And so the world awoke to news of the death of the King of Chess, Bobby Fischer. There is little I can add here that probably hasn't been written elsewhere, other than to add that it somehow all seems so right that Bobby would leave us at the numerical age - 64 - which also happens to be the number of squares that are on a classical chess board.
I have vague memories of the tall, lanky, intent, and striking looking Bobby when he was at the height of his playing powers. I can dimly remember as a small boy that my older brother was wrapped up in following the 1972 Spassky-Fischer match up. I remember that he used to play with my mother and that I would watch them, wondering about this strange game and how it was supposed to work. I do remember watching Bobby play tennis with Gail Goodrich at a tournament, but then it seemed that he disappeared from the public consciousness. I went to a parochial school where athletics was the past time of choice and none of my neighborhood friends played chess. In another time and another place, I might have become a master level player myself, but we were fated to play the newly created type of game called role playing games as teenagers. We then saw the onset of video game arcades in the 1980's, the precursors of today's home computer games. As it was, my memories of Bobby had faded like a ghost.
But it need not have been that way, and much of whether young people a generation ago might have picked up chess as a past time would in fact have depended upon Bobby Fischer. Chess, as a past time, has to compete with all other past times for time, money, and social attention, in order to thrive. In that sense, the Royal Game is no different in needing a charismatic figure than basketball needing Earvin Magic Johnson or Michael Jordon, or golf needing Tiger Woods. As it was, since he dropped out of the game, and out of public view, the surge of interest in the game - the "Fischer Boom" - was brief, like a fiery comet in the night. Bobby was literally fielding offers to play chess in Vegas for millions of dollars in the aftermath of his 1972 triumph. Anatoly Karpov became the first man to become a chess millionaire, but Fischer would have beaten Karpov to that title by 15-20 years had he stayed playing. It is a widely accepted observation that Fischer was literally 20 years ahead of his time when he was at the height of his game. Most people have no idea how much effort Fischer put into studying the game. Frank Brady wrote in Bobby Fischer - Profile of a Prodigy that Bobby owned some 480 chess books and thousands of chess magazines from all over the world in his apartment, many of which written in Russian, a language which Bobby taught himself how to read. He wrote that nearly all of the books had annotation notes written by Bobby under their board position diagrams. He had to part with some of them because he didn't have enough room to store all of them.
My thought is that Fischer, had he been a different person, would have held the title until around 1990 or so, probably losing it to a late 20's Garry Kasparov, who by that time had finally broken through the 2800 Elo rating barrier. What a match that would have been! Even today - 35 years later and armed with 3 gigahertz, 1 terabye sized disk computational power, and research assistants at their disposal - there are only perhaps 4 players in the world (Vladamir Kramnik, Viswanathan Anand, and Veselin Topalov, as well as Kasparov) who have achieved Elo ratings that are generally equal to or greater than that which was achieved by Fischer, who incidentally did all of his analysis on his own in the final age before the advent of personal computers.
Fischer could have easily amassed a fortune of over $100,000,000 had he kept playing, and could have been a hero to two entire generations of young American children. Instead, he found that once he had achieved the summit of being recognized as the greatest chess player in the world, he found that he literally didn't know what to do with himself. He gave a good chunk of his 1972 Championship winnings to a church which he then denounced (and with good reason) for malfeasance. Interest in the game cooled down after Bobby refused to defend his title in 1975. The game never really recovered and as a result, most really strong players struggle here in America to earn enough money to pay the bills. An acquaintance of mine who is a master level chess player has told me that there are only about 200-300 master level players in America (with an elo rating of 2200 or higher) who actively play the game. Most simply retire or go on to do something more lucrative.
It's hard to say where Bobby's anti-Semitism started, but it seems to me that it probably had the same roots which caused Bobby to be so difficult with his rock star, prima donna like demands which he imposed on tournament directors and game promoters. Maybe the rage from having been brought up in an unstable, fatherless household was too much for the chess board to bottle up, but that's an issue for the psychiatrists to chew over. As it was, I still find it hard to believe that he is gone. I hope that God has forgiven him and that he has left us for a better place.
Bobby Fischer - RIP.
Wizard
Yesterday I spent a few hours watching the History Channel where they put on yet another great program, this time about the fourth voyage of Christopher Columbus. And yes gentle readers, that is yet another plug to get you hapless game masters who have run out of adventure ideas to watch the History Channel. At the urging of some people I know, and because it was Columbus Day this past week, I was inspired to write this edition of D&D adventure ideas.
One aspect of D&D that many players may feel a bit uncomfortable with is how to deal with issues of law and justice in a fantasy world. Some of this undoubtedly has to do with the fact that many game players are under the age of 21 and therefore have had little or no first hand knowledge of how legal systems actually work. The rule books offer little or no guidance on the matter, other than to say that game masters and players should assume that "normal common sense laws are in effect."
Legal systems are a must. The general idea behind laws and governments are that they are necessary for societies of more than a few hundred or few thousand people. In small groups, everyone knows each other. If there are disputes, then they usually can be worked out in one way,shape, or form. However, as the number of people in a society grows, then you run into issues where people have to interact with many people on a day to day basis whom they may not know. People know who their family members are, as they know their friends, their co-workers and colleages from their job, as well as acquaintences from the interests that they may share with others. If anything wrong happens within that circle of people, then chances are that one might be able to work something out reasonably amicably with them.
However, what happens when you are dealing with people outside that circle of people you know? We now live in societies with millions of people. So how does a society deal with positive and negative interactions of strangers? How does a society promote commercial transactions between relative strangers which help promote economic growth? How does a society resolve conflicts between people whom have no blood kindreds or where parties have no friendship ties? What large complex societies do is that they form governments and codes of law to deal with such matters.
Before going any further, I should state here that I am not an attorney. However, I did read some law and economics courses as an undergraduate student. I also have been involved in some legal cases because of my political activism. As such, I can give hapless game masters (especially younger game masters who have not reached adulthood) some insight as to how our own legal system operates. That in turn can give game masters some means of sketching out a legal system for their own fantasy worlds.
Another place where game masters can look for some insight is to study this wiki entry on comparative legal systems throughout the world. It should be noted that some places in our own world run the legal traditions based on religious law, such as the sharia, while others use Civil law. In France, the Napoleonic Legal Code as adopted during the rule of Napoleon, which in turn was partially based on old Roman codes.
In America, we use the common law system which we inherited from the United Kingdom. As is noted in the wiki entry, we set down and follow precedents from days gone by, which are not supposed to be nullified by acts of legislation.
More to the point, the common law is largely recognized to have three main aspects to it - those laws regarding the disposition of property (read here for property laws in other legal systems), laws governing the disposition of contracts, and those of tort (i.e. negligence, accidents, or libel). There are many other specialty areas of legal expertise, including constitutional law, Corporate Law, Admiralty Law (and also Laws of the Sea), and so forth. Game Masters can search for other aspects of law, but RPG players should understand that as part of their legal training, all lawyers have a general reading background in torts, contracts, and property regardless of what they end up doing with their legal careers.
