Fantasy Hero Grimoire question

[Chris Goodwin]

Will there be an online supplement to the Grimoire similar to the USPD?

[Yamo]

Instead of creating another, semi-redundant thread, I'd like to add my own question here if it's okay.

Q: With a dozen seperate magic systems in Fantasy Hero and GMs everywhere already busy creating dozens (if not hundreds) more, how I can be assured that this book will have enough usable bits to be worth the price for someone using any particular one of them?

Not that I'm not going to buy the book no matter what, but I could really use some explaination to ease my mind a little here as to its general usefulness across masgic systems. Anyone in the know at Hero Games care to give me the FHG pitch; to "sell" me on it, so to speak?

[MarkusDark]

My thought would be that if you already have set magic items, spells and such like, perhaps you won't need it. However, if you found the USPD useful, I'd say you'd find the FHG just as useful, if not moreso.

[Monolith]

Originally posted by Yamo
Not that I'm not going to buy the book no matter what, but I could really use some explaination to ease my mind a little here as to its general usefulness across masgic systems. Anyone in the know at Hero Games care to give me the FHG pitch; to "sell" me on it, so to speak?
The main thing to keep in mind is that no matter what magic system is used the power still come down to vary basic concepts. The cost of a spell is still the cost of a spell. It is what you do with it when incorporating it into your chosen spell system that makes a difference.

For example, a Fireball spell in the FH Grimoire might be 50 Active Points and 10 Real Points. Now if your spell system of choice involves Multipower or Variable Power Pools you still need to know the Active Points cost of the spell. That aspect of spell creation does not change. By the same token your spell system might involve the mage paying 1 point for each 10 Active Points in the spell, but then making a Magic Skill roll based on the Real Points value. The good thing about the FH Grimoire is that you still get the basic themes of hundreds of spells and a rough idea of general cost.

Ultimately I think the Grimoire will be like the USPD. The main differences will be that spell types will have a consistent SFX base (meaning Fire Magic of Fragrenzen might show all the spells as having Gestures, Incantation, and OAF-Lava stone Limitations). No one product is going to be 100% useful to every possible magic system, but in a product like the FH Grimoire the themes of the spells can be just as important as the final point costs, IMO.

[Monolith]

Originally posted by archer
Will there be an online supplement to the Grimoire similar to the USPD?
I do not know if DOJ plans on doing an online database for this or not. I seem to recall Steve saying something about not wanting to do too many as they are time consuming. As with my suggestion for the Spacer's Toolkit database though, it could still be possible for the fans to contribute ideas to a "sticky" thread in the desired forum.

[Steve Long]

At this particular point in time I don't plan to have any sort of online supplementation. Just keeping up with the Online USPD is enough work. Trying to also manage an Online Grimoire, where literally anything could work, would be a nightmare.

In terms of utility, the book's spells are written in a fairly "generic" fashion. They tend to use common spell Limitations -- Focus, Gestures, Incantations, Requires A Skill Roll -- with options to add others, remove those, etc. Since I obviously can't design every spell to fit every magic system, I design the spells so that they're highly likely to fit the vast majority of systems with little or no effort on the GM's part. If you use some really weird magic system, then you're going to have to do more work to adapt the spells -- but that's the choice you made, since it's not reasonable to devise an unusual system and then expect published products to hew closely to it at the expense of the consuming public as a whole.

I suspect that once the FHG is available, GMs will be inclined to create systems that closely mimic the one it simulates, or to adapt their existing systems to it. That way they and their players gain the benefits of the product. Similarly, most people playing D&D use the D&D magic system because it's already available, and thus convenient; they don't create their own.

But fortunately, we're not limited to just the one system. If you don't like the idea of creating your own, we'll have various Fantasy setting books with their own magic systems and spells. But of course, none of them will be as extensive as the FHG; they could never be, due to size restrictions. Instead, in addition to whatever new spells a setting requires, I'll include in those books a section on how to select appropriate FHG spells and adapt them: "For the Blanketyblah Realms, you can use any spell in the FHG, but you must choose the option that has Side Effects."

[Yamo]

It's good that you're apparently going to have point costs and options for the spells without some of the "standard" Limitations. The older Fantasy Hero spells all had RSR, for example. Since I *hate* RSR for fantasy magic, I had to redo the math for every single one I wanted to use. It will be great if the FHG can eliminate or at least alleviate that somewhat.