[HoneyBadger]

Uh-Nu-Buh, you are the heart and soul of decorum. I appreciate your input and your moderating attitude and I agree about #5. I'd like to explain my thoughts on those two very good points you've made: The reason I suggested so many new paths wasn't for the sake of suggestion or greed for more, though I realize it may have appeared arbitrary. I did it for completeness, coming up with a whole "vision" if you will, rather than suggesting that a couple new paths be shoehorned in. UninspiredName's central idea was one of balance in the magic system, and I tried to roll with that. To come up with concepts which could be fit together, and work together (hopefully smoothly), without being there just to fill space. I attempted to make each new path unique in concept, without infringing on the uniqueness of the paths already in the game, and without interfering with the balance of a game. I also didn't want to suggest paths which I felt would be limited-or atleast severely limited-in scope, since ideally I'd like to see all 15 levels allowed in the game made use of (obviously, this also would require much thought and balancing). One reason I want the largeish number of paths I suggested, rather than say 2 or 3, is because yes, it complicates things admittedly, but it also frees up a lot of room for modding, which I think is very important. A "vanilla" game, if you will, plays just fine with the paths present, and will continue to play fine. Nobody who doesn't want extra paths, or even the paths already present in the game, has to use them. I could easily see someone dropping blood magic in a mod, for instance. But as things stand, the paths we have are it. I've requested the ability to mod in an expanded magic system, and hopefully that will be granted, but only time will tell what's decided on that front. I don't want to see more in the game unless the quality of what's added, and the quality of the game as a whole, is maintained. Sometimes you can maintain that quality and add a little bit here and a little bit there, and sometimes-and this seems to occur more in very complicated systems-when you add more, in order for everything to work well together and
not become cluttered (and old stuff has the ability to clutter just as much as new stuff) you need to redesign the structure and the relationships of each part from the ground up, and this will often require more "space", space being, in my interpretation, more paths. Now I freely admit that not every single path I came up with, if put into the game, would automatically become core to the magic system, but part of what I was going for was to keep with the theme of the game and offer precedented ways in which people actually have interpreted magic, be it the path of Clog taken from William Hope Hodgson's NightLands or Crystal and AEther, where I tried to give a nod to 1950's-60's mystics and psychics like Edgar Cayce and turn of the century mysticism, or Divine, Ley, and Weird, where I borrowed mythological concepts. Nothing was added just to add, that would be a waste of my time and wouldn't further my enjoyment of the game, which is why I'm going to the effort of coming up with ideas in the first place, rather than watching television. There's nothing on anyway. In any case, this may end up resulting in 0 changes to the game, but atleast I hope it will open peoples' eyes to possibilities.

AND IN CLOSING I haven't gone to college, I dropped out of highschool, I failed the 6th grade, and I spent the better part of three years in Special Ed, so...GET OFF MY BACK ABOUT THERE AND THEIR OR I WILL
SQUISH YOU!!! [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Hammer.gif[/img] [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Bug.gif[/img]