It seems to me that when the D&D books refer to "common sense" laws, they are probably referring to issues like laws against burglary, tresspass, murder, rape, robbery, fraud, and so forth. These acts would fall under torts in the Anglo-American common law. In general, there is a distinction between civil law and criminal law.
One idea to consider is what may happen if a trial takes place. What more or less happens in the real world is that a suit will be drawn up and filed where charges are made and the wrong doing is stated. Procedures are followed, which may involve what is called discovery before arguments are made by prosecution and defendants. Parties may litigate, judges (or political bodies like our Congress) may subpeona persons who are of interest to the case. In a world where magic works, GM's may consider granting magistrates and judges the power to compel parties to appear in trials via magical means.
Another thing to consider is that we in America have a state sponsored prosecution service. In other words, the government hires prosecuting attorneys to go after wrong doers. However, not all societies have done this. In ancient Rome, private citizens could bring charges against another person or group if they felt that they could prove that the other person or group had in fact been the ones who wronged them. In general, one might consider the consequences of wrongful prosecution or outcomes. Usually in civil laws, one of the things prayed for in relief (page 278) by the parties is that the other side will be compelled to pay for the legal costs of their side.
Game masters and players may find contract laws to be of interest. In particular, whenever contracts are entered into by both parties, there are issues of completeness and of information to consider. A contract may be set aside or nullified by a judge if it does not cover all terms. Also, it is generally recognized that parties to a contract should have perfect information or nearly perfect information in order to enter a contract. If one of the parties to the contract does not have full grasp of all the information detailed therein, then a contract may be set aside. The reason why information is so important to contracts is that parties need to have a grasp of all of the known facts so that everyone's interest is aligned properly when considering the offering and accepting of the contracts in question.
One example of a contract whose outcome was under question can be seen if you watch director Ridley's Scott's film, The Gladiator, starring Russel Crowe and Joaquim Phoenix. In the film, a slave trader named Proximo, played by Oliver Reed, complains to a Roman Senator about the fact that he has a contract to deliver slaves for entertainment purposes and that is wasn't in his interest to see it broken.
As an example, say you are a Game Master and you have set up an adventure for your players where the Sovereign of a nation state has commissioned the players to go and discover a mysterious island thousands of miles away. The King or Queen is sponsoring the expedition, but the players have been contracted so that (perhaps amongst other terms of the contract) they can can keep 25 percent of all treasures (gold, silver, precious metals, jewels or natural resources, etc) discovered and exploited in return for risking their lives.
Now then, let us consider this arrangement. Neither the Sovereign nor the players know what's out there, nor does either party fully understand what risks are to be faced. However, it is understood by both parties that there is a risk involved. The players can accept or refuse the offer of the contract - presuming that the Sovereign is not a tyrant, nor are the under some kind of magical compulsion such as a Geas spell.
And that idea brings me to the issue of magic use and legal issues. The whole point of D&D is that it is a game where magic works. This presents some very real problems when conducting a game. Just try considering conducting a murder trial where the either the defendant, the jury members, the prosecution, the defense, or the judge (or indeed all of the parties involved) could be magically influenced via charm spells or other methods to alter the outcome of the case! What about the idea that evidence for legal cases can be made to disappear via magical means? Clearly the presence of magic causes a conundrum which needs to be dealt with.
One idea would be to have law courts where there are powerful anti-magic spells in place which hinder the obstruction of justice via magical means. Another might be implementing laws where if parties are caught tampering with justice or legal matters, then they would be prosecuted by authorities. There are other ideas players out there might consider when devising forms of law for their fantasy worlds, but be aware that laws are, by their nature, a form of compulsion! Laws are meant to be enforced even though for various reasons they often are not - such as for reasons of not having enough manpower to enforce them or because the law breakers may know people of considerable wealth and power. Yes, laws are bent sometimes and GM's and players should be aware that societies never apply their laws to everyone equally.
Laws and their application can be used by creative Game Masters to come up with entirely new kinds of adventures for players to play, such as campaigns which emphasize adventuring in cities or which have a political flavor to them rather than have a boring hack and slash feel to them. As such, the Wizard encourages GM's to spend at least a few weeks of time reading and studying legal codes and forms of law, as their general outlines can now be found online. If imaginatively used, all kinds of interesting possibilities can pop up and may make your campaigns much more fun.
Enjoy!
Wizard
In continuing with my previous post on Tim Blanning's account of the Europe of 300 years ago, I present two follow ups on what happened in Europe (and indeed the early American Republic) in transportation. The first involves looking at the rest of the lessons from improved road building and my next blog entry will look at Blanning's writings on the use of waterways in Europe.
As was intimated in the previous post, Blanning writes that it was the British and the French who worked hardest at improving road building. However, pouring large amounts of money into road building did not in of itself translate into a leap towards modernity, indeed the results between what happened in France and what happened in Britain could scarcely be different. Though the French monarchs of the Ancien Regime poured growing resources into road building in the 18th century, where those resources went was a bit uneven as were the results. The highways and arterial roads were greatly improved and this indeed sped up travel in France considerably. However lateral roads linking up provincial towns were still in dire condition, something that was noticed by none other than Adam Smith:
In France, however, the great post-roads, the roads which make the communication between the principal towns of the kingdom, are in general kept in good order, and in some provinces are even a good deal superior to the greater part of the turnpike roads of England. But what we call the cross-roads, that is, the far greater part of the roads in the country, are entirely neglected, and are in many places absolutely impassable for any heavy carriage. In some places it is even dangerous to travel on horseback, and mules are the only conveyances which can safely be trusted.
Adam Smith then went on to add something else that was a big problem in France with regards to road building:
The proud minister of an ostentatious court may frequently take pleasure in executing a work of splendour and magnificence, such as a great highway, which is frequently seen by the principal nobility, whose applauses not only flatter his vanity, but even contribute to support his interest at court. But to execute a great number of little works, in which nothing that can be done can make any great appearance, or excite the smallest degree of admiration in any traveller, and which, in short, have nothing to recommend them but their extreme utility, is a business which appears in every respect too mean and paltry to merit the attention of so great a magistrate. Under such an administration, therefore, such works are almost always entirely neglected.
As the French say, plus ca change, plus c'est la meme.
Blanning goes on to write that the problem in France was that only a small proportion of the population could travel up and down the royal routes. Blanning writes that according to Pierre Goubert most of the population of France still lived in the conditions mentioned in my previous post - i.e. they were still living out their lives within a 5-10 mile radius of their places of birth, ergo their lives were still limited to that of the family, neighbors, the notary, the weekly farmers market and the seigneurial court. This meant that France continued to be fragmented in character, inhibiting the initial formation of an 18th century French national economy along with its vast advantages to entrepreneurs and businessmen of being able to reap economies of scale and scope through greatly expanded markets. That would not be accomplished until much later. In other words, the royal roads of the French Monarchy were not reaching the peasantry of France and they were the majority of the nation's people!
