From:	Erik Jameson <erikj@****.COM>
Subject:	Metamagic?!
Date:	Thu, 5 Mar 1998 19:47:47 -0500

Urm, I think this needs to be hashed out here Ereskanti (sorry, I don't
have your RL name in front of me). It sounds like much of what you are
talking about, through Binder-in-the-dark, as metamagic is frighteningly
similar to Earthdawn magic techniques.

I had a e-mail conversation with Steve "Magic Guru" Kenson about a year ago
in this regard. I had asked him to critique a piece on new magic
techniques for the Shadowland magazine (which did get published). He
basically "made me" tone things down a lot. He said that the level of
magic technology, not to mention the mana level, was far too low for
anything resembling ED type magic, such as Spell Matrices, Spell Matrix
Items, blood charms, physical transfer over the astral, and so on.

One example was a variation of Centering I proposed. It was available only
to high-level initiates (above Grade 5 or something) and only gave a bonus
to the Centering target number. I also proposed a Drain Focus, that
followed all the basic rules of foci, but only helped with drain. I wrote
a few other things, but those two items were as close to Earthdawn magic as
I could get away with.

And since Steve Kenson wrote Awakenings, among other SR books, I would tend
to go with his word on this. And since Mike Mulvihill approved the article
for publication, it comes close to SR canon.

If this is the sort of thing Binder is talking about, fine. If it's as
close to Earthdawn as it looks to me, it may need some re-working of some
sort.

Please get back to me ASAP regarding this so I can properly respond on TK.

Erik J.