World-Building Turn-Offs [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

sktarq

2012-09-14, 04:19 PM

1. Population centres with no way for them to support themselves with things like food, clothing, water or anything that the DM says are there. Cities either should have a good deal of farming, farming equivilants or a method of importing food.

2. 200 person assasin guilds in cities with only 5000 residents. On a similar note of living with massive danger a high CR monster that disrupt trade, cause entire villages to go exinct etc should either be rare, part of the story, or have some way for the NPC's who live there to deal with it. Otherwise why would lvl 1 villagers be still living there?

3. Knowing more about the gods, their histories, etc than how the setting works.

4. Rules scattered with the description/fluff

5. It bears repeating. Races as mono-cultures or even worse mono nations. And this includes sub-races as mono-national races. I can give a little leeway on this, but those better be well explained.

6. A "low magic", "impeaded magic" or any such setting where magic has no cost or limit, even if it is entirly non mechanical. If it makes more sense for me to play a guy who studied how to cast wizard spell because it is rare then so would NPC young men. If all your parties in a low magic setting have one or more of your casters who are rae then there is a problem. Mechanical limits are good to me but even a social cost or your soul get absorbed by evil monsters fiats are fine AS LONG AS THEY ARE REAL.

7. Racial dislikes, xenophobia, etc that effects everyone but the PC's. I don't mean within the group but if the Chebian nation is totally xenophobic and the party has no Chebians then why is everyong start with a Friendly or indifferent attitude?

8. Pirates, Raiders, etc especially whole cultures of them with little or nothing to raid. Heck if some if not most of trade doesn't get through then people will stop trading allong that route.

9. Culture or Races of (insert profession here). It just doesn't make much sense most of the time. As a caste within a larger society I don't care but otherwise I come back to the "How do they eat" type questions. But in this case its who raises the kids, who clothes people, where to they get the food, where to they get clothes, tools, etc and the raw materials for those things plus what they need for their (national profession). I understand a nation or culture in which a single proffession is the core of a society, economy etc. But I find that in many if not most times i see this it is taken to a degree that makes no sense.

10. Anything where I look at it without the PC's and the world would fall apart or massivly change. The story should need the PC's but the setting shouldn't.

11. As related to above A setting that is really a host to a single campign arc that pretends to be anything else. Sure the Arclord/Nimbral war can be run in a number of ways but if that is totally dominating setting plot then just admit it an build for it. It needs something differrent and a lot more work to make that base plot interesting enough to found the setting on. Pretending it is a gerneral setting is often just an excuse for not investing in that main plot you plan on running anyway.

12. Obvious alignment. If the abyss, hell etc are real and the place where people go when they die, and people through magic or what not KNOW this then why would anyone risk it? It directly follows that evil for evil makes even less sense in a world where this is true. Evil has to attract it followers who presumably make most of their choices at least somewhat rationally. I mean people don't wake up and choose to BE EVIL anywhere but in comics and BADLY written RPG's as far as I can see.

13. Techological "pause". We have gotten from first planting seeds to today in what 12,ooo years. In many RPG's the most advanced techology is still the same longsword, early telescope, or at most clocktower they were using some 10,000 years ago. I might give you that the sword was the hardest thing to make that regularly was for even 1000 years, so I'll give 2000 max. Give me a reason that people can not learn and develop technology as fast in your RPG than they could in real life even though things like magic would AID technological development.

14. Ruins that are easily found, looted, and explored but have not been for the last several hundred years (or even decades). Why has nobdy been looting this place until our PC's come along?

15. Magical solutions that avalible but not used. Control weather inst that high level a spell to cast. You agriculture priest can cast Augry? please tell me why there isn't a damn near perfect two week forecast posted on the front of the temple. Can cast wall of ice? A cold drink business in the making! Why have none of the mages in the mage guild thought of this and are instead waiting for people to pay them just as much reading books all day? And the big kicker magic beyond the grave. Speak with dead? makes a murder mystery rather boring. and assasinating a king (or anyone who has much chance of affording/ being in with the church enough) is almost impossible due to resurrection and the related spells. Cuts down the kind of stuff the members of court can expect to get away with agaisnt each other.

16. Non being consistant about if the divine is a mystery. It's a mystery? fine the gods are real and tangible? fine but that is going to have consequences. Procedural details of the church will escalated to the god for judgement. blue hat or teal? The use of a comune during a quiet week by the cardinal. And the more omnipresent the god is then the less fredom of action the divine casters of a setting have. This is fine but it also has consequences. Orision castings to prove a prienst is still in good graces with the god for example. And whatever issues this causes are regular priest it should also cause to the PC's.

A. A disagreement with Yora's dark lord who is an enemy of all living things etc. You can have them but they are to be handled with great care. They can't the target of a setting/story that I described in in number 11. Really they should be more of a force of nature type. Thus Gods fit here better than mortals.

Yora

2012-09-14, 04:27 PM

You can have them. I just really, really hate such settings. :smallbiggrin:

10. Anything where I look at it without the PC's and the world would fall apart or massivly change. The story should need the PC's but the setting shouldn't.
How so? You mean settings entirely centered on a few Chosen Ones?

Chosen Ones are probably the one character type I hate the most. I hate them even more passionately that comic relief characters.

Beleriphon

2012-09-14, 04:39 PM

You can have them. I just really, really hate such settings. :smallbiggrin:

How so? You mean settings entirely centered on a few Chosen Ones?

Chosen Ones are probably the one character type I hate the most. I hate them even more passionately that comic relief characters.

No he means that Middle Earth works without Frodo Baggins as a setting, Lord of the Rings as story does not. So you build the stories you tell with the players in mind, but the setting should not require players to make sense.

awa

2012-09-14, 04:41 PM

for me I dont mind always caotic evil races if its done well.

For example a solitary noncoperative race would likely develop very little empathy it would take what it wants when it wants unless something is powerful enough to stop it.

an always aligned creature should be truely alien in it's mindset or possibly not even capable of free will as we know it bound by instinct or magical laws.

whats lousy is if the always caotic evil race are just humans born with green skin and a bad guy hat

Yora

2012-09-14, 04:42 PM

You mean the setting should make sense even without the players?

Which would be that the PCs are not vital to the existance of the world. Which is what a chosen one is about, isn't it?

Eldan

2012-09-14, 04:49 PM

I think part of it is also that if there is some massive evil force of destruction, something has to have kept it at bay so far. Don't put in things just for the PCs to fight.

I dislike settings that are too defined. Leave a few white spots on the map and don't write down every street in your main city.

Also, I like my settings as fantastical as possible. I can see the Earth outside my window. Give me something different.

sktarq

2012-09-14, 05:11 PM

You mean the setting should make sense even without the players?

Which would be that the PCs are not vital to the existance of the world. Which is what a chosen one is about, isn't it?

Yes, it is but that is also an extreame example. I mean that if you look at your setting and without the players One race that formerly hadn't been a treat would take over the world. The stroy of the world should contue thematically smoothly. Starvation shouldn't break out across two contents because the orc horde needs to be contained and the surface nations never learned to organize a standing army. I mean you could but that should be an "event" something for the players to see coming not an unintended consequence of the players no longer cutting into the orc birth/death ratio. A rough test is this. Rewind the setting clock ten, one hundred, one thousand years. Give the powers of the time resonable brain power-how likely is it that the current setting would occur. Some luck is fine, even good (nothing ever works perfectly logically) but really the expansionist hyper militaristic nation never got around to attacking the soft, peaceful, shire inspired group right next to them who also never got afraid and became more defensive or militant? Give me a reason for that. It's possible but why....no good reason? better tweek the setting then.
Does that explain?

Yora

2012-09-14, 05:23 PM

I think. Sounds like Enders Game. Settings that would not be sustainable without the players using their genre knowledge to mention the obvious solutions that nobdy had ever been thinking of.
I would probably have approached it from the other side as settings that are only in their current condition to make the players look incredibly smart and important, but lack any good explaination why the worlds inhabitants created the situation in the first place.

But does that really happen? Except for Enders Game?

Also, I like my settings as fantastical as possible. I can see the Earth outside my window. Give me something different.
There I personally disagree. What really makes me invested in settings is to understand how the individual parts are connected and how each one affects all the others. And that can be best accomplished if most things remain as we're used to them and there's just a few really new elements introduced to the whole thing. And then discovering how those cause everything else to change makes the settings exiting.
When everything is new there is nothing to compare with and its more a giant crazy menagery. Not my type entertainment.

Oh yes, and Dark Carnivals. A absolutels loath evil circuses! I hate those so very, very much! :smallfurious: You can almost bend everything somehow to be more middle ages than modern age. Except those 19th century circuses, they just destroy and pretense of self contained fantasy worlds for me. If you have evil clowns, then it instantly becomes Alice in Wonderland to me. Not that Alice in Wonderland is bad, but it just can't exist in a world of dwarves and orcs. It's just impossible!
When I see a jesters cap, that sourcebook is done for me. Oh how much I hate those! :smallbiggrin:

sktarq

2012-09-14, 05:36 PM

But does that really happen? Except for Enders Game?

Yes. Sadly very common when you stop thinking about being a character and ask "why did the NPC make these choices?".
To give an example of the nWoD a vampire cannot join a bloodline they were embraced into until they are blood potency 2 and spend a willpower dot. That is a major investment which if you look up the spending of will power dots says are almost but not quite impossible to do without choosing to do so. Now many of these bloodline are flat out not worth joining. The weakness you gain (like being blind, enormously fat, only drinking poisoned blood, no legs) far outwhelm the boons. . . so why would any young vampire expend so much of themselves? Especially since the lit. is full of vampire who hate their new weaknesses. Either make each one come to terms with it and choose to gain the weakness, get a major way to apply pressure to the younglings to do so and still expect your lost (either rphaned or runaways) younglings to not be making that sacrifice or change the rule.
And this kind of thing is all over in homebrew which is what the OP posted about.

EDIT: And as may be noted from the readers of my above posts, Lots of the things I dislike, I dislike not period but find they need lots more support, reasoning, and explination than is commonly found. Personally I love finding lots of the problems mentioned in this thread when world building. They drive interesting fixes an often those fixes drip plot hooks disproporionatly well. EX. That large militaristic nation not invading the "shire" based one next door for the last several generations. Is there a prophetic tomb in the heart of the militant nation's church that says if the "shire" rises in anger (even if not aimed at them) their great crusade will fail? Does that lead the militant nation to subtly protect and appease the "Shire"? Does the "shire" pay off the militant nation with a special service of trusted outsiders for say household servants that can be trusted to act neutrally in the militant nations game of bloody politics? is the militant nation guided by the ghosts of the original founding war party who have a soft spot for their homeland and are willing to drive the people of the militant land far harder than they would drive their own? Or something totally different. I guess that's one of the things that gets to me most of these problems is that as much as anything they seem to be such wasted potential for making the world more interesting and giving it "spark" and pulling away from the generic.

Inglenook

2012-09-14, 06:17 PM

That's actually a wonderful mindset, sktarq—all that problems and inconsistencies need to be fixed is a creative solution!

Yanagi

2012-09-14, 07:36 PM

1. Thinly-veiled real-world cultures transplanted whole to a fantasy setting.

2. Bundled together lame ethnocentric tropes presenting them as thinly-veiled real-world cultures, transplanted whole to a fantasy setting.

3. Anthropocentrism fail. aka You've got a dozen different species and they all think human women are hot and elven food is perfect.

4. One species, one culture. My general grudge with fantasy settings is that culture is completely overlooked.

5. When magic is, by fiat, never used as technology. While there are settings that constrain magic usage such that it can't really be a part of society because of scarcity or expense, there's also settings (like D&D) where it's basically insane that magic isn't considered a resource or infrastructure asset to be developed. It's hard to do a spit-take when cantrips and first-level spells completely negate the health and environmental conditions that shaped the world for most of its history.

That plus a lot of stuff already mentioned.

Frozen_Feet

2012-09-14, 08:46 PM

PairO'Dice Lost

2012-09-14, 08:48 PM

Some responses to things that I feel shouldn't really be turn-offs if better understood, or that are usually done badly but can be done well, spoilered for my usual excessive verbosity:

6) "God needs prayer badly" - recently I've started to feel that the idea of gods being dependant of worship has become somewhat overused in fantasy settings. More than that, most don't think too deeply of how this actually works, which causes it to run head first into many of the same logic problems as point 1).

To summarize my feelings on this, it's okay with me if a god eats its worshippers or gets some other tangible benefit from them. Once it's something ill-defined and abstract that grants them their powers, it raises the question of how can they be powerful enough to be called "gods" in the first place.

I agree that this is overused, though it's the least of several evils; you really should come up with some reason gods grant people power, and since making it a symbiotic relationship is the easiest way to do it and gods being powered by worship is allows gods to remain mostly offscreen as opposed to e.g. them eating worshipers, "gods need prayer badly" can be preferable to the alternatives.

I have seen a take on it that I like, however: Gods' power depends on the prevalence and prominence of things in their portfolio. The more fire there is in the world and the more the metaphysical concept of fire is invested with significance, for instance, the more powerful a god of fire is. Gods only care about and oversee their worshipers and churches to the extent that they spread their portfolios and thus maintain and increase their patrons' power; Olidammara doesn't care about Joe the Adventuring Rogue because Joe makes sure to say his prayers every night, he cares about Joe because every time Joe steals something the prevalence of thievery increases Olidammara's power by a minuscule amount, and if Joe steals enough stuff for his community to see thievery as a major problem the increased prominence of thievery in the public consciousness increases Olidammara's power as well. It's almost animism/shamanism writ large.

This helps explain some common setting features. Gods of adventuring-relevant things like war, magic, and nature are more prevalent than gods of non-relevant things like fertility, trade, and craftsmanship because (A) the servants of war, magic, and nature are more powerful and thus better able to advance their portfolios, (B) a broader portfolio (e.g. nature > the harvest) means more power for the god, and (C) tons of creatures are part of nature and fight things with magic, but a much smaller subset of creatures (intelligent, civilized humanoids) really care about having kids, haggling in the marketplace, or making tools. Racial deities exist and only accept clerics of their race because granting power to members of that race gives the best expenditure of power-to-advancement of portfolio ratio, and empowering a creature within their portfolio is better than empowering one not within it. And so on and so forth.

But yeah, if I never see another "Praying really really hard makes your god more powerful" setting it'll be too soon,.

3. ^ Although it does make sense if gods are concrete, confirmable entities. But I don't care for this because it saps all the mystery out of the world. If you know with 100% certainty that gods are watching and evaluating you, and will cast you into the Abyss for eternity if you do bad things, no one except the extremely mentally ill would do anything worse than petty theft.

4. People worshiping evil gods for the sake of evil. Real people might worship an evil god for power or desperation, but no one does it "for the evulz". I sort of feel like this is related to the inherent silliness of the alignment system (see #10). It smacks of laziness and results in over-the-top, Card-Carrying Villains.

12. Obvious alignment. If the abyss, hell etc are real and the place where people go when they die, and people through magic or what not KNOW this then why would anyone risk it? It directly follows that evil for evil makes even less sense in a world where this is true. Evil has to attract it followers who presumably make most of their choices at least somewhat rationally. I mean people don't wake up and choose to BE EVIL anywhere but in comics and BADLY written RPG's as far as I can see.

I see this complaint a lot, and I think it's a side effect of living in a culture that sees things from a monotheistic perspective. People being "cast into the Abyss for doing bad things" doesn't happen in D&D, at least not with that value judgment attached, and people don't do things "for the evulz" any more than they do them for the good...ulz.