To be fair to the French, they were not the only ones which fell to the siren song of building roads mostly to please the courts of nobility, rather than to tie together cities and lesser towns. Blanning writes that the Spanish elites were also guilty of committing this sin, as were the Italians. And to reiterate, pursing this policy of road building for royal privilege rather than to integrate the nation resulted in fragmentation. According to John Lynch:
As natural produce, raw materials and manufactures could usually be transported only on the backs of mules and donkeys, the radius of any local economy was correspondingly short. For example, the price of wheat in Almeria was twice of what it was at Guadix, just 50 miles (80 kilometers) away. So the population followed the examples of the other coastal towns and imported grain from France, Italy or even Africa.
These issues (including the substantial price differentials in goods resulting from fragmented economies) were sidestepped in the United Kingdom. Of course helped immensely that the UK is a correspondingly small island, ergo the distances were not as great which was a big advantage in a world where travel was slow. It also helped that solutions from the national center were not trusted in Britain, ergo the solution of using turnpikes which were self funding. Moreover, they were also extended to towns and villages in the periphery, a fact that led to better and busier roads outside the main highways and arterials, which was noticed by contemporaries of the day.
It also helped businessmen, entrepreneurs, and travelers that the United Kingdom had a unified system of tariff structures, outside of those levied by the operators of turnpikes. When most people in the modern day world think of trade issues, they probably think of the some alleged exploitation of workers in the developing world, or of some disease or defects of products shipped in from other countries. It seems people seldom remember from history that the single biggest inhibition to trade were the seemingly endless number of levies which were slapped on travelers and merchants by an ongoing parade of officials - royal, provincial, and municipal, not to mention those laid by estates and monasteries! The Holy Roman Empire was particularly riddled with this problem, as was the Habsburg Monarchy. However France and Spain also suffered badly, even though they were nation states on paper. In fact both countries were a motley accumulation of territories which were acquired over hundreds of years. There was little movement for political reform on tariffs since so many were profiting from the system that was in place - and yes, much of that profiting was personal and was not going into public coffers. Stopping to pay the endless line of tariffs not only made trade and travel much more expensive, it also slowed trade and travel down. America's Founders noticed this and stipulated in the United States Constitution that the power to set tariffs was to be denied to the States without Congressional authority.
And last but not least, the improvement of European roads also helped alleviate to some degree one of the greatest horrors our ancestors faced - that of hunger and famine. Blanning writes that there is good evidence that Europe went through a cooling period that was particularly pronounced in the latter half of the 17th century. Mean temperatures were 0.9 - 1.5 Celsius cooler than they were from the 1920's - 1960's and that this cooling had a negative impact on agricultural production. Of course, agriculture was much different 300 years ago. Machinery did not exist. Cereals were a big part of the European diet and varieties were often not adapted to take maximum advantage of the soils.
For our ancestors, it wasn't a question of whether a crop failure and a year (or more) of dearth would come. It was a matter of when and it wasn't unusual for mortality rates to reach 20 percent when crop failures did strike. In two of his most unforgettable pages, Blanning describes in a hair raising narrative what would happen in a year where a crop failure struck. Still, the situation did start to improve during the 18th century and into the 19th. Some of the improvement came from improved governmental action made possible by the improved road and distribution system, while better farming and agricultural methods, not to mentioned improved weather all helped to cut down the length and severity of food shortages, though Europeans continued to be plagued by subsistence outbreaks. Widespread shortages occurred in France in 1741, the 1770's and most notably in 1788-1789 (which many believe was one of the factors which helped trigger the French Revolution), but it should be noted that many acute food shortages were local in scope!
Enough for now. Part three comes next week.
Wizard
Based on the strength of some book reviews on web sites I normally visit, I headed down to a Borders Books near where I live and purchased The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648 - 1815, by Tim Blanning, a Professor of History at Cambridge University and a Fellow of the British Academy. Blanning's book is a tour de force of a wonderfully rich subject - what happened in Europe during the 170 years between the conclusion of the Treaty of Westphalia and Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo. I am now about 100 pages into this book.
Of interest here is that Dr. Blanning starts off his book with a most curious topic - the amazing improvement in transportation and communications which occurred, particularly in Britain and France, during this period. Blanning also notes that in Eastern Europe, little changed in terms of infrastructure during this time. Blanning of course gives due to what happened when railroads were invented, but in his first 40 pages Blanning compares the difference of what transportation was like in the middle of the 17th century and what it was like 150 years later.
As a student of history, I knew that for most of mankind's history, transportation was slow and expensive for most and that not many people traveled more than 10 or so miles away from the homes they were born in during their own lifetimes unless something compelled them to. Nonetheless, Blanning's book drives home exactly how expensive it really was for our ancestors to travel and that travel was rarely faster than walking pace.
Some exerpts:
1) (If one desired to travel outside of one's own town - Wizard)
"Four or six draught animals were needed to pull a coach and they had to be changed every 6 to 12 miles, depending on the condition of the roads. In England it was calculated that one horse was needed for every mile of a journey on a well-maintained turnpike road. So, for the 185 miles from Manchester to London, 185 horses had to be kept stabled and fed to deal with the seventeen changes required by the stagecoaches which traveled the route. Those horses in turn required an army of coachmen, postillions, guards, grooms, ostlers and
stable-boys to keep them running. As a coach could carry no more than ten passengers, fares were correspondingly high and out of reach of the mass of the population. A journey from Augsburg to Innsbruck by stagecoach, although little more than 60 miles as the crow flies, would have cost an unskilled laborer more than a month's wages just for the fare."
2) "Almost everyhere the 'roads" were tracks, with no foundations or drainage and consequently deeply pitted by wheel-ruts."
'more like a retreat of wild beasts and reptiles, than the footsteps of man', in the view of an English observer writing in the early eighteenth century.... The roads of Europe were essentially those of the Roman Empire - after fourteen hundred years of neglect.
3) Blanning includes a table of travel times from London 1700-1800 in hours:
1700 1750 1800
Bath: 50 40 16
Edinburgh 256 150 60
Exeter 240 120 32
Manchester 90 65 33
4) Blanning talks about how forced labor from the farming peasantry was not an efficient method of infrastructure improvement. Instead...
"By that time, however, another method had been found. This was the 'turnpike', a word which originally designated just a barrier across a road to keep marauders out."
Blanning goes on to say that one of the beneficiaries of turnpikes were members of Parliament, who could now travel to London much more comfortably from their country homes - and proceed to pass more Acts of Parliament which created more turnpike roads!
5) Improvements in roads and road surfaces greatly dropped freight costs. To quote Blannning:
...but freight too could benefit. Much larger and more heavily laden wagons could pass along the improved roads: in the 1740's three-ton loads were permitted, by 1765 that had been doubled. The improved surfaces meant that fewer draught animals per ton were required. Writing in 1767, Henry Homer claimed that 'the carriage of grain, coal, merchandise, etc. is in general conducted with little more than half the number of horses a with which it formerly was.'
6) Writing in the middle of the 19th century, the German social historian Karl Biedermann estimated that travelling had been fourteen times more expensive two generations earlier!
7) Blanning wrote that the expansion of Europe's infrastructure also created a new class of society - the highwaymen - who would prey on hapless coach riders since cash was demanded up front in exchange for being permitted to use the turnpikes. Some wondered whether all this newly found mobility was worth the crime and congestion. London had streets choked full of coaches and wagons.
