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It's funny because I've been listening to the back catalog of the Just King Things podcast, where they're reading through all the books of Stephen King in publication order, and it's made me realize both how big a thing psychic powers were in popular culture from the late 70s-90s and also how plausible some people thought this stuff was a real life phenomenon. I think the mechanical differences between Psionics and Magic in D&D at the time were kind of a reflection of that perception: "Psionics were different from magic because they're more science-y and totally plausible with the rules of reality, so they need an entirely different mechanical system that is separate from magic!" It's actually gotten me thinking about what the genesis point for the very specific portrayals of psychic powers in that time period was: I think the works of Stephen King had a pretty major influence in shaping how the public viewed them, but I feel like there are likely a few other, earlier works that King was drawing off of that already used some of the very specific tropes of 80s-90s psionics?
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Mar 14, 2023 16:00
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FMguru posted:nd they had big plans for Greyhawk in 3E - it was going to be the core setting for the RPGA Living Campaign and it was also the setting for the D&D Minis Game (which they had hopes of battling Warhammer with). Well, the Living Campaign stuff more or less died when Dancey left… Nah — Living Greyhawk ran under RPGA auspices from 2000 to 2008. Dancey was laid off in 2002. He spent a couple of years after that trying to run his own organized play company and failed, which may be what you’re thinking of.
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Mar 14, 2023 16:01
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PurpleXVI posted:I confess that I usually ignored the "all characters have psionics"-thing when I ran it because, well, about 90% of all psionic powers in 2nd ed AD&D are completely dogshit useless and the player with them will never use them. Good call, that's what we ended up doing. PurpleXVI posted:I call it "low magic" not because it necessarily has less magic than other settings, but because the magic there is more dark and threatening, what with the majority being controlled by immensely powerful Defilers, and the average person not knowing the difference between them and Preservers, so anyone busting out a fireball somewhere populated has to be prepared for a peasant mob hacking them up with stone tools. In general it just feels like a setting where there's a shortage of everything, in most places, magic included. Agreed, yes.
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Mar 14, 2023 16:35
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LatwPIAT posted:It's a super weird artifact of design that seems to come from, originally, a desire to make psionics in D&D reflect the New Age soundbite that everyone has psionic potential, so every class could theoretically be also a psionist. I actually quite like how Dark Sun decided to run with that instead of quietly ignore it, by just giving everyone a psionic power and making the system front and centre rather than having it be awkwardly tacked on in a supplement for a supplement. (It also helps that Dark Sun emphasises differences in magic sources a lot: everyone has psionic powers, clerics draw their power from natural forces or sorcerer-kings, and sorcerers draw their power from defiling the earth.) The Mad Max ish post apocalyptic setting also seems common to have at least some psionics in, Fallout comes to mind.
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Mar 14, 2023 17:26
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PurpleXVI posted:In my mind that's still what I'd call "high-magic." I just dislike ubiquitous magic everywhere, at that point there's really no difference whether your train is being powered by "elemental lightning magic" or "electricity." It's rare that it actually matters except to give wizards better job security than engineers. That said Eberron isn't high fantasy, it's magicpunk. Feel free to not like magicpunk it's not for everyone.
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Mar 14, 2023 18:04
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One thing I've always liked about Dark Sun was that magic was damaging to the world. It feels more interesting if there is a price associated with using magic, and it isn't just one borne by the user. I've always wanted to actually combine that assumption with a high-magic world. Peak magic arrives, and whatever source it draws from can't sustain this level of use anymore so it just starts sucking it out of living things. But instead of descending into Dark Sun post-apocalypse I would like to see a struggle to maintain balance. Keeping their civilization going by determining where and when to use magic, and having spellcasters be given the option to exceed the limits of the environment by pulling from their own bodies or offloading that cost onto the world with increasingly negative consequences.