If you're good, do lots of good things in life, and follow the teachings of a good god, you're sent to a Good afterlife as a reward. If you're evil, do lots of evil things in life, and follow the teachings of an evil god, you're sent to an Evil afterlife as a reward. That's the key thing to remember: evil people are judged by their evil patrons, not good gods. People who love slaughtering innocents and inferiors all day find the Abyss as rewarding as someone who loves working with math and logic all day finds Mechanus rewarding. If you're lawful good and follow a lawful good god and don't act lawful good enough, you're not sent to the Abyss, that's where chaotic evil people go. You still go to Celestia, it's just that people who try being lawful good and suck at it become lantern archons or merge with the plane itself instead of becoming a more powerful outsider or serve their god more or less as-is.

The demons and devils aren't lying when they tell you that sacrificing things to them is the easy path to Phenomenal Cosmic power, they just neglect to mention that if you want to start out in the Abyss as the torturer rather than the torture-ee when you die, you need to be really really evil, or you get to be a lemure or mane because you suck at being evil. Petty theft and manslaughter are worse crimes for an evil person to commit than grand theft airship and first degree murder, because it shows a lack of commitment to their ideals. And the fact that people can just phone up the Powers with commune and contact other plane and have them explain that, yep, evil gods reward evil behavior only provides more justification for evil people to be evil, not justification for them to repent.

So you shouldn't be trying to convert to a good religion no matter what, you should find the religion that matches your goals and outlook best and follow it as best you can, since that's the simplest path to the afterlife that's best for you. In fact, the worst thing that can happen to a villain is for him to be redeemed! If a demon-worshiper converts from CE to LG right before dying in a heroic sacrifice, the CE gods probably won't want him because he let them down, the LG gods probably don't want him because no one likes a traitor, and the N gods probably don't want him because doing very very evil acts and very very good acts in the hopes that they'll balance out is a Stupid Neutral way of seeing the world.

Waaay to many zeros for dates in the worlds past.

This is misused a lot in most 'brews, granted, but long histories aren't innately a bad thing. Earth is over 4 billion years old, after all, and the universe over 14 billion years old. Human history is comparatively short because we had to work our way up from amino acids in conditions lethal to humans all the way to our present state, and technological development has only skyrocketed fairly recently in geological terms because for the longest time our first priority has been survival and living long enough to do all that R&D.

Even if you assume a world like Earth and creatures like those in real life instead of the gods magicking everything into existence, when you have creatures like demons, dragons, elementals, and so forth who can survive early-Earth conditions easily, it makes plenty of sense for there to be an Age of Demons/Age of Myths/etc. like settings often do before humanoids come along. Ancient empires of more advanced races make a lot more sense when you consider that even elves with lots of predators, poor nutrition, and other early-human handicaps live much longer than modern humans do, giving them a chance to develop magically, societally, and otherwise much faster than humans once they develop sapience.

13. Techological "pause". We have gotten from first planting seeds to today in what 12,ooo years. In many RPG's the most advanced techology is still the same longsword, early telescope, or at most clocktower they were using some 10,000 years ago. I might give you that the sword was the hardest thing to make that regularly was for even 1000 years, so I'll give 2000 max. Give me a reason that people can not learn and develop technology as fast in your RPG than they could in real life even though things like magic would AID technological development.

You're assuming that there's just one path of technological development, that "developing technology" means progressing exactly as Western Europe did in reality, but that isn't the case. Certain technologies might be developed much earlier than expected (e.g. the Romans had steam power but didn't bother to do anything with it), later than expected (e.g. there are still people today using stone tools in the rainforest), differently than expected (e.g. you can make cars with many different fuel sources), and more. So magic aiding technological development doesn't mean it gets you to guns and computers much faster than normal, necessarily, nor does it mean you get magical guns and magical computers.

You're also missing that D&D magic items basically are technology. Vancian magic is basically a field of science and/or engineering: it's quantifiable, repeatable, predictable, testable, reliable, logical, and able to be learned and used without any form of innate talent. Its magic items are classified and stratified, widely recognized and standardized, and sold on the open market (by private individuals if not the stereotypical Magi-Mart). They have no reason to develop what we'd think of as technology, even enhanced by magic; you might as well expect the modern world to give up transistor-based computers and digital storage to start over with vacuum tube computers and magnetic tape, or even more drastically go back to using bronze and iron swords instead of modern weaponry but use modern processes and engineering to produce them.

11. The four classical elements (earth, wind, fire, water) being fundamental building blocks of reality. I used to love this sort of thing, but then I realized that it makes absolutely no sense on any level. It's cool when it's a cultural belief, but when you actually apply it to the physics of the world it makes my head hurt.

As with some other tropes, this can be done well as long as it's not left at "Stuff is made of elements, because." See here (http://mimir.net/essays/planarphysics.html) for a pretty cool and unique spin on the elements (and para- and quasi-elements) being actual (al)chemical elements.

And now, on topic, some of my turn-offs:

1) Our X Is Different (where X is a race, a monster, or whatever else) but the difference doesn't actually change anything. Your dwarves being living creatures of stone is wonderful, and while not unique is at least a better explanation than just being another humanoid race, but if they're still short alcoholic Scottish Vikings after the change you've just added more setting details with no impact whatsoever.

2a) Everything assumes "medieval Western Europe plus magic" as a baseline, or one of the holy trinity of exotic-but-familiar mythologies/settings (Egyptian, Chinese, or Norse). Where are the African settings, the Byzantine/Ottoman settings, the Indian settings? Why aren't there more settings like Maztica and Al Qadim, or more original settings that aren't heavily based on one real-world culture?

2b) Everything assumes "medieval Western Europe plus magic" as a baseline, without actually taking into account what magic can do. This is similar to sktarq's #15, but more so: not just why individual casters don't do interesting and logical things with their magic, but why the world looks the way it does at all given the existence of magic. Something like the Tippyverse is one way to do it, where you start with a vaguely-medieval-European framework (there are normal cities, normal traders, normal currency, etc.), add spellcasters, and extrapolate, but there are lots of directions you can take this.

3) Grimdark settings. They have their place if done well--Midnight wasn't too bad, for example--but if done badly (usually as a reaction to more black-and-white settings) the pendulum just swings past "shades of gray" and goes too far the other way.

4) Addition or inclusion of setting-specific mechanics just to have something new and different. I'm not talking about settings where it makes sense and works with the setting (Dark Sun's defiling/preserving, psionic mindscapes, and elemental priests/templars; Eberron's action points, dragonmarks, and artificers/magewrights), but rather those where things seem to be added "just because" (such as FR's silver fire, spellfire, gem magic, and bazillion other minor magic systems).

5) Settings with nothing to do. The opposite of the "this setting is meant to run one plot" problem, these settings don't have anything to really hook you to run adventures in them. Spelljammer was an awesome setting thematically, and it was nice to have a "D&D! In! Space!" setting, but without an overarching theme (like "ongoing major war" in Warhammer 40K or Dragonlance or "explore everywhere" in Star Trek or Eberron) or a bunch of smaller hooks to let you run one-shots there or just wander around and interact with the world (like "escape the Mists" in Ravenloft or "explore the Outer Rim" in Star Wars) it kind of fell flat.

Ellye

2012-09-14, 09:30 PM

The "planets treated as a single city / village" one is my biggest turn off, and way, way too common in sci-fi.

It seems like authors completely forget how diverse, history-rich and interesting Earth itself is, and for some reason assume that every other planet will just be pretty much the equivalent of a single small nation at best.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-09-15, 12:17 AM

10) Using magic to repeat real technologic stunts - no, a magnetic train is not more interesting me when it runs on Lightning Elementals rather than electronics. Likewise, rather than say those ancient-but-impressive ruins were "build by MAGIC", why not say they were "build using archetechtural and metallurgical understanding that died with the culture". I find it tasteless to invoke poorly-defined supernatural elements merely to introduce "modern" or "futuristic" elements to a fantasy setting. It feels lazy - do your research and use science for your science fiction elements. :smalltongue:

I disagree on this one. It's all about aesthetics, not laziness. Using "Magic!" to justify something instead of science means you can get away with describing impossible things like floating cities or places bigger on the inside.

IMO, it's not much different from using "Dimensional flux capacitors" or whatever to explain something impossible in a soft-scifi setting. Whichever of the two you prefer is subjective, but personally I prefer magic to technobabble.

If you're good, do lots of good things in life, and follow the teachings of a good god, you're sent to a Good afterlife as a reward. If you're evil, do lots of evil things in life, and follow the teachings of an evil god, you're sent to an Evil afterlife as a reward.

But this is never how it's described. Well, by WotC anyway. The lower planes are portrayed as a horrible punishment (that cause most to regret and repent upon finally arriving there after death, i.e. they only behaved that way because they didn't believe the lower planes were real) and anyone who thinks otherwise is a deluded idiot. And I'd have to agree, yes, that's horrible and makes no sense. My preferred solution is to make the afterlife a horrible punishment that's good for *nobody* (that way people have, you know, a non-contrived reason to want to stay alive), or have no afterlife at all.

3) Grimdark settings. They have their place if done well--Midnight wasn't too bad, for example--but if done badly (usually as a reaction to more black-and-white settings) the pendulum just swings past "shades of gray" and goes too far the other way.

Aside from Midnight, what settings do you think did grimdark well?

Yanagi

2012-09-15, 02:35 AM

Why aren't there more settings like Maztica and Al Qadim, or more original settings that aren't heavily based on one real-world culture?

The problem with the concept of "fantasy country X" is that if the author and/or the readers are largely ignorant of the place being spoofed, then you have to resort back to big, meaty stereotypes to telegraph what's what.

Maztica is a good example of shallow copying. It's a minimal gloss of the era of the Reconquista, and the authors really don't have a feel for the Mexican Basin beyond human sacrifice, obsidian, and feathers. No Popul Vuh. No visual cues from the Mayan or Aztec codices. No credence to the region's distinct understanding of life and death, of nature or the spirit. There's not even an attempt to make the setting "fantastic" with magic or the supernatural, really...a few critters, "feather magic" (no, really). It's flat.

PairO'Dice Lost

2012-09-15, 03:38 AM

But this is never how it's described. Well, by WotC anyway. The lower planes are portrayed as a horrible punishment (that cause most to regret and repent upon finally arriving there after death, i.e. they only behaved that way because they didn't believe the lower planes were real) and anyone who thinks otherwise is a deluded idiot. And I'd have to agree, yes, that's horrible and makes no sense. My preferred solution is to make the afterlife a horrible punishment that's good for *nobody* (that way people have, you know, a non-contrived reason to want to stay alive), or have no afterlife at all.

2e Planescape's portrayal of the planes was much more egalitarian and much less preachy and Judeo-Christian, and it pretty much worked the way I described. TSR gave us archons and demons fighting with philosophy instead of swords, a cosmos shaped by beliefs and numerology, and an exploration of how outsiders think; WotC gave us the Book of Exalted "Biological Warfare Isn't Evil If We Only Do It To Evil Creatures" Deeds and the Book of Vile "Weird Sex Is Icky And Therefore Evil" Darkness. You'll pardon me if I entirely discard WotC's interpretation of the Great Wheel. :smallamused:

Aside from Midnight, what settings do you think did grimdark well?

The only other published settings I can think of that do grimdark well are 40K and Call of Cthulhu. The three of them do grimdark in a similar way: they have threats that are inevitable but not immediate (Izrador, Chaos, the Old Ones), and it's possible to make a difference in the world, if only temporary. Most settings that attempt to be grimdark, that I've seen at least, either try to achieve that by being low-power low-magic worlds that leave the players powerless--not in the low-level D&D character "play smart and cautiously or perish" sort of way, but in the "we're barely as competent as real-life humans against supernatural horrors" way--or by having the Grimdark Powers That Be be so powerful and effective that any PC actions against the grimdarkness are pointless.

WHFRP played to the most grimdark extent is an example of the former: all of the "you suck and are going to die" of being a handful of Imperial Guardsmen in 40K but without the technology or power to do anything about it. Ravenloft, when played more as a kill-Strahd-yet-again module backdrop more than the full horror setting, is an example of the latter: you can escape (or at least try to), you can kill a Dread Lord and fix up its Domain (or at least try to), but the Dark Powers will keep drawing people in and making more Lords and Domains forever, and there's really nothing you can do about it, and trying for a long-term solution is really pointless.

Morph Bark

2012-09-15, 04:12 AM

11. The four classical elements (earth, wind, fire, water) being fundamental building blocks of reality. I used to love this sort of thing, but then I realized that it makes absolutely no sense on any level. It's cool when it's a cultural belief, but when you actually apply it to the physics of the world it makes my head hurt.

This bothered me quite a lot at first, so I ended up deciding that, while this would be the "mythological explanation", the element of "Earth" basically encompassed solidness, being not only actual earth, but metals and several actual chemical elements, "Water" being liquidness, "Air" being gaseousness, and so on.

And that world actually being Earth in the distant future.

Guilty! :smallredface: My world originally started out as "Earth with some magic", then plot happened and major parts were destroyed, the fringes or reality were rended apart, and to restore it the world was merged with another dimension that had suffered similarly. This had an effect on the world similar to a solar storm, knocking out electronic devices and all. Cue 1500-3000 years of development and magic is now a much more prominent thing, with the new technologies running off it because it's much easier and cost-effective.

My own biggest gripe is the "sense of scale thing". Originally someone had suggested the time between the Rending (during which reality was torn and the world was merged with the other one) be 30,000 years, but that seemed ridiculously much to me. Sure, Earth's population was brought back to a paltry few million and technology was practically gone, but 30,000 years is still way much.

I also don't like the idea of "other planets/planes/races have a single culture/biodome". Sure, goblins may be the dominant species on Mars, but there's still various kinds of them that differ from one another and it sure as heck doesn't only have one biodome (granted, some terraforming was needed). Similarly, Hell has various cultures of devils and demons and isn't even that much of a place of torment, but moreso just of judgement.

Also, while I like multiple interpretations of magic (as an art, as a science) and don't mind it working either way, I don't like many tons of different types of magic all mashed together for no reason.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-09-15, 04:26 AM

You'll pardon me if I entirely discard WotC's interpretation of the Great Wheel. :smallamused:

Oh I agree, just saying.

WHFRP played to the most grimdark extent is an example of the former: all of the "you suck and are going to die" of being a handful of Imperial Guardsmen in 40K but without the technology or power to do anything about it.

This seems to be the case in second edition, not so much 3rd (which is the one I've played). 3rd edition WHFRP seems to take the D&D-clone direction by morphing into heroic fantasy (while still using many of the same extremely-lethal mechanics). The grimdarkness is still there, but it's downplayed compared to 2E in favor of "Look at all these cool monsters you get to kill!"

Not sure whether this is better or worse, tbh.

(Looks like I got off topic! Think of something, Craft, umm...)

Urban fantasy! Most urban fantasy in general puts a really bad taste in my mouth. I'm talking about stuff like Harry Potter or World of Darkness (the former moreso than the latter), the specific variety of "Okay, so the world's exactly like our world, except vampires and stuff are real and just managed to keep themselves very well hidden/covered up by a government conspiracy/whatever."

Depending on how the thing is handled, it pisses me off in one of two ways.

1. The setting just comes off as well, lazy. The author doesn't have to actually invent anything about how the real world works, they only have to come up with details about the supernatural stuff. The the "very well hidden" part means they don't have to bother coming up with how the two worlds interact.

2. If the setting focuses on paranormal investigators who know the truth but the world keeps shutting them out, it can get even worse. I have a bit of a personal beef with obnoxious conspiracy theorists and especially bad examples of this can seem like a conspiracy theorist's self-insert fanfic/desperate cry for attention.

