Book 2 – Page 71

[Kreistor]

Have we ever seen any mancer cast a spell of other discipline than his primary whitout scroll/item help?

Possibly.

http://www.erfworld.com/book-1-archive/?px=%2F133.jpg

Hoboken. Appears to be a Shockmancy effect, not Thinkamancy. We don't have good enough definitions to know for certain.

[matador]

The grumpy guy in the suit panel 8 would be Harry Seldon, of Asimov's Foundation series.
Greatest scientific predictor in fiction since he predicts the 1000 year fate of the entire galactic empire. (Dont worry no spoilers here)
He is described as a bit dour/grumpy in the books, and the books were written somewhere in the early 50's I believe, which is about the time period of the guy's suit.

Loving the idea of Hari Seldon as potential master-class predictomancer, but at least compared to Asimov's cover art, there's no physical resemblance whatsoever. Given the penchant for multi-referential characters, I'll hope he ropes in the beloved psychohistorian somehow...

[oslecamo2_temp]

Have we ever seen any mancer cast a spell of other discipline than his primary whitout scroll/item help?

Possibly.

http://www.erfworld.com/book-1-archive/?px=%2F133.jpg

Hoboken. Appears to be a Shockmancy effect, not Thinkamancy. We don't have good enough definitions to know for certain.

What exactly makes you think it's a Shockmancy effect? The "KI" effect and the fact that the enemy warlord is just dazed for a moment whitout visible damage points out more to a Thinkmancy offensive spell. All shockmancy effects so far have some kind of electricity theme.

[drachefly]

Hrm. Some definitely have, but I thought that the cwap golem attack was at least natural shockamancy, and nothing about that was electrical.

[Bogs]

Regarding the limit of a caster link by the amount of hands available to the Thinkamancer...how exactly would this play out should a Thinkamancer possess an unusual amount of limbs (oh Titans, please don't think of a mancer being connected by a thinkamancer's legs or....other stuff). A thinkamancer whom possesses only one arm would be severely limited in how much they could influence the work of others, though they can still perform a dual link as Maggie and Sizemore did when Gobwin Knoll was rebuilt.

However, a thinkamancer with four arms could be a troubling existence by being able to form a link with four other mancers at once. I recall at least one possible science fiction character who could serve as an underground thinkamancer in Erfworld: Kuato, from Total Recall. If anything, this scene http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=At5kaGJGcyU has Quaid link up with Kuato via his hands in order to allow Kuato to search his mind. Though Kuato's host seems to be in a vegetable state while Kuato is active, when the body advances it would seem that Kuato has some faculties over the body's limbs. Please attach your four mancers directly to Kuato, and "Open your mind."

Who knows, there may even be other possible figures with mental powers that could serve as a Thinkamancer hub. Beast (X-men), while not four-armed, was highly efficient at grasping things with his feet, apparently. >_> Although all of the seen casters are seemingly humanoid (not sure if that's required to become a caster, or if we simply haven't encountered a non-humanoid faction), could there be any caster creature with multiple digits capable of serving as a thinkamancer hub? Or some obscure power resulting from dittomancy allowing a thinkamancer to generate multiple links, though that would be incredibly awkward and could easily be abused.

[oslecamo2_temp]

Hrm. Some definitely have, but I thought that the cwap golem attack was at least natural shockamancy, and nothing about that was electrical.

That was an offensive dirtmancy spell, since Sizemore was the one who "activated" the cwapgolem (when that previous cwap golem fought the marbits, he couldn't self-destruct by himself). It's hard to get more dirty than 4chan. Really, why do you all think shockmancy is the only school that would get offensive spells?

[Swodaems]

The problem with the whole casters are limited only to abilities from a single discipline' idea is that it makes casters far too limited as compared to other casting units that we have seen, Archons in particular.

Archons are able to combine magic abilities with non-magical specials. Using the information about the DDR trick contained in that update, you can reason out the following fact: Even if Jack can dance, Jack could not do the DDR trick because he lacks the leadership special.

