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Arivia posted:Ed has confirmed that yes, those kinds of characters do exist in the FR, but none are documented. My personal guess is that Brian the Swordmaster is one of them, since that name sticks out like a sore thumb (the other explanation being one of the players in the Company of Crazed Venturers really mailing it in at character creation). Thank you for the answer! https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Brian 4 Levels in Fighter, 16 levels in Expert. Something tells me his title's a bit misleading unless it's like Knowledge (swords) lol Edit: Apologies for any derails, I don't mind moving the topic elsewhere Libertad! fucked around with this message at 03:48 on Apr 14, 2022 |
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Apr 14, 2022 03:46
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Libertad! posted:Thank you for the answer! Could be Craft (weaponsmithing) and he makes really good swords too.
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Apr 14, 2022 03:49
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OtspIII posted:My personal hot take is that orcs are the worst mainstream fantasy species. The more I think about them, the more their theming just comes off as "humans, but okay to kill". That's their origin. JRR Tolkien, an avowed Catholic, made the orcs as a race born without parents and without a soul, to have an antagonist that it was OK to kill without thinking too hard. But again, devout Christian. So when fans would ask him questions like, "What about an orc raised by humans as a baby" or "Is God truly incapable of saving them" he'd fold and admit that, fine, maybe there isn't a race, real or fictional, it's OK to genocide. Eberron remains the best: There is no species it's OK to kill, you're supposed to fight cults and terrorists and the rich.
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Apr 14, 2022 04:39
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Mystic Mongol posted:There is no species it's OK to kill, you're supposed to fight cults and terrorists and the rich. 
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Apr 14, 2022 14:24
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Siivola posted:"Cults and terrorists" still sounds pretty bad. It's a pulp adventure setting, these are cults and terrorists who are unabashedly evil and mostly killing people for the sake of killing people.
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Apr 14, 2022 16:59
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The entry-level antagonist faction in Eberron is a far-right paramilitary cult of personality disowned by their parent government for war crimes. That's the kind of terrorism you're likely to run into in that setting.
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Apr 14, 2022 16:59
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It's a shame D&D never did more interesting stuff with Eberron's Shifters, at least not that I know of.
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Apr 14, 2022 17:04
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OtspIII posted:My personal hot take is that orcs are the worst mainstream fantasy species. The more I think about them, the more their theming just comes off as "humans, but okay to kill". lately there's been a definite shift towards orcs as the "dudes rock" species of just a bunch of big cool guys who like to hang out and do guy things together, and I like that take on them
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Apr 14, 2022 18:07
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Mystic Mongol posted:That's their origin. JRR Tolkien, an avowed Catholic, made the orcs as a race born without parents and without a soul, to have an antagonist that it was OK to kill without thinking too hard. But again, devout Christian. So when fans would ask him questions like, "What about an orc raised by humans as a baby" or "Is God truly incapable of saving them" he'd fold and admit that, fine, maybe there isn't a race, real or fictional, it's OK to genocide. Tolkien's orcs are also irredeemably, metaphysically corrupted by Absolute Evil. D&D's orcs started out the same way, but got increasingly humanized as editions went on while keeping them in the same antagonist slot which, obviously doesn't work. 5e tried to revive this very useful idea of "smart, self-aware, relatively organized, Unquestionably Evil Things It's Okay To Kill" by making gnolls demon-spawn who literally "lack anything resembling a conscience" and "can't be taught or coerced to put aside its destructive tendencies," but people got Very Mad Online about that too.
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Apr 14, 2022 19:33
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I really loved Pratchett's take on Orcs, where it turns out that they were artificially created from humans and driven into battle by an evil overlord and have been persecuted ever since, and the one Orc we meet is a sensitive genius who has a charming romantic subplot.
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Apr 14, 2022 19:34
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Kestral posted:Tolkien's orcs are also irredeemably, metaphysically corrupted by Absolute Evil. D&D's orcs started out the same way, but got increasingly humanized as editions went on while keeping them in the same antagonist slot which, obviously doesn't work. 5e tried to revive this very useful idea of "smart, self-aware, relatively organized, Unquestionably Evil Things It's Okay To Kill" by making gnolls demon-spawn who literally "lack anything resembling a conscience" and "can't be taught or coerced to put aside its destructive tendencies," but people got Very Mad Online about that too. Yeah because Gnolls rule and species all being auto-evil sucks, even demons and devils.