PairO'Dice Lost

2012-09-15, 04:32 AM

This seems to be the case in second edition, not so much 3rd (which is the one I've played). 3rd edition WHFRP seems to take the D&D-clone direction by morphing into heroic fantasy (while still using many of the same extremely-lethal mechanics). The grimdarkness is still there, but it's downplayed compared to 2E in favor of "Look at all these cool monsters you get to kill!"

Not sure whether this is better or worse, tbh.

Just like how in D&D you'll run into DMs who've been playing since 1e who run 3e with a very AD&D-ish playstyle, you'll run into WHFRP GMs who still GM 3e with a lot of grimdarkness. I've run into two GMs like that, neither of whom are particularly good at either grimdark or heroic fantasy. :smallannoyed:

Yora

2012-09-15, 05:00 AM

1. Thinly-veiled real-world cultures transplanted whole to a fantasy setting.
I hate Golarion. Of all the poor settings that are released big, this one seems by far the worst.

5) Settings with nothing to do. The opposite of the "this setting is meant to run one plot" problem, these settings don't have anything to really hook you to run adventures in them. Spelljammer was an awesome setting thematically, and it was nice to have a "D&D! In! Space!" setting, but without an overarching theme (like "ongoing major war" in Warhammer 40K or Dragonlance or "explore everywhere" in Star Trek or Eberron) or a bunch of smaller hooks to let you run one-shots there or just wander around and interact with the world (like "escape the Mists" in Ravenloft or "explore the Outer Rim" in Star Wars) it kind of fell flat.
My advice to every newly started setting always is "before you do anything else, think of which stories you want to have happening in the setting".
Everything else, even the most basic themes, should be chosen in response to that play style.
What are the PCs or protagonists supposed to do? Even if it is just "treasure hunters who risk their life to get really rich fast".

Frozen_Feet

2012-09-15, 09:23 AM

I disagree on this one. It's all about aesthetics, not laziness. Using "Magic!" to justify something instead of science means you can get away with describing impossible things like floating cities or places bigger on the inside.

You see, that's a different thing. It's okay in my books to invoke supernatural for something that clearly can't be natural. My pet-peeve is when it's just a "color swap", so to speak - when the funtional difference between "train" and "magic train" is on the level of "red train" and "green train".

Yora

2012-09-15, 10:34 AM

I think when you have magic that is more than just spells and items, you need a solid theory or model of what magic is and what it does.
Because this enables players to investigate a magical phenomenon and then comming up with ideas how to manipulate it to their benefit.

How would you derail a lightning train? There's all kinds of things you can do, but when there are no rules, all you can do is try random things and hope that at some point the GM says "okay, this works". You need something to work with.

Inglenook

2012-09-15, 12:02 PM

2e Planescape's portrayal of the planes was much more egalitarian and much less preachy and Judeo-Christian, and it pretty much worked the way I described. TSR gave us archons and demons fighting with philosophy instead of swords, a cosmos shaped by beliefs and numerology, and an exploration of how outsiders think; WotC gave us the Book of Exalted "Biological Warfare Isn't Evil If We Only Do It To Evil Creatures" Deeds and the Book of Vile "Weird Sex Is Icky And Therefore Evil" Darkness. You'll pardon me if I entirely discard WotC's interpretation of the Great Wheel. :smallamused:
The Planescape version you described actually sounds pretty cool and makes a lot of sense. But yeah, WotC's planes and alignment are complete nonsense.

Oh, another one I just thought of:

13. The languages in 95% of settings, especially published ones. Common works fine as a lingua franca, sure, but in that case most people should speak it as a second language, rather than their primary. Sometimes people from different areas of the same country can barely understand one another in real life, so the idea of most of the world speaking the same language mutually intelligibly is mind boggling. Especially when most people are uneducated, and there are no global media to reinforce a language standard. And don't even get me started on the silliness that is racial languages (e.g. Dwarven) and environmental languages (e.g. Aquan).

Yeah, I know Common is supposed to be an abstraction to represent whatever the PCs and DM speak, and I know it's super nitpicky. I'm a linguistics major, though, so this completely destroys my suspension of disbelief. Similar to how a biologist must feel when he looks through the Monster Manual, I suppose. :smallfrown:

Morph Bark

2012-09-15, 01:28 PM

sktarq

2012-09-15, 01:43 PM

II see this complaint a lot, and I think it's a side effect of living in a culture that sees things from a monotheistic perspective. People being "cast into the Abyss for doing bad things" doesn't happen in D&D, at least not with that value judgment attached, and people don't do things "for the evulz" any more than they do them for the good...ulz.

If you're good, do lots of good things in life, and follow the teachings of a good god, you're sent to a Good afterlife as a reward. If you're evil, do lots of evil things in life, and follow the teachings of an evil god, you're sent to an Evil afterlife as a reward. That's the key thing to remember: evil people are judged by their evil patrons, not good gods. People who love slaughtering innocents and inferiors all day find the Abyss as rewarding as someone who loves working with math and logic all day finds Mechanus rewarding. If you're lawful good and follow a lawful good god and don't act lawful good enough, you're not sent to the Abyss, that's where chaotic evil people go. You still go to Celestia, it's just that people who try being lawful good and suck at it become lantern archons or merge with the plane itself instead of becoming a more powerful outsider or serve their god more or less as-is.

The demons and devils aren't lying when they tell you that sacrificing things to them is the easy path to Phenomenal Cosmic power, they just neglect to mention that if you want to start out in the Abyss as the torturer rather than the torture-ee when you die, you need to be really really evil, or you get to be a lemure or mane because you suck at being evil. Petty theft and manslaughter are worse crimes for an evil person to commit than grand theft airship and first degree murder, because it shows a lack of commitment to their ideals. And the fact that people can just phone up the Powers with commune and contact other plane and have them explain that, yep, evil gods reward evil behavior only provides more justification for evil people to be evil, not justification for them to repent.

So you shouldn't be trying to convert to a good religion no matter what, you should find the religion that matches your goals and outlook best and follow it as best you can, since that's the simplest path to the afterlife that's best for you. In fact, the worst thing that can happen to a villain is for him to be redeemed! If a demon-worshiper converts from CE to LG right before dying in a heroic sacrifice, the CE gods probably won't want him because he let them down, the LG gods probably don't want him because no one likes a traitor, and the N gods probably don't want him because doing very very evil acts and very very good acts in the hopes that they'll balance out is a Stupid Neutral way of seeing the world.
I TOTALLY disagree with you here. Reading the books on Hell or the Abyss they specifically say they are punishments and the upper planes are rewards. Furthermore the hell you describe of people going there because they enjoy torturing innocents etc is people doing for the evil nature of what they do. Not because it is easy, simpler, shapes the world into a prefered mold, and/or gives them the ability to not thing about parts of themselves they don't like...as in real normal motivations in murder etc. Once the afterlife is known to have the kind of rules that are described in DnD furthermore mortal law and judgement are pretty much rendered moot and silly anyway.
And as for 2e planescape. Never was I closer to leaving the game than that book. I hurts how many problems that book has and takes every minor issue that one can have with alignments and turns them into game breakers

This is misused a lot in most 'brews, granted, but long histories aren't innately a bad thing. Earth is over 4 billion years old, after all, and the universe over 14 billion years old. Human history is comparatively short because we had to work our way up from amino acids in conditions lethal to humans all the way to our present state, and technological development has only skyrocketed fairly recently in geological terms because for the longest time our first priority has been survival and living long enough to do all that R&D.

Even if you assume a world like Earth and creatures like those in real life instead of the gods magicking everything into existence, when you have creatures like demons, dragons, elementals, and so forth who can survive early-Earth conditions easily, it makes plenty of sense for there to be an Age of Demons/Age of Myths/etc. like settings often do before humanoids come along. Ancient empires of more advanced races make a lot more sense when you consider that even elves with lots of predators, poor nutrition, and other early-human handicaps live much longer than modern humans do, giving them a chance to develop magically, societally, and otherwise much faster than humans once they develop sapience.[/QUOTE}

first of all the age of the planet doesn't really matter, heck the Permian explosion of multicelled life is far more important for this discussion and that was less than 1Billion years ago and much more important to homebrew is the fact human "civilization" as we know it has been around for less than 25K years....and I'm being generous there. 12K years for permanent settlements, farming, most tool making speciallists etc. As for the Elves etc I'll give you that it buys you some leeway but not the multiple shifted decimal points that we are so ubiquitous.

[QUOTE=PairO'Dice Lost;13899988]
You're assuming that there's just one path of technological development, that "developing technology" means progressing exactly as Western Europe did in reality, but that isn't the case. Certain technologies might be developed much earlier than expected (e.g. the Romans had steam power but didn't bother to do anything with it), later than expected (e.g. there are still people today using stone tools in the rainforest), differently than expected (e.g. you can make cars with many different fuel sources), and more. So magic aiding technological development doesn't mean it gets you to guns and computers much faster than normal, necessarily, nor does it mean you get magical guns and magical computers.

You're also missing that D&D magic items basically are technology. Vancian magic is basically a field of science and/or engineering: it's quantifiable, repeatable, predictable, testable, reliable, logical, and able to be learned and used without any form of innate talent. Its magic items are classified and stratified, widely recognized and standardized, and sold on the open market (by private individuals if not the stereotypical Magi-Mart). They have no reason to develop what we'd think of as technology, even enhanced by magic; you might as well expect the modern world to give up transistor-based computers and digital storage to start over with vacuum tube computers and magnetic tape, or even more drastically go back to using bronze and iron swords instead of modern weaponry but use modern processes and engineering to produce them.

No I'm not making the assumption of west europe based tech. What I am assuming is that if you have enough people to have specialist in crafting various things and semi regular communications via travel to distribute new knowledge is that technology grows. I don't care if it is mills, swords, clothing or even(in fact especially) magic as field there will be growth. If a culture doesn't grow it will loose out to those that do.
I really don't care how development goes but as long as the impuse to do so is present. If it is not working there needs to a retardent force present. A government or church that presents an idealised lifestyle and sees new tech (which a spell would be an example of) as a potential threat. A cycle of a rising deamon horde that wipes out almost everyone and sets humanity back to the stone age. Whatever force is holding things back is irrelevant and setting based. However if you don't have one then technology (which includes magic-spells are basically inventions) should be advancing. And if the world looks like midevil europe then I would expect the tech to match.
And as for magic driving material technological growth you missed my point though I don't think I explained my reasoning there. Magic allows a civilization to discover things faster. How stone works or how stone it is by magical testing and vision etc allows one to select stone for properties that would otherwise need chemical testing. Magic makes purification of things used in lamp, weapon or whatever else manufacturing. It can make higher tempreture forges to work metals that before couldn't me made or used. It provides guidence, ideas, and solutions to problems during technological development.

Oh I agree, just saying.
Urban fantasy! Most urban fantasy in general puts a really bad taste in my mouth. I'm talking about stuff like Harry Potter or World of Darkness (the former moreso than the latter), the specific variety of "Okay, so the world's exactly like our world, except vampires and stuff are real and just managed to keep themselves very well hidden/covered up by a government conspiracy/whatever."

Depending on how the thing is handled, it pisses me off in one of two ways.

1. The setting just comes off as well, lazy. The author doesn't have to actually invent anything about how the real world works, they only have to come up with details about the supernatural stuff. The the "very well hidden" part means they don't have to bother coming up with how the two worlds interact.

Haveing GM and created worlds both for WoD and DnD high fantasy type games I'd have to say the WoD cities are deffinatly not lazier I found it much harder actually. The real world creates bounds that both inspire lots of interesting things but also limit things. Especially for larger ideas.

Maquise

2012-09-15, 02:04 PM

What do I dislike? Humanized Outsiders.

Outsiders are theoretically the physical embodiments of the cosmic forces that drive the universe, so they really shouldn't behave like mortals. I would think they would have completely alien mindsets. Even Angels would have a slight undertone of Lovecraftian otherness.

The biggest offender I feel is Planescape. A babau is literally the desire to murder made manifest. Why is it sitting in a tavern booth in Sigil having a tankard with its buddies?

Lord Raziere

2012-09-15, 02:28 PM

My turn offs:
1. Everything not human has to UNRELATABLE ALIENS THAT DON'T MAKE SENSE AT ALL! Even the dwarves and elves must be unable to relate to humans in any way!

2. Too much linguistic separation, thus making everyone unable to understand each other at all.

3. monocultures.

4. not different enough from real world.

5. any non-demon race designated as always evil.

6. not enough variety in general.

PairO'Dice Lost

2012-09-15, 02:46 PM

13. The languages in 95% of settings, especially published ones. Common works fine as a lingua franca, sure, but in that case most people should speak it as a second language, rather than their primary. Sometimes people from different areas of the same country can barely understand one another in real life, so the idea of most of the world speaking the same language mutually intelligibly is mind boggling. Especially when most people are uneducated, and there are no global media to reinforce a language standard. And don't even get me started on the silliness that is racial languages (e.g. Dwarven) and environmental languages (e.g. Aquan).

Yeah, I know Common is supposed to be an abstraction to represent whatever the PCs and DM speak, and I know it's super nitpicky. I'm a linguistics major, though, so this completely destroys my suspension of disbelief. Similar to how a biologist must feel when he looks through the Monster Manual, I suppose. :smallfrown:

Well, to be fair, Common is pretty much English. English is the bastard child of at least two major language families with a few bazillion loanwords, spread around the world because the countries with it as their native tongue are very influential in the world; swap Latin and Germanic for, say, Elven and Goblin and swap American and the UK for Humanity, and you get Common. I still prefer Common as a trade pidgin over an actual language, but it's not really that bad.

And the elemental languages are the languages of creatures made of the elements; things made of fire and water can't speak the same way humanoids do and wouldn't use the same means to record anything in written form, so it makes sense that they'd have their own means of communications. Now, it doesn't really make sense that humanoids could speak those languages easily since their vocal apparatus aren't built for it, and they'd have a really terrible accent if they tried. I generally play those languages as Shyriiwook from Star Wars: a water elemental walks up to a human and is all "blubblublubbwooshwooshblubwooshblub" and the human just responds with "You said it, Chewie" and doesn't bother trying to speak Aquan back.

I TOTALLY disagree with you here. Reading the books on Hell or the Abyss they specifically say they are punishments and the upper planes are rewards.

As I said, the WotC version of the planes doesn't make any sense at all, since they're just imposing monotheistic biases on a polytheistic world. Having the Fiendish Codices say that Kord is better than Tiamat or similar is like having a book on mythology saying Zeus is better than Hades: in actual mythology neither one is good or evil, they were brothers, and they got along relatively well, but the popular conception of Hades is of being a bad guy, partly because in our culture we're used to having a major divine bad guy to balance out a major divine good guy and partly because of the fact that the Disney version of Hercules cast him as a bad guy. :smallannoyed:

Furthermore the hell you describe of people going there because they enjoy torturing innocents etc is people doing for the evil nature of what they do. Not because it is easy, simpler, shapes the world into a prefered mold, and/or gives them the ability to not thing about parts of themselves they don't like...as in real normal motivations in murder etc. Once the afterlife is known to have the kind of rules that are described in DnD furthermore mortal law and judgement are pretty much rendered moot and silly anyway.

D&D settings are ones in which you have roving bands of insane murder hobos wandering the land, killing anyone they can get away with and stealing their stuff, and those are the good guys. Murder in such a setting is still a way to get what you want, it's just that there are now religions you can follow who actually reward you for it.