8) And perhaps my favorite excerpt:
"The turnpikes brought speed and mobility into a society previously characterized by their opposites. This was a culture-shock which many found upsetting - especially when the lower orders started to move out of their villages, on to the roads and into the towns, picking up insubordinate habits on the way. John Byng complained bitterly in 1781:
'I wish with all my heart that half the turnpike roads of the kingdom were plough'd up, which have imported London manners and depopulated the the country - I meet milkmaids on the roads, with the dress and looks of Strand mistresses, and must think that every line of Goldsmith's Deserted Village contains melancholy truths.'
The reference to Goldsmith's poem is revealing, for it is an elegy for a lost world of rural innocence and harmony, from which the forces of modernization have banished the inhabitants to urban anomie and vice."
300 years later, some people are still complaining that mankind's vastly increased mobility has resulted in the same urban ills. It seems that for some people, the more things change the more things stay the same. At the same time, one really does need to remember that one of the primary reasons why we build the cities we do today is because we can - due to the staggering drops of transportation costs in real terms. Otherwise we would still be living in huddled and cramped conditions.
Wizard.
I know that a lot of big thing have happened in the past week which are worth writing about including the death of Marvin Zindler, the collapsed I-35 West bridge in Minneapolis, and Metro's giving everyone a choice on Richmond as to how they are going to get railroaded (but at least they will have some public artwork to look at). Still, I wanted to blog about some notable events which are happening in Nerd World.
1) First, the news came across the wires two weeks ago that checkers has been solved. I should clarify that statement a bit. From a Game Theory standpoint, the game of checkers has been weakly solved, meaning that once you get down to a position where you have 10 checkers on the board, then the developed program cannot lose! The program will always at least obtain a draw, if not a win.
Now I can hear right now a lot of chess players jumping to their feet, shouting that chess is ultimately unsolvable. All I can say is that most chess players have programs these days, which says quite a bit about the state of player's attitudes these days.
2) Neal Krawetz, a security researcher, has written a program which can compare the metadata on image files and determine if a file is an original or whether it has been Photoshopped. The article goes on to describe how most of the Al-Queda images we have been seeing in the media have possibly been doctored up.
3) Several weeks ago, I noted how Microsoft was developing touch screen computing, which would revolutionize the computing experience. I noted how developers in Penguin land needed to get their act together or M$ would leave them behind. Well, it seems that developers in Penguin land are doing just that with MPX (Multi Pointer X-Window). The good news is that MPX will recognize multiple users at once.
4) Dell is indeed shaking up Linux land and is seeing some demand for Linux. The good news is that Dell (and Google) is / are starting to lean on developers for better drivers.
5) Meanwhile Red Hat, which is the leading Linux distributor, is not sitting still. They are coming out with their own Linux desktop. Meanwhile, Information Week brings up the hoary old argument of whether 300 different Linux distros is fragmenting and hurting the adaption of Linux. Remember that Unix forked in the 1980's between Sun's Solaris, IBM's AIX, HP's HP-UX, and lots of others, which opened the door to Microsoft winning over the desktop.
6) Last, but probably most interestingly, here is an article with noted Australian (former) kernel developer Con Kolivas, where he talks about his frustrations with kernel development which led him to quit working on Linux.
My own .02 worth is that Linux will continue to be a niche hobby OS until we can develop reliable drivers which always work! Also, the Open Office suite needs to be improved so that it always can open and deal with Adobe and Microsoft Office documentation.
A quick story about Linux and drivers. Several weeks ago that the Big Evil Company, one of our processors came in with a USB stick which he wanted to mount on his Linux desktop. My senior counterpart, an incredibly knowledgeable, hard working, and diligent guy, fiddled for some 2 hours trying to get a USB stick to work on his desktop. There's more to the story than issuing a simple mount command, but if Linux is going to make inroads on $200 - $800 copies of Microsoft Vista, then we need to make sure that the user experience is painless and that things work the first time and every time - end of story. Otherwise, the world will continue to pay the steep Microsoft premium and the world will stay a WinTel type place.
Wizard
This entry is actually a redirect from a web page which I wrote in February 2004. I copy it into my blog in its entirety.
My website gets, on average, probably 10 visits per month from people who are searching for Dungeons and Dragons adventure ideas. As a retired player of role playing games (though I am considering starting to work as a game master again), I haven't been to a game tournament in over 10 years. I now play chess, but I can sympathize with intelligent fellow travelers who happen to be wracking their brains out trying to come up with new ideas to keep their campaigns and milleus interesting for jaded players. Thus, after noticing the number of visits I was getting to this page, I decided to write some advice for people who happen to be looking for new ideas for role playing games (RPG's).
And what is that advice, pray tell? I would suggest that Game Masters start reading history and political science. No gentle readers, not Tolkien's, or Harry Potter, or Elric, or John De Chance, C.J. Cherryh, or any imaginary history written by any other fantasy or science fiction author to flesh out their own worlds. I'm talking about the history of Egypt, ancient Greece, Rome, the Middle Ages, Chinese history, or of the Indian subcontinent.
If you can afford to cough up the money, start reading Edward Gibbon's unabridged version of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Read the works of Livy, of Dion (if you can find Dion), of Herodotus, the Veneable Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English people, Alfred the Great, or the Chinese classic The Dream of the Red Chamber (aka Hong Luo Mong in Mandarin or The Story of the Stone). Find a book on the history of the Roman Catholic Church (which has a incredibly fascinating 2000 year history!) for ideas regarding politics surround your Cleric playing characters. For that matter, why not read British religious author Karen Armstrong'sA History of God, Camille Paglia's Sexual Personnae, or revisit the Bible for ideas? As of this reposting, I am reading The Mammoth Book of Pirates by Jon E. Lewis.
Do you want a true adventure story? Why not try reading Olaudah Equiano's The Interesting Narrative. Equiano was an West African, who in the 18th century was taken into the slave trade, but eventually won his freedom and became a loyal British subject. Equiano's true life story will blow your mind. If you have slavery (or realms where slavery is part of the social fabric) in some of your campaigns (which you will find was quite common in the ancient world), this story will breathe some terrifying reality for what that sorry institution was like for those who suffered from it.
Once you get on a kick for reading history and political science, you'll find more titles that are to your taste. You can find these books at most major book store chains, as they are published by Penguin Classics (for that matter, you might want to visit Penguin's website and look for them there).
So why would I suggest you start reading real human history instead of imaginary works by sci - fi or fantasy authors? Well for one, most authors themselves have read quite a bit of history and political science and plunder the past for ideas to write about. Tolkien did (and Rowling does) this, so why not you? More to the point, if you find yourself wracking your brains out looking for names that don't sound phony for your characters, for twisted mind bending situations for your hungry players to solve, and for broad historical / political situations as to why things are the way they are in your world, then why not read history and political works. All of these things are found in unending abundance in the works of history and political science.