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Apr 14, 2022 19:48
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They should just throw out the concept of good and evil. It's metaphysically shaky to begin with in a universe with multiple gods. Elemental Good and Evil doesn't really work unless your in a monotheist universe where someone can define what good is
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Apr 14, 2022 19:55
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D&D cosmology is this incredibly weird thing where Good and Evil are, like, wave-particles that don't necessarily correspond to anyone's idea of ethics.
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Apr 14, 2022 19:59
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Kestral posted:Tolkien's orcs are also irredeemably, metaphysically corrupted by Absolute Evil.
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Apr 14, 2022 20:07
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Golbins are my friends.
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Apr 14, 2022 20:27
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Halloween Jack posted:D&D cosmology is this incredibly weird thing where Good and Evil are, like, wave-particles that don't necessarily correspond to anyone's idea of ethics. I kind of like that tbh
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Apr 14, 2022 20:41
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Halloween Jack posted:D&D cosmology is this incredibly weird thing where Good and Evil are, like, wave-particles that don't necessarily correspond to anyone's idea of ethics. Motherfuckers closed down the Evil Electric Power Plant, and it's 100% because they don't like the name. All that poo poo about it turning the frogs dire is just fossil fuel company propaganda. Meanwhile the coal power plant they opened to replace it is somehow "clean" because the coal comes from Mount Celestia. Who cares what plane the fuel is from? It's still dumping carcinogens into the air, guys!
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Apr 14, 2022 20:47
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Andrast posted:I kind of like that tbh But instead we got what we got, which is not coherent or very useful.
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Apr 14, 2022 20:55
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Kestral posted:Tolkien's orcs are also irredeemably, metaphysically corrupted by Absolute Evil. D&D's orcs started out the same way, but got increasingly humanized as editions went on while keeping them in the same antagonist slot which, obviously doesn't work. 5e tried to revive this very useful idea of "smart, self-aware, relatively organized, Unquestionably Evil Things It's Okay To Kill" by making gnolls demon-spawn who literally "lack anything resembling a conscience" and "can't be taught or coerced to put aside its destructive tendencies," but people got Very Mad Online about that too. I think it would have been more successful if they picked one of the existing Really Evil humanoids instead of gnolls, which are just “monstrous tribals” so there was already some flexibility in their portrayals. Nothics or meazels or something.
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Apr 14, 2022 21:04
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Mystic Mongol posted:Motherfuckers closed down the Evil Electric Power Plant, and it's 100% because they don't like the name. All that poo poo about it turning the frogs dire is just fossil fuel company propaganda. Meanwhile the coal power plant they opened to replace it is somehow "clean" because the coal comes from Mount Celestia. Who cares what plane the fuel is from? It's still dumping carcinogens into the air, guys! The entire multiverse is actually just the business bits of a good/evil reactor being used by a higher dimension to generate power.
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Apr 14, 2022 21:09
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Honest, in my opinion all they really need to do to fix alignment is acknowledge that it's complete nonsense that only exists to give the game a fun D&D vibe. These gnolls are chaotic evil 90% of the time because they're just kind of violent assholes, but that's not worth killing them or anything. These demons are chaotic evil 90% of the time because they're secreted from the Evil Hole. There is no contradiction, because there is no actual system to contradict. Just a series of vibes that your party feels out for themselves.
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Apr 14, 2022 21:16
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Alignment is, Gygaxianly, a mess: (from the 1e DMG) So, alignments are called out explicitly as abstractions that are simplistic and real people will contain multitudes, and also everything is culturally subjective and it's up to the DM to determine what is right and wrong  But also every character knows a secret language that only their alignment speaks and only in the company of other like minded individuals of the same species and which can only communicate ideas related to that alignment  And also every character secretly serves the gods of that alignment, and will be punished for deviating from their deity's proscriptions whether they know them or not  And also you can't shift alignment severely unless magic or insanity are involved, and it happening often will keep your character at such a low level as to make them unplayable 
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Apr 14, 2022 21:19
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Toph Bei Fong posted:Alignment is, Gygaxianly, a mess: (from the 1e DMG) I wonder what prompted him to add the Evil/Good axis to the alignment system in the first place. The original system only had Order and Chaos, which are concepts that are a lot more universal than good and evil and fit into the fantasy setting a lot better.
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Apr 14, 2022 21:42
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also getting paid to kill people is verily perforce held to be the antithesis of weal
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Apr 14, 2022 22:06
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Siivola posted:This is also how the conquistadors justified plundering the Americas, triggering an extended religious argument on whether non-white people have souls or not.
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Apr 14, 2022 22:57
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There is an endless supply of white men. There has always been a limited number of human beings.