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Mar 14, 2023 18:21
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Ghost Leviathan posted:The Mad Max ish post apocalyptic setting also seems common to have at least some psionics in, Fallout comes to mind. Splicer fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Mar 14, 2023 |
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Mar 14, 2023 19:32
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Serf posted:One thing I've always liked about Dark Sun was that magic was damaging to the world. It feels more interesting if there is a price associated with using magic, and it isn't just one borne by the user. I've always wanted to actually combine that assumption with a high-magic world. Peak magic arrives, and whatever source it draws from can't sustain this level of use anymore so it just starts sucking it out of living things. But instead of descending into Dark Sun post-apocalypse I would like to see a struggle to maintain balance. Keeping their civilization going by determining where and when to use magic, and having spellcasters be given the option to exceed the limits of the environment by pulling from their own bodies or offloading that cost onto the world with increasingly negative consequences. That was actually kind of a background plot detail in the Mystara campaign setting, of all things. The sourcebook for Glantri describes how the grand school of magic contains a hidden device called The Radiance, which is essentially a giant nuclear battery that a cadre of secret elites are using to enhance their magical abilities and become Immortals. The only problem is that every time they use the thing it's siphoning power from the Immortal Sphere of Energy and its continued use is going to eventually drain all magic from the world. Under the timeline given, within 25 years of the game's start The Radiance is going to have sucked enough magic out of the world that magic is going to be completely unusable for 1 day out of the year. The later Wrath of the Immortals campaign built on this idea and has The Radiance and its use play a major role in the plot.
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Mar 14, 2023 19:36
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Dark Sun was intended to push other products before they even had a one-sentence description of what the setting would be like. It was tied to the 2nd edition of BATTLESYSTEM, and at some point in the development process it became a proof-of-concept for the new psionics handbook. The original concept for Dark Sun was even weirder, with no standard D&D races. I think it was more science-fictional and post-apocalyptic, maybe with some influence from Dune, all of which would explain the psionics. I think Dark Sun was also the first time they had a readymade explanation for why psionics wasn't just magic with a different name, which wasn't revisited until 4e clarified the idea of power sources.
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Mar 14, 2023 19:40
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Did that dragon lance space wizards game for 5e ever come out? I don't think it'd be a good base setting, but it'd at least be not the forgotten realms where drist hangs out with his cat or whatever. I think we've collectively put more time and effort into solving this than wizards has. edit: Halloween Jack posted:I think Dark Sun was also the first time they had a readymade explanation for why psionics wasn't just magic with a different name, which wasn't revisited until 4e clarified the idea of power sources.
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Mar 14, 2023 20:08
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That's also the setting where dirtz hangs out with his cat though. They all are.
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Mar 14, 2023 20:10
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Ominous Jazz posted:Does 5e even have psionics or what? Not really, iirc there's like 3 subclasses with the "psionic" keyword. Mostly flavour changes.
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Mar 14, 2023 20:11
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Siivola posted:That's also the setting where dirtz hangs out with his cat though. They all are. Driz'zt hanging out with his cat is a universal constant. No matter where you go in the multiverse that plane's going to have its own version of Driz'zt who hangs out with his cat...
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Mar 14, 2023 20:13
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KingKalamari posted:Driz'zt hanging out with his cat is a universal constant. No matter where you go in the multiverse that plane's going to have its own version of Driz'zt who hangs out with his cat...
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Mar 14, 2023 20:14
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I'm glad Dark Sun isn't ever going to be updated to the 5e ruleset (or 6e? what the gently caress is D&D One), since it feels like WOTC would attempt to file off anything that could be perceived as offensive to dipshits on Twitter and, in the process, accidentally make something almost as racist as what existed in the 80s, like what they did with the Hadozee in Spelljammer.
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Mar 14, 2023 20:15
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Whirling posted:I'm glad Dark Sun isn't ever going to be updated to the 5e ruleset (or 6e? what the gently caress is D&D One), since it feels like WOTC would attempt to file off anything that could be perceived as offensive to dipshits on Twitter Hell yeah dude, what are you talking about
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Mar 14, 2023 20:21
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I'm trying to think back and I can't even really think of anything about Dark Sun that could be perceived as offensive these days. The city states often had a bit of flavour based on some real ancient cities, like I recall one being somewhat Greek-ish and another being a bit Mesoamerican, but that was kind of it. Unlike most D&D settings it also didn't have as many "always evil humanoids," either, I think the stranded mutant Gith were about the only ones. Even in the module where the undead Dragon King was creating an army of mutant dragon men to conquer the world, the dragon men have their own internal politics, and good people as well as bad, even if all of them were indoctrinated from the moment of their creation. Even weird creatures like the Thri-Kreen have both the more free and cosmopolitan Thri-Kreen of the Tyr Region, in addition to the imperialistic Thri-Kreen cities far to the northwest of the Silt Sea. It's also a setting with very few "racial" societies. Elves and Thri-Kreen, tend to be a bit on their own because other groups don't trust them, and halflings tend to be the only people hardy enough to settle in the vicious jungles, but the city states tend to have their fair share of all the species: Humans, elves, giants, dwarves, thri-kreen, halflings, etc. It's a harsh setting but it manages to do that without really being an edgy setting, which I think is kind of an accomplishment.
