PDA

View Full Version : Origin of Spells in Media



Maladaptive
2017-08-08, 12:27 PM
So my friend and I were having a discussion over lunch today about where "Chain Lightning" as a concept comes from. It's a staple spell across basically any RPG, paper or otherwise, but where did it come from?

We did some cursory googling and the phrase has been around since the 1800s, but it just referred to zigzagging lightning from the sky. As far as we could find, ADnD was the first use in the standard sense of "lightning that hits multiple targets", beating out a Captain Marvel villain and the Raiders of the Lost Ark by a few years. However, I'm curious- where did ADnD pull it from?

I want an answer to this question, but I'm also curious about other "standard" spells and their first uses in media. Stuff like "a spell that makes someone sleep" is ancient, and so is shapeshifting or polymorphing, but how did frost rays and cones of cold (which make no sense in real life) become a thing? What was the first media to come up with these kinds of spells instead of "natural" spells like changing the weather or speaking to animals?

Edit:
Thought of another one- walls of fire. Where did that one come from? It's completely ubiquitous now, but what was the original source?

Anymage
2017-08-08, 12:36 PM
Many D&D spells got their start in D&D. I got started in 2e, and many of the later spells printed were book-fillers designed to fill a game mechanical role (E.G: a cold damage AoE) over mythological fidelity.

VoxRationis
2017-08-08, 12:56 PM
Walls of fire, or at least columns of fire capable of preventing advance, were Biblical in origin at least. A fair number of priest spells are just Biblical miracles and such. Some spells (Prismatic Spray) are straight from Vance's work. Others (the ones with names attached, for the most part) were developed by early players of wizards in D&D. Melf was an actual PC whose name comes from the character sheet note "M elf," if I recall correctly.

Maladaptive
2017-08-08, 01:06 PM
Well okay, but why is "cold damage" ubiquitous? The classic elements are earth/air/water/fire, but then DnD drops that when it comes to spells and instead does acid/lightning/fire/cold for damage types. Fire/cold makes sense in a thermometer sense, lightning for air, sure, but then why acid as the "earth" damage type? There's not really anything opposite about acid/lightning even though air/earth are oppositional.

I also looked around and I think sci-fi beat fantasy to cold rays, with a comic book villain using a cold ray in 1947 (and maybe somewhere else before that, my ability to Google on my phone isn't great). It looks like wall of fire is literally biblical, so that's explained, but I still think it's interesting how these things get codified.

VoxRationis
2017-08-08, 01:25 PM
Cold spells are also there. In the pre-modern age, freezing to death was a pretty significant threat every winter if you live in a temperate climate, so it's not surprising that it made a cultural impression. The "Ice Queen," I believe, is a Scandinavian tale on which the movie Frozen was very, very loosely based.

Vogie
2017-08-08, 01:37 PM
Anything's ubiquitous if people use it enough. Being damaged by the cold is a known quantity IRL (Frostbite, et al) that is uniquely separate from water damage (erosion), and much can occur much faster*. Acid being something "earthy" may have to do with the fact that most acids are natural in some manner - either naturally occurring in an ecosystem, or biologically produced by an animal. The dichotomies between fire/ice is kind of just a bonus.

However you may be interested in Google's nGram search for text from various literature, such as THIS (https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cold+ray%2Ccold+gun&year_start=1700&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Ccold%20ray%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cc old%20gun%3B%2Cc0) which compares the instances of Cold Ray vs Cold Gun in literature, or THIS (https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cold+damage%2Cforce+damage%2Cacid+da mage%2Clightning+damage%2Cpsychic+damage&year_start=1900&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Ccold%20damage%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B% 2Cforce%20damage%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cacid%20damage% 3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Clightning%20damage%3B%2Cc0%3B.t 1%3B%2Cpsychic%20damage%3B%2Cc0) one comparing the other types of damage (other than fire damage, that wins by a mile)





*Using High-pressure water to cut steel is a fairly modern thing, but is still a thing that exists

Darth Ultron
2017-08-08, 07:38 PM
Well lets see...

The Bible has a lot of the ideas for a lot of the basic, classic D&D spells. Along with bits from other religions and mythologies.

D&D takes a lot from Norse myth, and more generally Germanic myth and legends.

And Faerie Tales and folklore.

