A wizard then should have a spellbook, one filled with all sorts of spells written out for immediate use. Maintainable hacks if you will. Those are probably just scripts though I suppose?
A real open source Magic Spell Book 'Sorcerer Linux':
A new "grimoire", which is a catalog of software supported for immediate installation, is made available daily. When new sources are available, the spells in the grimoire are updated. A user's desktop is updated by first installing a current grimoire. If necessary, the installed Sorcery is updated. Finally, installed software can be updated according to the user's decision. Users can also add new spells to the grimoire on their local machine and submit the new spell for inclusion in the general distribution.
Fun metaphors and a decent (old) Linux distro with it's infrastructure written in Shell Script for purity.
And to install software you would 'cast' a 'spell'.
This is a great idea. The feeling of being able to do anything combined with reasonable limitations (ideally invisible) to focus the player's energy is extremely engaging--perfect for teaching.
And I've always thought of magic spells in fantasy as a kind of hack using a secret, natural programming language. :-)
As long as we're recommending things, I'm tossing "Off To Be The Wizard" into the pool. Magic is done by modifying a secret file that modifies the world; you can create macros that modify it for you, etc., etc. Shenanigans ensue.
Computers are literally (literally) magic. Take a rock, use light to inscribe it with arcane runes, then infuse it with lightning and recite the proper incantation to complete the spell.
I also really loved the episode of "In Another World With My Smartphone" where the character aquires the spell "program" which lets a caster enchant a physical object with a command.
The regular wizards use it to, let's say, make a door open when someone says "open" or other minor one-step commands.
The protagonist, a modern human stuck in a magical world, uses it differently. He creates sequences with it. He scripts complex programs.
[Minor Spoiler] As an example, he ends up creating a magical pistol. When the users speak "reload", the pistol (which the character imbued with a few spells using "enchant") casts a detection spell to finds the closest bullets. If bullets are found, the pistol then casts the spell "aports" on it. The bullets are teleported into the chamber of the pistol. He uses the same concept but with transmogrification enchantments to add voice commands such as "sword mode" or "pistol mode" that transform the pistol into a sword and vice-versa.
When you're 5 everything novel in your environment is basically like magic. So being as the command line pretty much is the closest thing we have to actual magic spells anyway, it's going to be useful for them to encounter this fact early on, while they still find it easy to accept.
Very cool, thanks. How does one become aware of this class of magic? It seems completely undiscoverable, not being in the FAQ, nor in the present "List of Hacker News's undocumented features..."
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