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Mar 14, 2023 20:32
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KingKalamari posted:That was actually kind of a background plot detail in the Mystara campaign setting, of all things. The sourcebook for Glantri describes how the grand school of magic contains a hidden device called The Radiance, which is essentially a giant nuclear battery that a cadre of secret elites are using to enhance their magical abilities and become Immortals. The only problem is that every time they use the thing it's siphoning power from the Immortal Sphere of Energy and its continued use is going to eventually drain all magic from the world. Under the timeline given, within 25 years of the game's start The Radiance is going to have sucked enough magic out of the world that magic is going to be completely unusable for 1 day out of the year. The later Wrath of the Immortals campaign built on this idea and has The Radiance and its use play a major role in the plot. That's really cool, I should look at Mystara. It's one of the old settings that I never really got into. WRT Dark Sun having offensive stuff, I'm drawing a blank other than the mul? The half-human half-dwarf people who were specifically bred to be slaves. But that's all that comes to mind.
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Mar 14, 2023 20:40
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PurpleXVI posted:I'm trying to think back and I can't even really think of anything about Dark Sun that could be perceived as offensive these days. Gulg probably isn't unsalvageable as a concept but I wouldn't want to leave "the one West African-inspired city-state is especially primitive and close to nature" untouched.
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Mar 14, 2023 20:56
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Has anybody made an RPG setting based specifically on The Shaver Mysteries? No Cthulhu or Agartha stuff mixed in, just an RPG sourcebook based on one man’s delusions? I could get into that.
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Mar 14, 2023 21:07
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Nigmaetcetera posted:Has anybody made an RPG setting based specifically on The Shaver Mysteries? No Cthulhu or Agartha stuff mixed in, just an RPG sourcebook based on one man’s delusions? I could get into that. e: Some checking shows they existed back in AD&D 1E. 1982 with Gygax's Lost Cavern's of Tsojcanth and Monster Manual II:https://dungeonsdragons.fandom.com/wiki/Derro#Derro_in_various_campaign_settings FMguru fucked around with this message at 21:12 on Mar 14, 2023 |
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Mar 14, 2023 21:09
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The only thing I can think of for Dark Sun is that slavery exists as an institution in it and that might not be a look WotC wants from one of their campaign settings? Other than that I'm honestly coming up blank.Serf posted:That's really cool, I should look at Mystara. It's one of the old settings that I never really got into. Mystara is a really interesting setting to look into from a historical perspective because it's both one of the oldest, but it didn't end up having the same impact on D&D's identity that campaign settings like Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms did. It's sort of like the Burgess Shale of campaign settings, in that it contains a lot of worldbuilding elements that feel like evolutionary offshoots of old D&D that went extinct.
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Mar 14, 2023 21:10
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Serf posted:That's really cool, I should look at Mystara. It's one of the old settings that I never really got into. I've seen discussions recently that societies in RPG settings having any kind of slavery is inherently problematic, even if the society and the institution are portrayed as evil as gently caress. I believe this was one of them, but Reddit is currently down for me: https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/11bomgj/is_slavery_now_a_taboo_topic_for_dnd_and_rpgs_in/
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Mar 14, 2023 21:15
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Gulg probably isn't unsalvageable as a concept but I wouldn't want to leave "the one West African-inspired city-state is especially primitive and close to nature" untouched. Huh, yeah, back when I first read Dark Sun I never parsed it as African-inspired, but I can see that now. On the bright side they also made the African-inspired city one of the better ones to actually live in, with less entrenched nobility, more actual meritocracy, etc.