Though a lot comes from written Fantasy books from the 20th century. All most all the games original creators were readers of fantasy fiction. Jack Vance alone is the origin of a lot in the game. Also writers like Fritz Leiber (Of note he has a short story collection called Swords and Ice Magic. Just a wild guess but bet you will find 'cone of cold' in there).

Type 'Appendix N' into a Goggle search and it will give you the official list of books the creators of D&D read.

The thing is....it gets a bit tricky. It's easy to spot the spell Part Water as coming from the Bible, but most other 'magic' is everywhere and a bit hard to pin down to one spot.

GungHo
2017-08-09, 08:04 AM
I always think about prismatic spray when I see that one Jesus panting where there's a rainbow coming from his chest.

johnbragg
2017-08-09, 08:20 AM
So my friend and I were having a discussion over lunch today about where "Chain Lightning" as a concept comes from. It's a staple spell across basically any RPG, paper or otherwise, but where did it come from?

It's not in pandagon's AD&D 1st edition spell list, so probably Raiders of the Lost Arc. With a strong possibility that Marvel Comics' Electro or DC's Black Lightning/Vulcan did it before that.


We did some cursory googling and the phrase has been around since the 1800s, but it just referred to zigzagging lightning from the sky. As far as we could find, ADnD was the first use in the standard sense of "lightning that hits multiple targets", beating out a Captain Marvel villain and the Raiders of the Lost Ark by a few years. However, I'm curious- where did ADnD pull it from?

Are you SURE D&D Chain Lightning predates Raiders? I remember it from 2nd Edition, but I've been relying on Pandagon's lists for 1st edition and it's not there.


I want an answer to this question, but I'm also curious about other "standard" spells and their first uses in media. Stuff like "a spell that makes someone sleep" is ancient, and so is shapeshifting or polymorphing, but how did frost rays and cones of cold (which make no sense in real life) become a thing?

ICeman dates back to X-Men #1 in 1962. Flash villain Captain Cold first appears in 1957.


Well okay, but why is "cold damage" ubiquitous? The classic elements are earth/air/water/fire, but then DnD drops that when it comes to spells and instead does acid/lightning/fire/cold for damage types. Fire/cold makes sense in a thermometer sense, lightning for air, sure, but then why acid as the "earth" damage type? There's not really anything opposite about acid/lightning even though air/earth are oppositional.

Ice witch/queen is a fantasy trope, see Hans Christian Andersen, see Narnia.

I think Acid/Lightning/Fire/Cold lining up with EArth/Air/Fire/Water is something that crops up during 3rd edition, but I could be wrong. Fire and Fire, Water and Cold, Air and Lightning were pretty obvious, and Acid fit better with Earth than Sonic.


I also looked around and I think sci-fi beat fantasy to cold rays, with a comic book villain using a cold ray in 1947 (and maybe somewhere else before that, my ability to Google on my phone isn't great). It looks like wall of fire is literally biblical, so that's explained, but I still think it's interesting how these things get codified.

Thrudd
2017-08-09, 11:04 AM
I'm pretty sure chain lightning came out in 1e Unearthed Arcana, so mid eighties. My guess is the idea came about organically from Gygax, not necessarily from any media, as a way to make a stronger Lightning bolt, like fireball already had delayed blast fireball, and also based somewhat on how electricity kind of works. But who knows, maybe he watched Raiders and got inspired as well. No way to know.

I wouldn't assume that every spell comes from somewhere other than Gygax's(or later developer's) imagination, other than for very broad/vague themes.

On the whole acid thing and the elements in general, early d&d and 1e ad&d had very little in the way of elemental spells. Melf's acid arrow was the first and only acid for a while, that came out in the 1e UA, also. There were a few fire spells, a couple cold spells (all mid to high level), lightning bolt and shocking grasp for electricity, that's it really.

My guess is the wall spells came from GG's imagination, too, rather than a specific media source. D&D is not about replicating stuff from movies and books, it is its own thing loosely inspired by lots of sources.

KillianHawkeye
2017-08-09, 02:10 PM
A wall of fire is such a basic idea that anybody could think of it.

Darth Ultron
2017-08-10, 07:01 AM
D&D is not about replicating stuff from movies and books, it is its own thing loosely inspired by lots of sources.

