|
It's my favorite book.
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 14:52
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 11, 2024 20:26 |
|
|
Kai Tave posted:To be fair "making Fighters suck" was less Gygax's doing and more those that came after him. To be fair, Gygax tried to balance the fighter. But had Rob Kunz playing Sir Robilar and messing up any attempts at balance. He's gone on record (I can't be bothered to dig into ENWorld) as saying Weapon Specialisation and the martial variant classes in Unearthed Arcana were to try to get the balance right. And the 2E and RC fighters both kicked rear end and took names. Gygax underpowered them until UA - but they were only made to suck by Monte Cook and co. Mr. Maltose posted:Not to mention the major Arthurian oath of Gawain to Guinevere, which Liesmith brought up in the first page of his thread, wasn't about making official a moral stance. It was a restriction on a master of arms who no actual earthly force could restrict. If Gawain broke his oath and went around stabbing women and children, no divine power was going to take away his Smite or BAB (or his ability to grow increasingly stronger as a fight went on) and no mortal power could bring him to justice. Gawain had no moral apprehension of stabbing ladies, and even with his oath it wasn't ethically wrong for other knights not so oathed to do so. I believe that Galahad was, from memory, an exception to this rule. But the Grail Quest is a slightly different genre to the rest.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 15:05
|
|
fatherdog posted:There's also a canonically black member of the round table, for everbody who likes to say including minorities in midieval fantasy is PC bullshit - Sir Morien. Well, technically he's half white/half Moorish 
|
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 15:46
|
|
|
neonchameleon posted:I believe that Galahad was, from memory, an exception to this rule. But the Grail Quest is a slightly different genre to the rest. Yeah, the Grail Quest was a very unknightly quest, because it was basically a bunch of morality checks that Galahad passes by being born a basement dwelling nerd before the invention of delivery pizza. I mean, this is a dude who gets to choose when he dies after winning The Quest and blows that boon when he runs into Joseph of Arimathea, the Christian equivalent of deciding life is but ashes in the mouth after meeting Chakotay at a Ramada Inn outside a convention. The real reason that happens is to keep the morally perfect knight free of the shame that occurs when his companions return to Camelot with the news and the final poo poo hits the fan.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 16:30
|
|
|
SunAndSpring posted:Well, technically he's half white/half Moorish Hereditarily, yes, but he's specifically and explicitly described as black as pitch.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 16:33
|
|
|
Non-ANGLO SAXONS were all over the place, it's not like Europe is an entirely separate landmass from, uh, Spain, much less Africa or Asia. The crusades didn't exactly have to cross a loving ocean. Making D&D WHITES ONLY is both a) constantly claimed as a ~*~realism~*~ argument, and b) entirely racist and literally unrealistic. It just goes back to nerds being the dumbest of motherfuckers while simultaneously priding themselves on their awesome intelligence. But then most American schoolbooks tend to completely ignore any and all non-WASP history so it shouldn't be too surprising people actually believe this.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 17:21
|
|
|
ProfessorCirno posted:Non-ANGLO SAXONS were all over the place, it's not like Europe is an entirely separate landmass from, uh, Spain, much less Africa or Asia. The crusades didn't exactly have to cross a loving ocean. Making D&D WHITES ONLY is both a) constantly claimed as a ~*~realism~*~ argument, and b) entirely racist and literally unrealistic. Europe consistently gets nearly a foot of vertical space to list all its various goofy nations, while China has this small centimeter-thick line for as far as I can tell.  Eurocentrism at its finest.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 17:39
|
|
|
ProfessorCirno posted:Non-ANGLO SAXONS were all over the place, it's not like Europe is an entirely separate landmass from, uh, Spain, much less Africa or Asia. The crusades didn't exactly have to cross a loving ocean. Making D&D WHITES ONLY is both a) constantly claimed as a ~*~realism~*~ argument, and b) entirely racist and literally unrealistic. See also realism of AD&D strength charts and realism of how the only jobs for women in AD&D are maids or whores. AD&D screws people up in the head and its errors are repeated constantly.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 17:46
|
|
|