Moreover, once you have absorbed a big idea from the past, with some imagination (isn't that why you play role playing games to begin with?), you can easily flesh out the ideas you have read about and work them into your campaigns. I would be willing to bet big money that you will never run out of ideas for characters, adventures, and situations to embroil your characters with.
"But wait," you cry! I don't like reading history. We read it in high school and all there is to history is reading what the three causes of the French and Indian War were and writing them down on an exam. Not only that, history is dry and boring! Who wants to know about the past, when what happened long ago has nothing to do with anything? Moreover, these are works of heavyweights! They are way out of my depth! Don't laugh at this last statement. Once per month, I attend a Tolkien gathering group, and more than a few people I meet get intimidated when a bring a history book with me to the gathering.
Well, well, well, gentle readers, if you start reading Edward Gibbon, you will be in for a very rude shock. You will find yourself reading the words of a man who makes the pages turn effortlessly. Many of these men are very easy to read, you just have to pick up the book and start reading them! Don't get intimidated by the idea that these "weighty" works are only for professors of the classics. They can be enjoyed by everyone, not just college students and their professors!
Also, if you happen to have some real money, try taking an actual vacation to China, India, anywhere in Europe, Mexico, or some other far away place. Open your mind and it will feed your imagination!
As for the issue that history can be dry and boring, that is probably because the history you read in a public high school is in fact dry and sanitized history because public tax dollars are at stake and plenty of interest groups don't want you to read too deeply about the past. Moreover one of my own thoughts about public schools is that they are really there to keep you off the streets during the day and not necessarily to teach you anything interesting.
So take my advice to heart. Put down those Star Trek and Ursula Le Guinn books and dig into the real thing. Not only will your campaigns probably become more interesting, people might start looking at YOU as a more interesting person.
Regards... oh, and as for the Greatest Dungeons and Dragons adventure in history? Well gentle readers, read on!
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Today's writing regards the greatest Dungeons and Dragons adventure ever told. This is no idle boast either! I was one of the original crowd of Dungeons and Dragons players. It is well known that the game was first conceived and invented circa 1974 by Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax. I was first introduced to the game in 1977, the same year Star Wars first came out. There were two brothers with whom I grew up with down the street and the older of the two came home around the time the school year ended with the game.
When David, the younger of the two told me of this new game, he had a bit of a hard time explaining what Dungeons and Dragons was and how to play the game. I distinctly remember him telling me that this game was unlike any other game in existence and that I would simply have to play the game in order to experience what it was like. A week or two later, Steve, the older of the two guided me through creating my first character - a magic user named Gandalf (how original!). Like so many others, we all immediately got hooked by the incredible imagination involved in the game. I still have my first books and some of my stuff from way back then.
I played in 6 or 7 "campaigns" (a series adventues in an imaginary world involving a group of characters created by a group of players for those of you who have no idea of what I am talking about) over the years when I was an active D&D player. All of these campaigns lasted somewhere between 3 - 18 months. As time went on, I specialized in "running" (creating and role playing) Magic User type characters. Magic Users are weak in using weapons and could not wear armor to protect themselves, but as time went on, the spells which came within their grasp became very potent and much feared. I fell in love with Magic Users and specialized in their play. I knew their spells up and down and could often put such powers to interesting and unexpected uses.
I've long since forgotten most of the adventures we had, but I do have one memory that I will remain with me as long as I live. I was playing at Nancon, which was sponsored annually by Nan's Toys and Games in Houston. It was 1983 and I had made it to the last round of the tournament playing a magic user. This adventure would tax my powers of imagination at problem solving to their very limits. It was my greatest moment in D&D play. Unexpectedly, I was to find many years later that my game play at this tournament was to become the stuff that legends are made of.
When we received our characters that we were to play in the 3rd and final round of play in the tournament, I was stunned. I was given a 17th level magic user! I couldn't believe it! I had never played any character remotely that powerful before and it took me about 45 minutes just to write down the spells my character had at his disposal for the tournament round! In a similar vein, all of my fellow players (there were six of us in the party), had characters ranging from 14 - 17 levels in ability! We were also loaded with very powerful magical items and weaponry. We soon found out why.
We were told at the outset of the game round that we (the six of us) served as the sole armed forces for a small "Switzerland" type City State far up in the mountains of our fictitious world. Our kingdom was normally safe from invaders, but there was little in the way of agriculture to support ourselves, so our little city - state relied largely on trade with the outside world to support itself. However, there was only one road that led to our fair city from the plains and fields that surrounded the mountains in which we were situated. This road normally served as our access and trade route to the outside world. There was, however, a problem....
The world had turned dark you see. We could see the skies turn cloudy and full of omens. We heard rumors that 3 evil and chaotic gods had come to invade and conquer our world. We had heard rumor that the world was frothing with horrible plagues and pestilences, but nothing of these potents had yet visited our little realm - not yet...
One morning, the denizens of our fair City all arose to find that there were100,000,000 (yes that's 100,000,000!) little Orc like demons were lined up blocking the road to our little paradise! They stood, crowding the entire width and breadth road for 75 miles! They were three feet tall and had only 4 hit points each. They did not move, they just stood there. They were armed with swords and spears, but they did not brandish them or threaten us with them. All they were doing was waiting for the citizens of our fair City state to roll over and die of starvation. With a sense of awe and horror, we knew we were in TROUBLE...
Our first thought was that "we are the most powerful characters in the world! We can just hurl tons of spells and attack then with wild and hideous abandon!" They can't possibly do anything to us! However, the game master laughed hideously and quickly squashed such idiotic ideas! He started telling us stories such as if our fighting men attacked with all of their might while our spell casting characters fired off all of our magic spells like fireballs and lightning bolts, it would take 27 years to clear the road. We would have to do better than that...
It began to dawn on us how many of these creatures there really were...
My fellow players went into a group think. We tried to think of other ideas that would be able to deal with such a vast horde of monsters. It began to dawn on us that the framework of the game Dungeons and Dragons was set up such that even the most powerful characters in the game would find it impossible to deal with the destruction of such an awe inspiring horde of creatures. We could defeat hundreds, even thousands, of creatures. Millions however, were absolutely out of the question.
We tried many ideas. We tried thinking of having our clerics cast Blade Barrier spells which would destroy monsters that would dare to pass the gate. However, the monsters weren't moving. We tried to change the weather in the hope that such an event would chase these monsters away. No such luck. We tried to summon various monsters and undead with the hope of scaring them away. Nope.
Finally at one point, we decided to send our Thief character on a voyage / adventure (we all possessed magic flying carpets as part of our incredible, but seeming useless arsenal of items we had at our disposal) in the hope that there was some artifact or powerful talisman that could destroy the awesome horde of passive beasts that sat there, waiting for our starvation. The rest of us would remain as guards in case the fell bite - sized demons decided to invade our Fair City State. They never did, but our Thief came back empty handed.
All seemed lost...
The Game Master spoke of a few issues and then went through the process of describing how the Thief was coming back to our Fair City State. We took pains to make it clear that our Thief was flying high over the mountains, out of range of bow and arrow shot of the demons which lined the road. The Game Master said he understood and our Thief was soon safe and back at home with us. Still, we were no nearer to solving our horrible dilemma.
