My brother-in-law sent me this. An interesting read on how the Austronesian term and concept of "mana" made its way into video games.
The History of Mana: How an Austronesian Concept Became a Video Game Mechanic
It's a good read, if you're interested in the origin of gaming terms like I sometimes am.
So, the short version seems to be that the term entered gaming from P.E.I. Bonewits by way of Dave Hargrave. Very interesting, and good to know. For myself, I had only traced it back as far as Authentic Thaumaturgy, mostly because I have never had a chance to learn much about Arduin Grimoire. I wonder from which source (probably one of those two) that Fantasy Wargaming picked up the term? We'll probably never know for certain, since the person who seems to have written those chapters passed away more than thirty years ago, but I would guess that it was probably AT.
ReplyDeleteThough I suspect that Niven's Not Long Before The End/The Magic Goes Away had a lot to do with popularizing the term, and RP Gamers seizing on it as a conceptual alternative to Gygax's preferred "Vancian" system. I remember some Gygax screeds in early issues of The Dragon where he disparaged such systems (I believe using the term "Mana" at least in passing), and it's not clear to me that Authentic Thaumaturgy predated the controversy.
DeleteSorry. I was talking of AT in respect to Fantasy Wargaming. The entry point for gaming in a wider sense seems to have been Dave Hargraves's Arduin Grimoire, and Hargraves, according the article, developed the idea from discussion with Bonewits.
Deletemana was used in stormbringer rpg and other games - i always assumed was related to bible and commonly used archaic spelling
ReplyDeleteI've heard a few people say that. I don't get it, myself, since Biblical "manna" (occasional archaic "mana") is a food (or, metaphorically, spiritual nourishment), not magical power.
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