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Mar 14, 2023 21:15
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Megazver posted:I've seen discussions recently that societies in RPG settings having any kind of slavery is inherently problematic, even if the society and the institution are portrayed as evil as gently caress. I believe this was one of them, but Reddit is currently down for me: While I wouldn't say I'm a fan of having slavery in my fantasy settings, at least they make for uncomplicated villains. Bandits raiding farmsteads for food might have some sort of deeper problem that could be explored. Slave-taking operations can just be ruthlessly dismantled without having to worry about any sort of moral quandary. You can use them for cheap heat, but the larger implications of including such an evil institution do make me hesitant.
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Mar 14, 2023 21:20
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FMguru posted:The Derro show up as monsters in D&D, going back at least to 2E. Great, so I have to make it, wonderful.
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Mar 14, 2023 21:20
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Ominous Jazz posted:Hell yeah dude, what are you talking about I think the last few things I recall about 5e discourse was that people got into the idea of wheelchairs being important to have in these fantasy settings where you can get summoned skeletons to lift you on a palanquin, or magic carpets to zoom around on, or literally anything else that can go down stairs (a common feature of many a dungeon) without much trouble, people yelling at the Critical Role people because they wore Indiana Jones get-ups in a promo because Indiana Jones was a colonist or the clothes were reminiscent of colonists or something, and other such things. While Wizards does continue to bungle things in regards to race (such as with the Hadozee) and other sensitive topics, there also appears to be a good contingent of people in the fandom who believe they must make D&D (which they view to be the only RPG ever) the most socially aware thing possible to the point of getting rid of basically anything uncomfortable or different from the modern day, even if the creators of the setting portray these uncomfortable or socially backwards things as obstacles for a hero to fix. Thus, the things I like about the setting of Athas (its a miserable shithole with villains who richly deserve a group of level 20 people kicking their palace doors down and slaying them after they spent the previous 19 levels grinding up XP by killing slavers and nasty wasteland beasts) feel like they would get removed to please someone who really really needs to log off and join a socialist organization and do things with actual real world impact.
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Mar 14, 2023 21:34
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Megazver posted:I've seen discussions recently that societies in RPG settings having any kind of slavery is inherently problematic, even if the society and the institution are portrayed as evil as gently caress. I believe this was one of them, but Reddit is currently down for me: Oddly enough, I've actually been thinking about this topic a fair bit lately, what with my revisiting of old Wilderlands material which is a setting that included slavery as an institution and, at least in the 3.5 adaptation of the setting, included some eyebrow raising apologia for it. The big problem that including slavery in an officially published campaign setting runs into is that no matter how negatively you portray slavery as an institution in your sourcebooks, there's going to be a table of shitheads out there who will want to own slaves in-game. There's both nothing you can do as a company to prevent that and players doing that is going to be a majorly bad look for you as a creator. That said, I'm kind of perplexed by the guy in that Reddit thread who claims "There's a lot of players who will not be happy with - or misinterpret - being told that in this setting, fighting slavery is a bad idea that will get them killed." because that isn't really how Dark Sun works in my experience? Like obviously it's a shithole world and trying to stage a slave rebellion is going to a difficult thing to pull off, but I don't think there's anything inherent to the setting that prevents players from trying to foment a slave rebellion and overthrow the Sorcerer Kings?
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Mar 14, 2023 21:38
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Slavers being ubiquitous feels less like an authorial statement and more just a necessity to have villains who will nonlethally capture PCs rather than always coup de gracing them, allowing for campaigns to not just be instantly ended by a single encounter ending in a TPK, while also giving an excuse to strip players of equipment and having forced stealth and escape sequences. e: even better if it facilitates players being forced into gladiatorial slave combat, as an excuse for the DM to use some weirder stuff from the monster manual that would be hard to organically fit into the campaign otherwise. Asterite34 fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Mar 14, 2023 |
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Mar 14, 2023 21:39
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RE: Slavery on tabletop, is there any fantasy society that operated like the Mamluk Sultanate in real life? They operated on such a way that it is honestly stranger than fiction, with slaves being bought from far off lands like the Caucasus to Egypt and trained to become soldiers... But also they were the military elite of the country and even the Abbasid Caliphs were but puppets to the Mamluks.
