Magical Training Item

[Snail Cadet]

Hello!

I think it would add an excellent thematic air of mystery/esoterica if there were a way to learn spells and moon/element ranks from objects on grid. A spellbook of sorts is possible, but I think that would be 1) too easy and 2) not conspicuous enough. I propose an interactive object of sorts that a mage can, through great effort, imbue with a portion of his or her own knowledge, perhaps similar to holocrons from the Star Wars universe. It could have a visible projection of its creator, or just "speak"/project thoughts directly into the mind of the user. The item could be a higher rank magecraft recipe, maybe involving precious gems, and should need activating with a spell - perhaps attune, or a new spell in Void or Water. It would be REALLY cool if a mage could design the appearance of the object and the projection, and add custom quotes for the object to communicate through when used.

Adding some sort of training item would give the Mages a bit of continuity in their lore, which right now doesn't really exist beyond word of mouth. Perhaps powerful mages would leave their repositories with other mages, or hide them deep in the tunnels below the city. These receptacles would, of course, be highly illegal, giving the Order more contraband to look for; they might even drive some interesting plots in which some Mages try to steal back receptacles from the Order.

Would love to hear some perspective on this from people who have played Mages a long time - how do you think it might affect balance?

[Voxumo]

To my understanding there did infact use to be a system like this in the past. It was primarily with books... I can't remember the system name but remnants of it still exist.

[Taunya]

research, I think?

[Snail Cadet]

The only research I know of is the potion experiments.
What was the old system like/why was it removed?

[Voxumo]

Research, that was the name of it. Thanks Taunya

I don't know what the old system was like, or why it was removed as it was removed before I even joined. I only heard about it due to the fact the helpfile was still around before.

Perhaps someone with more experience can provide insight into it.

[Temi]

Essentially, you would sit down in a library and use a command to research. Then lines would repetitively go by, approximately every tick or so. 'You read a boring anecdote.' 'You pore over a passage.' etc. Occasionally, it would come up with 'You come across an interesting part about Balathumel.' or 'You come across an interesting part about a ritual.' etc. If you want to learn more about that you use the research command again to dive deeper. Then it scrolls by some more lines about reading about that, and if you made it through it all, you got the bit of pool or the ritual, etc. Otherwise, you might get a message about becoming frustrated or coming to a dead end, etc, and the research ends.

We removed it because it sucked and was not fun and did nothing to encourage roleplay. I put forth another proposal for research to revamp it at one point and extend it to more skills, but it was a bit complex for what it offered and never got to a point we wanted to flesh it out enough to implement.