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Apr 14, 2022 23:18
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Yvonmukluk posted:I really loved Pratchett's take on Orcs, where it turns out that they were artificially created from humans and driven into battle by an evil overlord and have been persecuted ever since, and the one Orc we meet is a sensitive genius who has a charming romantic subplot. Huh. Which book had orcs in it? I’m totally blanking.
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Apr 15, 2022 02:14
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Unseen Academicals.
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Apr 15, 2022 02:18
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Just Winging It posted:Unseen Academicals. The football one? I think I missed that one for brain dead reasons. Thanks.
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Apr 15, 2022 02:51
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Xiahou Dun posted:The football one? I think I missed that one for brain dead reasons. Unseen Academicals is not a very good book by Pratchett standards so it's totally fair to give it a pass.
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Apr 15, 2022 03:34
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bewilderment posted:Unseen Academicals is not a very good book by Pratchett standards so it's totally fair to give it a pass. Yeah, the uh progression of his books towards the end was really depressing, for pretty obvious reasons. I grabbed Raising Steam when it came out, which has some pretty severe issues, but it was still good enough to kind of make me forget things. There was this constant nagging feeling of, "Huh, this isn't as tight as his usual stuff, almost like he didn't give it another pass in edit- O. Yeah.  "
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Apr 15, 2022 05:15
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This was pages ago but the pairing of these two posts back to back tickled meGimpInBlack posted:Years later she somehow stumbled on the infamous Dead Alewives "I'm attacking the darkness!" skit with the note "Please tell me this is not what you're doing when you play that game," so I think she realized it was all a bit silly. HopperUK posted:I got into the only face-to-face DnD group I've ever had because my sister watched the episodes of Community about DnD and got interested, so I agreed to run it for her and some friends and we ended up having an amazing time. So I am in favour of it being on TV. Though I think those Community episodes are pretty accurate to what DnD is like, at least filtered through the sitcom lens of everything being extreme. Dead Ale Wives Wiki Page posted:Dan Harmon was the creator and writer of the "Dungeons and Dragons" sketch, also known as "Summoner Geeks". In the late 1990s, he moved to Los Angeles with Schrab, where the two launched a career as screenwriting partners. Harmon was the creator of the TV series Community.
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Apr 15, 2022 12:45
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bewilderment posted:Unseen Academicals is not a very good book by Pratchett standards so it's totally fair to give it a pass. I mean, it was the first one I read so I have a soft spot for it. And even a not very good Pratchett is still pretty good when it comes to fantasy novel.
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Apr 15, 2022 17:06
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fez_machine posted:This was pages ago but the pairing of these two posts back to back tickled me I mean, both the Dead Alewives skit and the Community episode are silly hyperbole of D&D sessions with dysfunctional groups of weirdos, even if they technically are more grounded in facts about how the game is played. The "I attack the darkness!!" or later weirding out a girl who tries to join in bits in the Dead Alewives stuff aren't any more out there than like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODgu_-rR1X8 Nuns with Guns fucked around with this message at 17:47 on Apr 15, 2022 |
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Apr 15, 2022 17:44
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The last few Discworld books get really rough and unengaging. Fortunately, The Shepherd's Crown (the very last one) is quite excellent, though I'd assume given the contrast between it and Raising Steam that someone from Pratchett's circle of friends acted as a secret co-writer.
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Apr 15, 2022 21:27
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I'm conflicted about the last few books because while the writing definitely falls off a cliff and reminds me on every other page of Sir Pratchett's terrible decline, Raising Steam also contains one of my favorite discworld characters ever, Of the Twilight the Darkness the goblin. If I remember right, he has cameos in one or two of the following books as well.
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Apr 15, 2022 21:43
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Maybe the real TG industry was the goons making me cry about Terry Pratchett we made along the way 
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Apr 15, 2022 22:13
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sasha_d3ath posted:Maybe the real TG industry was the goons making me cry about Terry Pratchett we made along the way Shepards Crown definitely got me. 
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Apr 15, 2022 22:14
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Lord_Hambrose posted:Shepards Crown definitely got me. I can't imagine there are many it didn't get, at least if they'd been following the world/author for any amount of time. It's a whole lot.
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Apr 15, 2022 22:20
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Roadie posted:The last few Discworld books get really rough and unengaging. Fortunately, The Shepherd's Crown (the very last one) is quite excellent, though I'd assume given the contrast between it and Raising Steam that someone from Pratchett's circle of friends acted as a secret co-writer. Not really a secret, by that time he was leaning on Rich Wilkins more and more.
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Apr 15, 2022 22:23
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