And as for 2e planescape. Never was I closer to leaving the game than that book. I hurts how many problems that book has and takes every minor issue that one can have with alignments and turns them into game breakers

Than "those books," technically, there were several Planescape sourcebooks. If a group already has a common understanding of alignment and fleshes them out a bit--my PS group had a common interest in philosophy, so we had lots of discussions of morals and ethics as applied to alignments anyway--then you won't really have issues with Planescape, and if alignment is a game-breaker for you then you will, lots of them. You can love or hate Planescape, but its take on alignment and the afterlife makes a hell of a lot more sense than the 3e version.

first of all the age of the planet doesn't really matter, heck the Permian explosion of multicelled life is far more important for this discussion and that was less than 1Billion years ago and much more important to homebrew is the fact human "civilization" as we know it has been around for less than 25K years....and I'm being generous there. 12K years for permanent settlements, farming, most tool making speciallists etc. As for the Elves etc I'll give you that it buys you some leeway but not the multiple shifted decimal points that we are so ubiquitous.

My point was precisely that the age of the planet is more important than the rise of humanity as far as most settings' history are concerned. You've heard the common fantasy trope of "Foolish humans, my race was building flying cities while you overgrown monkeys were still making fire!" and so on? Same here. 100,000 year histories make no sense at all if you're working on human timescales, but if you're talking about magical creatures who were ruling the world while humanoids were still crawling out of the seas, you can have an Age of Demons that makes perfect sense.

No I'm not making the assumption of west europe based tech. What I am assuming is that if you have enough people to have specialist in crafting various things and semi regular communications via travel to distribute new knowledge is that technology grows. I don't care if it is mills, swords, clothing or even(in fact especially) magic as field there will be growth. If a culture doesn't grow it will loose out to those that do.
I really don't care how development goes but as long as the impuse to do so is present. If it is not working there needs to a retardent force present. A government or church that presents an idealised lifestyle and sees new tech (which a spell would be an example of) as a potential threat. A cycle of a rising deamon horde that wipes out almost everyone and sets humanity back to the stone age. Whatever force is holding things back is irrelevant and setting based. However if you don't have one then technology (which includes magic-spells are basically inventions) should be advancing. And if the world looks like midevil europe then I would expect the tech to match.

Well, first off, magic is a technology that's advancing. Spells aren't named after wizards for no reason. If you look at Eberron you can see that settings with logically-used magic have basically reached the modern world technology wise (1950s-era tech, if not Information Age tech). Secondly, D&D and other fantasy systems that assume ancient ruins with forgotten artifacts do assume catastrophes that set everyone back decades or centuries. Looking at Eberron again, the Last War left society looking pretty much the same instead of sending everything back to the Stone Age; however, the Mournland wiped out Cyre, destroying an entire nation's infrastructure and breaking up a major lightning rail hub; the Treaty of Thronehold (mostly) destroyed the means to create warforged and other large-scale magical items; most of the more powerful spellcasters died in the war; and so forth. If the equivalent of losing the last decade's computer advancements and bombing half of Europe off the map isn't a setback, I don't know what is.

And as for magic driving material technological growth you missed my point though I don't think I explained my reasoning there. Magic allows a civilization to discover things faster. How stone works or how stone it is by magical testing and vision etc allows one to select stone for properties that would otherwise need chemical testing. Magic makes purification of things used in lamp, weapon or whatever else manufacturing. It can make higher tempreture forges to work metals that before couldn't me made or used. It provides guidence, ideas, and solutions to problems during technological development.

With your above clarification, this part makes more sense. And magic is doing that. You need magic to perform alchemy, forge mithral, and similar.

sktarq

2012-09-15, 04:14 PM

Well, to be fair, Common is pretty much English. English is the bastard child of at least two major language families with a few bazillion loanwords,... Now, it doesn't really make sense that humanoids could speak those languages easily since their vocal apparatus aren't built for it, and they'd have a really terrible accent if they tried. I generally play those languages as Shyriiwook from Star Wars: a water elemental walks up to a human and is all "blubblublubbwooshwooshblubwooshblub" and the human just responds with "You said it, Chewie" and doesn't bother trying to speak Aquan back.
Common is annoying. However it is a usefull trope...especially for new players. In some settings it even makes a degree of sense (Taldan as Common in Pathfinder for example). But do agree on the pigin (actually a homerule I use for non new players).
Really like that solution to your Elemental languages issue. It's bit of a cheat but a homerule that my players have liked in the past was to make the communication one way unless the player is in physical contact with the elemental-who have a natural ability to understand human languages that are also being mentally "progected" by a intelligent being who knowns their own language.

As I said, the WotC version of the planes doesn't make any sense at all,... Disney version of Hercules cast him as a bad guy. :smallannoyed:
D&D settings are ones in which you have roving bands of insane murder hobos wandering the land, killing anyone they can get away with and stealing their stuff, and those are the good guys. Murder in such a setting is still a way to get what you want, it's just that there are now religions you can follow who actually reward you for it.
Exactly. . . That to me proves the system is broken quite possibly beyond repair. Not that it is in any way good. It's a system that requires definition, gives partial definitions, and then promptly disagrees with itself. The system can't break free of a monotheist base but added in polytheistic framworks and trys to simplfy the range of human behavior in order to keep the game mechanics simple enough to use....Which is fine as long as everyone promises to play nice and not look at it too hard.

Than "those books," technically,.... You can love or hate Planescape, but its take on alignment and the afterlife makes a hell of a lot more sense than the 3e version.

My problem is the same as your solution. Get a group of people who like to discuss philosophy....apply it to the alignment system. We could never make it even start to work. It becomes a de facto DM's personal upbring vs the ability of the player to agrue their idea. It was always a dealable issue in most games. It wouldn't break the system get in the way of people having fun etc. In Plansecape it did damn near every time. Or it totally wrecked people's ability to get into the game or enjoy it. As for it compared to standard 3.5e it makes about as much sense to me in effect-I don't really see the change at the level that average NPC living their life in this world come to...thus it's drivers on their behavior remain the same...thus it creates non sensical behavior in NPC's and NPC societies which hurts the immersive feel of the game and the development of the PC's character (as their foils have less credibility). Though I will admit it makes more sense on a philisophical level-that boon is limited to player discussion only I think and if anything provides false cover for bad storytelling.

My point was precisely that the age of the planet is more important than the rise of humanity as far as most settings' history are concerned. You've heard the common fantasy trope of "Foolish humans, my race was building flying cities while you overgrown monkeys were still making fire!" and so on? Same here. 100,000 year histories make no sense at all if you're working on human timescales, but if you're talking about magical creatures who were ruling the world while humanoids were still crawling out of the seas, you can have an Age of Demons that makes perfect sense.

But the age of the planet is not more important. Never has been-it has always been the age of civilization-no matter what beings are making that civilization. The flying cities while humans still learning to spell your name type stuff has always struk me as A: interesting but why would humans survive when these folks didn't B:Why didn't humans raid the ruin LONG before now and get a huge leg up on their development -you'd only need a couple tribes pulling it off and either they'd be copied or would grow. And there are several more problems just as bad. Furthermore while yes a 100K year history using non humans may get something of a pass (even if I overlook the enviromental and physical effects of that long of a civilization which is a whole kettle of fish just as bad-or wonder why in their 40K year history as great and powerful empires the *insert non-human race of great age and drama* never got beyond 14th century europe human technology-which looking at the ruins of, say, the Age of Deamons you never seem to) that isn't what annoys me as much as the very common 100K histories of HUMAN and near human histories. And this a thread of what annoys us in homebrews. Like I said above it's possible to make almost anything I dislike work with proper backing information and working that into the setting. I'm not saying they could NEVER work it is just that 95% don't and should be avoided as a general rule.

Well, first off, magic is a technology that's advancing. Spells aren't named after wizards for no reason. If you look at Eberron you can see that settings with logically-used magic have basically reached the modern world technology wise (1950s-era tech, if not Information Age tech). Secondly, D&D and other fantasy systems that assume ancient ruins with forgotten artifacts do assume catastrophes that set everyone back decades or centuries. Looking at Eberron again, the Last War left society looking pretty much the same instead of sending everything back to the Stone Age; however, the Mournland wiped out Cyre, destroying an entire nation's infrastructure and breaking up a major lightning rail hub; the Treaty of Thronehold (mostly) destroyed the means to create warforged and other large-scale magical items; most of the more powerful spellcasters died in the war; and so forth. If the equivalent of losing the last decade's computer advancements and bombing half of Europe off the map isn't a setback, I don't know what is.

First of all looking at Eberron-I think this is one of the Commercial Brews that has the LEAST problem with this. It has NEW technology (magic based and non) entering into the world in its history along with the advent of created monsters (such as the undead or constructs). It also does more to explain loss of technical skill than almost any other. However the skills have not really been set back very far in most of the large events descibed....no really look again....a few very advanced techniques have been lost, others have like Very large floating mobile fortresses don't have the need or money but they still exist, they have plans and records and most importantly the principals of how to do these things are still there and really that's the key to technology level...all the research in these applied disciplines could be recreated in a generation or two of applied effort. New things just as complex and advanced will soon start coming out of those principals-maybe not as fast but it isn't a big step backwards. No my issue is when a party goes plumbing a ruin from the age of Deamons, From the Hobgoblin Empire etc there is same basic menu of weapons that have had to redeveloped who knows how many times....except they haven't. Those same tech's are being used by Galifar, Karrn the Conquerer, or even you local PC. The relics of the time of Galifar (the first) wouldn't be as strong as modern weapons, or farming techniques etc. Yet every treasure haul (as found in the books) seems up to date and just ready to fit in with modern campighn world like the last 1000 years of growth didn't matter. It is FAR worse in most published worlds and far far worse in most homebrews. On a general scale technology either dies in it's infancy because a use can't be found, too expensive, government doesn't like it etc or it starts to spread. And once it does-the idea of it-the understanding of the principals that make it work those are VERY hard things to kill off. The genie is out of the proverbial bottle. Sure there are counter examples but to have that happen on the scale that it would have to have happened in the "Book" histories of most Commercial Settings much less homebrew I think ripps a big hole in their logic and feel.

Eldan

2012-09-15, 04:40 PM

Common can make sense in a setting. Look at our world. Greek was spoken from Spain to India for centuries. They even used a kind of Greek referred to as the "common language" for trade.

Amechra

2012-09-15, 04:59 PM

Of, few more things:

9) When there are more planes that I have fingers - this is related to the lack of sense of scale. (Pocket dimensions are excused, because they are, by definition, small.) Because often it raises questions like "why can't these be different places in the same world?" Extra minus points if the setting has realistic cosmology (ie. planets), but adds loads of planes on top of that. Congratulations, you just ignored loads of poorly-explored vastness to add more of it! Extra extra minus points if said planes are infinite, or at least as large as the universe. Gee, this tiny dot of land you detailed feels really important amidst these incredibly huge weird places.

10) Using magic to repeat real technologic stunts - no, a magnetic train is not more interesting me when it runs on Lightning Elementals rather than electronics. Likewise, rather than say those ancient-but-impressive ruins were "build by MAGIC", why not say they were "build using archetechtural and metallurgical understanding that died with the culture". I find it tasteless to invoke poorly-defined supernatural elements merely to introduce "modern" or "futuristic" elements to a fantasy setting. It feels lazy - do your research and use science for your science fiction elements. :smalltongue:

All I'm gonna say is that your 10 is something that can be done... if the structures would require full-out unnatural stuff to build them.

Like if they had non-euclidean hallways, or they were like those towers in the ?Shadow Out of Time? where the bases were way smaller than the tops...

Other than that, I agree with most of these, as well as:

I HATE HATE HATE transplanted morality: Dear setting authors; why are your morality systems/religions so simplistic?

I wanna see something more like Digger or the Malazan Book of the Fallen, where religions are weird and wonderful.

Man on Fire

2012-09-15, 05:01 PM

2) "Every myth is true" - where every tale of monsters, gods and treasure corresponds to real monsters, gods and treasuse. D&D is perhaps the worst offender. (Evidence: Monster Manuals.) Just because some supernatural elements are true, doesn't need to mean that all tales told of supernatural elements need to be true.

3) "Fantasy kitchen sink" - related to the above, when every nook and corner is filled to brim with bizarre creatures from every conceivable mythology. It's more than a bit redundant to have goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears, trolls, oni etc. as separate species when you could have one "petty evil race living in the dark" that could explain all of these peoples.

My presonal turnoff is when people try to cram everything they can int othe setting. Like in published D&D settings - every one must have Mind Flyers, Yuan-Ti, Beholders etc. I would really preffer if most of D&d unique monsters were unique and keept on one part of the world.

4) Peoples as species - There are some fringe cases where it makes sense for all members of a single species to also be of one culture. Beyond that, there is no reason to have "woodloving hippies" be elves or "hard-working mountainfolk" be dwarves, if you can as easily have both peoples be different varieties of humans. On the flipside, each species should have multiple differing cultures.

5) Non-humans as humans with fancy hats - an immortal lich is going to have vastly different mental and physical needs than a human, and this should show. As noted above, if you can do something with humans, you don't need non-humans - so if you're going to inroduce non-humans, make them feel non-human.

Yeah, I dislike those two too.

6) "God needs prayer badly" - recently I've started to feel that the idea of gods being dependant of worship has become somewhat overused in fantasy settings. More than that, most don't think too deeply of how this actually works, which causes it to run head first into many of the same logic problems as point 1).

I belive the rammifications of that should be more explored really. Like in comics series Fables, where characters from Fairy Tales are dependant on people's belief in them - characters who are well-know and popular cannot be killed, s Snow White can take a bullet to the head and survive, but this also means that less known Fables, like Rose Red, are very vunarable and won't return to life if shot. Another thing is that it's quite territorial, which means that in Russia, where everybody knows Baba Yaga, the outcome of her battle with witch from Hansel And Gretel will be different than in United States, where latter's story is much more popular. it can also be abused - Jack Horner, who is every jack in every fairy tale, made a movie trilogy about himself and harvested his new popularity. think of how these rammifications could work in fantasy. If the power depends of how many people in certain area belive in you, gods would be very territorial and intorelat to other religions, sending their people on missions toconvert villages in other gods territorie, slaughtering their messangers and even leading crusades to enforce belief in themselves, to become more powerful. If it's territorial, no god would leave the area where they have the most belivers and would probably travel only with hundreds of pilgrims at hand, many plans would me made to kill other god into luring him on enemys theriroy, where they are weaker, and gods would meet only on boders out of fear of the other guy trying to drag them into their land ans defeat. If they can be spread by gaining followers, gods would actively do heroic deeds to convert people or send their clerics to do so.

7) No place for the natural - many fantasy setting put plain too much emphasis on the supernatural elements of their setting. But you don't need to invoke supernatural elements to convey and create a fantastic feel - just take a look at all the crazy stuff real world has.

Oh yeah, my buddy recently started gmind Deadland, that's his main complaint - behind every problem hides supernatural, it's never normal bandits who rob the train, it's undead ones.

Another thing I dislike are badly used "no stats" - characters who are said to be so powerful that players cannot match them. It's not really bad itself, I mean, Cthulhu in pathfinder is good example - power beyond anything, one that game overs you when he wakes up, because he is a very old god. Same with that giant bird from deadlands or Cain. But guys like Stone from Deadlands, who is just Revenant who made pact to get a lot of power, or that religious leader whose name I forgot - these are normal guys in that setting, jsut strong, nothing in their files puts them above players' usual level, there is no reason for them to be best in everything and have no stats.

sktarq

2012-09-15, 05:06 PM

Common can make sense in a setting. Look at our world. Greek was spoken from Spain to India for centuries. They even used a kind of Greek referred to as the "common language" for trade.

