This came up at last night's game, so I tracked it down. "Gandalf is only a 5th level magic-user," proof that snooty nerds have been doing powerscaling dick-wavery since time immemorial.
oh, that shrunk some
(As best as I can tell, no one took the writer up on this.)
powerscaling was a mistake
but stefan
how else could we know if batman could beat jack flagg if we can't scale him off of captain america's feats?
...some people really need to like... touch grass
anyone who tries to make a "hard" magic system is my eternal enemy and will never see heaven
given that this was published in March of '76, it's entirely possible that he's now spending all of his time pushing grass up from the bottom.
oh, the guy who gets co-credit for the first use of "min-maxing" in print
That tracks.
A Sin in the Past – The Argothald Journal he has some opinions about having written it, though.
(mostly, they boil down to "good lord, i was full of myself at 17 years old".)
At least he's got a sense of humor about it. I hadn't realized it was only a teenager writing that, I was picturing someone quite a bit older.
But I guess the Dragon was trying to scrape up everyone they could back then.
ohhhhh he's totally forgiven if he was 17
I hate D&D magic systems. In this essay, I will --
(I won't, but I do. I don't think they needed to base the magic system on Dying Earth. I don't think it's fun or cool. Etc etc etc.)
(Ok, Prismatic Spray is cool.)