One of the fun things about getting into The Fantasy Trip again is fleshing out the spell list from the wealth of resources available today. Admittedly the spell list in Advanced Wizard was more of a starting point for wizards, not a complete end-all listing. Spells need to be "borrowed" from sources… And here is some help converting spells from GURPS to TFT.
The biggest difference between spells in GURPS and TFT is the use of Magery for wizardly ability, and how character points are used to determine how many spells a wizard can learn. The treatment of spells as Hard and Very Hard skills factors largely in how many spells a wizard can learn–and how well he or she can cast them.
One way of adapting spells from GURPS to TFT would be to just use the GURPS character point and magic system. That would add more complexity and in my mind get in the way of the simplicity of TFT. That would start making TFT… Well, GURPS.
A different way to convert the spells is to just treat normal GURPS spells as normal AW spells, with Very Hard spells counting as 2 spells instead of 1. Magery would not be needed–it is assumed that if the character is a wizard, he or she has Magery. Individual costs and effects would be modified as needed on a case by case basis.
I think the spell cost is roughly equal between the two systems, but that will have to be adjusted on a case by case basis. This is especially true of spells that would ruin game balance by having too little cost and too high an impact.
Two other differences between GURPS and TFT are the absence of IQ requirements in GURPS and the categorization of the individual spells. The IQ requirements could be added in as spells are converted, as well as the categorization. The more complex the spell, or the more prerequisites, the higher the required IQ.
As I convert spells I will post them here. If anyone has any ideas or disagreements, feel free to comment or talk about it in the Forums!
Marko ∞
(Originally published on inthelabyrinth.org, on 2/22/2015.)
