hidden reason why magic users don't find world-altering uses for their spells.
05:08All spells have a built-in memory-erasing or anti-memetic effect that prevents magic users from thinking of uses
05:18for them.
05:19The part of continual flame that allows you to forget it at will
05:22is the same part that prevents you from realizing that you have a source of unlimited energy on your hands.
05:30Incidentally, this would also explain why worlds where magic is illegal exist.
05:36This whole peasants-fear-what-they-don't-understand thing has always been a weak handwave.
05:42Understanding something can make it less frightening, but mystery, in and of itself, isn't scary.
05:48If anything, Lucretes has proven that we like the unknown a little too much.
05:53But maybe magic forces peasants to hate it.
05:57There's no rational motivation for commoners to want to lynch their savior
06:01when they know that she could mow down half their population with her cantrips alone.
06:07Magic, being magic, gives them an irrational motivation.
06:11Maybe when a commoner sees someone casting a spell, it sends them into a mindless rage.
06:16Not the cool kind that barbarians get, but the stupid kind that zombies from 28 Days Later get,
06:22where all they can do is just throw themselves at their target in a suicidal charge.
06:27But in order to truly keep the whole world medieval for a longer time period than written human history,
06:33magic's anti-memetic effects would have to also extend to non-magic users.
06:37Unless everyone smart enough to invent the battery learned shocking grasp
06:42and lost the ability to find any uses for electricity outside of combat.
06:48What if the anti-memetics even go through the fourth wall?
06:52How many times have you heard people refer to D&D as back then?
06:56Or heard statements like,
06:58Photographs haven't been invented yet in this time period.
07:01You know, the time when elves were real.
07:05What if there's actual magic in these books?
07:08What if there's some kind of arcane secret
07:10that some unknown force won't let you understand?
07:14Occam's Razor says no.
07:16I'm guessing it's a combination of genre convention
07:18and oversight rather than any kind of plan.
07:23What would have to be true for every spell to be mind-affecting?
07:271. David Arneson and Gary Gygax used the Fire and Forge system from Dying Earth
07:33to keep the fantasy world static
07:36and planned this from the game's inception in the mid-70s.
07:402. All the game's subsequent writers at TSR and WotC
07:44kept this secret for the game's entire life,
07:46leaving clues but never stating it outright,
07:49all while WotC introduced new spells that you can fire without forgetting.
07:543. They decided to never present this information as advice for dungeon masters,
07:59leaving them to deal with spell exploitation on their own
08:02and forcing DMs into constant arguments
08:04over whether or not Tenser's floating disk
08:07could be jerry-rigged into a ghetto airship.
08:104. Some or all of the people writing homebrew settings
08:14also know that every spell is mind-affecting
08:16and change the way spells affect minds to justify witch hunts.
08:215. Homebrewers also keep this secret
08:23and choose to give handwaves instead of the real answer
08:27whenever someone asks why witches are hunted.
08:30Finally, what was all this even for?
08:32What do these people gain from making their worldbuilding look sloppy
08:36when it actually makes sense?
08:38And what assumptions would have to be true
08:40if it's just oversight?
08:431. D&D writers want their game to take place in the Middle Ages
08:47and also want their game to take place over a huge span of time,
08:51longer than written human history.
08:53To that end, they've extended the Middle Ages infinitely in both directions
08:57until there's nothing on the sides for it to be in the middle between.
09:012. D&D writers want to give cool spells to their characters
09:05and don't think of the effects these spells could have on the wider world
09:08if they were taken outside the context of adventuring.
09:123. Homebrewers want to have witch hunts in their settings
09:15to show how dark and gritty they are,
09:17so they shove them in and then come up with post-hoc justifications
09:21if you point out that D&D witches are too powerful for commoners to hunt.
09:26Even if magic is limited to the battlefield,
09:28spellcasters are still more powerful than warriors.
09:32Letting magic users just turn the world into some kind of
09:35science-fantasy magic-punk thing
09:37makes warriors completely obsolete
09:39while magic users get to stomp around in mech suits
09:42soloing dragons into extinction.
09:45A world where rich people can buy immortality
09:49while death itself becomes a poor person problem
09:51may make an interesting RPG setting,
09:54but it's not what the D20 system and the D&D brand name is built around.
09:59The escapist fantasy of Dungeons & Dragons is
10:02a world of constant conflict with zero change.
10:07The status quo is infinitely sustainable,
10:10and the only way the world can really be changed
10:13is if some dark overlord conquers and or destroys it,
10:17and it'll always be the player character's job to prevent this change.
10:21Also, it's always the dungeon master's job
10:23to make sure that when players sign up for a game called Dungeons & Dragons,
10:29they don't end up playing cyberpunk with elves
10:32or Shadowrun with more magic and less hacking.
10:35In the Strategic Review, Volume 2, 1976,
10:39Gary Gygax said,
10:41If magic is unrestrained in the campaign,
10:44D&D quickly degenerates into a weird wizard show
10:47where players get bored quickly,
10:49or the referee is forced to change the game into a new framework
10:53which will accommodate what he has created
10:55by way of player characters.
10:57And I didn't learn about this quote
10:59until I read it in Magical Industrial Revolution,
11:02a framework built from the ground up
11:04to accommodate the weird wizard show.
11:06It starts out resembling medieval London,
11:09but the title should give you an idea
11:11of how much the setting changes over the course of a campaign.
11:14That's all I'll say about MIR in this video,
11:16because this isn't a review of a book I've never used.
11:21Well, that's my too many thoughts on spell exploitation.
11:25How do you handle creative spell use?
11:27What would you do if one of your players
11:29tried to use continual flame to make a laser gun
11:31or tried to build an electric motorbike
11:33powered by shocking grasp?
11:36I can take advantage of it.
11:36How do you handle 및 colouringen�� 인교
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