Night10194 posted:D&D religion is just awful. It's not even good polytheism, as it's all written so pat and just so without any real conflict or shades of grey to the Gods or how they're viewed, which makes all the lovely stuff they always do stand out even more. Gods can be assholes! As someone who studies religion, nothing in D&D has ever approached actual mythology. I mean, we should have all kinds of contradictory or interesting or problematic stories of the Gods and they should loving shape culture beyond 'I get to wear white and kill all the baddies'. D&D religion is cargo cult polytheism with the certitude of fundamentalist Christians thrown in for good measure. I've written about this before and I will again, but...yeah, D&D religion is...well, inaccurate to say the least. "Evil gods" don't exist in the real world, though rear end in a top hat gods certainly do. Gods can do all kinds of things, but when you're a polytheist you generally don't treat any one of them as explicitly always the best. (Though often you will have a personal favorite based on where you're from, and this isn't universally true.) I care a lot about real history and mythology, myself, so...I like to write about what it was really like. Non-whites were all over in Europe; my favorite saint is Saint Maurice, who is explicitly a black guy. (Well, my favorite actual saint. My favorite venerated-but-non-official saint is Saint Guinefort, who is a dog.)
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 17:59
|
|
ProfessorCirno posted:Non-ANGLO SAXONS were all over the place, it's not like Europe is an entirely separate landmass from, uh, Spain, much less Africa or Asia. The crusades didn't exactly have to cross a loving ocean. Making D&D WHITES ONLY is both a) constantly claimed as a ~*~realism~*~ argument, and b) entirely racist and literally unrealistic. Agreed. While they weren't exactly common, Asian, Moorish, and African traders would pop up in Europe to do business because, shockingly enough, there's money to be made in exotic foreign goods. This usually happened in trade cities in the south such as Venice. And, of course, there was the Moorish invasion and conquest of the Iberian peninsula, as well as Sicily and small parts of Italy.
|
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 18:00
|
|
|
It's sort of like how we know Roman emissaries showed up in ancient china. Or how the roman roads and sea routes are what let Christianity spread as widely as it did as a young movement, because people from all over the world were traveling all over since there was money to be had (or curious things to see). People have always traveled all over the place and a group with a bunch of people of different faiths and nationalities and cultures all interacting with each other and their perspectives on events is a ton of fun.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 18:16
|
|
|
I recall that China thought of Rome as their Western counterparts and named it Daqin, which essentially means "Great China". So essentially Chinese people highly regarded Rome like how modern nerds worship Japan.
|
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 18:28
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:I've written about this before and I will again, but...yeah, D&D religion is...well, inaccurate to say the least. "Evil gods" don't exist in the real world, though rear end in a top hat gods certainly do. Gods can do all kinds of things, but when you're a polytheist you generally don't treat any one of them as explicitly always the best. (Though often you will have a personal favorite based on where you're from, and this isn't universally true.) Also this was a really cool article and I think I'll try writing that style the next time I try a polytheistic setting, instead of a monotheist dominated one (I study 2nd temple Judaism and early Christianity, so I tend to feel comfortable writing monotheist cultures and religions).
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 18:38
|
|
|
This is a very good tumblr on the topic: http://medievalpoc.tumblr.com/
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 18:39
|
|
|
neonchameleon posted:To be fair, Gygax tried to balance the fighter. But had Rob Kunz playing Sir Robilar and messing up any attempts at balance. He's gone on record (I can't be bothered to dig into ENWorld) as saying Weapon Specialisation and the martial variant classes in Unearthed Arcana were to try to get the balance right. And the 2E and RC fighters both kicked rear end and took names. Gary Gygax, Strategic Review 2.2 1976 posted:Magic-use was thereby to be powerful enough to enable its followers to compete with any other type of player-character, and yet the use of magic would not be so great as to make those using it overshadow all others. This was the conception, but in practice it did not work out as planned. Primarily at fault is the game itself which does not carefully explain the reasoning behind the magic system. Also, the various magic items for employment by magic-users tend to make them too powerful in relation to other classes (although the GREYHAWK supplement took steps to correct this somewhat).