Furthermore, nowhere in that update, or elsewhere for that matter, is it said that they are limited to only one of the limited casting specials, potentially allowing for a single archons to be able to pull out skills from multiple disciplines.

[splintermute]

Although all of the seen casters are seemingly humanoid (not sure if that's required to become a caster, or if we simply haven't encountered a non-humanoid faction), could there be any caster creature with multiple digits capable of serving as a thinkamancer hub?

I think the groundhog in this page might be the first non-humanoid caster (the guy holding him is clearly just a puppet).

[oslecamo2_temp]

The problem with the whole casters are limited only to abilities from a single discipline' idea is that it makes casters far too limited as compared to other casting units that we have seen, Archons in particular.

Archons are able to combine magic abilities with non-magical specials. Using the information about the DDR trick contained in that update, you can reason out the following fact: Even if Jack can dance, Jack could not do the DDR trick because he lacks the leadership special.

Furthermore, nowhere in that update, or elsewhere for that matter, is it said that they are limited to only one of the limited casting specials, potentially allowing for a single archons to be able to pull out skills from multiple disciplines.

It's not a problem if archons get spells from multiple schools if mancers can simply pull out higher level stuff from their personal schools.

Archons can hide themselves. Jack hides whole armies and cities.

Archons can take down heavily wounded dwagons with their shockmancy. The (stored) spells of an actual shockmancer quickly lays waste to full-health dwagons.

Archons can send thinkgrams. Maggie is the one supervising their communications while sending undetectable messages and throwing the ocasional sugestion.

Also remember that archons are a freaking special arkentool unit. It's not like everybody has acess to them. There's actualy been a lot of talks about how imba they are compared to other units.

[fjolnir]

They aren't JUST a special arkentool unit like the decrypted and possibly dwagons (unsure on this, the hammer tames wild dwagons but we don't know if other sides can produce them.) other sides ARE known to be able to produce archons, but none as fast as charlie with the dish.

[oslecamo2_temp]

They aren't JUST a special arkentool unit like the decrypted and possibly dwagons (unsure on this, the hammer tames wild dwagons but we don't know if other sides can produce them.) other sides ARE known to be able to produce archons, but none as fast as charlie with the dish.

Correction, few other cities can produce archons at all. And considerably slower, because while Charlie can get one archon per day, those other few cities demand several days for a single archon.

Not to mention their maintenance. Charlie seems to be the only tool that needs to pay for his special troops upkeep, and they aren't cheap. A side whitout the arkendish probably would have to pay even more obscene upkeeps. All of those combined, Charlie is the only one who can make effective use of them, for anybody else they would just be too expensive, if they can produce them at all.

[Bogs]

I think the groundhog in this page might be the first non-humanoid caster (the guy holding him is clearly just a puppet).

Ah, that's right. I keep forgetting that the groundhog is the caster, not the pet. Thanks for clearing that up, Splinter. : )
This leaves hope for some Illithid caster that forms mancer links with his hands and various tentacles.

[Kreistor]

Ah, that's right. I keep forgetting that the groundhog is the caster, not the pet. Thanks for clearing that up, Splinter. : )
This leaves hope for some Illithid caster that forms mancer links with his hands and various tentacles.

Illithid is one place Rob probably would never go. Unlike the vast majority of monsters that D&D publishes, illithid and beholders are an in-house creation and not released to the public domain. They weren't in the 3.0 or 3.5 SRD's. I may be wrong, but they may be trademarked. If so, using them is very dangerous. Since Rob does some contract work for WotC, he wouldn't risk brushing up against copyright or trademark infractions, so he won't.

I spoke about this with a comic artist that did use a beholder, and he stated that he had intentionally written the behoiolder in as a satirical role (the beholder cried like a baby), which allowed him to use the beholder without permission.

[BLANDCorporatio]

Illithid is one place Rob probably would never go. Unlike the vast majority of monsters that D&D publishes, illithid and beholders are an in-house creation and not released to the public domain. They weren't in the 3.0 or 3.5 SRD's. I may be wrong, but they may be trademarked. If so, using them is very dangerous. Since Rob does some contract work for WotC, he wouldn't risk brushing up against copyright or trademark infractions, so he won't.

