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Angrymog posted:re: Settings, I liked Basic D&D's known world. It's got the human culture analogue thing going with most of its nations, but it never got the mass popularity so the setting isn't overwhelmed by high level NPCs who're having all the fun. Alphatia's 200 36th-level wizards say hi. No, I get what you meant, most of the high-level NPCs are there so the PCs don't show up for a quest and immediately try to kill the king and raid the treasury, so they can safely be ignored by just asking nicely, rather than being there to save all magic for the fiftieth time while the PCs clean out their basements. There are a few high-level NPCs who have legitimately changed the world but they're mostly from history and it's presented as powerful and cool.
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Dec 5, 2018 14:56
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AlphaDog posted:Because I would have assumed that with ~40 fiction books it might have the exact same problems. But then I went and looked and there's over three hundred loving Forgotten Realms books. Unlike FR, the Eberron fiction is also explicitly non-canonical "unless you want it to be canon."
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Dec 5, 2018 15:32
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Let's be real, all fiction is non-canonical unless you like it
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Dec 5, 2018 15:49
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ProfessorCirno posted:Unlike FR, the Eberron fiction is also explicitly non-canonical "unless you want it to be canon." The Dungeon Master chooses what’s “canonical” in his or her game. I think people tend to forget that campaign settings are there to help the DM, not dictate to the DM. You can use or not use as much as you like.
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Dec 5, 2018 15:53
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nelson posted:The Dungeon Master chooses what’s “canonical” in his or her game. I think people tend to forget that campaign settings are there to help the DM, not dictate to the DM. You can use or not use as much as you like. Shhh these windmills need to be slain!!! @glagha: that’s not how construction of a modern canon to be representative of important texts works.
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Dec 5, 2018 16:11
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has there ever been a metaplot that explicitly told you that this is absolutely 100% precisely what happened and you CANNOT modify it in any way? I'm not even talking about a book that neglected to have a sidebar that says "you can change this if you want", but a book that explicitly said the opposite
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Dec 5, 2018 16:34
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Glagha posted:Let's be real, all fiction is non-canonical unless you like it Almost all fiction. Barkley's Shut up and Jam Gaiden is explicitly canon whether you like it or not.
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Dec 5, 2018 16:40
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Ratoslov posted:Gully dwarves are kinda stupid conceptually, but they never got the hate that kender got because they're genuinely underdogs in a world that hates them and gives them no respect. I like that about them. If you replaced my party's races with Gully Dwarf their actions would make incalculably more sense.
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Dec 5, 2018 17:02
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clusterfuck posted:I half seriously thought some Eberron purists might be mad at my Frankensteining. I just really want to see an army of halflings on dinosaurs fighting demons allied with ghouls (darakhul) enhanced with warforged tech Taking poo poo you like and running with it is cool, though. I probably wouldn't want to play a game set in the Divinity: Original Sin world, but if I, a person who overwhelming despises the idea of elves, found out that someone had taken D:OS's elves and stapled it to their own game, I'd be thrilled.
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Dec 5, 2018 17:10
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Dragonatrix posted:Almost all fiction. Barkley's Shut up and Jam Gaiden is explicitly canon whether you like it or not. Well obviously. It says so fight at the beginning! Ratoslov posted:Gully dwarves are kinda stupid conceptually, but they never got the hate that kender got because they're genuinely underdogs in a world that hates them and gives them no respect. I like that about them. It's because Kender say right in their description "be an rear end in a top hat to your party and treat them like dicks for calling you out on it." Like it says that they don't understand personal property and will just take poo poo that doesn't belong to them and feign ignorance if you call them on it. That's never behavior you should encourage in players because there's always That Guy and it's this race.
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Dec 5, 2018 18:28
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Glagha posted:
I still love this image: 
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Dec 5, 2018 19:05
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Kender very literally exist because of Mormonism.
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Dec 5, 2018 19:22
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ProfessorCirno posted:Kender very literally exist because of Mormonism. ...go on
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Dec 5, 2018 19:25
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Brother Entropy posted:...go on Yeah. Hit me with this poo poo. I'm ready. I'm not ready.
