Creative Conjuring

A magazine article in Dragon #100 discussed three categories of energy that fueled magical powers within the Marvel Super Heroes role-playing game.

• Personal energies allow magicians to cast illusions or use psionics, such as telepathy, astral projection, and mental attacks.
• Universal energies are necessary to fire magic bolts, transform one object into another, dispel magic, or acquire knowledge through divination.
• Dimensional energies come into play when summoning otherworldly creatures, creating objects out of nothing, or raising the dead.

This magical taxonomy wasn't explicit within the comics. For example, Dr. Strange might invoke the name of Dormammu or other extra-dimensional beings when wielding magic that the game described as using Personal or Universal energies instead of Dimensional energies.

To prevent sorcerers from becoming disproportionately more powerful than other heroes in the game, the article set parameters around the number of magical powers they could wield within each of the three categories.

This image of Dr. Strange appeared with the article "Creative Conjuring" by Eric Walker in Dragon #100 (August 1985).