I spoke about this with a comic artist that did use a beholder, and he stated that he had intentionally written the behoiolder in as a satirical role (the beholder cried like a baby), which allowed him to use the beholder without permission.

There's even a thread about copyright vs secondary characters referencing other people's intellectual property.

About beholders, a brief note: there's a kind of unit in the Heroes of Might and Magic games that is eerily similar. But they're called "Evil Eyes" so they're totally not Beholders

About fair use, satirical roles, and sue-happy intellectual property owners: my pet example is the Imaginationland episode of Southpark, in which, among others, Storm Troopers and Jack Skellington appear in the background. Freddy Krueger delivers one line of dialog. Luke Skywalker is a rather important character. And while Southpark and parody go hand in poop smeared hand, I wouldn't call the roles of the characters previously mentioned satirical*. It's certainly not obvious that they are, and a case could be made either way. The humour of that episode does not derive from some portrayal of those characters; they are mostly there to provide a plausible population for the episode's concept, the titular Imaginationland.

*: again, in the Imaginationland episodes. Not the ones in which a Storm Trooper gets raped by Lucas and Spielberg, thereby having an auxiliary role in a "Lucas raped my childhood" joke, nor the one where Freddy Krueger is a master dream-within-a-dream infiltrator, an obvious parodic reference to FK's films as well as Inception.

So my uninformed guess is that one could get away with referencing various property, on account of the owners not willing to go through the legal hassle to prove that fair use would not apply to a casual reference. However, if one is liable to get frowned upon at the office for liberally using the property of the employer, one would think twice about such things.

[madmaw]

Have we ever seen any mancer cast a spell of other discipline than his primary whitout scroll/item help?

Possibly.

http://www.erfworld.com/book-1-archive/?px=%2F133.jpg

Hoboken. Appears to be a Shockmancy effect, not Thinkamancy. We don't have good enough definitions to know for certain.

What exactly makes you think it's a Shockmancy effect? The "KI" effect and the fact that the enemy warlord is just dazed for a moment whitout visible damage points out more to a Thinkmancy offensive spell. All shockmancy effects so far have some kind of electricity theme.

I don't think it's been explicitly stated, but there are several inferences to casting a spell outside of a casters discipline being possible. Probably the most compelling evidence that it is possible is that Sizemore identifies himself as being "good at nothing beyond [his] specialty" (http://www.erfworld.com/book-1-archive/?px=%2F013.jpg) while Wanda "can manage a number of magicks outside of Croakamancy". Much later on we see Sizemore casting a Shockamancy spell from a scroll without any problems (http://www.erfworld.com/book-1-archive/?px=%2F126.jpg). The combination of these two panels, implies that Wanda can cast certain non-Croakamancy spells without the aid of a scroll.

Maggie also drops a few hints about casting spells outside of your specialty.
"When you cast within your discipline there is a sense of warmth, comfort, familiarity" (http://www.erfworld.com/book-1-archive/?px=%2F135.jpg)
"Lady Firebaugh is quite a proficient Croakamancer. But as a Thinkamancer, she is a novice" (http://www.erfworld.com/book-1-archive/?px=%2F084.jpg)

[Kreistor]

So my uninformed guess is that one could get away with referencing various property, on account of the owners not willing to go through the legal hassle to prove that fair use would not apply to a casual reference. However, if one is liable to get frowned upon at the office for liberally using the property of the employer, one would think twice about such things.

Under Trademark Law, such failures to prosecute cause you to lose the Trademark. Unlike Copyright, Trademark laws require the owner to prosecute all known violators of trademark. They cannot "choose" to not prosecute. They can only choose to give up the Trademark.

The example you give is one of parody, and that use is permitted. In the example provided by the previous poster, there is no parody, and thus would be a Trademark violation that WotC would need to prosecute.

[BLANDCorporatio]

Under Trademark Law, such failures to prosecute cause you to lose the Trademark. Unlike Copyright, Trademark laws require the owner to prosecute all known violators of trademark. They cannot "choose" to not prosecute. They can only choose to give up the Trademark.