It's easy to say ''oh person X saw Y and copied it''. It's a great way for people to ''knock down someone '' and make the claim that they are not so great...even more so for people that can not think up of things on their own.

And it's true that creators of things are full of copycats: people who see X, and just out right copy it...with just enough of a sprinkle of a change to make it legal or just copying the more generic parts.

But it is not true of all creators. A small handful do just ''make stuff up from scratch''. It is not all ways ''some lazy unimaginative person copies someone else''.

And even if ''X'' does exist at some point in history, just as it does exist does not automatically mean the creator copied it. Not everyone has seen every movie or read every book ever made. So even if ''x'' did come out in ''year x'', there is no way to know if the person read or saw it; unless they tell you.

And true creators do watch and read a lot, but then when they create that are not exactly just ''copying x'' . For example, fantasy is full of magic fire effects. A creator reads and sees them all. Then makes a spell 'fire sword' based on the vague idea of making objects out of flames. Then some kid in a basement somewhere starts to scream that the ''Firez Sword of Coolz Awesomez'' is in the Anime "Wez Doesz Coolz Scribblesz with ColorZ'' and says that person copied the fire sword from that anime. But, it's not true as that creator will never, ever, ever watch any anime ever...so they have never seen it.

GungHo
2017-08-10, 09:02 AM
A wall of fire is such a basic idea that anybody could think of it.

So is chain lightning.

johnbragg
2017-08-10, 09:23 AM
It's easy to say ''oh person X saw Y and copied it''. It's a great way for people to ''knock down someone '' and make the claim that they are not so great...even more so for people that can not think up of things on their own.

And it's true that creators of things are full of copycats: people who see X, and just out right copy it...with just enough of a sprinkle of a change to make it legal or just copying the more generic parts.


You may be under-rating the degree to which early D&D groups brought in elements from other genres with wild abandon. "Kung Fu The Legend Continues" syndicated TV show gives us the Monk. Conan gives us the Barbarian class, Aragorn the Ranger. (Set aside that the Ranger evolved into something entirely different.) Rumor has it that a vampire player at Gygax' table gave us the cleric (because the vampire was wildly overpowered compared to everyone else.). Time Stop and Ioun Stones (and much more than I know) are taken from Jack VAnce's Dying Earth. Hobbits and balrogs become halflings and balors.

So for a given spell, the most likely explanation is that it was copied from available cultural sources.

Mith
2017-08-10, 09:51 AM
I've always tied Acid damage with Water. To be fair, a part of that is me tying elementals and golems together (Fire -> Iron, Water-> Clay, Flesh -> Air, Earth -> Stone).

Darth Ultron
2017-08-10, 12:03 PM
You may be under-rating the degree to which early D&D groups brought in elements from other genres with wild abandon. "Kung Fu The Legend Continues" syndicated TV show gives us the Monk. Conan gives us the Barbarian class, Aragorn the Ranger. (Set aside that the Ranger evolved into something entirely different.) Rumor has it that a vampire player at Gygax' table gave us the cleric (because the vampire was wildly overpowered compared to everyone else.). Time Stop and Ioun Stones (and much more than I know) are taken from Jack VAnce's Dying Earth. Hobbits and balrogs become halflings and balors.

So for a given spell, the most likely explanation is that it was copied from available cultural sources.

Well....you might note that D&D did not have a monk, barbarian or ranger class at first. It was years before each became a real class .

But I never said ''D&D was a pure as the win driven snow'' or anything. I'm saying that not everything anyone creates is automatically taken from somewhere else.

johnbragg
2017-08-10, 12:12 PM
Well....you might note that D&D did not have a monk, barbarian or ranger class at first. It was years before each became a real class .

But they all emerged during the AD&D period.


But I never said ''D&D was a pure as the win driven snow'' or anything. I'm saying that not everything anyone creates is automatically taken from somewhere else.

Not automatically, but "How can I do Cool Thing X that I saw/read" and/or "How can I be Character Z" is the way to bet.

mig el pig
2017-08-10, 12:34 PM
So is chain lightning.

To be fair, man has mastered fire much longer then lightning.