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 20:07
|
|
|
How is it so many of them know? Like, they actually know how lovely it is to have the Wizard control everything, and yet they keep making the goddamn wizard control everything!?
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 20:31
|
|
Night10194 posted:How is it so many of them know? Like, they actually know how lovely it is to have the Wizard control everything, and yet they keep making the goddamn wizard control everything!? It's probably because nerdy people have kind of assumed that the wizard is the coolest thing ever. The warrior hits things with a mace, the cleric prays, and the druid communes with nature, but the wizard summons mansions and throws lightning storms at motherfuckers. Of course, they conveniently forget about badasses like Cú Chulainn, who does crazy poo poo like contort his body so much he turns all his joints backwards and pops his eyeballs out so he can scare his opposition more easily, builds walls out of the corpses of hundreds he slew by himself, and throws a barbed spear that instantly kills anyone it strikes with his feet.
|
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 20:43
|
|
|
SunAndSpring posted:It's probably because nerdy people have kind of assumed that the wizard is the coolest thing ever. The warrior hits things with a mace, the cleric prays, and the druid communes with nature, but the wizard summons mansions and throws lightning storms at motherfuckers. Of course, they conveniently forget about badasses like Cú Chulainn, who does crazy poo poo like contort his body so much he turns all his joints backwards and pops his eyeballs out so he can scare his opposition more easily, builds walls out of the corpses of hundreds he slew by himself, and throws a barbed spear that instantly kills anyone it strikes with his feet. That doesn't sound very realistic. 
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 20:51
|
|
|
Night10194 posted:How is it so many of them know? Like, they actually know how lovely it is to have the Wizard control everything, and yet they keep making the goddamn wizard control everything!? quote:Interview with Rob Heinsoo about 4E
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 21:07
|
|
|
Night10194 posted:How is it so many of them know? Like, they actually know how lovely it is to have the Wizard control everything, and yet they keep making the goddamn wizard control everything!? But I will add the canard that if magic can be anything, then it can be something with limitations that make it more interesting, which is how pretty much every worthwhile fantasy author does it. Sometimes I get tempted to pointedly make a campaign setting where magic exists but is so useless hardly anyone bothers because the mundane way of doing something is pretty much always better on account of not requiring 36 hours of meditation to produce kind of lame results anyway.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 21:10
|
|
|
Evil Sagan posted:That doesn't sound very realistic. That's the single biggest problem among the 3.5/Pathfinder crowd. Their game expectation is this bizarre, mutant half-realism. They've convinced themselves the game is a deep simulation of a consistent world (just look at Grog.txt) and thus it would be too 'anime' for a fighter to be able to reload a musket or crossbow swiftly, let alone cut a hill in half or draw deep on his reserves to heal. All those things can exist in their idea of realistic, but it has to be magic. Me, I like gritty settings sometimes. Sometimes it's fun to play something where combat's lethal and you want to avoid injury. But if you're going to go on the more wild and unrealistic side like D&D, why not have amazing superhuman warriors to match the crazy spellslinger guys? Either go all one, or all the other, not the crazy mutant half-way D&D brings. I mean c'mon, this is a game where you can get hit with 5 arrows (and based on their arguments against the fighter being able to tough it out and heal himself, they think those are real, solid hits, often) and not be impaired at all! Embrace the heroism and go dive sideways whilst firing two hand crossbows or something.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 21:14
|
|
|
Maybe the trick is just to abandon the idea that a non-monstrous, non-magical human should ever be adventuring alongside a D&D cleric and wizard. Keep the idea of a heavy toe-to-toe fighter, but make it some hosed up witcher high on magic potion. OK, so the fighter is Asterix now.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 22:00
|
|
|
Or maybe the D&D wizard could stand to be not literally the most powerful magic character in fantasy fiction. Seriously, compare him to anything at all. He wins. He has it all.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 22:07
|
|
|