Yes as a trade language, a scholars language etc. In the majority of the area it was used it was a secondary language or a national language of the post Alexander states and greek colonies. And that's fine to translate. What I think most of us take umbrage with it the A: World spanning nature of the language. B: That most people speak it as their first language-even if the "common" originates in a far off land.
Untill WWII most people in eastern Europe spoke German. It was a secondary language for most but at least a few people in each village did. Only a few people who a few dealing with government or outsiders didn't speak it. But the former AustroHungarian Empire had over 20 significant languages. It's the role of common that I think many people want but it turns into German as the common language of the various german states of the former Holy Roman Empire. It's common because if people speak anything else it is UN-common.
Or at least that's my issue with how common is most often found. It's a pretty easy fix though.

Amechra

2012-09-15, 05:15 PM

PairO'Dice Lost

2012-09-15, 05:39 PM

Exactly. . . That to me proves the system is broken quite possibly beyond repair. Not that it is in any way good. It's a system that requires definition, gives partial definitions, and then promptly disagrees with itself. The system can't break free of a monotheist base but added in polytheistic framworks and trys to simplfy the range of human behavior in order to keep the game mechanics simple enough to use....Which is fine as long as everyone promises to play nice and not look at it too hard.

My point wasn't that Good PCs get away with murder, it was that in D&D, violence is actually a good solution to your problems. In the modern real world, someone being murdered is a horrible thing that happens occasionally because some unstable psychopath is committing a crime; in D&D and in the ancient real world, people dying to violence is something to be expected and taken for granted. Killing someone is not incompatible with being Good in a world where a big evil monster can and will eat your neighbors and reanimate their corpses to kill you if you don't kill it first. That's not a matter of monotheism vs. polytheism, that's a matter of Iron Age values vs. Information Age values.

But the age of the planet is not more important. Never has been-it has always been the age of civilization-no matter what beings are making that civilization.

The age of other civilizations is exactly what I'm talking about. The original complaint was that having a 100,000-year history for various civilizations doesn't make sense, and I said that while it doesn't make sense in the context of humans it makes sense in the context of whatever beings came before them.

The flying cities while humans still learning to spell your name type stuff has always struk me as A: interesting but why would humans survive when these folks didn't B:Why didn't humans raid the ruin LONG before now and get a huge leg up on their development -you'd only need a couple tribes pulling it off and either they'd be copied or would grow.

It's case B. What do you think adventurers are for? Your party isn't the first one to go off, find a bunch of priceless magic items and dump them on the market for people to study and reverse-engineer because they don't kill monsters fast enough for you. :smallwink:

And there are several more problems just as bad. Furthermore while yes a 100K year history using non humans may get something of a pass (even if I overlook the enviromental and physical effects of that long of a civilization which is a whole kettle of fish just as bad-or wonder why in their 40K year history as great and powerful empires the *insert non-human race of great age and drama* never got beyond 14th century europe human technology-which looking at the ruins of, say, the Age of Deamons you never seem to) that isn't what annoys me as much as the very common 100K histories of HUMAN and near human histories. And this a thread of what annoys us in homebrews. Like I said above it's possible to make almost anything I dislike work with proper backing information and working that into the setting. I'm not saying they could NEVER work it is just that 95% don't and should be avoided as a general rule.

What settings have 100,000-year human histories? Pretty much every 'brewed setting I've read starts off with "A bazillion years ago, gods created stuff" then moves onto monsters and dragons, then gets down to elves and dwarves, and then has humans show up relatively recently. It's entirely possible that I haven't seen many of those because the ones that do that are bad enough that I don't make it to the human part of the timeline, I suppose.

No my issue is when a party goes plumbing a ruin from the age of Deamons, From the Hobgoblin Empire etc there is same basic menu of weapons that have had to redeveloped who knows how many times....except they haven't. Those same tech's are being used by Galifar, Karrn the Conquerer, or even you local PC. The relics of the time of Galifar (the first) wouldn't be as strong as modern weapons, or farming techniques etc. Yet every treasure haul (as found in the books) seems up to date and just ready to fit in with modern campighn world like the last 1000 years of growth didn't matter. It is FAR worse in most published worlds and far far worse in most homebrews. On a general scale technology either dies in it's infancy because a use can't be found, too expensive, government doesn't like it etc or it starts to spread. And once it does-the idea of it-the understanding of the principals that make it work those are VERY hard things to kill off. The genie is out of the proverbial bottle. Sure there are counter examples but to have that happen on the scale that it would have to have happened in the "Book" histories of most Commercial Settings much less homebrew I think ripps a big hole in their logic and feel.

That's not really as far-fetched as you'd think. If you look at modern technology and picture what would happen if our civilization collapsed, give it a few thousand years and all of our written works, all of our digital technology, and pretty much everything else that's fragile or biodegradable would be completely gone. Only the sturdy mechanical, non-degradable stuff would survive. Now look at magic items: enchantments don't fade over time, and they're not biodegradable, so if you dig up an ancient hobgoblin sword it'll work just fine. Basic Medieval/Renaissance weapons are the substrate for Age of Demons magical technology, with only the materials and enhancements changing over time, just like how the basic car body hasn't changed much in shape and layout since the Model T--we still have four wheels, an engine, a steering wheel, etc.--and it's the body shapes, the materials used in the body, the computerized systems, and other "under the hood" technologies that are really where the advancement lies.

Once you get past Medieval-/Renaissance-level tech, you're getting into guns (which they wouldn't develop and which wouldn't last), so finding a sword in the ancient crypts that looks only a bit different from a modern sword but glows like the sun under Detect-Magic-O-Vision makes sense. And since all of the enchantments in use are pretty obvious ("hit stuff better" or "fire everywhere!" or "make shooty thing shoot farther") I don't see why finding a flaming longsword in the ruins that works like a modern flaming longsword would be out of the ordinary.

Yes as a trade language, a scholars language etc. In the majority of the area it was used it was a secondary language or a national language of the post Alexander states and greek colonies. And that's fine to translate. What I think most of us take umbrage with it the A: World spanning nature of the language. B: That most people speak it as their first language-even if the "common" originates in a far off land.
[...]
Or at least that's my issue with how common is most often found. It's a pretty easy fix though.

In my settings, no one gets Common as a default language; there's a Human language for humans if we're going with racial languages or regional languages for everyone if we're going with more logical languages, and everyone gets Common or the equivalent on their bonus language list. It's worked out well so far.

Morph Bark

2012-09-15, 05:56 PM

You know, after reading this, I kinda want to make a setting that is a single city, with a blasted wasteland outside (think what happens around Tanelorn when the forces of Law attack it), where all the other planes are actually just (extraplanar "shadow") districts, kinda like demiplanes.

I kinda like the idea of the River Styx being a nickname for the sewer system, and reaching the "lower planes" involves navigating the sewers.

"Welcome to the cosmologistic administrative horror that is known as the Great Wheel City. Leave your morality at the doorstep and get your sanity card punched before entry. Don't forget to bring your blue orange-flavoured skindrops to protect against elementary duststorms." :smallamused:

Amechra

2012-09-15, 06:01 PM

"Oh, and stay away from the prison district; man, whose idea was just boarding up the exits?"

Actually, I was thinking of basically just using a variant on alignment that I saw somewhere where alignment doesn't exist, and alignment subtypes are replaced by the [Spirit] subtype.

Basically, the entire thing would be very, very "human centric", for lack of a better word; the big guys probably won't even be running around (plus, I just find it easier to map a city than to map a world, when you get down to it.)

sktarq

2012-09-15, 06:56 PM

My point wasn't that Good PCs get away with murder, it was that in D&D, violence is actually a good solution to your problems. In the modern real world, someone being murdered is a horrible thing that happens occasionally because some unstable psychopath is committing a crime; in D&D and in the ancient real world, people dying to violence is something to be expected and taken for granted. Killing someone is not incompatible with being Good in a world where a big evil monster can and will eat your neighbors and reanimate their corpses to kill you if you don't kill it first. That's not a matter of monotheism vs. polytheism, that's a matter of Iron Age values vs. Information Age values.
I'd give you the Iron age vs Information age values if the rest of the game system supported it. But even in 2e murder was bad. Ravenloft flat out said it. It was described as one of the reasons to force a change of alignment on a PC. Good basically became "when it was convenient for the DM". And That big evil monster just wants to feed his little monsters and thinks that letting a soul get eaten up by the outer planes to be eventually merged into the planar fabric is just horrible and must be prevented. It's a totally ethnocentric idea of "good and evil" that doesn't stand up to itself. Replace the PC's with any given NPC (take a hobgoblin or ogre to make life interesting) and it falls apart. Your Iron Age/Info age analogy sounds good but I don't think it holds water.

The age of other civilizations is exactly what I'm talking about. The original complaint was that having a 100,000-year history for various civilizations doesn't make sense, and I said that while it doesn't make sense in the context of humans it makes sense in the context of whatever beings came before them.
Still doesn't. Why? because those oh so great civ's have the same tech level as the humans. Sure not in the fluff but when it come down to what the players actually deal with. The rare exceptions are called artifacts and have all sorts of warnings plastered all over that part of the book. Those were meant to have been powerful even at the time of their creation. So no you can replace any given race that had a civilization 100K years ago and if it lasted 5K years or more it should have developed at least somewhat comparable tech, or been so alien that humans find it hard to use anything they find there-take your pick. The clock kicks off for each civ when it begins no matter the race. Non humans may get a multiplier of either lesser or greater speed. But any issues I have with a human civilization lasting 10K years or more I'd have with a civilization of any intelligent beings lasting that long....but with more acceptance of storytellers slowing things down, speeding them up or otherwise messing with it. To make matters worse many of the races that are used this way develop much slower that RW humans but have int bonuses - seems odd. I guess one easy way to explain it is to look at Forgotten Realms-Look at the Yuan Ti or the Elves. Yes both fell from great heights....but even so they have been where they are now being just as smart and seem no more advanced than they were 100 years after they fell.

It's case B. What do you think adventurers are for? Your party isn't the first one to go off, find a bunch of priceless magic items and dump them on the market for people to study and reverse-engineer because they don't kill monsters fast enough for you. :smallwink:
Yep that sounds like what adventurers should be doing. But it stretches my suspension of disbelief that most of these places hadn't all ready been looted if they are that old. Also It's not just the magic items that would be so valuable. It would be plans or forges, stone-working tools, craft tools of all kinds, those would all be far more valuable than a magic item-because the idea can spread and be used in any and every blacksmith shop in the land in only a few years if it's a really good one (or library, or where ever it is used). And that is what would have driven the advancement of the stone age humans (or whatever the next civilization to come along) to a level not very far behind the one that collapsed-even faster if the fallen one was literate. Comprehend writing isn't a high level spell. Even if technology isn't directly translatable it would still communicate principles that the following civ would take advantage of.

What settings have 100,000-year human histories? ...bad enough that I don't make it to the human part of the timeline, I suppose.
I've seen enough. While not 100K ..20K isn't that uncommon in homebrew...which is only twice as long as RW people have been farming. And a decent chunk of an ice age was thrown in that length of time.

That's not really as far-fetched as you'd think. If you look at modern technology and picture what would happen if our civilization collapsed, give it a few thousand years and all of our written works, all of our digital technology, and pretty much everything else that's fragile or biodegradable would be completely gone. Only the sturdy mechanical, non-degradable stuff would survive. Now look at magic items: enchantments don't fade over time, and they're not biodegradable, so if you dig up an ancient hobgoblin sword it'll work just fine. Basic Medieval/Renaissance weapons are the substrate for Age of Demons magical technology, with only the materials and enhancements changing over time, just like how the basic car body hasn't changed much in shape and layout since the Model T--we still have four wheels, an engine, a steering wheel, etc.--and it's the body shapes, the materials used in the body, the computerized systems, and other "under the hood" technologies that are really where the advancement lies.

Once you get past Medieval-/Renaissance-level tech, you're getting into guns (which they wouldn't develop and which wouldn't last), so finding a sword in the ancient crypts that looks only a bit different from a modern sword but glows like the sun under Detect-Magic-O-Vision makes sense. And since all of the enchantments in use are pretty obvious ("hit stuff better" or "fire everywhere!" or "make shooty thing shoot farther") I don't see why finding a flaming longsword in the ruins that works like a modern flaming longsword would be out of the ordinary.

Wait-why wouldn't they develop guns or their magical equivalents? And why wouldn't they enchant the guns, cars, aeroplanes, computers etc to make them stronger, faster, and otherwise better? And thus why would only the enchantments on the things humans can already make still work to preserve them? That just makes no sense. Also you've just hand-waved away more modern tech away as not lasting-but things with more advanced materials would probably last just as well if not better than the old-that's why they replaced them. Also all the "under the hood" stuff you describe are magic and well only really applies to magic. And lots of things HAVE changed massively over time. The model T was only where people start thinking about cars because it was the first mass produced. Before then the car changed allot. Which changed allot from the carriages from before that..also if its been THAT long then the stonework and buildings that adventurers explore would be just as gone as the fragile materials inside and only in those areas that either naturally or magically preserve things would you find anything beyond a few scattered enchanted items-which isn't very adventure hook friendly.

In my settings, no one gets Common as a default language; there's a Human language for humans if we're going with racial languages or regional languages for everyone if we're going with more logical languages, and everyone gets Common or the equivalent on their bonus language list. It's worked out well so far.
Sounds like a good fix.-it's easy enough. I just mark certain languages as "trade languages" that have spread far beyond their boarders. and make those languages available as bonus ones across large areas. So some nations may have two or even three "commons". But yours is nice and simple.

On a point I saw a while back about there not being many Non western Europe based settings and those that are seam to pick Egypt, China, Norse (which honestly I think of as western Europe but I get your point), or Japan. Brought up Maztica and Al Quadim as examples of what hasn't been seem much in the last few years. To make those work people need a pretty good knowledge of the culture or at least need to be able to pretend that they do. I did a bit of homebrew in the mesoamerican tradition and found it hard to stick very close to it. I was using mostly older sources back then but getting my players hooked on those kind of cultural references was hard. I'd researched enough to find things fascinating but found it hard to get people excited about it. I think that probably translated into poor sales of professionally done games which has led the rules and systems to support the kinds of things that would appeal to the New world homebrewer harder as well as just finding players is harder.

PairO'Dice Lost

2012-09-15, 07:58 PM

I'd give you the Iron age vs Information age values if the rest of the game system supported it. But even in 2e murder was bad. Ravenloft flat out said it. It was descibed as one of the reasons to force a change of alignment on a PC. Good basically became "when it was convenient for the DM". And That big evil monster justs wants to feed his little monsters and thinks that letting a soul get eatten up by the outer planes to be eventually merged into the planar fabric is just horrible and must be prevented. It's a totally ethnocentric idea of "good and evil" that doesn't stand up to itself. Replace the PC's with any given NPC (take a hobgoblin or ogre to make life interesting) and it falls apart. Your Iron Age/Info age analogy sounds good but I don't think it holds water.

Murder != killing. The stereotype might be referred to as "murderhobos" but actually, unless we're talking about killing monster children or something, there's no reason to label killing things as an Evil act when Good kills Evil all the damn time. The paladin's signature smiting ability is all about killing Evil faster and more effectively, and he gets it before he gets any healing or defensive abilities.

