Where does "blasting" get its inspiration from?

[The Insanity]

As the title. Was there even any particular inspiration for blasting spells like Fireball or the Blaster archetype?

[Willie the Duck]

Fireball came to D&D via Chainmail and wargames in general. It was a way to replicate the cannon/artillery pieces that show up in wargame scenarios set in other settings/time periods (ex. the Napoleonic Wars). As for inspiration for the 'blaster' character concept, it was mostly from the type of player who wanted to play a mage for the direct damage spells.

Edit: Found my reference. From Jon Peterson (author of Playing at the World, the only primary source-specific exploration of the games' roots)' blog (http://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2016/01/a-precursor-to-chainmail-fantasy.html): "Chainmail itself drew on a two-page set of rules developed for a late 1970 game run by the New England Wargamers Association (NEWA), which were designed by one Leonard Patt."

[NigelWalmsley]

There's some. I'm not super familiar with pre-D&D fantasy, but Gandalf has the sequence with the exploding pinecones in The Hobbit. But Willie is right that the proximate cause is D&D coming from wargaming, and "blow some guys up" being one of the core things a Wizard can do in that context.

[Kurald Galain]

As the title. Was there even any particular inspiration for blasting spells like Fireball or the Blaster archetype?

Zeus, from Greek mythology, would often throw lightning bolts around.

[Willie the Duck]

If we are looking for Fantasy literature examples, the Tolkien example is spot on. The Wicked Witch of the West as well. Tim the Enchanter from Monty Python is a bit late for original inspiration, but certainly helped enhance the image of conjuring pure fire as a spellcastery-thing. Of course dragons exist alongside magic in most minds, so there's a direct fuzzy connection there.

Here's a nice bit from R.E. Howard's "The Scarlet Citadel" (1933): "Old Tsotha rose and faced his pursuer, his eyes those of a maddened serpent, his face an inhuman mask. In each hand he held something that shimmered, and Conan knew he held death there... "Keep off" screamed Tsotha like a blood-mad jackal. "I'll blast the flesh from your bones!"... Conan rushed, sword gleaming, eyes slits of wariness. Tsotha's right hand came back and forward, and the king ducked quickly. Something passed by his helmeted head and exploded behind him, searing the very sands with a flash of hellish fire. Before Tsotha could toss the globe in his left hand, Conan's sword sheared through his lean neck. "

[Kurald Galain]

The first X-Men comic dates from 1963, and contains both Cyclops and Ice Man as blasters. Fantastic Four is two years older and has the Human Torch. I find it very likely that Gygax has read some of these, and these are probably not the earliest examples in comics, either...

[Telonius]

I think Tim the Enchanter probably had a bit to do with cementing the image. Holy Grail came out in 1975, one year after Dungeons and Dragons was first published.

[Dimers]

Forum rules preclude specific details, but there are plenty of references to blasting done by deities (and sometimes their servants) in various real-world religions.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Reverse inspiration from Michael Bay*?




*Explosions so amazing they traveled backwards through time to inspire wizards everywhere!

[Telonius]

This article (https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/271708/A_brief_history_of_the_fireball_in_fantasy_games.p hp) collects some information about the history of Fireballs in tabletop RPing. Leonard Patt's 1970 ruleset is also mentioned as the first recorded mention of a fireball in modern gaming.

[The Insanity]

To be clear, the topic is about "blasting" in general, not Fireball specifically. And by "blasting" I mean mostly the use of offensive damage dealing spells as a caster's primary shtick.

[Ramza00]

To be clear, the topic is about "blasting" in general, not Fireball specifically. And by "blasting" I mean mostly the use of offensive damage dealing spells as a caster's primary shtick.

Artillery in war, especially modern war. The more we see explosions in society such as gunpowder the more we see mages performing feats in art and literature. While other forms of Magic such as divination and shapechanging are older in literature.

