Dungeons & Dragons White Box 17

Sadly, there are 11 pages left of spells to do. And I have done... two.

Sigh.

Continual Light: This spell creates a light wherever the caster desires. It sheds a circle of illumination 24" in diameter, but does not equal full daylight. It continues to shed light until dispelled. Range: 12".

This is almost, but not quite the "light" spell. Now, instead of "a spell to cast light" this "creates a light." This one "sheds a circle."  The stumble here is that while a lamp (or the moon, or a fire) sheds light, it does so in the sense of "to radiate or fall from," as from a place of origin. The spell is an act, it's performed, and once created, it doesn't continue to fall. But still, this is a quibble.

The larger problem is, again, the unrestricted, unending presence of the light. While mages are busy using dispel magic getting rid of all the wizard locks in the world (see previous post), there are third level and better mages littering the world with eternal glowing spheres, obviating the need for torches in towns, villages and large structures throughout the world, while two or three shifts are ongoing in guild houses who now are able to conduct business around the clock. Large cities can be seen ten or twenty miles away, while residents find it difficult to sleep and stress/insomnia is killing people as it was in the 70s and 80s, before most cities began replacing mercury streetlights with sodium. Groups of 30+ mages are touring the continent, light-bombing granary and garner outposts with light, or literally spreading lights along the roads, from end to end. The gods in space can identify Paris, London and Venice just as astronomers can today. It's not the D&D world you thought it was.

"That farmer's field over there? It's been lit up since 1127, when Nathan the Proud thought he was being funny. We've asked and asked for someone to come dispel it, but still no one's available."

And still, what does "not equal" to full daylight mean?

Knock: A spell which opens secret doors, held portals, doors locked by magic, barred or otherwise secured gates, etc. Range: 6".

This is not so bad. The "etc." is more or less the same lack as found in hold portal, but in fact there are a few more examples here, and it lacks the word "like" these things. One word makes an enormous difference.

There really isn't a need to mock these spells for the time period. In most cases, the duration counted only the single combat or one-session attitude that the game held for the majority of the participants. The issue arises where the White Box itself tries to be the other thing, talking about a campaign as though this set of rules could also be applied to that, when it's self-evident that this is the designers writing cheques their rule system couldn't cash.

It's also worth the mockery for that present day set who, like wannabe hipsters, portray themselves as the smug players of "real" D&D, "as written." When, obviously, they're not playing it that way. They're making up their own boundaries and "it actually meant this" mechanics, to cover up the failings that are obviously here.

Fly: By means of this spell the user is able to fly at a speed of up to 12"/turn. The spell lasts for the number of turns equal to the level of the Magic-User plus the number of pips on a six-sided die which is secretly determined by the referee.

Okay... sigh.  12" = 120 feet underground, but 120 yards in the wilderness...

(How the spell knows, don't ask me. If I'm in a huge cavern, does that count as the outdoors; and at which point does the cavern become large enough that the spell knows to propel me forward... oh, never mind)

You've cast the spell and you're travelling 120 yards per turn in the outdoors, which is 12 yards per round, which is 10 seconds in basic, so you're travelling at 1.2 yards per second if you use that system. But if you're using AD&D, you're travelling at 0.6 feet per second... which is 7.6 inches per second, or just double the speed you're levitating upward.  And this is funny: AD&D did not fix this. The spell description on p.73 says: "12" per move," the last word not being defined at all in the book. Just a minute, I've got a wall for my head right here.

Meanwhile, the average airspeed velocity of a European swallow is 32.3 feet per second, which is pretty close to that of a falling rock (for the first second).  Since there is no such thing as an African swallow, we just don't know.

By the time the mage has crossed a distance of, say, the length of a tennis pitch (we'll use the 15th century number of 78 feet), which would take 2 minutes, 10 seconds, the swallow would have circled the entire pitch (perimeter 216 ft.), allowing for a 5 foot buffer around the outside to be sure no corners were cut, 17.8 times. That's not flying. To put this another way, if I'm walking, just loafing along, 2½ miles per hour, I'm moving at 3.67 ft. per second. It only takes me 21.25 seconds to walk the pitch. Anybody besides me see the problem here?

I suggest changing the name of the spell to "Hover."

The secret die roll?  The early dungeon master was encouraged to be a fucking dick. It's right there in the rules.  If Gygax wrote this, and I think he did, this alone justifies any ill feeling I have ever had toward the man for my entire life time and the rest of his.  

Any person capable of codifying a rule like this in a game set is, by definition, the kind of person who would take advantage of someone in real life if the opportunity arose. This is ungentlemanly behaviour, which is the reason when it used to be revealed that you could portray this sort of behaviour, you were banned for life from decent culture. This is the person I conceive Gygax to be.  You want to know why this past-time is thick with assholes? There. There it is. A mentality that believes it's acceptable, even fun, to build a system where the players are constantly at the mercy of an arbitrary power, cannot be one I ever respect, no matter what other accomplishments he may have achieved.

I am not a fool.

That's not even half a page from the book, but I'm going to have to stop now.