Problematic spell words in Donjon

[aplath]

Hello all,

I've just finished reading my copy of Donjon and so far it is exactly what I expected, which is pretty good. I can't wait to try it and that will probably be soon enough.

However, while talking with some friends about Donjon something came up that made us wonder. Since I haven't seen it mentioned in any posts, perhaps it is a non-issue, but anyway ...

Some of my friends (mainly the min-max guys) started wondering about which words would be interesting to choose for a spellcasting PC. And most of the words that came up were verbs like "kill", "destroy", "create" or "animate".

Without having any actual play experience with Donjon I wonder if those choices for words wouldn't create too powerful wizards and what measures would be fit to control that.

A few come to mind, like limiting the use of "kill" or "destroy" to damaging the target instead of actually killing or destroying it or tying the level or worth of whatever is "created" or "animated" to the number of successes gained in the roll.

So, I guess my question is... are there any known problematic words in the experience of those who have played Donjon ?

Note that I'm more curious than worried. Donjon has passed the first test of any RPG material for me that is the reading. The final and more important test, actual play, is just around the corner and looking good. As I said, I just can't wait. :-)

thanks,

Andreas

[Bob McNamee]

One Golden Rule for Donjon GMing.

If it annoys you...be literal.

Boring is bad too...magic should be interesting, or else don't make a magician.

Hmm... still verbs are fine by rules...but boring by themselves

"kill"... "Kill Bolt"...sorry can't try to wing him
Now combine "Cloud" and "Kill" and you've got classic AD&D!

A set of words like
Cloud, Kill, Cloak, and Courage

Now there's potential! Even without making up neat names!

Cloud Kill - noxious gases,
Cloak Kill  - stangled by own garments,
Cloud Cloak - fog cover,
Courage Cloak - imbues with courage
Kill Cloud - removes clouds from the sky
Kill Courage - creates fear

etc...

There's some good threads where folks haves used the magic system to make specialized Ninjas powers etc

[Paganini]

IIRC, Donjon is like HeroQuest. You can call it whatever you want, but a Kill spell doesn't actually kill anything, unless it kills something mechanically.

[jdagna]

Paganini is right.  To a very large degree, all spell words provide is color.  A fireball and a death bolt are essentially the same mechanically.  In fact, when I played with Clinton himself as a GM, he interpreted spell words so liberally that you could get practically any effect out of any word (for example the word "grave" built a bridge over a river, using gravestones to explain how the word fit in).  I prefer a much stricter policy (because then you really have uses for many different words), but the effects still stem from the mechanics.  And, either way you interpret it, vague, colorful words (fire, grave, cloud) are almost always more useful and cool than things like kill or destroy.

[aplath]

Thanks for the responses ...

Well, after reading the responses and giving it some thought I think there's not much to worry about.

I made a few tests with a friend and it looks like if we keep the mechanics in mind and don't allow an excessive stretching of the meaning of the words everything shall run smoothly.

Andreas