This is not quite true for in the Bronze to Iron Age it was quite common for armies to destroy other cities. Wait let’s go back a step. In Bronze and Iron Ages defensive walls were such a force advantage and thus it was a PITA to fight walled cities. This change with specific empires that were so prosperous that they could housed standing armies all the time and some of these standing armies developed engineers focused on siege craft expertise. Once these specialized knowledge is crafted it has to be maintained and used and thus you see the same empire repeating destroying other cities again and again finding new enemies to overthrow. They then razed the cities to the ground and looted all valuables and moved the locals to new areas. In lore though this was seen as a clash of gods and the humiliation / destruction of those other deities in lore. Aka divinity battles and not the work of lone individuals mages or wizards. This is why it took technology such as gunpowder, TNT, etc for more blasting mages lore to be common. The previous times you see civilizations razed to the ground or the environment radically shaped by human hands it was seen as actions by gods, and later the state such as Rome.

[SimonMoon6]

The first X-Men comic dates from 1963, and contains both Cyclops and Ice Man as blasters. Fantastic Four is two years older and has the Human Torch. I find it very likely that Gygax has read some of these, and these are probably not the earliest examples in comics, either...

Technically, the original Human Torch goes back to the 1940s, but... none of these are wizards who cast spells that are all explodey and stuff, which is kind of what I think the OP was asking about. Otherwise we could say that people who use cannons make things go boom too and they've been around for ages.

There aren't a lot of fictional analogues of blaster wizards (at least not PRIOR to D&D). Merlin didn't do squat (he can be a prophet and a shapeshifter sometimes, but not really a blaster). Gandalf one time cast a spell that's more like fire seeds than fireball and never showed off any such propensities ever again. And those are some of the most famous wizards ever.

By the time superhero comics rolled around, most comic book wizards were ripoffs of Mandrake the Magician who was mostly a hypnotist and illusionist. While other comic book magicians (like Zatara and a million other less famous Mandrake ripoffs) tended to be more versatile in abilities, they never really focused on doing huge damage through explosions or fire or electricity or anything along those lines.

[Blackhawk748]

Look to the old Sword and Sorcery Pulps. There's plenty of damage chucking mages in there.

[Thurbane]

Tim the Enchanter from Monty Python is a bit late for original inspiration, but certainly helped enhance the image of conjuring pure fire as a spellcastery-thing. Of course dragons exist alongside magic in most minds, so there's a direct fuzzy connection there.

I think Tim the Enchanter probably had a bit to do with cementing the image. Holy Grail came out in 1975, one year after Dungeons and Dragons was first published.
I started playing in about 1984, so Tim the Enchanter was firmly etched in my mind every time someone cast a fireball. :smallbiggrin:

Also, not sure if it's been mentioned, but there plenty of mythological and theological references to hurling lightning bolts and columns of fire...

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Also, not sure if it's been mentioned, but there plenty of mythological and theological references to hurling lightning bolts and columns of fire...Those did tend toward "wrath of the gods" moments, though. I guess there're reasons why they're called "god wizards."

[Thurbane]

Those did tend toward "wrath of the gods" moments, though. I guess there're reasons why they're called "god wizards."

https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1195.html


"The gods are just fancy alien wizards who figured out how to crowdsource their magic".

[SimonMoon6]

I think part of the problem of a lack of precedents may relate to the fact that, for a very long time, wizards were never the main characters of stories. They were the sidekick character to make the real hero (the dumb meat shield with a sword) look good or they were the antagonist. You've got Merlin, who's just there to help Arthur. You've got Gandalf who helps the hobbits, but the hobbits are the main characters. And so forth. Typically, the spellcasters aren't the main character, so they can't do anything that affects the story too much. And in any moderately plausible story, big blasts of fire or lightning are likely to actually kill someone (not in D&D, but D&D doesn't even attempt to be moderately plausible). So, wizards can't do that. They can stand in the back and make premonitions, they can try to hypnotize people, and so forth, but they can't actually do anything that would affect the plot.

This did change eventually. For example, Mandrake the Magician was actually the main character in his comic strip (and this led to a million imitators, causing magician characters to be all over the place), but he was a fairly limited magician even so.