In the meantime, I had drifted off into a dream. In my mind's eye, I imagined our Thief flying high in the air, out of bow shot of our little enemies. I saw the thief flying along the road and following it back to find his way back to our Fair City State.
And then... I had a Vision!
I had an Angle...
And it just might work...
Suddenly, my mind raced like lightning! My powers of imagination were blazing with excitement! Inside I was jumping up and down with the possibility that I had glimpsed a way out of this impossible situation! Inside, I shook with the amazement that I was on to something that bordered on the verge of greatness!
Quickly, I took out my First Edition Dungeons and Dragons Players Handbook. I looked up the Magic User spell, Wall of Fire. It was a 4th level spell, so it was easily with the power of my character to cast and wield such a spell. I read feverishly through the spell's description. I was looking for a prayer...
The description of the Wall of Fire spell read as follows:
Wall of Fire (Evocation)
...
...
This spell different from the fifth level Druid spell , Wall of Fire, ... (the difference between the spells was minimal).
So, I turned to the description of the Fifth level Druid Wall of Fire spell. It read as follows:
......
Only the side of the wall away from the spell caster will inflict damage. The opaque wall of fire lasts for as long as the character concentrates on it (or for a limited time if they do not - TMW). The spell could create an actual wall in front of the spell caster, or a ring of fire that surrounded the spell caster and moved with the spell caster if the spell caster decided to move somewhere.
I had my answer...
Quickly, I told my fellow players and Game Master of my idea. First, we would get all of my fellow players to get on to their magic flying carpets. Second, I would cast a "ring type" Wall of Fire spell on each of them so that the firewall would move along with them. Then, we would open the gates of Our Fair City and fly out of them on our flying carpets with the idea that we would mow these little Orc like demons down (like a Lawn Mower in Fact!) by flying right through them with our Wall's of Fire blazing a hellish and fiery trail in front of us.
It was impossible. My fellow players went wild! They absolutely could not believe that I had thought up such an idea. Seeing that nobody else had any other ideas, everyone agreed immediately to trying my plan.
At that point, the Game Master punched the clock that kept time as to how much time had passed during tournament play. We had 2 hours and 30 minutes of game time to complete the adventure, assuming that we would be able to get anywhere to begin with. We had already spent about 90 minutes trying to come up with an idea to destroy the 100,000,000 demons in front of us.
As we waited for the Game Master to return, we talked excitedly about what was to come just in case our plan worked. We didn't know what to expect next.
The Game Master came back. He said that he had conferred with the Tournament Director and that they had concluded that my use of these spells were in fact within the scope of the game rules. We immediately went into a celebratory frenzy - yelling, slapping each other's backs and giving each other "High Fives"! And so it was that we returned back to our Fair City having won the adoration of the populace and ruling classes.
The rest of the adventure was also memorable, but sadly we didn't complete the entire scenario. We ended up fighting one of the gods whom was visiting pestilence on our world, but time ran out while we were in the midst of combat. We never found out what else was to follow.
That tournament was the end of innocence for me. I went on to my adult life and gaming grew to be of less and less importance. I did go back to play 2 or 3 more tournaments in my adulthood, but they didn't have the excitement they had of my youth.
Ten more years passed before I went to my last game tournament. I was 27 years old and had just quit working for the much hated Data Company. I had quit with no job lined up, but I had to save my sanity. I went to a game tournament with the hope of taking my mind off of my real life woes.
During the second round of the tournament, I found myself playing (yes!) a Magic User. We were six adventurers who were out trying to watch the son of a ruling monarch of a seafaring based empire. The City we were in was, naturally, a sea port and we were told to follow "Junior" while he went out on a night on the town. It was a good adventure and as usual, I came up with some timely solutions to some awful situations.
We were playing this round of the tournament at a very late hour, perhaps 11:30pm - 12:00am on a Saturday night. At one point during play, the Game Master, along with a long time Houston area gamer / Tournament Director whom I remembered from years gone by, had decided to order some pizza from a nearby restaurant. We all decided to join him. So we stopped the game when the food arrived.
As we sat eating our late night repast, several of my fellow game players had noticed my abilities at playing a Magic User character. At that point, I decided to tell them the story about my classic defeat of the 100,000,000 demons from 10 long years before. My fellow players were spell bound as they heard my now legendary story from years gone by...
And I was to discover that my story had indeed become a legend! While I told my story, both the Game Master whom was handling our game and the Tournament Director (who was lying down on a couch in the hotel room we were playing our game in) immediately broke in. They were buzzing with excitement and started laughing when I spoke! "Oh, my gosh, the Wall of Fire story!" yelled the Tournament Director as he laughed aloud. Clearly, they knew the story, but they said that they never had met anyone who had played the game! Some players had actually told them that they heard that the story was nothing but a myth and a legend! Both men said it was an honor to have met me and the game master actually shook my hand!
The Game Master then told me a very interesting fact about what had happened to Dungeons and Dragons after that tournament. During the years, the Game had gone through one of its changes and new rule books had been published. One of the rule changes in the new Game Players Handbook was that the Wall of Fire spell had been changed so that a magically created Wall could be avoided by adversaries. The Game Master told me that after that tounament I had played in 10 years before, word went out everywhere like wild fire about my classic solution to the impossible situation of destroying 100,000,000 monsters with this spell. Therefore, everyone who ever heard the story (and both the Game Master and the Tournament Director told me that the story had in fact been told far and wide) started using the spell in this way - if they were powerful enough to actually use the spell. This eventually resulted in a rewriting of the game rules regarding the powers of this spell.
I was dumbfounded. Nearly everyone who played Dungeons and Dragons claimed at one time or another that they had done something or another that resulted in a change in the game rules, but never offered any proof. I cannot be certain that my case was the reason the rules were changed regarding this spell, but it cannot be doubted that such an act made an incredible impression on my fellow players.
This is the first of what will probably be a slew of ideas involving role playing games. I've been inspired to write these because of the frenzy accompanying the release of the last Harry Potter book.
I've noted elsewhere that I get visits from hapless game masters looking for Dungeons and Dragons adventure ideas. I was watching the History Channel the other day and came up with the following ideas just by watching a one hour program:
1) Why not have your characters go on a state or government sponsored expedition to locate the source of a great river? Perhaps the city or town where they happen to be lives and dies by what happens to the river and it would be of interest to the inhabitants of the town or city to know all they can.
2) Who knows? Maybe there is gold mine at the river's source? In effect your players would become prospectors. If there was an undiscovered gold mine, then surely that would attract the attention of rival political powers, powerful non player characters, nasty monsters and so on. Think of what happened in Tolkien's The Hobbit after Smaug the Dragon was killed. A fierce scramble ensued to battle over the slain dragon's hoard. Players might find themselves fighting to hold on to their new treasures or having to use their diplomatic skills to do the same.
3) One issue that was pointed out in the History Channel program is that adventurers and explorers of human history often didn't find what it was that they were looking for. For example, Ponce De Leon did not find the Fountain of Youth, nor did Christopher Columbus find a passage to India.