Murder, then, is put in a different context relative to normal violence. It's not the fact that you killed someone at all, that as you put it murder "is easy, simpler, shapes the world into a prefered mold, and/or gives them the ability to not thing about parts of themselves they don't like." Killing evil things is easy, simple, and shapes the world as desired (i.e. to have fewer evil things in it). So of course if you take WotC's misguided view that killing is evil in such a world and equate murder with killing the alignment system isn't going to make sense.

Still doesn't. Why? because those oh so great civ's have the same tech level as the humans. Sure not in the fluff but when it come down to what the players actually deal with. The rare exceptions are called artifacts and have all sorts of warnings plastered all over that part of the book. Those were ment to have been powerful even at the time of their creation.

The only distinction between artifacts and normal magic items is that magic items have a known means of creation and artifacts. So if you set aside things that current civilization can't make, then by definition anything left is stuff at the current civilization's tech levels. That's like the Enterprise running into a planet outside the Federation that's roughly the tech level of modern earth and having that planet dismiss the Federation as being at the same tech level. "Pfft, the oh-so-great Federation is just like us! They still wear clothes, sleep in beds, communicate with walkie-talkies, use antibiotics....yes, you have the rare exceptions like, oh, replicators, warp drives, that sort of thing, but those are different."

Yep that sounds like what adventureers should be doing. But it stretches my suspension of disbelief that most of these places hadn't allready been looted if they are that old.

Old caches of valuables tend to come with traps and monsters. The first adventuring party to make it through the Tomb of Horrors wasn't the first to explore it, it was the first to survive it.

Also It's not just the magic items that would be so valuable. It would be plans or forges, stoneworking tools, craft tools of all kinds, those would all be far more valuable than a magic item-because the idea can spread and be used in any and every blacksmith shop in the land in only a few years if it's a really good one (or library, or whereever it is used). And that is what would have driven the advancement of the stone age humans (or whatever the next civilization to come along) to a level not very far behind the one that collapsed-even faster if the fallen one was litterate. Comprehend writting isn't a high level spell. Even if technology isn't directly translatable it would still comunicate principles that the following civ would take advantage of.

Well, what do you think old tomes full of magic rituals are? They're the magical equivalent of blueprints and technical manuals.

Wait-why wouldn't they develop guns or their magical equivilants? And why wouldn't they enchant the guns, cars, aeroplanes, computers etc to make them stronger, faster, and otherwise better? And thus why would only the enchantments on the things humans can already make still work to preserve them? That just makes no sense.

I already said that if a civilization has a magical infrastructure, expecting them to take a break from working on tried-and-true ways to shoot magical fire, fly magically, store knowledge magically, and so forth to start developing primitive, unwieldy technological equivalents doesn't make any sense. They already have the magical equivalents in the form of wands, magic carpets, and so forth.

Also you've just handwaved away more modern tech away as not lasting-but things with more advanced materials would probably last just as well if not better than the old-that's why they replaced them.

If you throw a laptop, a few dozen books, and a Glock into an area full of bad weather, wild animals, deathtraps, and other hazards, they wouldn't last more than a few years at best. Throw a sword into the same conditions and it'll be battered but workable. There are exceptions of course--AK-47s can be buried in swamps and work fine--but in general more modern tech wouldn't survive as well as more primitive technology. And since civilizations are developing magic based on the civilizations that came before, if one empire finds a bunch of enchanted swords they're more likely to improve upon sword-based enchantments than to take a few-decade detour to develop guns.

Also all the "under the hood" stuff you describe are magic and well only really applies to magic. And lots of things HAVE changed massivly over time. The model T was only where people start thinking about cars because it was the first mass produced. Before then the car changed allot. Which changed allot from the carrigies from before that..also if its been THAT long then the stonework and buildings that adventurers explore would be just as gone as the fragile materials inside and only in those areas that either naturally or magically preserve things would you find anything beyond a few scattered enchanted items-which isn't very advernture hook friendly.

You were complaining that the adventurers are finding swords in the ruins, and they have swords themselves, so obviously they haven't advanced at all. Take a Model T and a 2012-model car and you'll see the same general similarity. It's the non-obvious stuff that really matters--better composites and an assembly line for the cars, better enchantments and craftsmanship for the swords--so saying "they both use swords so nothing changed" isn't accurate.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-09-15, 08:53 PM

awa

2012-09-15, 09:45 PM

sktarq

2012-09-15, 09:51 PM

Murder != killing. The stereotype might be referred to as "murderhobos" but actually, unless we're talking about killing monster children or something, there's no reason to label killing things as an Evil act when Good kills Evil all the damn time. The paladin's signature smiting ability is all about killing Evil faster and more effectively, and he gets it before he gets any healing or defensive abilities.

Murder, then, is put in a different context relative to normal violence. It's not the fact that you killed someone at all, that as you put it murder "is easy, simpler, shapes the world into a prefered mold, and/or gives them the ability to not thing about parts of themselves they don't like." Killing evil things is easy, simple, and shapes the world as desired (i.e. to have fewer evil things in it). So of course if you take WotC's misguided view that killing is evil in such a world and equate murder with killing the alignment system isn't going to make sense.
Totally disagree murder is simply killing that you don't support. Or killing that is done by good people in an easy cop out. If something is murder is based allot on perspective. Murder vs mercy killing-Perspective, Protecting Family farms-lands from raiders? vs Genocide of the goblin hunter gathers-Perspective, Lawful Execution of Traitors vs Oppressive state sanctioned butchery-Perspective. Perspective comes from where-alignment in D&D lexicon. So it seems to be a self licking ice cream cone. Define murder by evil and evil by murder (replace murder with whatever other evil it largely still works but murder is one of the clearest and easiest)

The only distinction between artifacts and normal magic items is that magic items have a known means of creation and artifacts.....They still wear clothes, sleep in beds, communicate with walkie-talkies, use antibiotics....yes, you have the rare exceptions like, oh, replicators, warp drives, that sort of thing, but those are different."
If you take that idea then fine, however it comes with a consequence. The artifacts loose their rarity. These are the kinds of things that the ancient cultures would be able to crank out with no more trouble than they did the lesser magic items. The artifact level items would be expensive but not really that big a deal. What I'm saying is that given how rare, unique, weird, requiring of deities that artifacts are as described in the books then they can not be logically taken as a technological baseline for the culture that produced them. Basically anywhere important to that culture would have one if not several artifacts. These would get recycled into any new civ rather quickly considering how useful they would be. Basically It would break the game. Now you could say that was true but most of the have broken down, need multiple parts to work etc. But it would be a major shift from standard D&D mythology and could be a major tent-pole of that setting (in fact would be pretty cool)

Old caches of valuables tend to come with traps and monsters. The first adventuring party to make it through the Tomb of Horrors wasn't the first to explore it, it was the first to survive it.
True....but given that humans have had it sitting around for 5K years plus and the PC's are 5th-10th level .... Wait the math really breaks down here. It's a common complaint for me that there are lots of old ruins that people haven't gone to yet even though they are not very hard and they have been around a long time. I'd give you a dungeon with a CR 18+ anything but those are the exception rather than the rule. If all the low level dungeons are still out there then a slightly cowardly group of 6th level characters could make a very nice (and not too challenging) livelihood by plumbing all of those they could find. And even if only 10% of the ruins or plumbed in the first 200 years enough information about building materials, crafting, etc would come out (especially if magic was available to answer questions like "how was this made" or " where did the sand that was used to make this glass come from") that the raiding civ would catch up to the previous civ enough that the fact they have not surpassed it in the time since that it strains credibility

Well, what do you think old tomes full of magic rituals are? They're the magical equivalent of blueprints and technical manuals.
For a single category of technology-spells. Now where is the rest....unless most of the crafters, artisans, etc of that lost nation were casters (possible but limited in actual use) then what about everybody else? It's not just the magic users who matter.

I already said that if a civilization has a magical infrastructure, expecting them to take a break from working on tried-and-true ways to shoot magical fire, fly magically, store knowledge magically, and so forth to start developing primitive, unwieldy technological equivalents doesn't make any sense. They already have the magical equivalents in the form of wands, magic carpets, and so forth.
Since making magical items takes XP and that is a limited resource I'd disagree with you. A wizard who churns out magic item after magic item may be a trope of the D&D world but it isn't one that could really last. He'd have to go earn the XP somewhere. Magic items are great when they are rare and as a wizard are not expected to build them for everyone else. I'd postulate that magic items would be used heavily in researching thing that lead to technological advancements, but making a magical version be the baseline drains your wizard quickly. Also the non magical version would could be built and used by anyone instead of your limited wizard population. One of the main reasons crossbows came to dominate European warfare even though they were more expensive than a longbow, caused less damage than a long bow (then-they got better late in the game), and had less range than a cross bow was that they were far easier to train and the power was in the weapon not the user thus the leader of a crossbow using nation has less to fear from the unruly peasants -they had not been off training with advanced weaponry for the last several years. The same principal would apply to magic as technology.

If you throw a laptop, a few dozen books, and a Glock into an area full of bad weather, wild animals, deathtraps, and other hazards, they wouldn't last more than a few years at best. Throw a sword into the same conditions and it'll be battered but workable. There are exceptions of course--AK-47s can be buried in swamps and work fine--but in general more modern tech wouldn't survive as well as more primitive technology. And since civilizations are developing magic based on the civilizations that came before, if one empire finds a bunch of enchanted swords they're more likely to improve upon sword-based enchantments than to take a few-decade detour to develop guns.
The sword would be useless too. Corrosion etc would eat at the blade just as fast if not faster than the Glock. There is a reason the blade needs to be oiled and cleaned just like a gun. Also the grip would be gone just as fast. Would it last longer yes-long enough to be counted in the type of civilization hopping we have been discussing-not much better chance than anything else. Heck to look at the Romans the best bet for what to find would be shoes. The conditions in which blades would survive are close enough to what would allow that book, or the glock to survive that while the blade would be more common it wouldn't account for the other things never showing up. If you are using magic to protect thing all things will get protected (not in equal numbers but most things will have a few fans)

You were complaining that the adventurers are finding swords in the ruins, and they have swords themselves, so obviously they haven't advanced at all. Take a Model T and a 2012-model car and you'll see the same general similarity. It's the non-obvious stuff that really matters--better composites and an assembly line for the cars, better enchantments and craftsmanship for the swords--so saying "they both use swords so nothing changed" isn't accurate.
Advancements in enchantments I'll buy but that the basic blade is still the most advanced way of non magically hurting things still don't fly to me. I'm not ignoring that craftsmanship would improve over time. Today's machetes have much better steel and composites than swords ever had when they were front line weapons of war.....but that would be ignoring guns as if machetes where what we sent our armies out to fight with. I see what you are saying but incremental change is just that. This is denying the capacity of the current civilization to make any kind of revolutionary change. I'm not comparing a 2012 car with a model T I'm comparing it with a Horse. The goal posts of the technology never seem to move from one civ to the next. They are all playing on the same field.

Lord Raziere

2012-09-15, 10:01 PM

also remember in a society with magic the very smartest people will be working magic rather then the smart inventors will be studying magic not technology dramatically slowing technological growth.
on top of that you can't just teach someone how to cast magic their are no shortcuts after someone invents a 9th level spell he can teach it to other people but if they want to use it they still need to be able to caste 9th level spells.

that's not even including the tendency for wizards to horde and jealously guard their magic.

in regards to ancient empires with little in the way of technological advancements. first off elves and dwarves are often depicted with better technology then humans elven chain mail and dwarven plate just to name some examples. but it also makes sense that they would advance in technology slower both species are extremely long lived this means that the leadership has lots of time to get set in their ways. for example elves have a cultural affinity for swords and bows its quite possible such a society would consider trying to replace them with guns as an insult to their culture preventing them. you might argue that any society that is unwilling to adapt or change would eventually die out, but remember those elven and dwarven empires are usually depicted as having greatly declined.

Um…..you are assuming that all geniuses would focus on magic or not be able to see the downsides of it, and wouldn't instead opt to develop what everyone can use instead of magic which wouldn't be much use to anybody.

and that is even assuming we are working with DnD magic! there could be magic that works completely different than you think!

and furthermore, the long-lived people can always go the shorter lived humans to show their inventions and get a fresh viewpoint, thus making the humans develop the technology while the older ones suddenly have to adapt to keep up with the short lived ones….

awa

2012-09-15, 10:18 PM

an elf could go to a human and ask for a fresh view point but that would be admitting his view point is wrong. that's incredibly difficult for humans how hard do you think it would be for a species known for their arrogance to seek advice from something it considers a crude brute no older than a child.

while its possible that smart people would chose not to study magic they would have a hard time acquiring funding. scientist comes to king i want money to study farming on the off chance i can maybe possible come up with an incrementally better method of crop rotation.

then caster pops in and says pay me and ill give you a magic item of once a week plant growth it will be exponentially more effective and is definitely going to work and can be implemented with in a week.

which one do you think is going to get the money. their will be little incentive to fund the study of physical science or even the training of scientist when wizards are so much better.

sktarq

2012-09-15, 10:58 PM

which one do you think is going to get the money. their will be little incentive to fund the study of physical science or even the training of scientist when wizards are so much better.
Actually looking at the scenario you present-the scientist. Why? Because the science can be distributed and used without needing the wizard ever again, especially if his kingdom is big enough to need two of the item. Or he could chain the wizard up until he makes lots of item but that might dissuade other wizards asking for funding. Also who is to say that wizard won't soon be setting up just outside your boarders selling food by the ship load? Sounds great until he just put most of your peasants out of a job selling their excess - and you as king- now need to deal with their problems and unrest. Even the possibility of these things would dissuade many kings.
Research a spell that's 5th level or above that does amazing things. Great. But only a very tiny few of the most advanced arcane citizens can use it. One or more of them then needs to sacrifice life force-part of their very being and part of what makes them so powerful in order to caster it permanently or put it in a magic item. The number of citizens who can use that same ability granted by scientific means is vastly larger and as king you are not in hock to the very wizard who you paid. Magic is amazing at point source change - it can powerfully change individual situations very easily but science can change whole societies on a distributed way. Now the key with allot of the magic effecting society is to figure out how to use a point source change to make a knock on effect. But it also means that you build a society focused on various critical points-which is not how every king would want it.
It is careful balance to hit and lots of DM and homebrew writers make assumtions that leave plot holes with this. Generally players walk right around them-even if they see them just to get along playing the game.

Lord Raziere

2012-09-15, 10:58 PM

not all elves are monoculture stereotypes….

and if the King does accept the Wizards proposal over the Scientists- a greater abundance of crops is exactly what leads to more population and eventually more people to become scientists and study science. more science eventually leads to an industrial society. and who said scientists were not open to magic? science and magic aren't exclusive things, since science is a method, and magic a tool.
all scientists have to do is convince wizards to adopt their methods, and lo, the wizards and scientists are one. science could probably even improve the effectiveness of magic through experimentation. and once the scientists prove that they can make magic itself more effective, they can then prove that they can make everything else more effective without it through experimentation.

assuming that the culture even likes wizards. not everyone is accepting of change and new ideas, and wizards change things far faster than scientists. scientists sound sane by comparison, that and wizards are easily more dangerous. a scientist is merely studying your crops, but can you trust a wizard not use his magic for his own advantage and say make all who eat said crops, loyal to the wizard and not to the king?
and soon, the wizard is the new king once he has made all the crops in the kingdom brainwash people into being his followers.

