[gurps] Worldbuilder PDF recommendation

[hal at buffnet.net]

At 08:04 AM 3/29/2007 -0400, you wrote:
>On 3/29/07, hal at buffnet.net <hal at buffnet.net> wrote:
>>  One of the fun things I'm getting from the PDF is the idea that based on
>> the technological expertise of mining in the early centuries - that some
>> mines played out because they could not delve too much deeper than the
>> local water table without flooding.
>
>It's remarkable how much mining drove power-producing technologies.
>Really efficient treadmills, superior waterwheels, and steam engines
>were all developed in order to pump water out of mines.
>
>> One thing that GM's
>> may want to keep at the back of their minds regarding the "SEEK EARTH"
>> spell in GURPS MAGIC is that some of those metal lodes might either be
>> incapable of being worked by normal means due to the rock they were
>> embedded within, or that they might lie below the water table making it
>> nearly impossible to get out via normal methods.
>
>Of course, it would only take a handful of other water and earth
>spells to handle those problems.

One of these days, I'm going to have to expand on some writing regarding
the use of magic users in society :)  I have this disgusting tendency to
treat mages as "coins" that one needs to spend to achieve a given effect
within society.  Thus, to have a mage who specializes in mining requires
that he be "spent" on that process.  A mage who is "spent" on healing
spells is useless for mining, and so on and so forth.  I'm also  fond of
utilizing what I call the generational approach where if say, 2% of any
given population have magery of any kind, that roughly 1/3 of those budding
mages will be children.  I do recall at some point in time, there was this
guy at the Forums who was planning on determining the spell prerequisite
charts such that the availability of any given spell within society was
randomly available, or at least a given percentage of those who'd know the
spells would be within a given mageborn population.  Alas, I never saw
anything further.  Just out of curiosity, is there anyone interested in the
topic enough to begin discussing it as a hypothetical exercise in world
building on this list?  If so, I'd be happy to see if we can organize this
in a fashion that might be of interest for the list as a whole.  


>My wife's food blog is quite interesting:

You know, that signature statement looooooks so familiar ;)  Always good to
see you dude.  Now to figure out which of the 12 signs was a bad sign at
the time of your birth ;)

          Hal