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Mar 14, 2023 21:41
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Plutonis posted:RE: Slavery on tabletop, is there any fantasy society that operated like the Mamluk Sultanate in real life? They operated on such a way that it is honestly stranger than fiction, with slaves being bought from far off lands like the Caucasus to Egypt and trained to become soldiers... But also they were the military elite of the country and even the Abbasid Caliphs were but puppets to the Mamluks. There isn't much, yeah. In rpg-adjacent space there's the country of Bhuvauri in the Anbennar setting.
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Mar 14, 2023 21:46
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Whirling posted:a lot of words You've invented someone to be mad at over their hypothetical objections to dark sun.
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Mar 14, 2023 21:53
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Whirling posted:I think the last few things I recall about 5e discourse was that people got into the idea of wheelchairs being important to have in these fantasy settings where you can get summoned skeletons to lift you on a palanquin, or magic carpets to zoom around on, or literally anything else that can go down stairs (a common feature of many a dungeon) without much trouble, people yelling at the Critical Role people because they wore Indiana Jones get-ups in a promo because Indiana Jones was a colonist or the clothes were reminiscent of colonists or something, and other such things. While Wizards does continue to bungle things in regards to race (such as with the Hadozee) and other sensitive topics, there also appears to be a good contingent of people in the fandom who believe they must make D&D (which they view to be the only RPG ever) the most socially aware thing possible to the point of getting rid of basically anything uncomfortable or different from the modern day, even if the creators of the setting portray these uncomfortable or socially backwards things as obstacles for a hero to fix. Thus, the things I like about the setting of Athas (its a miserable shithole with villains who richly deserve a group of level 20 people kicking their palace doors down and slaying them after they spent the previous 19 levels grinding up XP by killing slavers and nasty wasteland beasts) feel like they would get removed to please someone who really really needs to log off and join a socialist organization and do things with actual real world impact. Dude, it's a fantasy setting. Just let the people in wheelchairs play fantasy people in wheelchairs, or at least have a few pages of stuff written up to show that disability actually exists in this fantasy setting. Also, the people talking like that are either teens who know concepts are bad but don't have nuance because they're teens, or they're bad actors trying to make those teens start poo poo. loving chill.
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Mar 14, 2023 21:53
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MonsieurChoc posted:There isn't much, yeah. In rpg-adjacent space there's the country of Bhuvauri in the Anbennar setting. They don't even have a Mission Tree yet... I keep smashing them on my Rahen and Haless campaigns but never got to play them...
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Mar 14, 2023 21:59
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Asterite34 posted:Slavers being ubiquitous feels less like an authorial statement and more just a necessity to have villains who will nonlethally capture PCs rather than always coup de gracing them, allowing for campaigns to not just be instantly ended by a single encounter ending in a TPK, while also giving an excuse to strip players of equipment and having forced stealth and escape sequences. I've never needed to have slavery be the reason for NPCs not murdering the PCs after winning. And I have to imagine that adventurers would be kill on sight for slavers, as they have the skills and motivation necessary to be very dangerous to anyone trying to keep them in captivity and thus more trouble than they're worth.
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Mar 14, 2023 22:05
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KingKalamari posted:The big problem that including slavery in an officially published campaign setting runs into is that no matter how negatively you portray slavery as an institution in your sourcebooks, there's going to be a table of shitheads out there who will want to own slaves in-game. There's both nothing you can do as a company to prevent that and players doing that is going to be a majorly bad look for you as a creator. Both of these problems kinda just boil down to WotC needing to properly establish the tone if they make more Dark Sun. For the first thing, well, there's always going to be creeps who want to do weird slave stuff, but if you can establish that it's a lovely practice all heroes should rebel against and don't include prices there should be enough separation from anyone doing Gor isekai poo poo. And the thing about Dark Sun is it's a fine line between "this world sucks, but you can make it better (possibly at the cost of your life)" and "this world sucks forever, embrace nihilism". A lot of forum discussion flanderizes the setting into the latter, but 4e was successful enough at doing the former that WotC could pull it off if they tried.