Informative, good to know. Shite, TM trials have got to be a lot of fun because of that.

The example you give is one of parody, and that use is permitted.

My guess then is that the definition of parody is either very lax, or that the Imaginationland episodes got away on different aspects of fair use. Consider this- Jack Skellington appears in the background, for just a few seconds in total. He's waving to the kids when they arrive, then gets blown up along with other characters by terrorists. This is hilarious, but at no point does the joke use the character of Skellington. Replace him with the Gingerbread man*, nothing is lost.

Compare with what wikipedia says that the USSC says on the issue of parody: "is the use of some elements of a prior author's composition to create a new one that, at least in part, comments on that author's works." That's not the case with Skellington's part (there's NO comment on Nightmare before Christmas or anyone involved in that production that I can see), nor Freddy Krueger, nor Jason Vorhees etc.

Rather, the Imaginationland episode gets away on grounds of

(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. {shall be taken into account when deciding copyright vs fair use issues}

*: who was also in the episode, but let's forget about that for a moment.

[Kreistor]

My guess then is that the definition of parody is either very lax, or that the Imaginationland episodes got away on different aspects of fair use. Consider this- Jack Skellington appears in the background, for just a few seconds in total. He's waving to the kids when they arrive, then gets blown up along with other characters by terrorists. This is hilarious, but at no point does the joke use the character of Skellington. Replace him with the Gingerbread man*, nothing is lost.

Compare with what wikipedia says that the USSC says on the issue of parody: "is the use of some elements of a prior author's composition to create a new one that, at least in part, comments on that author's works." That's not the case with Skellington's part (there's NO comment on Nightmare before Christmas or anyone involved in that production that I can see), nor Freddy Krueger, nor Jason Vorhees etc.

Unless you are familiar with the details of Trademark Law, which you state that you are not, then you're just speculating. While you can make arguments, I can't comment on their validity because I haven't studied the details, either.

What it comes down to is that the creators of South Park are experts in parody and the laws involved. They couldn't use Tom Cruise in a show without his permission, unless it was in parody. Robot Chicken is another parody-based show. Anything you see on these, if it does not result in a lawsuit, must be permissible under Trademark and Copyright Laws.

So I suggest heading down to a library and finding a book on Trademark Law. If you want to know the arguments, they are available to you. I don't need more specific knowledge than this because I do not plan on writing any fanfic or encroaching on Trademarks and Copyrights.

[BLANDCorporatio]

Unless you are familiar with the details of Trademark Law, which you state that you are not, then you're just speculating. While you can make arguments, I can't comment on their validity because I haven't studied the details, either.

Not fair enough. For one, I doubt Skellington, or Krueger, or Jason Vorhees are trade-marks. For two, (since this is a copyright vs. fair use), plausible half-informed guesses are better than nothing: at least, they are a starting point for a discussion. Look, I'm not an expert in any law, and sadly most citizens aren't, despite the fact that laws affect our lives every day. Including, say, fair use and copyright.

Now, since I'm not an expert, I surely miss nuances and subtleties, but I should have enough of a basic understanding, by reading the law text and noticing the facts themselves, that someone who IS knowledgeable of the deeper aspects not despair at the prospect of informing me of them. I say "I should", because the law should not be so opaque so as to be completely incomprehensible to any without a law degree, and also because you need to trust your own judgement, whithin limits.

For example, when deeming Illithids off-limits because of trade-mark issues.

[drachefly]

Hrm. Some definitely have, but I thought that the cwap golem attack was at least natural shockamancy, and nothing about that was electrical.

That was an offensive dirtmancy spell, since Sizemore was the one who "activated" the cwapgolem (when that previous cwap golem fought the marbits, he couldn't self-destruct by himself). It's hard to get more dirty than 4chan. Really, why do you all think shockmancy is the only school that would get offensive spells?

Because the words he's saying are SHOCK sites!!!

But now, reviewing, I see he was reading from a scroll, and the result was a set of electrical attacks. Okay, shockamancy has electrical signamancy in all known cases. Got it.