4) Remote islands in our own world are often used as prisons. Devil's Island off of Guyana was used by the French for generations and housed many of France's most famous convicts. Adventurers could be asked to free some prisoners off of such an island.
5) Game Masters should really think twice before they use the old "there's a nearby dungeon which used to belong to an old wizard" adventure. Why? If there really was an old dungeon nearby, then chances are that if there was treasure in the dungeon, then other more powerful non player characters would have already gone on an expedition to plunder those riches.
And speaking of information and law, I will be writing more about these matters in RPG's soon.
Long, long ago, in a land not so far away, I was once a player of RPG's aka Role Playing Games. I retired from this past time many years ago, but my mind returned to the idea of RPG's recently. The reason I started thinking about RPG's was, strangely enough, because of the issue of the Kelo vs. City of New London ruling rendered by the United States Supreme Court. One argument that was raised by the entire issue was whether the SCOTUS even has the power to render a decision on this matter at all. There is no grant of power given to the SCOTUS in the United States Constitution to render Local or State acts as unconstitutional. Only in what some have described as a "power grab made in perpetuity" was that power taken by the SCOTUS in Marbury vs. Madison. There is an additional matter of whether there should be some overriding mechanism that overrides SCOTUS decisions.
As for the issue of Role Playing Games and power (how in the Hades did Supreme Court decisions come into a discussions about Role Playing Games anyway and where was all of this leading to by the way?), one of the problems that all RPG's which are "medieval" or "magically" based is what to do about the issue of magic, magic use, and the power granted to players by its use. The classic RPG is, of course, Dungeons and Dragons. In D&D (or Advanced Dungeons and Dragons - AD&D), there were several types of player characters (and non - player characters, who were often played or acted out by the Game Master) who could use or wield magic. These characters included several different kinds / flavors of Magic Users, as well as Clerics (holy men who actively worshiped a Deity), Druids (nature priests who guarded and harnessed the power of the natural world), and some other characters who could wield minor magic powers.
Many monsters, beasts, or other dastardly creatures could also wield magic powers of various kinds. Their powers were largely dependent on the "nature of the beast" for a lack of a better idea in mind. Case in point: Vampires were powerful undead monsters who wielded a number of magical powers in addition to possessing a number of intrinsic magical abilities that were inherent to being a vampire. Vampires could charm those who gazed upon them, summon night creatures such as bats and wolves, and so forth.
The problem that magic posed in games like D&D / AD&D was that eventually characters could become so powerful and proficient in the use of magic that it became progressively more and more difficult to come up with new situations and new scenarios with which to challenge the player's characters. The premise of the game is somewhat like that of the Game of Life that we all play. Players start off weak and poor in wealth and experience. After weeks and months of game play, characters grow in strength, experience, and wealth - again much like the Game of Life that we all play. Again though, the magical powers that become progressively more within the reach of players becomes so great that it eventually destroys - well - the balance of power of the game.
To give an example, say for just a moment that you are a Game Master who has created an adventure for your players. The adventure involves completing a quest to gain some great artifact or talisman located in an ancient tower which happens to be located in the middle of a desert that is 4,000 miles across. The tower was build eons ago and the sands of time and nature have literally swept over this monument. Stories have been told for generations that many a great adventurer has died trying to attain the Great Talisman and gain incalculable fame and fortune in doing so.
Now the idea of traversing 2,000 miles of hot, waterless desert should daunt even the most bold and daring of adventurers, but your players hear of the story and laugh. Why? Because they have a Cleric who can cast a "Create Food and Water" spell and have magic flying carpets. They will simply zoom across the desert in their roomy 5-speed flying carpets, all the while enjoying the luxuries of wine and meat that is easily provided daily by the Cleric. Indeed, the Cleric could conceivably cast a Create Food and Drink spell every few hours and presto, the adventurers would enjoy sumptuous repast after sumptuous repast without missing a beat. The wonder created by Christian Miracle of Christ feeding the multitudes becomes rather commonplace in the world of D&D / AD&D. Well, so much for that adventure...
So what to do about this sad state of affairs? One idea is to change the "gaming system" by which the rules of the game are played. The creators of "The Lord of the Rings" roleplaying game, have taken a different approach to creating characters which help limit the potency of magic in their RPG. They have players create characters which have levels of weariness and stamina which can be weakened by heavy magic use. Spells cast by characters can tire out the magician, which eventually inhibit the characters' performance in game play. This is in stark contrast to D&D / AD&D where there were relatively few such constraints on spell casting and use. Also, the strength of the magic spells that are available to characters in the LOTR RPG verses classical D&D / AD&D is much lower.
I have a degree in Economics and strangely enough, it really helps to think in economic terms when it comes to these issues. A co-worker of mine, a rather geeky fellow, once commented that he didn't like reading fantasy based genre books. Nor did he like playing fantasy based RPG's. His big thing was science fiction based games and reading sci - fi books. Why? His issue with magic was that there was rarely any rational reason for its existence, nor rationality behind the magic. He could discern some rationality, if even at a threadbare level, out of science fiction. There had to be at least some science in the science fiction!
That is a good point to start from when dealing with the issue of magic. The first idea we can use Economics with in regards to magic is that TANSTAAFL. What in the world does that mean? Simple: There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch! In other words, there is a price to pay for wielding the power of magic and that price must be paid for. As an add on, there must be a positive correlation or direct relationship between the power of the magic that is to be used and how much of a price that must be paid to wield that power.
One idea which helps throw barriers in the way of magic using characters gaining greater powers via spell use is to mandate that it takes plenty of time to memorize and master new spells. This is like saying in economic terms that the fixed costs in acquiring new property (spells and spell knowledge) is being raised. In a similar train of thought, another problem with D&D / AD&D was that many spells, once learned or acquired, required relatively little out the spell caster in the way of time, money, or materials to cast spells. Indeed some spells could effectively be cast almost instantaneously. This would be like saying that the marginal cost of casting spells once acquired are negligible, and since decisions are made on the margin, then there is going to be an awful lot of magic being used.
For those of you who have done little formal study of economics, think of a company like Microsoft. The cost to Microsoft of developing a new version of Windows is high both in terms of money and time (the Windows Vista OS has taken 5 years to develop), but once all of the code has been written, Microsoft can then create millions of CD's and DVD's which have a licensed verison of Windows on them for pennies on the dollar and can sell all of those copies for $200 or more. In other words, the fixed cost is high, but the marginal cost producing Windows is nearly zero. The same with many spells in D&D / AD&D.
If one wants to create a game which helps rein in the strength of magic using characters, it would be much more realistic to create a gaming system which is closer to that of the LOTR RPG. In effect, what I am advocating is that RPG's need to consider raising the marginal cost of employing magic to players. Instead, various other methods of reining in magic using characters have been employed, such as decreeing that magicians cannot use any weapons greater than a staff, a dagger, or a knife. Magicians are prohibited from wearing most forms of normal armor to protect themselves with, while also making them easier to slay in terms of how much in wounds and physical harm the magician can take vis - a - vis other characters. Ultimately though, if a magician manages to survive, their powers become so formidible that they are often easily able to overcome such limitations on their physical strengths and abilities.