And maybe it's related to a topic I recently encountered, the idea that up until recently (Tolkien's era), fantasy stories tended to be about normal people encountering strange magical places, but then leaving those places to go back home, with possibly the suggestion that writers assumed readers wanted relatable characters, meaning someone who is mundane, not someone who is casting fireballs left and right. That's why we see early fantasy stories such as the Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, the stories of Narnia, and even Lovecraft's tales of the Dreamlands, all involving ordinary people who encounter a fantastic world for a while and then go back home. So naturally in such stories, a wizard would never be the main character. Some would argue that this changed with Tolkien's novels, which were among the first to have the entire story take place in a world of fantasy, with no humans from elsewhere as the focus. (I think this theory is far from perfect, as even the second Oz novel was pretty much completely about Oz, and I can't say where Conan or other swords-and-sorcery stories fall in this timeline.)

Regardless of how absolutely true that theory is, it's at least somewhat true that most stories have tried to have relatable main characters, making it hard for the main character to be a wizard and therefore hard for a wizard to have story-altering abilities like fireball or lightning bolt.

This certainly changed with Tolkien (who still kept his wizard characters from doing much) but also with the advent of superheroes. Superheroes didn't have to be relatable normal people, they could have fantastic powers. But they were rarely wizards and when they were, they tended to either be limited to very minimal abilities (like Mandrake) or vaguely all powerful (like Zatara, Doctor Fate, etc), so "blasters" weren't common.

[Kurald Galain]

I think part of the problem of a lack of precedents may relate to the fact that, for a very long time, wizards were never the main characters of stories.
Off the top of my head, there's Odin, Prospero, Vainamoinen, Suleiman, and Faust. Those are all considerably older than the fantasy stories you mention.


And maybe it's related to a topic I recently encountered, the idea that up until recently (Tolkien's era), fantasy stories tended to be about normal people encountering strange magical places,
I don't think this is such a strong case, as characters like Theseus and Beowulf and Lancelot clearly aren't normal people that just want to go home. And for that matter, Bilbo is very much a normal person who wants to go home.

And it strikes me that characters are made relatable by their personality, not by their powers.

[Quertus]

And it strikes me that characters are made relatable by their personality, not by their powers.

As they say, "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". There's… perhaps only a more modern view… that it is more difficult to understand the psychology of someone who either has grown up with, or gained, powers with which the reader is unfamiliar. Although, IMO, some of the most recent media seems to be coming closer to giving reasonable answers to how otherwise human(ish) psychology would be affected.

So, in short, I don't think it's quite that "cut and dry" (even if I generally agree).

[rel]

Gandalf does most of his blasting off screen.

He blows up a bunch of goblins after the rest of the party is captured in the hobbit.

In Fellowship of the Ring he fights off The Nine on Weathertop.

[Pex]

What made it popular was kids going pew pew in Cops & Robbers. Explosions and lights special effects in movies and television. Video games came out where your character fires stuff at the computer bad guys, eventually getting specials for limited big booms and/or stronger fire power. There's also the fun of rolling lots of d6s.

[Telonius]

For more classical examples of blasting, there was the "Greek Fire" employed by the Byzantine Empire. There's still debate about what exactly it was made of, and the formula was a state secret. Speaking of Greeks and fire, there's the alleged invention of a solar-powered death ray by Archimedes. (The idea was tested by Mythbusters, with kind of mixed results; no immediate explosion, but it did manage to create some fire on board and a small hole in the hull of a boat).

[Saint-Just]

(The idea was tested by Mythbusters, with kind of mixed results; no immediate explosion, but it did manage to create some fire on board and a small hole in the hull of a boat).

I am not aware of anyone claiming that Archimedes' mirrors caused explosions.

[Kurald Galain]

the alleged invention of a solar-powered death ray by Archimedes.

What I'm getting from this thread is that Tesla is a reincarnation of Archimedes.

And probably, so is Michael Bay.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

For more classical examples of blasting, there was the "Greek Fire" employed by the Byzantine Empire. There's still debate about what exactly it was made of, and the formula was a state secret. Speaking of Greeks and fire, there's the alleged invention of a solar-powered death ray by Archimedes. (The idea was tested by Mythbusters, with kind of mixed results; no immediate explosion, but it did manage to create some fire on board and a small hole in the hull of a boat).Wait, explosions? I've never heard that before.

[KillianHawkeye]

I'm sure it would make things explode in the film adaptation. :smallbiggrin:

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I'm sure it would make things explode in the film adaptation. :smallbiggrin:I guess I'm more prescient than I knew... (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=24405832&postcount=9)