Tinkerer
2017-08-10, 02:15 PM
I'm about 90% sure that acid tying to earth comes from alchemy. Although any number of sources could tie to it specifically beyond that, it's just the oldest source that I know of. While organic acids were in use for centuries the type of acid that one would see in RPGs is a much stronger acid, the mineral acid. They would make acid out of minerals such as salt and sulfur (indeed an olden name for hydrochloric acid is spirit of salt). Hence acid was tied to earth rather than water. Old timey alchemy books were often used as inspiration for magic systems in RPGs being both fairly easy to peruse and fairly easy to translate into effects. I know that each of these statements is true so I assume that is the reason however I haven't run across anything confirming or denying it.

FreddyNoNose
2017-08-10, 02:38 PM
You may be under-rating the degree to which early D&D groups brought in elements from other genres with wild abandon. "Kung Fu The Legend Continues" syndicated TV show gives us the Monk. Conan gives us the Barbarian class, Aragorn the Ranger. (Set aside that the Ranger evolved into something entirely different.) Rumor has it that a vampire player at Gygax' table gave us the cleric (because the vampire was wildly overpowered compared to everyone else.). Time Stop and Ioun Stones (and much more than I know) are taken from Jack VAnce's Dying Earth. Hobbits and balrogs become halflings and balors.

So for a given spell, the most likely explanation is that it was copied from available cultural sources.

The Monk origins is: The original monk character class was created by Brian Blume, inspired by the fictional martial arts of the Destroyer series of novels.[2] The monk was introduced in 1975's Blackmoor supplement.

reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monk_(Dungeons_%26_Dragons)

Kung Fu The Legend Continues is from 1993. You know what is funny about that besides being 18 years post Blackmoor? Is that the legend continues from the 1972 TV Series Kung Fu!

Mith
2017-08-10, 02:55 PM
I'm about 90% sure that acid tying to earth comes from alchemy. Although any number of sources could tie to it specifically beyond that, it's just the oldest source that I know of. While organic acids were in use for centuries the type of acid that one would see in RPGs is a much stronger acid, the mineral acid. They would make acid out of minerals such as salt and sulfur (indeed an olden name for hydrochloric acid is spirit of salt). Hence acid was tied to earth rather than water. Old timey alchemy books were often used as inspiration for magic systems in RPGs being both fairly easy to peruse and fairly easy to translate into effects. I know that each of these statements is true so I assume that is the reason however I haven't run across anything confirming or denying it.

Hmm. Would it make sense to tie Cold to Earth with the idea of Stasis? I feel it also works as they can inflict Slow on a target.

johnbragg
2017-08-10, 03:27 PM
The Monk origins is: The original monk character class was created by Brian Blume, inspired by the fictional martial arts of the Destroyer series of novels.[2] The monk was introduced in 1975's Blackmoor supplement.

reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monk_(Dungeons_%26_Dragons)

Kung Fu The Legend Continues is from 1993. You know what is funny about that besides being 18 years post Blackmoor? Is that the legend continues from the 1972 TV Series Kung Fu!

I somehow did not know that the two Kung Fu series were not the same series.

Tinkerer
2017-08-10, 05:26 PM
Hmm. Would it make sense to tie Cold to Earth with the idea of Stasis? I feel it also works as they can inflict Slow on a target.

...Yes, but not for the reasons you specified? Cold is associated with earth in Greek science but unless I'm completely mistaken that was due to the fact that the earth is cold at night. Normally you see cold showing up with water. In D&D in particular you would associate it with Ice which in their cosmology is the combination of water and air.

Mith
2017-08-10, 07:43 PM
...Yes, but not for the reasons you specified? Cold is associated with earth in Greek science but unless I'm completely mistaken that was due to the fact that the earth is cold at night. Normally you see cold showing up with water. In D&D in particular you would associate it with Ice which in their cosmology is the combination of water and air.

That too. I was thinking of that as well, but got thoughts jumbled when writing my previous post.

daniel_ream
2017-08-11, 11:44 PM
Acid keeps trolls from regenerating.

Beyond that, Thrudd, it's a very rare element of D&D that was original to the designers or their players (even the cleric started out as a ripoff of Roddie McDowell's character in The Fearless Vampire Killers). Virtually everything in D&D was lifted from somewhere else. That's not a criticism, nor is it a terribly controversial statement: the OSR has done huge amounts of historiography on this.

Mordaedil
2017-08-14, 03:42 AM
To be fair, man has mastered fire much longer then lightning.

