[Adonthell-general] Journals and Spellbooks

[Andrew Michael Phillips]

As I was on the road today (my new job has me driving quite a lost) I was 
thinking about the way journals have worked in the games I've played and 
what I wish they did differently.

Of course, I did my research first. I searched the savannah archives of 
this list for Journal, but the exact url of the search is so long that it 
would probably be mangled by textual mail readers, so I won't include it 
here. Besides, I've had rather poor luck with urls of late...

Anyway, I'll start by suggesting the one thing I wish one could do in 
journals: jot down texts that you find. In IWD and Planescape, for 
example, some of the journals and scraps of paper are integral to the 
plot. One cannot afford to leave them behind. But, they take up inventory 
space and weigh down characters who in some cases need all their strength 
for core weaponry and armor.

Or, alternately, a bard who has or wants to acheive a high score in 
entertain can add stories or poems to his journal as a way of expanding 
his repertoire. Later, when he needs to earn a supper or free lodging, he 
can choose to tell a story from his journal or try to make something up on 
the spot. If it works, he can record that as well.

One thing I disagree with from the previous discussions on this subject is 
the grand, unified journal/character sheet. I think that party-wide skill 
availability would run counter to one of the basic tenets of the 
gameworld: individual power is a product of individual learning. In some 
respects, the open source spellbook idea seems right on the money. What 
one member of a party knows, others may learn very easily, but I think it 
would be a mistake to say that every skill or spell known to one member of 
a party is immediately known by all the others. In view of how personal 
magick is for Elves, for example, I think it would be a much better fit to 
make free teaching and learning of spells possible within the group.  
Teaching or learning spells might even by a way of gaining experience. 
However, I may have misunderstood Nils' comments.

-- 
Andrew Phillips
God Bless Our Troops
cptlogic at endor dot hsutx dot edu
"Let the Prince win his spurs" 
-C.S.Lewis: The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe