That said, I must confess that there was a difference between his concept and the modern computer-RPG one -- his mana was present in the environment in general, rather than being specific to any one spellcaster.
(I am permanently ashamed that I didn't see the close connection to Nevinyrral's Disk until it was pointed out, but the I generally don't quickly see backward spellings. E.g., it took me about a week to understand the name of the "Alucard" vampire build in Elder Scrolls Online.)
Per Wikipedia, "Not Long Before the End" was first published in 1969. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_Goes_Away
That said, I must confess that there was a difference between his concept and the modern computer-RPG one -- his mana was present in the environment in general, rather than being specific to any one spellcaster.
(I am permanently ashamed that I didn't see the close connection to Nevinyrral's Disk until it was pointed out, but the I generally don't quickly see backward spellings. E.g., it took me about a week to understand the name of the "Alucard" vampire build in Elder Scrolls Online.)