Brandon Sanderson Lecture 9: Sanderson's Second Law of Magic (7/7)

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[christiepowell]

I loved his description of video games here, because when I'm in a certain mood I love to ask questions like this. So, Harry Potter can't create food by magic, but he can transform rocks into dogs. Why on earth weren't the students taught how to butcher chickens? And if you can increase the amount of food, you need an entrepreneur to invent a little carrying case with unspoiling bits of food in it. Simply take out the one you want, increase it to make a whole dinner, and then make sure to put the original back!
--Christie V Powell, author of The Spectra Unearthed.

[trolleymouse]

I get the feeling Brandon might like Athas (Dark Sun).
"If wizards could do {all that shit} the world would be doomed"
Well they did, now it is. Bow before your sorcerer-king, lord of this lifeless pit.

[LordOmnipraetor]

Cythil I know what you mean, man! If you have wizards who can conjure up Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion that serves food to a number of people, then that would have a huge factor on city developments. Governments would fund wizards to make permanent spells for this purpose. Also, a cleric who can revive the dead? Armies would be full of clerics. The only limit there would be ritual components which is not costly compared to a human life. And spelljammers! Why isn't everybody flying spelljammers? It's the best thing ever!

[Aerroon]

I think a character's strengths can be much more interesting than their flaws. A strength can be any skill they've mastered or a character trait, whereas a flaw almost invariably ends up being a character trait. You can't make a skill a character lacks into a flaw in the same way that you can into a strength. Imagine a character that's very good at playing poker. You can construct an interesting story around how they use their strength in poker to achieve some other goal. You can't really construct an interesting story around somebody being bad at poker - most people (characters) that are bad at poker just end up not playing much poker. You could make a story about somebody playing poker despite being bad at it, but that's going to end up as a story around addiction to gambling.
The problem with interesting character strengths is that they're much harder to write. The author can't give much insight into what a strong poker player is like if they aren't at least a good poker player themselves (or don't constantly interact with them). On the other hand, I think this is why biographies (and other books) by famous people are so enticing to people - they want to know about the life and ideas of a person that's very good at something.

[Cythil]

on DnD and the Sanderson's 3rd law of magic. That what get me so annoyed at DnD. Especially since I like to use all the tool I have to solve problems. But the world get so broken so fast.

[mandu]

Sandon Branderson should have been his pen name