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Dec 5, 2018 19:38
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Hickman is a devout Mormon and had issues with there being a literal "thief" class, but also needed something to replace the role in Dragonlance, and so he invented Kender, who are thieves, but aren't really thieves, making them morally OK, uh, somehow. The pure insanity of Kender exist due to Hickman essentially trying to loophole and rules lawyer their own religious morality into allowing a D&D class/race that could handle all the trappings of the "thief" class without being an actual thief.
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Dec 5, 2018 19:42
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this is why mormons shouldn't be allowed to play roleplaying games
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Dec 5, 2018 19:55
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kidkissinger posted:this is why mormons shouldn't be allowed to play roleplaying games Or write Sci-Fi novels.
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Dec 5, 2018 20:11
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kidkissinger posted:this is why mormons shouldn't be allowed to play roleplaying games Hey, hey now. I got a buddy that's a mormon who is actually a really excellent player and Dungeon Master. Of course he's also not batshit insane which probably helps, and takes more of his tropes from Legend of Zelda than The Book of Mormon.
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Dec 5, 2018 20:24
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huh. i always pictured kender as little dog people
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Dec 5, 2018 20:51
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Serf posted:huh. i always pictured kender as little dog people That's kobolds. Except when they're little lizard people.
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Dec 5, 2018 20:54
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My first Dragonlance novel, one of the little YA ones from the early 2000s, had this weirdly stylized kender that resembled a mousey rat halfling. It was cute in that vaguely rodent pet sort of way. When I went on to read the original series after that and saw the depictions of Tasslehoff Burrfoot, I had a massive disconnect between my original conception of kender and the not-halflings that they were supposed to be.
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Dec 5, 2018 21:01
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Is there anything actually worse than kender? And this is a serious question, I want to know if things get worse. edit: rat and/or mouse people are also superior
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Dec 5, 2018 21:07
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Gharbad the Weak posted:Is there anything actually worse than kender? And this is a serious question, I want to know if things get worse. Arguably, Gully Dwarves. They're a half-dwarf hybrid species and they're stupid. By which I mean, exceedingly unintelligent. By which I mean, fully mentally disabled in a way few humans have ever managed to be. These guys legit have trouble counting to 2. I'm not even making that up, that's actually in their description, only the very brightest amongst them manage to reach 3. When you have something whose defining traits are "mixing of the races" and "mentally challenged" the result is... yeah, not a good look. They're also a joke race, btw. So it's not some exploration of being neurologically a-typical or whatever, it's full blown "lol let's make fun of the retard" territory.
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Dec 5, 2018 21:30
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kidkissinger posted:this is why mormons shouldn't be allowed to play roleplaying games But what about Dogs in the Vineyard? Checkmate atheists. 
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Dec 5, 2018 21:40
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Arthil posted:Hey, hey now. I got a buddy that's a mormon who is actually a really excellent player and Dungeon Master. I've played with both a priest and a Lutheran pastor and both have been really excellent players. Like the Lutheran played a tiefling paladin of a very not God god, and was really into drinking and fist fights. He was a blast. The priest was very shy but really got into it whenever his character had to make a speech or translate stuff and was also more apt to negotiate with intelligent races than attack them, which was also a lot of fun. EDIT: Fixed
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Dec 5, 2018 22:38
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AlphaDog posted:*Source: I was a dragonlance kid. I had the book with the songs and recipes and everything. Someone freely gave me that book about 10 years ago. Still haven't made kender muffins or whatever. It's simultaneously cool and insanely uncool for being that all-in.
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Dec 5, 2018 22:54
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Gharbad the Weak posted:Is there anything actually worse than kender? And this is a serious question, I want to know if things get worse. probably mongrel-men in the earlier games. Their deal is that they were the product of lots of different species intermingling their gene pools, and this led to messed-up impure monster people.  5e brought them back but made them the product of crazy wizard experiments in genetics, just slamming everything together, which is a big improvement even if it's a pretty common story.
