Bill_McGrath comments on Brainstorming help request: teaching rationality basics in an RPG setting - Less Wrong
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This is the first thing that occurred to me as well, but would the characters know about it? Or does this game require a significant barrier between player knowledge and character knowledge?
We're talking about an in-character class, so even though I'll be talking to fellow channelers I don't think any of us is aware of balefire.
On the other hand, Ogier lore on the Pattern, including how some of them can sense ta'veren, might be valid IC knowledge for me.
We weren't supposed to know about Balefire? Oops.
Come to think of it, I suppose my Sedai would know, but you're hardly supposed to be telling Novices about it.
That's good. Wedrifid would have known too - given that he was curious, Cate Sedai was a specialist in arcane research and both were rather direct about seeking out and exploiting any novel sources of potential power.
Oh, such as?
And here I naively thought that the thing to do with bugs is to report them so they get fixed...
Hah, bet you were well loved for it. I remember when I had Justice for about a year and a half (with some breaks). Fun.
Would still be doing it probably except Justice is currently bugged and not loading, ever since a game crash literally 1 second before I was going to pick it up. (The most you've-gotta-be-kidding me MUD moment ever, for me.)
Sure, when they annoy me. Even fixed a few myself once I got my somewhat short lived coder Immortal. :)
Used to have people scream in outrage when I took it on trips to Seanchan. For some reason north PKers thought I was obliged to go to the blight and die to a gank of 10, not play hide and seek down south.
Why was it short lived?
Haha, so it was you. I remember people were complaining about some guy doing that. I never quite stored the name because nothing that happens south or west of Lugard registers in my brain.
Yeah, I got hated on just for using it extensively.
Well, IIRC, balefire is well-documented in the old lore and may be forbidden; I more vaguely recall Moiraine stealing a ter'angreal which specialized in producing balefire, and since she didn't spend her life playing with random ter'angreal, someone else must have known of its function or it was listed in storeroom catalogues. If balefire is discussed in the old books, forbidden by Tower law, and a ter'angreal is documented as producing balefire, it's hard to see how any Aes Sedai could doubt balefire's existence.
That makes sense, though I had vague memories of the existence of balefire being suppressed.
Hm, Moiraine learned how to actually weave it herself. The ter'angreal thing was someone else. Not that it matters.
What matters is that class will be taught to Accepteds and Novices, so discussing something Moiraine describes thus...
... is out.
My understanding is that it's forbidden to use or even know how to weave balefire, but not to know it exists or what it does. Knowledge of its existence moves around among Aes Sedai quite a lot without comment throughout the series.
Letting Novices and Accepted even know it exists is probably bad conduct, if not forbidden though, lest someone lacking sufficient discipline be tempted and try to learn to use it.