Goodman Games

I love the following from the Beta rules:

There are 716 wizard spells. No more, no less. This number is known because Leetore the Limicker, a great mage of the fourth aeon, successfully contacted a somnolent elder god that sussurated several secrets (in limerick form, of course) before drowsing off forever.

I post it here in the hopes that I can encourage more such flavor in the final draft. The above passage is shamelessly channeling Jack Vance, and I dig it. Anyone else have examples of non-rules bits they like in the rules? Please, dear authors, give us more of the same.

Actually, I didn't like that in the book but haven't really complained about because I know the great Leetore misunderstood the sibilant speakings of the sleepy god.

There should be similar text explaining the number for Mighty Deeds of Arms that can possibly done aside from the "standard 7".

One of my favourites is;

What man calls free will is but the options remaining after destiny and the gods have made their plays.

Personally I like the flavor text, although I see it in much the same way as the awesome GM-only maps where it's possible that only a small percentage of the participants may experience it.

And so we see the problem with open playtests among so many people: one person's favorite aspect is also someone else's least favorite.

We've seen this with so many elements of this game so far -- character level range, attribute range, number of spells, levels (or not) of spells, importance of luck, rate of healing, and so on. Joseph has gotten us started and somewhere along the line he'll have to weigh in on this and the other topics so that we can all see the direction that the game is headed. My guess is that he will consider flavor text to be a significant part of of the atmosphere of the RPG, but we'll have to wait and see.

jmucchiello wrote:Actually, I didn't like that in the book but haven't really complained about because I know the great Leetore misunderstood the sibilant speakings of the sleepy god.

Why don't you like it? Not sure if serious.

Drew wrote:

jmucchiello wrote:Actually, I didn't like that in the book but haven't really complained about because I know the great Leetore misunderstood the sibilant speakings of the sleepy god.

Why don't you like it? Not sure if serious.

It's too specific. And I've been saying there should not be a lot of spells if you've noticed. 716 is outrageously high to me.

jmucchiello wrote:It's too specific. And I've been saying there should not be a lot of spells if you've noticed. 716 is outrageously high to me.

I think that number is meant to be "flavour", not a proscription for what will be presented in the rules (either core or expansion).

Agreed. It's not like there are actually any plans to write up 716 spells or anything like that. It's just a way to say "the world is real and here is a detail" and it's a large enough number that we should never actually attain it.

I'm going to house rule that there are only 666 spells in my campaign. (See what I did there?)