A Spell A Week
I saw somewhere online that someone was trying to write up a spell each week—and I wondered if I could do that, too.
How long can I keep the streak alive?
I saw somewhere online that someone was trying to write up a spell each week. That made me think of the Dungeon 52 Challenge that went around last year—and I wondered if I could do that with spells, too.
Converting Spells or Creating New Ones
I have been gathering spell lists from various games for a few years now, intending to convert them to Blades & Black Magic. Now that I have moved on to Barbarians of Lemuria, I want to convert them to that game.
The question is whether that is something suitable for this challenge, or do I need to do 100% completely new spells?
That’s a fascinating question, and I think the answer is a mix of both. Working out spells for a Swords & Sorcery game or setting narrows down the list of possible magics a bit, and it also focuses you on how those spells are described.
On one hand, most of the classic spells laid out in games like Dungeons & Dragons or The Fantasy Trip are geared towards dungeon crawling—very much tactical in use and feel. Not all, but most. On the other hand, Swords & Swords literature and games are much more geared towards magics that drive story—major plot devices, etc.
So the question about simply converting simple spells from other games is not all that simple. Yes, you can do that with common spells that all sorcerers would need to be worth their salt. But it is the more complex, deeper spells that really are the ones you want to convert or come up with. Those are the ones I want to play with and post here.
Full Disclosure
I have tried this before—and failed. I tried the Dungeon 52 challenge and found it very hard to maintain the focus of doing this every week, week after week. Yeah. With all I have going on in my life, and my own personal weaknesses, I just find it hard to keep that focus for that long.
I’m not going to make any promise that I will make the whole year doing this. Nope. But I am going to promise that I will try, and come up with some cool spells for Barbarians of Lemuria along the way.
I’m going to post a spell a week here on this website, in BoL terms. Most of them will be conversions of spells from other games, but I will post a few new ones, ones that are my own. A great number of spells in various games are all really just the same ones, duplicated for in that game’s terms. I am going to try to add something new to each—and some possible variations that can make them different or more interesting.
We’ll see how this goes. All of these spells are completely free, and free for anyone to use. The only thing I ask is if you use one of my new spells in a published game, you make a note that you got it from me. But really—have fun. As much fun as I will behaving coming up with them!
Marc