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Dec 5, 2018 23:08
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Kender and Gully Dwarves are an example of "how did you survive this long?" If there's a species that just constantly steals from people as a matter of course why would anyone associate with them? Or on that note are we just establishing Kender are too stupid to realize humans generally don't like it when you take things they have without asking? Like if they don't have a concept of personal property then that's fine, but as an intelligent species they really can't figure out as a group that when they're around big folk they will take offense if you do that? Like I figure they'd at least learn the social norm of "hey don't touch that you little poo poo" or they would just never get to hang out with the other cultures of Krynn or whatever. Gully Dwarves are just a lovely joke of "lol they can't count above 2 and they're dumb and they smell bad" just don't do that what the gently caress.
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Dec 5, 2018 23:15
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Wrestlepig posted:5e brought them back but made them the product of crazy wizard experiments in genetics, just slamming everything together, which is a big improvement even if it's a pretty common story. I’ve got a soft spot for the MM entries that can be summarized as “yeah, a wizard really hosed up...”
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Dec 5, 2018 23:18
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I think one of my favorite bits from the 5e Monster Manual is the little anecdote on the Owlbear page that reads "The good thing about owlbears is that the wizard who created them is probably dead."
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Dec 5, 2018 23:35
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I think you could write a kender race no problem by just taking advantage of narrative features. Borrowing: With your group's consent, you have immediate access to any item carried by your allies, having retrospectively borrowed it. Any borrowed item can be recovered by one of your allies as required, having retrospectively shaken you down for it. Remember this?: During a long rest, pick an ally and describe which memento of theirs you've borrowed and return. They narrate the memento's history and gain [X] until you use this ability on them again. (basically, kender as a spotlight-granting tool) Then something to let you mess with NPCs
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Dec 5, 2018 23:36
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Sodomy Hussein posted:Someone freely gave me that book about 10 years ago. Still haven't made kender muffins or whatever. It's simultaneously cool and insanely uncool for being that all-in. Yeah a friend gave it to me because I was running a DL campaign that he was enjoying. I kinda wish I'd kept it. But the spiced potatoes aren't all that. xiw posted:I think you could write a kender race no problem by just taking advantage of narrative features. Yeah, that's good stuff. Also, a society without the concept of personal property would probably be really weird and I think the concept is worth exploring. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Dec 5, 2018 |
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Dec 5, 2018 23:36
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Sodomy Hussein posted:Someone freely gave me that book about 10 years ago. Still haven't made kender muffins or whatever. It's simultaneously cool and insanely uncool for being that all-in. So how many Kender's must you kill for these muffins?
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Dec 6, 2018 01:38
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AlphaDog posted:But the spiced potatoes aren't all that. Not as good as the spiced potatoes at the Vermillion Minotaur?
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Dec 6, 2018 01:55
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AlphaDog posted:Yeah, that's good stuff. To be honest, there's a lot of stuff in D&D that's worth exploring a lot more than what's already been done, in both established settings as well as just the implications that arise from the basic Players Handbook. To touch back on the Eberron talk, that's really one of the only settings that I can readily think of that acknowledges the fact that there are people who can shoot fire and fly around like it's nothing, there's more than one person who can do such feats (and these feats can even be taught to others as well!), and keeps extrapolating on that. Rather than the typical D&D world of Dirtfarmistan, where there might be a wizard out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, and the closest people haven't decided to burn the witch, Eberron realizes that stuff like Continual Light lamp posts would not only exist, but would probably be fairly common, and the general public would not only be way more comfortable around magic, but (thanks to dragonmarks) may be capable of minor magic themselves without even putting in the time and effort that the actual wizards and artificers do. Not to say that Eberon's the be-all end-all of settings, as there's way more focus on Dragons and dragon-related stuff than I'd really personally like. That's also not getting into some of the more questionable stuff in the setting, either, like the leader of the Order of the Silver Flame, often referred to as "Loli-Pope", falling suuuper hard into the Little Miss Badass trope. In any case, I'd love to see a setting that not only took into account that magic is ubiquitous, but high-level magic is a lot more common than it is. I mean, Fly has been available to pretty much any 5th level wizard from Basic all the way on up to 5th Edition, yet it seems that not a single non-Eberron setting has taken that into account, and still has castles with walls (that are easily flown over). That's not even taking into account great siege-breaking spells like Passwall or Cloudkill, let alone having a wizard powerful enough to drop a Meteor Swarm on a besieged army would be absolutely devastating. On the other hand, being able to just create food and water means cutting supply lines is meaningless, poisons and diseases aren't a threat when they can be cured en masse with a few words from a man of faith, and advancing armies can be deterred by a barrier made of whirling blades, and siege towers caught in massive flame strikes. I'd love for a setting to not only realize there is powerful magic around in the world, but take it to it's natural conclusion. Like Mystara's "200 Level 36 Wizards" in Alphatia, there should have been way more going on than there was. One max-level wizard is hilariously powerful, let alone two loving hundred, in just the top of the ruling class alone. Sure, there were a few floating islands, and yeah, it was totally an allegory for Atlantis, but come the gently caress on. Am I the only one that felt a bit underwhelmed by that?  AlphaDog posted:But the spiced potatoes aren't all that.