Also, man has yet to really master lightning. We can replicate its far weaker cousin, electricity, but we're nowhere near being able to even harness the power of a lightningbolt by itself.

We can merely redirect it and guide it away from our most sensitive areas and even that is a toss-up.

Martin Greywolf
2017-08-14, 07:35 AM
...Yes, but not for the reasons you specified? Cold is associated with earth in Greek science but unless I'm completely mistaken that was due to the fact that the earth is cold at night. Normally you see cold showing up with water.

You are mistaken.

Aristotelian theory tells us that there are four elements, kind of like 4 letters in an alphabet that creates everything (well, everything material), or atoms, if you will. These elements, and by extension all things, have two qualities, or rather axes of qualities: hot/cold and wet/dry.

Therefore, fire is hot and dry, water is cold and wet, earth is cold and dry and air is hot and wet (since it's considered to be a form of vapor).

If you want to associate damage types from DnD to Aristotelian elements, fire is fire, lightning is also fire (lightning has been depicted as heavenly fire for a long, long time), cold is both earth and water and acid is the odd one out because it can have several forms, not all of them liquid (or acidic for that matter, I'd say bases fall under acid damage).

Bicorn
2017-08-14, 08:46 AM
Both, "Sticks To Snakes" and "Insect Plague" spells come from the Moses part of the bible.

Tinkerer
2017-08-14, 11:55 AM
You are mistaken.

Aristotelian theory tells us that there are four elements, kind of like 4 letters in an alphabet that creates everything (well, everything material), or atoms, if you will. These elements, and by extension all things, have two qualities, or rather axes of qualities: hot/cold and wet/dry.

Therefore, fire is hot and dry, water is cold and wet, earth is cold and dry and air is hot and wet (since it's considered to be a form of vapor).

If you want to associate damage types from DnD to Aristotelian elements, fire is fire, lightning is also fire (lightning has been depicted as heavenly fire for a long, long time), cold is both earth and water and acid is the odd one out because it can have several forms, not all of them liquid (or acidic for that matter, I'd say bases fall under acid damage).

Oh I'm familiar with all of that, I was trying to recall why they associated earth with cold. Bear in mind that while they were drawing from Aristotelian ideas they were also drawing from a number of other classical elemental ideas including oriental, 16th century alchemy, and some modern ideas. Then they took all of those and put them in a blender and added their own ingredients. Hence why cold is ice, which is Water and Air in D&D. Also why lightning is Air rather than Fire. Acid they don't generally separate into bases and acids rather it's a catch all phrase for corrosive damage however some of the specific books that they were drawing inspiration from labelled it as an earthen element so that was why I was assuming they put it as an Earth associated effect (several editions have acid damage under Earth).

In short we are trying to see where they drew inspiration from rather than trying to apply Aristotelian theory to D&D.

VoxRationis
2017-08-14, 12:39 PM
Acid they don't generally separate into bases and acids rather it's a catch all phrase for corrosive damage.

I've enamored with the idea of playing with that concept, like using hydroxides to damage acid-resistant creatures.

Joe the Rat
2017-08-14, 01:47 PM
You are mistaken.

Aristotelian theory tells us that there are four elements, kind of like 4 letters in an alphabet that creates everything (well, everything material), or atoms, if you will. These elements, and by extension all things, have two qualities, or rather axes of qualities: hot/cold and wet/dry.

Therefore, fire is hot and dry, water is cold and wet, earth is cold and dry and air is hot and wet (since it's considered to be a form of vapor).

If you want to associate damage types from DnD to Aristotelian elements, fire is fire, lightning is also fire (lightning has been depicted as heavenly fire for a long, long time), cold is both earth and water and acid is the odd one out because it can have several forms, not all of them liquid (or acidic for that matter, I'd say bases fall under acid damage)....except that things are less Aristotelian, and more Swycafferian (Dragon #27). The proposed model (and associated elementals) flip the design, making air cold and dry, and earth warm and wet. While this plan isn't necessarily canon to later models, it does align with how D&D mixes their planes and damages.

daniel_ream
2017-08-15, 04:51 AM
It's probably worth pointing out that traditional occult literature (http://www.llewellyn.com/browse_category.php?product_category_id=171) has gone to great lengths to classify just about everything under one of the four elements, with explanations as to why.