The situation was somewhat different for Clerics, Druids, and other spell casting character classes, but again the general observation was that these other character classes were eventually able to wield enough power via their spell casting abilities to arguably effectively upset the balance of power in the game. That in turn made coming up with new challenges for players a difficult chore for game masters.
Therefore to create a RPG which more naturally reins in spell casters and which raises the marginal cost of employing magic, it makes more sense to put other forms of checks on their abilities to use magic. The LOTR RPG says that magicians have the potential to become physically worn out by use of magic.
Another idea would be that in order to employ spells which are going to be of long duration, the spell caster would be required to concentrate solely on the task at hand and would not be able to perform any other tasks. In the Lord of the Rings for example, the Fellowship is climbing Caradhras when a massive snow storm hits. The Fellowship had brought wood along with them, but nobody could get a fire going. Eventually Gandalf steps in and employs magic to kindle the wood and get the fire going. The fire stays lit for most of the night, arguably saving the lives of a few of Gandalf's companions.
In a revised RPG setting which whose goal would be to rein in magical powers, a feat such as kindling a fire which is meant to last for a long period of time might require that the magician concentrate solely on keeping the fire going for at least one-fourth to one-half of the desired time period. For example, if a fire was to last for 12 hours, then the magician would need to concentrate on nothing but casting a "Light Up Fire" spell for 3-6 hours. The casting of the spell could be done quickly, but the magician would have to expend willpower of some kind or measure for the required 3-6 hours to keep the blaze going for the desired 12 hour time duration. If the magician is disturbed in some way during the 3-6 hour time frame, then poof! - out goes the fire and our heroes might freeze to death. In a similar vein, other spells which would be intended to last for long periods might need a concerted spending of a magician's will in order to make (and keep) them effective.
A good example of what I am talking about with regards to payment in time and effort from casting a spell can be derived from watching director John Boorman's excellent 1981 movie Excalibur.In the film, the wizard Merlin, played by Scottish actor Nichol Williamson, casts a spell upon King Uther Pendragon which turns Uther into the physical likeness of his rival, the Duke Lord Cornwall. The reason for doing this was that Uther had seen Cornwall's wife, Igraine, and had decided he wanted to - ahem - spend the night alone with her and get to know her a little better. Merlin did this via casting a spell, but the liason between Uther and Igraine produced Arthur. In the subsequent scenes, Merlin comes to claim Arthur, as Uther had sworn to Merlin that in return for his magical aid, he would get to keep the fruits of the night's labor between Uther and Igraine. In the scene, Merlin says that he "slept for nine moons" to recover from casting the spell which turned Uther into the likeness of the Duke. The idea that Merlin had to rest for 9 months after performing this potent magic was extraordinarily high, but it realistically reflected the idea that Merlin was empowering a man to enjoy a night with a woman who did not love him and that a child was born out of one night's affair.
A brief aside here: Another little noticed aspect of Merlin's use of magic in that scene in Excalibur was that Merlin helped manage to avoid a long and costly civil war and siege of Cornwall's castle by employing this magic, but those issues were also hastened by the deaths of both Duke Cornwall and Uther Pendragon.
Another idea for raising the marginal cost of employing magic would involve the idea that spellcasters might fail to cast the spell. Probabilities could be assigned that spell casting failure would occur, even for the simplest of spells. Of course the greater the wizard, the less likelihood that a spell failure would result, indicating that the magician would be getting more proficient in casting such spells. There would be fallout from failing to cast a spell correctly. The harm that is inflicted on spellcasters, taken in the form of lost hit points, lost constitution points and what not, that resulted from spell failures would become progressively greater as the spells become greater in power.
Spell failures could take numerous forms. A cleric casting a healing spell which fails could end up harming the person which the cleric is attempting to heal. Cure Disease spells don't end up curing the patient, food or water created becomes unedible or undrinkable, a wizard casing a fireball at his enemies ends up striking his friends instead. A Druid who tries to summon some horses but fails to cast the spell correctly would simply end up with no horses coming to his / her beck and call. The possibilites are endless.
Eventually the idea rises that a spellcaster could end up incapacitating himself by casting spells that end up overtaxing them, as was discussed in the exampe of Merlin. Spellcasters in such situations would find themselves thinking twice about the opportunity costs involved in employing powerful magical spells that could potentially leave them crippled.
Now that we have laid out these ideas, we could borrow ideas from the LOTR RPG whereby a spellcaster could cast two or more spells at one time. More accurately, after one spell is cast and is in effect, another spell could be started. In D&D / AD&D, this is not possible. Spellcasting in D&D / AD&D used to be serial in nature. One spell would be cast and done, then another could be started in its turn. As long as a spellcaster is not too fatigued, then why not allow the spellcaster to cast multiple spells in succession? Indeed why not allow spellcasters to bundle spells together or put extra "will power" or energy, perhaps in the form of taking hit points of damage, to put some extra strength into a spell as long as they are able. The extra strength of will expended through taking hit points of damage could result in making an attack spell more powerful, extend the range of a spell or its duration.
In the D&D / AD&D world, the mode of measuring a characters' ability to take harm is in the form of "hit points". To align measures with penalties on spellcasters, failed spells and what not would also require spellcasters to take "hit points" of damage. Either that, or in extreme circumstances, players could be required to drop an entire level of experience in their abilities, or could be required to lose some points in some trait such as constitution. Players or Game Masters could get very creative in their ideas with regards to this. In the example of a "Create Fire" spell mentioned above for example, a lowly magician with, say, 5 hit points could easily cast such a spell to save our heroes from freezing to death. Now, there are already spell durations defined in every spell in the game, but one could throw in the idea that the spell caster could expend hit points in order to keep the fire going for the length of time needed to keep his comrades alive during a long brutal winter storm. That idea could be perhaps used in conjunction with the idea that the spell caster would need to concentrate on keeping a fire going for a long time and perform no other duties while doing so.
A similar line of thought could be employed when characters attempt to use magical items. Magic items are part and parcel of the D&D game. Players usually acquire a number of magical items of various kinds over the time of their charcter's lives. One could employ rules which make the employment of some of these items more difficult, such as requiring that crystal balls need some kind of will power test to employ them to see visions. Magicians using a staff, wands, or rods might also need to pass some will power test (or expend hit points for example) to successfully employ these items.
These are ideas for the future of Role Playing. RPG's, and D&D in particular, have been and continue to be wonderfully creative experiences for many players. The problem with magic in D&D (or AD&D) is that the price for using it has arguably been set too low and as with anything else where the price is very low, then the consumption of the product in question will be very high. Also, it is often taken for granted by game players that magic will always work when desired, when throughout history and in many fictional settings, the employment of magic was often considered to be an mystical, arcane, uncertain, and indeed terrifying thing to persue. In a sense, I should invoke the old saw that magic is counted on as being a prehistorical substitute for technology. What I am offering here is a refinement of what already is a great thing and pointing out that by revisiting and revising the rules by which magic is used, we can restore some of the Uncertainty, Heroism, Wonder, and - well - Magic back into Role Playing Games.