Talk:Spellbook

"Spellbook" isn't really the mechanic, "Draft" is

I think the way "drafting from a spellbook" is described on this page and Alchemy: Innistrad is a bit off from how the terms are being used in-game and from official sources. From everything I've seen, it doesn't appear that "Spellbook" is the new mechanic. As this page has noted, the term "spellbook" was already used in official card text in a previous card with Conjure. It makes no sense to say "spellbook means drafting, and it did say spellbook another time but that wasn't really a spellbook". The keyword action here is "Draft". The keyword action on the previous card is "Conjure". Those are both clearly game actions, like many other keyword actions. Spellbook is less than that - "spellbook" is just a flavorful game term for "a specific list of cards". This page is trying to force the term "spellbook" to mean "drafting from a spellbook", when even the lead paragraph itself says the action being described is drafting, not "spellbooking".

I did check the refs on this page so far to make sure I wasn't missing anything official - I'm certainly aware I don't keep up with new content all the time. Although I'd caution that pre-release press isn't always clear about what the Official Game Terminology is precisely anyway. At any rate, the "State of the Game - Alchemy" article just uses the phrase "drafting from a spellbook". There's nothing there about "spellbook" itself being a brand new concept and the previous usage of "spellbook" being something different. But let me know if I did miss something more substantial on the terminology.

I'd highly recommend recognizing "Draft (keyword action)" as the name of the digital-only keyword action, just like Conjure. Then, either:

• Move this page to that one. The lead paragraph and half of the description in this page are already describing the action of what you do with the spellbooks in the new set (Draft from them), rather than the spellbooks themselves. The spellbook concept can still be discussed within whichever other mechanics refer to it, namely Conjure and Draft (so far).
• Create that page, and move the lead paragraph and half of description to that page, since again, they already describe the action of drafting. Keep the parts of this page that do describe what a spellbook is, as a supplemental mechanic to both Conjure and Draft. (I prefer this option, but splitting a page is always more work than just moving one.)

Just to be clear, a lot of great work has already been done setting up pages for the new set - awesome job y'all! I just want to help make sure the wiki doesn't get locked in to using one term without due consideration, and end up having to rephrase a lot of the content later on. And obviously I'm not going to rush in and clobber everything while folks are still working on it :) I just want to get the idea out there as early as possible, so everyone working on the new content can consider which term works best, to make the most of the time they're investing.

- jerodast (talk) 08:14, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

I've created the Draft (keyword action) page and updated the Spellbook page per your second point. With the release of Alchemy Horizons: Baldur's Gate it's clear that Alchemy R&D are treating the spellbook as it's own individual thing and the mechanics of how that list is accessed in-game are via Conjure or Draft. It should also be noted that as of 7 July 2022, the Arena tooltips don't describe Spellbooks in any way. They only refer to conjure and draft.

- RivalRowan (talk) 08:02, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

RR, really appreciate the work you did for that idea, and your support of the proposal! I have to admit I had softened on my initial stance when they kept on using spellbooks only for draft through 3 Alchemy sets - glad to see I wasn't completely off base that they'd eventually use it with Conjure again haha. Your info about the Arena tooltips is also a great point - I don't really use Arena myself anymore so I appreciate your calling attention to it. - jerodast (talk) 20:10, 8 July 2022 (UTC)