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| by Charles Keegan |
Any ideas?
Mince Pie Fest 2024: Waitrose No 1
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These often get picked as the best supermarket mince pies by the gutter
press, so let's see. The pastry has a good texture, firm but also soft, but
is mayb...
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Posts
I believe it originates in "The Lords of Quarmall," along with the ability of thieves to unreliably activate them.
ReplyDeleteWeren't their one shot scroll like magic items in old middle eastern stories?
ReplyDeletecertainly not the originator, but one of the novels connected with Zork has scrolls that work like in D&D. In fact, they're the PRIMARY way that magic-users in that setting can do magic
ReplyDeleterules of young people playing pretend- "you can only do it once!" Best seen in Calvinball.
ReplyDeleteYes, Leiber's "The Lords of Quarmall" would be the source for this, as Cole points out.
ReplyDeleteYou may turn in your OSR membership badge at the door as you leave, for not already knowing that ;).
I'll third "The Lords of Quarmall."
ReplyDelete"You may turn in your OSR membership badge at the door as you leave, for not already knowing that ;)"
ReplyDeleteThe truth of the matter is I don't read nearly as much fantasy or science fiction as the typical gamer does. Usually I'm much more up for some solid non-fiction, 'serious' literature or trashy comic books.
Not that it needs more support, but "The Lords of Quarmall" is definitely the source of the D&D scroll.
ReplyDeleteIt also appears in at least one of Vance's "Dying Earth" stories, though I don't recal which one. The spell was written on pottery shards I think, and the writing faded as it was taken into the character's mind. There was no suggestion though that he was casting it directly, just "learning" it (in D&D terms)
ReplyDelete@Jeff - Just giving you a hard time. I should read more seriously literature and nonfiction myself.. But you can keep the comics :). However, there's a fair amount of good stuff (Leiber, Vance, etc.) in fantasy (not to mention SF) mixed in with the execrable trash like Brooks, Eddings, et al. All published before about 1980.
ReplyDelete@Fitz - At first I said to myself, "Naw, that's not right," but the more I think about it the more I seem to recall something along those lines in one of the Cugel books by Vance (Cugel the Clever or Eyes of the Overworld). The Mouser's scroll from Sheelba is by far the purer example, though, I think.
I'm amazed that nobody can remember an example of a novel where someone reads from a magic paper and the spell goes off and the paper gets burned up. Is it just my contact with D&D that makes me think this is super common?
ReplyDelete