PairO'Dice Lost

2012-09-15, 11:08 PM

Totally disagree murder is simply killing that you don't support. Or killing that is done by good people in an easy cop out. If something is murder is based allot on perspective. Murder vs mercy killing-Perspective, Protecting Family farms-lands from raiders? vs Genocide of the goblin hunter gathers-Perspective, Lawful Execution of Traitors vs Oppressive state sanctioned butchery-Perspective. Perspective comes from where-alignment in D&D lexicon. So it seems to be a self licking ice cream cone. Define murder by evil and evil by murder (replace murder with whatever other evil it largely still works but murder is one of the clearest and easiest)

Murder, by definition (https://www.google.com/search?q=murder+definition), is unlawful, premeditated killing. Self-defense, manslaughter, homicide, and executions aren't murder. Adventurers killing goblin raiders isn't murder, nor is goblin raiders killing adventurers. Executions aren't murder regardless of whether the state is a benevolent government executing criminals or a tyrannical government executing innocents. Private citizens killing other citizens is, however, murder.

If you take that idea then fine, however it comes with a consequence. The artifacts loose their rarity.

They don't lose their rarity any more than any other items lose their rarity. Artifacts can be just as rare, dangerous, hard to make, etc. as top-tier "modern" magic items, or they can be just as common, safe, and trivial as bottom-tier modern items. Heck, there are even two tiers of artifact, lesser and greater. They're just not things that current civilizations can make. There are mostly unique and powerful artifacts in the book, but really a hammer of thunderbolts isn't all that much different from an enchanted warhammer and a staff of power is quite similar to a staff of the magi.

As I said before, the artifacts are just magic items something that can't be made by current civilizations, that's all they are, and you can't try to prove there hasn't been any progress by claiming that all the ancient items you dig up are the same as the modern ones and because you're just ignoring the ones that aren't the same.

If all the low level dungeons are still out there then a slightly cowardly group of 6th level characters could make a very nice (and not too challenging) livelihood by plumbing all of those they could find. And even if only 10% of the ruins or plumbed in the first 200 years enough information about building materials, crafting, etc would come out (especially if magic was available to answer questions like "how was this made" or " where did the sand that was used to make this glass come from") that the raiding civ would catch up to the previous civ enough that the fact they have not surpassed it in the time since that it strains credibility

And how do you know that's not happening? Current civilizations have to pick up knowledge of +1 adamantine swords and 3rd-level spells from somewhere, after all.

For a single category of technology-spells. Now where is the rest....unless most of the crafters, artisans, etc of that lost nation were casters (possible but limited in actual use) then what about everybody else? It's not just the magic users who matter.

Honestly, it is just the magic users who matter as far as technology is concerned. Every field of engineering is just a field of applied magic. Chemistry and chemical engineering? They're alchemy in D&D, which require being a magic user to work with. Mechanical engineering? All of the clockwork creature and devices in D&D require magic to be constructed. Electrical and computer engineering? Magic is the only equivalent to digital devices and electronics. Nonmagical engineering will get you the substrates to be enchanted, but if you already have magic (and they do) there's no sense in investing in nonmagical engineering for anything very advanced.

Since making magical items takes XP and that is a limited resource I'd disagree with you. A wizard who churns out magic item after magic item may be a trope of the D&D world but it isn't one that could really last. He'd have to go earn the XP somewhere. Magic items are great when they are rare and as a wizard are not expected to build them for everyone else. I'd postulate that magic items would be used heavily in researching thing that lead to technological advancements, but making a magical version be the baseline drains your wizard quickly.

Crafters earn XP the same way anyone else does. However your mid-level NPCs got to that point--adventuring, RPing XP, DM fiat--those crafters got there the same way and can continue earning XP the same way. There are many magic users in the world of many different classes, so individual crafters don't have to work at a breakneck pace to keep up with demand. Keep in mind also that casters using their own spells is as good as technology, and those don't have a cost or limit; a druid who goes around casting plant growth in his spare time is as good as (or better than) a magic item that you give to a farmer to cast on his fields, for instance, since you don't need to make multiple items or pass one item around when the druid can do it himself.

Also the non magical version would could be built and used by anyone instead of your limited wizard population. One of the main reasons crossbows came to dominate European warfare even though they were more expensive than a longbow, caused less damage than a long bow (then-they got better late in the game), and had less range than a cross bow was that they were far easier to train and the power was in the weapon not the user thus the leader of a crossbow using nation has less to fear from the unruly peasants -they had not been off training with advanced weaponry for the last several years. The same principal would apply to magic as technology.

On the contrary, a nation using crossbows has more to fear. If your country relies on longbows and you don't want a revolt, restrict who can train with it and crack down on people practicing with them. If your country relies on crossbows, the peasantry can pick up a bunch of crossbows and revolt at the drop of a hat. Which would you rather have in circulation, a wand of scorching ray that only spellcasters and specially-trained people can use, or a machine gun that anyone can use?

The sword would be useless too. Corrosion etc would eat at the blade just as fast if not faster than the Glock. There is a reason the blade needs to be oiled and cleaned just like a gun. Also the grip would be gone just as fast. Would it last longer yes-long enough to be counted in the type of civilization hopping we have been discussing-not much better chance than anything else. Heck to look at the Romans the best bet for what to find would be shoes. The conditions in which blades would survive are close enough to what would allow that book, or the glock to survive that while the blade would be more common it wouldn't account for the other things never showing up. If you are using magic to protect thing all things will get protected (not in equal numbers but most things will have a few fans)

Again, we're not talking someone digging up a weapons and immediately trying to use it, we're talking someone digging up ancient weapons and reverse-engineering them. Pull out a Renaissance-era sword and you'll find a sword that's rusted and rotted away, but it's obvious what it does (hold this, swing that, stab thingy) and a quick mending or make whole will fix the damage. Pull out a Renaissance-era gun and you have
a big metal tube with no obvious use that's rusted and rotted away, and people are going to guess that it was a magical item of some sort before they guess you need to put a certain kind of chemical in with a certain kind of metal projectile and light a certain hole to activate it.

Even if they're all warded away and safe, you have a bootstrapping problem. If Joe Blacksmith finds a magic sword, he has the technology to make more swords. If Joe Blacksmith finds a magic Glock, he needs to make the technology needed to make the technology needed to make the technology to make more Glocks.

Advancements in enchantments I'll buy but that the basic blade is still the most advanced way of non magically hurting things still don't fly to me. I'm not ignoring that craftsmanship would improve over time. Today's machetes have much better steel and composites than swords ever had when they were front line weapons of war.....but that would be ignoring guns as if machetes where what we sent our armies out to fight with. I see what you are saying but incremental change is just that. This is denying the capacity of the current civilization to make any kind of revolutionary change. I'm not comparing a 2012 car with a model T I'm comparing it with a Horse. The goal posts of the technology never seem to move from one civ to the next. They are all playing on the same field.

Again, you'll never have a technological revolution if no one's working with technology. The car went from a horse-drawn carriage to a horseless carriage via steam power, then internal combustion, and now we're working on fuel cells and other energy sources. Airplanes have been refined with better power sources, better control surfaces, and more, and we've developed helicopters, drones, VTOL, and other variations on the theme. To get there, though, someone had to be trying to figure out how to make a horseless carriage go or figure out how to make things fly.

If a wizard wants to make a cart go on its own or make something fly, he has a few dozen ways to accomplish it (enchant an item, animate a mundane item, construct a rolling/flying golem, cast a spell on it, etc.) There's no process of discovery or refinement, just 0 to flying in 6 seconds. There's no technological base to build on to get from horse to airplane, and there's no reason to create one when you have magic.

sktarq

2012-09-16, 01:05 AM

Murder, by definition (https://www.google.com/search?q=murder+definition), is unlawful, premeditated killing. Self-defense, manslaughter, homicide, and executions aren't murder. Adventurers killing goblin raiders isn't murder, nor is goblin raiders killing adventurers. Executions aren't murder regardless of whether the state is a benevolent government executing criminals or a tyrannical government executing innocents. Private citizens killing other citizens is, however, murder.
And I'd say that to the family of the goblins who died that bunch of humans just came in and murdered two dozen of their fellows who were trying to defend their homeland. And I'd say homicide is murder. Sorta goes with the territory. Heck large numbers of people charged with one of the above crimes could just as easily be charged with another and often are in plea deals. Those don't change what happened. And by your definition then genocide is no longer murder. It is no longer murder on a mass scale. So Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao, etc are not murderers? Comes as news to me but they were not private citizens they were the leaders of their nations. So no I think using that definition of murder in this case is inappropriate. Killing is killing. Murder is killing a society disagrees with. And only they and those who choose to respect their choice will call it such.
INSOMNIA EDIT: And even if I did accept your application of this definition It runs into another problem. Unlawful killing...so depending on the local laws different things are murder depending on where one is....or what tribe you belong to if you go by the "take your legal system with you" train of thought. Laws are a social construct....they are the social contract of a group laid out a regularized form. Now that works fine to aid in the smooth running of a society which is how they worked in RL; what it is very bad at is being the base of a system by which creatures are sent to various places in the afterlife. If various groups get to define murder themselves then defining "evil" by murder is going to be different by each group which means their souls may go to different places not depending on their actions but depending on the social contract (an place within that society which effects their standing under said laws) they were born into. That is not how I read any of the source material published by either TSR or WotC; I think I'm in the majority on that. The D&D great wheel system relies on a universal system of good and evil that applies equally to all races, societies, ages, slaves, or kings (who by your definition in an absolute monarchy would be incapable of murder). Also any killing that would be done on those who do not share the same code of laws/social contract would be unlawful in the eyes of the the group killed-some societies would share enough of their social contracts in common or have rules dealing with such things to recognize declarations of war etc but otherwise It is still unlawful and thus still murder. So thus two groups looking at the same event and deciding if it is murder depending on perspective.

They don't lose their rarity any more than any other items lose their rarity. Artifacts can be just as rare, dangerous, hard to make, etc. as top-tier "modern" magic items, or they can be just as common, safe, and trivial as bottom-tier modern items. Heck, there are even two tiers of artifact, lesser and greater. They're just not things that current civilizations can make. There are mostly unique and powerful artifacts in the book, but really a hammer of thunderbolts isn't all that much different from an enchanted warhammer and a staff of power is quite similar to a staff of the magi.
I see a total disconnect between the artifacts as you describe them and as they are written. In both 3.5e and 2e D&D. they are not JUST things that the current civilizations can not make. That is one of their traits to be sure by not the be all end end all of what makes an artifact. They have a significant number of special rules, unique destruction methods off the top of my head. And it does effect their rarity because if the old civ could build them as relatively easily as they could build any other magic item (on a similar sliding scale of expense) then why didn't they when they would be so useful? There are a ton of ways that level of magic would be all over. It seems inappropriate so use such special items as a baseline for what the previous civ could do on a regular basis. And that's my issue artifact (particularly greater ones) could never have been commonplace. The only time I've seen that addressed is in forgotten realms when the rules of magic changed with the Karsus. Artifacts exist in D&D largely to act as McGuffins and story - if applied to the game in any more common way the whole concept of "game balance" goes out the window.

As I said before, the artifacts are just magic items something that can't be made by current civilizations, that's all they are, and you can't try to prove there hasn't been any progress by claiming that all the ancient items you dig up are the same as the modern ones and because you're just ignoring the ones that aren't the same.
See above.

And how do you know that's not happening? Current civilizations have to pick up knowledge of +1 adamantine swords and 3rd-level spells from somewhere, after all.
Yes. and if it has been happening for any length of time then there would be no more low level ruins to search after more than a few hundred years (being somewhat generous). Which means that low level adventurers need to find a different source of plot material. Its not that those things could not happen but it seems very inconsistent with the other material presented as normal in the majority of D&D.

Honestly, it is just the magic users who matter as far as technology is concerned. Every field of engineering is just a field of applied magic. Chemistry and chemical engineering? They're alchemy in D&D, which require being a magic user to work with. Mechanical engineering? All of the clockwork creature and devices in D&D require magic to be constructed. Electrical and computer engineering? Magic is the only equivalent to digital devices and electronics. Nonmagical engineering will get you the substrates to be enchanted, but if you already have magic (and they do) there's no sense in investing in nonmagical engineering for anything very advanced. Magic as technology entirely now. hmmm... Clockwork creatures-we still have not made those with 21st Century science so I'm fine in calling that magic. And frankly the same goes the above. The technology is there. Magic can be a tool for it but it is no more necessary than a physics degree is for being a blacksmith. So there is a ton of reasons to study non magical science and technology. also see below

Crafters earn XP the same way anyone else does. However your mid-level NPCs got to that point--adventuring, RPing XP, DM fiat--those crafters got there the same way and can continue earning XP the same way. There are many magic users in the world of many different classes, so individual crafters don't have to work at a breakneck pace to keep up with demand. Keep in mind also that casters using their own spells is as good as technology, and those don't have a cost or limit; a druid who goes around casting plant growth in his spare time is as good as (or better than) a magic item that you give to a farmer to cast on his fields, for instance, since you don't need to make multiple items or pass one item around when the druid can do it himself.
And the math doesn't come close to covering what you are asking them to do. Creating enough magic items and/or advancing in level enough to cast many of the more socially useful spells (as in useful to society not charm) eats a huge amount of XP. Society has limited amount of XP available at a time-because people are born, grow and die. And only a small part of that will directed at either magic item creation or supporting the levels of casters. Casters are not common enough (at least in DM Guide, and the Cityscape splat-book on character levels found in population centres after you account for all the experts, rogues, aristocrats, fighters, and other non casters) to fill the role in society you are asking them to. If all your upper level characters in a city were casters with no experts, cleric, fighters etc and they pushed themselves and had little or no lives of their own I could just barely see it working. Also as you advance in level casters would be actually slightly lower in XP totals than their peers as some has gone to build items-so that seems even more skewed (A fighter has nothing else to do with XP than sit on it). Three low level experts socially acting as druids studying the harvest generation on generation will provide more help over the long term than a caster druid in terms of plant growth over the same time. Is it three to one yes, but those three are about the same cost to hire. No spell-casting fees and those three can help others who can then help others in turn through techniques and technology. That caters depending on level could cast plant growth how often in his "spare time"? He/She/It has a life to lead -other things to do XP to earn-so say three or four days a week-anything more and he is no longer a Druid he is the local plant growth machine that can also walk-basically would have to life for the community instead of in it. So how many spells you could expect the local wizard to cast for the town on a regular basis? Not that many really-besides if they did do that very often the the prices charged in the DM manual makes NO sense at all. If they are giving them out free often enough to be counted on to replace technological advancement.
INSOMNIAC EDIT: Also making magic items is a massive drain on time-particularly the permanent ones like say flying carpets. Its a large process and during the construction time one can't be off earning that additional XP (which unless the DM is going to be VERY generous with RP XP then is dangerous and the NPC may well die-I basically say what works for the PC works for the NPCs just offstage) It just doesn't turn around very well. That wizard must be pretty high level to be making that item -that implies he/she/it has more important things to do with his time at least on a regular basis. So they can't punch out even enough flying carpets to satisfy a couple dozen people which would leave the rest of the city including those rich nobles who didn't have the connects to get a carpet, or even a family member who is jealous of his brother who did looking for a way to fly that doesn't need the one wizard in the city powerful enough to do it that way.