Rulebook Heavily posted:Or maybe the D&D wizard could stand to be not literally the most powerful magic character in fantasy fiction. I did always wish they would split wizards up according to subtype. You don't need one class to be enchanter, fire mage, and necromancer depending on their whim that morning. Thing is though, "normal dude who's decent with a sword" is never going to stand up to anyone with halfway decent magic powers.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 22:09
|
|
|
Ewen Cluney posted:But I will add the canard that if magic can be anything, then it can be something with limitations that make it more interesting, which is how pretty much every worthwhile fantasy author does it. Sometimes I get tempted to pointedly make a campaign setting where magic exists but is so useless hardly anyone bothers because the mundane way of doing something is pretty much always better on account of not requiring 36 hours of meditation to produce kind of lame results anyway. Which brings us back to the old proverb that "Discworld x are the best x". Being a wizard or witch in Discworld is mainly about knowing how to not use the magic you know. Witches do that by having such a deep knowledge of everyday, mundane subjects that magic is never really necessary. Wizards have to study so much to learn magic that they end up being 80-year olds confined to strictly academic lifestyles, and there the amount of problems solvable by hurling fireballs is very small. And there's also that the people who use too much magic end up dead, maimed by interdimensional horrors, turned inside out, or have to spend the rest of eternity boiling eggs in Death's home. Discworld wizards are the best wizards. Thinking about it now, I've just realised that Discworld does the magic with consequences thing so well, it's probably one of the best inspirations for World of Darkness out there 
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 22:11
|
|
|
Just go with it like One Piece does. Mundane humans are still capable of going toe-to-toe with people who can turn into fire or electricity or whatever with enough training and willpower; essentially, mundane people are still capable of things that humans in real life couldn't actually do. I mean, here's one of the extreme examples (although technically not a mundane human, for the purposes of getting hurt by things he's still an old man with a terminal illness): 
Tollymain fucked around with this message at 22:16 on Jun 28, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 22:14
|
|
|
Gort posted:I did always wish they would split wizards up according to subtype. You don't need one class to be enchanter, fire mage, and necromancer depending on their whim that morning. Normal dudes with swords have stood up to a lot of things in real life, including fire and explosions fired from beyond their reach. The original metaphor for a wizard on a battlefield was as artillery. There is nothing inherent in the concept of magic that makes dude-with-sword somehow intrinsically inferior. D&D has taught you that, but D&D is stupid about a whole hell of a lot of things.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 22:21
|
|
|
Consider that if we go back to medieval legend, 'one man with a sword' beats the magic stuff. One man with a sword can kill dragons, though he may die in the doing so. One man with a sword can kill giants. To say nothing of, say, Parzival, of the eponymous poem, who fights himself to a standstill. One guy with a sword can do a whole hell of a lot, and that includes stabbing enchanters to death, often. Magic, in legend, is an equalizer or an empowerer but is hardly invincible. I mean, hell, the most important thing that ever happens to any legendary figure that is magically invincible is how they die, because they always die, because it's never perfect.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 22:39
|
|
|
Conan loses to magic all the time.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 22:49
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:One guy with a sword can do a whole hell of a lot, and that includes stabbing enchanters to death, often. Magic, in legend, is an equalizer or an empowerer but is hardly invincible. I mean, hell, the most important thing that ever happens to any legendary figure that is magically invincible is how they die, because they always die, because it's never perfect.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 22:51
|
|
|
Gort posted:Conan loses to magic all the time. Conan constantly surprises and murders the poo poo out of magical dudes because how can this mortal with a sword resist my eldritch *splorch*.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 22:51
|
|
|
Gort posted:Conan loses to magic all the time. Conan defeats magic all the time, too. Really, that's an argument for balance.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 23:01
|
|
|
One thing I rarely see mentioned, though it's the root of this entire argument, is that the word magic has no meaning. It means nothing by itself. It has any meaning you want to give to it. It's like, who wins, a man with a sword, or this thing I made up? I don't know dude, what did you make up?
