Post originally by Simon Rogers at 2003-09-09 03:55:11
Converted from Phorums BB System

XPS 2 has an article by the estimable Gary Gygax describing the influence that Vance had on D&D, including the magic system

Simon Rogers
Pelgrane Press

The Old Geezer wrote:
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"We get years of people telling us on (second hand opinion) "

I fear, dear colleague, that I must essay gently, nay tenderly, to press upon your mind the possibility that forces and perhaps, even, persons, have conspired in this unfortunate instance to result in your utterance not, alas, being aligned to the utmost atom with the absolute truth, which occurance, all will surely agree, is a thing of rareness beyond all mention.

But if you do pursue the words and writings of one Gary Gygax, proclaimed by some savant and others charlatan (such petty squabblings, of course, are beneath the dignity of persons of our undoubted excellence and I dismiss them forthwith) with your usual energy and undenied sagacity, I feel most warmly reassured that you will find (with a speed befitting one of your intellectual prowess) that the accredation of resemblance of the 'spell slots' of that jejune entertainment known colloquially as "Dungeons and Dragons" to the epistolary, scholarly, and literary....