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Mar 14, 2023 22:07
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Asterite34 posted:Slavers being ubiquitous feels less like an authorial statement and more just a necessity to have villains who will nonlethally capture PCs rather than always coup de gracing them, allowing for campaigns to not just be instantly ended by a single encounter ending in a TPK, while also giving an excuse to strip players of equipment and having forced stealth and escape sequences. To me it feels more like it's a very easy way to define a society as hosed up and villainous, plus it's believably what most of history's absolutely most hosed up societies did in some way or another. Whether it was chattel slavery, debt slavery, using prisoners as labour and suicide troops, etc. it seems to believably be what lovely societies gravitate towards. Like, slavery is pretty much the ultimate way for a society to say that some people aren't considered people, that they aren't allowed to have agency and control over their own lives, that they can be traded like goods for others' profit and pleasure. You could absolutely have hosed up societies with evil rulers without necessarily invoking slavery, and I could absolutely see it as darker than what some groups might want to engage with, but unless the setting starts making excuses and trotting out those age old "did you know that in X society slaves were actually treated like family and had tons of rights????"-bullshit arguments, I don't think it's necessarily something that we need to disown writers for including. KingKalamari posted:The big problem that including slavery in an officially published campaign setting runs into is that no matter how negatively you portray slavery as an institution in your sourcebooks, there's going to be a table of shitheads out there who will want to own slaves in-game. There's both nothing you can do as a company to prevent that and players doing that is going to be a majorly bad look for you as a creator. And this feels to me like a pretty non-problem, because then the answer is to not play with people who want to own slaves in games. Bad actors will make bad actions with any ingredients you give them, if the setting has puppies and sandwiches, they're going to want to make a puppy sandwich. Like, you can't make a shithead-proof setting just by removing anything shitheads might want to play with, because they'll always find something. Just trust most of the player base to be adults. Like yeah, it's going to make you look bad if your game has slave-owning rules, or if you permit Slaving Bob to win a formal tournament with his 200 Slave Charop Build. But there's a huge difference between "the setting has things that most sane adult humans recognize as hosed up, they are there for you to stop, not to indulge in, even if everyone knows some rear end in a top hat somewhere will try" and "we added detailed slave-breeding charts and random slave trait generators." Only, once again, bad actors, who intentionally interpret things badly, would interpret someone doing unintended and unsupported things with the game as reflecting badly on the creators.
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Mar 14, 2023 22:27
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Serf posted:I've never needed to have slavery be the reason for NPCs not murdering the PCs after winning. And I have to imagine that adventurers would be kill on sight for slavers, as they have the skills and motivation necessary to be very dangerous to anyone trying to keep them in captivity and thus more trouble than they're worth. There's also a pretty big difference between "slavery exists in this setting as something for PCs to fight against" (reasonable) and "slavery exists in this setting as something for the PCs to be subjected to," which is something I can see being a hard line for a lot of players. At bare minimum, I think slavery as a major setting element should be something discussed at the table first, along with how it might intersect with the narrative.
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Mar 14, 2023 22:28
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Serf posted:I've never needed to have slavery be the reason for NPCs not murdering the PCs after winning. And I have to imagine that adventurers would be kill on sight for slavers, as they have the skills and motivation necessary to be very dangerous to anyone trying to keep them in captivity and thus more trouble than they're worth. It's not the best solution, but it is sort of the "off the rack" stock plot device that comes up a lot in the 20s-40s Weird Fiction adventure pulp serials that were the genre primordial soup that D&D emerged from. The genre the game was designed to emulate back in the 70s ran on cliche a lot, and that specific cliche happened to guys like John Carter at least once a book as a way to get the Hero out of his element and immerse them in an exotic locale full of orientalist stereotypes. Nowadays it does feel a bit anachronistic as a plot device as the fantasy genre has moved on a bit and the common reference pool has shifted.
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Mar 14, 2023 22:29
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Antivehicular posted:At bare minimum, I think slavery as a major setting element should be something discussed at the table first, along with how it might intersect with the narrative. So many problems can be solved by talking to your friends like adults, but I think it's more important to invent someone who might disagree so we can be mad at them.
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Mar 14, 2023 22:38
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