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 23:04
|
|
|
Conan's mages have a lot less power than a D&D mage, however.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 23:04
|
|
|
Gort posted:Conan's mages have a lot less power than a D&D mage, however. No poo poo?
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 23:07
|
|
|
Gort posted:Conan's mages have a lot less power than a D&D mage, however. Help, help, the thread is eating its own tail.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 23:07
|
|
|
FMguru posted:Earlier versions of D&D made life hard for the wizard. You had no class features or feats. There were very few magic spells per level, and most of them were utility-type spells (detect this, speak with that, identify something, carry something else, etc.) with almost no role in combat. You started with a handful of spells that were randomly determined, and you had to acquire in-play any new spells you might want to cast. If anything hit you or distracted you during spellcasting, your spell automatically fizzled. Magic items were rare and almost impossible to make and randomly determined. You had to gather and track all of your material components. You only had one spellbook, and heaven help you if it got stolen or burned or wet. Etcetera etcetera. They were supposed to be "glass cannons" - powerful but fragile, and needing lots of support to keep them alive long enough to cast their spells. Subsequent versions stripped away most of the limitations until now you have things like Pathfinder's component pouch which magically refills while everyone else has to track individual arrows and sling stones and rolls of bandages in the first-aid kit. Personally, I wish they had gone the dread necromancer/warmage/etc. path right from the get-go in 3e. You get this spell list, you can add a new spell every few levels and take a feat to get another if you like. Your class features do stuff that add to the conceptual framework you already have in place, but if you go into a PrC you trade those out for something different. And then of course do tome of battle style maneuvers for the martial classes because "I roll to hit" x1000 is lame as all hell.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 23:08
|
|
|
Anyone tried out Interface Zero 2.0 yet?
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 23:10
|
|
|
ProfessorCirno posted:Non-ANGLO SAXONS were all over the place, it's not like Europe is an entirely separate landmass from, uh, Spain, much less Africa or Asia. The crusades didn't exactly have to cross a loving ocean. Making D&D WHITES ONLY is both a) constantly claimed as a ~*~realism~*~ argument, and b) entirely racist and literally unrealistic. I play an elf in a game where the culture my character is from is based loosely on the Golden Horde. Because I'm a dork I decided to do some reading about that and holy poo poo. The Golden Horde was absolutely jaw-droppingly incredible and extremely interesting besides, and it was never, not once, so much as mentioned in my history classes in school. And there's tons of poo poo just like that which is just glossed over in favor of the exploits of the whitest parts of western Europe. Then again we also watched The Patriot in my American History class so it's not like my school was a beacon of quality education. ETA: Mors Rattus posted:I've written about this before and I will again, but...yeah, D&D religion is...well, inaccurate to say the least. "Evil gods" don't exist in the real world, though rear end in a top hat gods certainly do. Gods can do all kinds of things, but when you're a polytheist you generally don't treat any one of them as explicitly always the best. (Though often you will have a personal favorite based on where you're from, and this isn't universally true.) That was a seriously great and interesting read and I'd be interested in anything else written on the topic of fantasy polytheism and specifically the ridiculousness of setting up "evil gods" if you happen to be able to point me at anything. Reene fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Jun 28, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 23:16
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 11, 2024 20:26 |
|
|
Sadly, I don't actually know if any similar articles exist! I didn't find any when I originally wrote it and I still don't know about any.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2014 23:35
|
|