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Dec 6, 2018 05:48
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Aniodia posted:I'd love for a setting to not only realize there is powerful magic around in the world, but take it to it's natural conclusion. Like Mystara's "200 Level 36 Wizards" in Alphatia, there should have been way more going on than there was. One max-level wizard is hilariously powerful, let alone two loving hundred, in just the top of the ruling class alone. Mutually assured destruction is the natural result of any all-out war between any two magisters. A world of nothing but intrigue and low-level warfare between deniable assets, fought on a global scale.
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Dec 6, 2018 06:05
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The world my Saturday DM has been building up for us seems to strike a balance, although we've hardly touched on in a fifth of the world. It seems like magic above what a Level 10 character is capable of is extremely rare, as what is easily the Holiest of Holy Cities was still struggling to deal with an undead threat popping up in their lands. A City of Wizards, somewhat based off of how widespread magic is in Eberron, has restrictions in place which hinder magic being cast above 1st Level aside from within Mage Towers. We'll have to see how things go as we continue to progress, currently Level 7, but it has done a good job of making the party actually feel powerful but at the same time we're not all-powerful. No wizard in the party might help there, closest is the Eldritch Knight that is my temporary replacement for my monk due to orcnapping.
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Dec 6, 2018 06:19
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Aniodia posted:I'd love for a setting to not only realize there is powerful magic around in the world, but take it to it's natural conclusion. Honestly, I'd settle for one that acknowledges that the existence of low level spells and cantrips utterly changes what warfare looks like. Oh poo poo, what about a setting where this poo poo reached its natural conclusion and
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Dec 6, 2018 06:20
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Aniodia posted:To be honest, there's a lot of stuff in D&D that's worth exploring a lot more than what's already been done, in both established settings as well as just the implications that arise from the basic Players Handbook. To touch back on the Eberron talk, that's really one of the only settings that I can readily think of that acknowledges the fact that there are people who can shoot fire and fly around like it's nothing, there's more than one person who can do such feats (and these feats can even be taught to others as well!), and keeps extrapolating on that. Rather than the typical D&D world of Dirtfarmistan, where there might be a wizard out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, and the closest people haven't decided to burn the witch, Eberron realizes that stuff like Continual Light lamp posts would not only exist, but would probably be fairly common, and the general public would not only be way more comfortable around magic, but (thanks to dragonmarks) may be capable of minor magic themselves without even putting in the time and effort that the actual wizards and artificers do. The Spellmonger series by Terry Mancour sort of goes into that magic vs magic (not DnD wizards, but mages in play on large war setting). You have wizards that call down meterswarm and then you have another wizard who casts counter spell. Then the wizards try and take each other out and it tends to go more mage vs mage then mage vs army. Castles wind up being reinforced with magic making them even stronger vs magic as well as non-magical assault, etc. If you have the money to spend constructing a huge keep, you probably have the money to hire a team of wizards to shore up its magical defenses and retain a court wizard, etc. I definitely would like to see (and even read about) some higher level magical war campaign stuff.
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Dec 6, 2018 06:20
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That's addressed in the malazan books,actually. It has a funny but logical enough solution that I don't want to spoil it (read malazan if you haven't, even though book 1 sucks )
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Dec 6, 2018 06:22
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