On the contrary, a nation using crossbows has more to fear. If your country relies on longbows and you don't want a revolt, restrict who can train with it and crack down on people practicing with them. If your country relies on crossbows, the peasantry can pick up a bunch of crossbows and revolt at the drop of a hat. Which would you rather have in circulation, a wand of scorching ray that only spellcasters and specially-trained people can use, or a machine gun that anyone can use?
No they don't and more importantly DIDN'T I wasn't making that up as a hypothetical. It is easier to control the crossbows and the few people who can make them than the larger number of people who could use a longbow. And if the crossbowmen become unhappy it is easier to take them away and hand them to somebody new than take away someone's longbow and give it to someone else (the power being in the user not the tool in a longbow). Also you can keep many extra crossbows for when you really need them and only have a few out "in circulation" at a time. Then when war breaks out hand them to the most loyal people who can be picked at that time. The only people who need to keep happy with crossbows are the few who can make them, the few who hold your supply and just enough people to use them at the time you want to. Its not JUST about being able to put down the revolt if it happens but to have a large dangerous army when you want it (something the longbows were better at) and being able to prevent that group from being able to overthrow, threaten, blackmail, or otherwise impinge on the freedom of the leaders during peacetime (which the cross bow was better at).
And as for your wand of scorching ray vs machine gun question. I'd want exactly two machine guns. One to give to a friend and one friend with another to point at the first if I ever want to take his machine gun away. Visa versa works too there. If anyone can use it I only need two friends who can be ANYONE I want-and I can change who-and they know that.

Again, we're not talking someone digging up a weapons and immediately trying to use it, we're talking someone digging up ancient weapons and reverse-engineering them. Pull out a Renaissance-era sword and you'll find a sword that's rusted and rotted away, but it's obvious what it does (hold this, swing that, stab thingy) and a quick mending or make whole will fix the damage. Pull out a Renaissance-era gun and you have
a big metal tube with no obvious use that's rusted and rotted away, and people are going to guess that it was a magical item of some sort before they guess you need to put a certain kind of chemical in with a certain kind of metal projectile and light a certain hole to activate it.

Even if they're all warded away and safe, you have a bootstrapping problem. If Joe Blacksmith finds a magic sword, he has the technology to make more swords. If Joe Blacksmith finds a magic Glock, he needs to make the technology needed to make the technology needed to make the technology to make more Glocks.
Actually you seem to be making my point from earlier that the nifty stuff that ends up in adventures bag's of holding is less useful than the forges and tools they so often leave behind. Grab those and you get the tech to make the tech and so on-rather quickly works too if you have access to basic spells and a modicum of communication-oh and a supply of ready, willing, brave and slightly foolhardy types to set off the traps for you. And looking at what is found in the treasure tables and even your earlier post about protected magic items the ready to wipe off and run into battle with type stuff does seem well "cannon". And If you've got a magic sword that's protected why not a magic gun? And as for figuring out how to use that metal tube putting the fire in one end and all - adventurers are already casting identify, commune, and other divination spells left right and centre in order to get the command words and ID for the magical items they found-why would the gun be any different? It would also put the idea in their head and start experimentation - which since they have a working model as a guide then it shouldn't take too long.

Again, you'll never have a technological revolution if no one's working with technology. The car went from a horse-drawn carriage to a horseless carriage via steam power, then internal combustion, and now we're working on fuel cells and other energy sources. Airplanes have been refined with better power sources, better control surfaces, and more, and we've developed helicopters, drones, VTOL, and other variations on the theme. To get there, though, someone had to be trying to figure out how to make a horseless carriage go or figure out how to make things fly.

If a wizard wants to make a cart go on its own or make something fly, he has a few dozen ways to accomplish it (enchant an item, animate a mundane item, construct a rolling/flying golem, cast a spell on it, etc.) There's no process of discovery or refinement, just 0 to flying in 6 seconds. There's no technological base to build on to get from horse to airplane, and there's no reason to create one when you have magic.
You won't have technological revolution if nobody is working on technology. True. But that works on the assumption that nobody is. Which doesn't fly with me. Nor does it seem to account for the experts and non spell-casters with access to Knowledge (Engineering) or (Nature) let alone the social sciences-or the fact that only in D&D do you need magical ability to copy the alchemical things people do in the RW and did centuries ago (making drugs, paint, dyes and various other real world applications that would get otherwise put under Alchemy)-and If you want to call it craft specialties I suppose that works but those would also have a Knowledge base that would just as appropriate to grow technology from. And if a wizard want to make something fly yes he can get there in several ways. However, there are plenty of reasons not to use magic. The single largest is that magic is very expensive to buy and someone with technological skill will look to undercut the cost. I can buy wizardry acting as a brain drain to normal technological advancement but for every one that does you have a wizard who uses magic to learn how to make and sell airplanes or other technological gizmo much faster because of his magic and he can sell that tech cheaper than the wizard down the road can do with his spells-esp after you take getting the wizard to where you want the gizmo, rare components in magic item manufacture, repeatable treatment etc. The wizard who invented the technological version can even delegate the construction once he or she discovers it and use the proceeds to fund more research or an endless stream of hookers and "invigorate" potions. The spellcasting only wizard has to trudge off and actually cast the spell every time that king fellow wants it cast disrupting his day, he can only be in one place at a time (a few short term exceptions), his spell choice for the day is being set by someone else and if he wants to avoid that he has to give up some of his very self to pay the XP cost of the item - double bad if he isn't high enough to make a permanent item. Also the tech researching wizard can pass this new family business down to his children even if they are not casters. Thus it would make more sense for a wizard will his ability to analyze, support, fabricate, and conjure to use his skills to research new non arcane tech than almost anything else-at least from a financial point of view.-Like an Edison coming up with invention after invention as his employees toil away one his old designs that rake in gold from far away lands except where his competitors can be found like that damnable sorcerer Tesla!

FINAL INSOMNIA EDIT: Been looking over the thread. I hope the rest of you all are enjoying the show and sorry if Rolling Dante and I have highjacked the thread.

Durazno

2012-09-16, 01:09 AM

When there are more planes that I have fingers - this is related to the lack of sense of scale. (Pocket dimensions are excused, because they are, by definition, small.) Because often it raises questions like "why can't these be different places in the same world?" Extra minus points if the setting has realistic cosmology (ie. planets), but adds loads of planes on top of that. Congratulations, you just ignored loads of poorly-explored vastness to add more of it! Extra extra minus points if said planes are infinite, or at least as large as the universe. Gee, this tiny dot of land you detailed feels really important amidst these incredibly huge weird places.

I have to disagree with this. Whether or not you detail it, there's likely a whole universe around whatever setting you make anyway. We live here on Earth, surrounded by billions and billions of lightyears of strange and wonderful things that none of us will ever experience in our lifetimes. Does that make our adventures boring or pointless?

If your adventurers save a magical kingdom with 200 residents, and this kingdom is on one of a thousand inhabited planets in a galactic empire in one of the hundred known parallel dimensions (and that's not even getting into their afterlives, elemental planes, pocket dimensions, etc.), they still saved 200 people, and that's still important.

Amechra

2012-09-16, 01:59 AM

One thing to interject into the argument.

First, the Confederate States of America basically were stalled in their development of industry.

Why? Because they had slaves. Which were, to them, good enough to do everything.

Because humans are lazy; why bust our asses designing something that may or may not work when you can cast a spell that costs some of your capacity for growth (that's what XP is, not life force), which you probably won't even notice is gone.

Because you can go get more.

On a different note...

Once a wizard is a high enough level, assuming he knows the right spells, he can make a virtually unlimited number of clones, that can each cast spells.

So he clones himself, uses any of the many spells that alter minds to make them do what he tells them to, and uses to them to solve everyone's problems.

That, in my mind, is one of the problems with magic as set down by D&D.

Doorhandle

2012-09-16, 02:29 AM

I have to disagree with this. Whether or not you detail it, there's likely a whole universe around whatever setting you make anyway. We live here on Earth, surrounded by billions and billions of lightyears of strange and wonderful things that none of us will ever experience in our lifetimes. Does that make our adventures boring or pointless?

If your adventurers save a magical kingdom with 200 residents, and this kingdom is on one of a thousand inhabited planets in a galactic empire in one of the hundred known parallel dimensions (and that's not even getting into their afterlives, elemental planes, pocket dimensions, etc.), they still saved 200 people, and that's still important.

Also, when referring to the planes, it's very possible they are about as empty as our own universe.
For example, the part of the plane of fire connected to your setting is an earth-sized ball of lava, surround in a thick atmosphere of fire, and with the exception of the rough equivalents of planets/suns in the system, there is nothing except an incredibly empty sea of raw heat for lightyears around.

3) "Fantasy kitchen sink" - related to the above, when every nook and corner is filled to brim with bizarre creatures from every conceivable mythology. It's more than a bit redundant to have goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears, trolls, oni etc. as separate species when you could have one "petty evil race living in the dark" that could explain all of these peoples.

4) Peoples as species - There are some fringe cases where it makes sense for all members of a single species to also be of one culture. Beyond that, there is no reason to have "woodloving hippies" be elves or "hard-working mountainfolk" be dwarves, if you can as easily have both peoples be different varieties of humans. On the flipside, each species should have multiple differing cultures.

They start to blurr together after a while anyway.

I think these COULD work together you you took both of them at face value though: have so many species that there is simply barley enough space on the map to fit them all: and so each species is confined to a small civilization on one area on the map, that slightly overlaps with the other groups.

Man on Fire

2012-09-16, 04:48 PM

2. On a related note: all races and cultures worshiping the same pantheon. Hopefully not treading too hard on the forum rules here, but even Abrahamic religions, which ostensibly have the same god, are quite at odds with one another and have hundreds of denominations. Fantasy folk all worshiping the same gods in the same way puts a large strain on my suspension of disbelief.

3. ^ Although it does make sense if gods are concrete, confirmable entities. But I don't care for this because it saps all the mystery out of the world. If you know with 100% certainty that gods are watching and evaluating you, and will cast you into the Abyss for eternity if you do bad things, no one except the extremely mentally ill would do anything worse than petty theft.

I think interesting way around this would make religion colvoluded. There is one pantheon, but is mysterious, keeps it for themselves and is worshipped by different cultures, races and sects who calls them many names and follow different rules. Every vilage and city has it's own myth about particular diety and every diety is known as several incarnations, each with it's own attributes and characteristis, who sometimes overlap with other diety's domain. Fun starts when players run into a place where people belive two incarnations of the same god to have duked it out. This way you don't know which form of the god is real one and which religion tells the true codex gods wants you to follow.

4. People worshiping evil gods for the sake of evil. Real people might worship an evil god for power or desperation, but no one does it "for the evulz". I sort of feel like this is related to the inherent silliness of the alignment system (see #10). It smacks of laziness and results in over-the-top, Card-Carrying Villains.

This one may have some explanation if they belive evil god to be actually good and wanting them to commit evil acts. In Black Company there is a good example of what I mean:

In Books of South there is evil cult of assassins who are worshipping Godess of Death and are working on starting Year of Skulls - time so horrible, where war and death rampage all around, that it will awaken their godess. They however belive, that once the godess will awaken, she will destroy the world and recreate it as paradise without evil, where all souls will be washed from their sins.

I could see evil *******s who join cult like this to just be evil, because they belive they'll walk scott-free in the end anyway.

6. Resurrection magic. It cheapens death and 99% of the time confirms the existence of the afterlife (see #3).

This, ressurection, atonment and all other ways to make it too easy for players are ruining the game very hard.

7. Races being more or less the same as the ones from D&D, which are themselves watered-down versions of Tolkien's races. Don't get me wrong, I love Tolkien, but it seems like 50% of all fantasy settings are "knock-off Gucci purse" versions of Middle Earth. :smallfrown: Conversely, I love it when races get returned to their original roots (fairies being inhuman sociopaths, hobgoblins being Dobby, orcs not existing because Tolkien made them up, etc.).

8. All members of a single race having the same culture. Looking at real-life humans, the idea of this is pretty crazy. Races should ideally have several different religions, lifestyles, beliefs, worldviews, etc. etc.

Except if that race is ecountered only in one location. If Goblins live on single island it's okay for them to have one culture. If Goblins live on one archipelage, they should have similiar cultures, but each island should have their differences. If they live on continent too, continental goblins and island goblins should have vastly different cultures.

9. Always Chaotic Evil races and species. A) It's not at all realistic, B) It's pretty xenophobic, and a little too similar to the real-world nastiness spewed by hate groups and such.

10. The alignment system in general. It makes sense if you have concrete religion like in #3, and I suppose I can see its merit as a roleplaying device, if it helps you in that regard. But other than that it's completely arbitrary and I wish more people phased it out of their settings.

Both very much.

12. Obvious alignment. If the abyss, hell etc are real and the place where people go when they die, and people through magic or what not KNOW this then why would anyone risk it? It directly follows that evil for evil makes even less sense in a world where this is true. Evil has to attract it followers who presumably make most of their choices at least somewhat rationally. I mean people don't wake up and choose to BE EVIL anywhere but in comics and BADLY written RPG's as far as I can see.

Reminds me of one of Xykon's best speeches, about being undead.

15. Magical solutions that avalible but not used. Control weather inst that high level a spell to cast. You agriculture priest can cast Augry? please tell me why there isn't a damn near perfect two week forecast posted on the front of the temple. Can cast wall of ice? A cold drink business in the making! Why have none of the mages in the mage guild thought of this and are instead waiting for people to pay them just as much reading books all day? And the big kicker magic beyond the grave. Speak with dead? makes a murder mystery rather boring. and assasinating a king (or anyone who has much chance of affording/ being in with the church enough) is almost impossible due to resurrection and the related spells. Cuts down the kind of stuff the members of court can expect to get away with agaisnt each other.

I coudl see it pulled out if there are some rules of magic that forces you to be more responsible. Like, if controlling weather would cause the opposite efect to happen somewhere else, wizards would be taught to refrain from using that, unless its really necessary.

Settings that would not be sustainable without the players using their genre knowledge to mention the obvious solutions that nobdy had ever been thinking of.

Actually, obvious solutions nobody had ever tought of are pretty common. This joke describes it well:

After Columbus discovered America, many people were saying things like "It's nothing special, would I have a ship, I would do that too." One day Columbus told to group of people he heard talking like this "You want to know why I'm so special? Try to make this egg stand on it's narrow tip." Each one them tried, but not a single one could make it stand. When the last one has give up, Columbus took the egg, smashed it's narrow tip and made it stand.
"That way anybody could do it!" Yelled one of the critics.
To which Columbus said "But I did it first!'

Then there is Alexander The Great and Gordian Knot - obvious solution but only he had thought of it. Sometimes you need to think outside the box to see seemingly obvious solution.

When I see a jesters cap, that sourcebook is done for me. Oh how much I hate those!

You haven't read 4chan's Black Jester story, did you?

Another one of my world-building turn-offs - when people try to cram too many things into them. If your game is about chasing ghosts, what the hell is powerful mega-corporation with advanced cybernetic technology bent on world domination doing there? It's the problem I generally have with World of Darkness - why do their world need all of that supernatural BS, including several cosmologies, 3 ancient conspiracies, ****load of alternate dimensions with magical mumbu jumbo, ghosts, undeads, vampires etc. It's one thing when all these things seemingly fit or are coming from one source, but in WoD we have several games going around separately in one world and it just doesn't make sense. I had this problem once, trying to make setting emulating many anime with unpleasant twists all around, until I realized that I actually created several separated games in one world and they would work much better had I just divided them into multiple separeted settings.

Durazno

2012-09-16, 04:50 PM

Oh, man, now I want to visit the Jupiter of the Elemental Plane of Water.

Yeah, the environment would probably kill an unprotected human instantly, but I'll wear an old-timey diving suit. I'm sure it'll be fine.

sktarq

2012-09-16, 05:04 PM

I coudl see it pulled out if there are some rules of magic that forces you to be more responsible... unless its really necessary. That would be fine and sounds like it would make both a nifty home-rule and a great source of plot hooks.

Another one of my world-building turn-offs - when people try to cram too many things into them. .. WoD ... multiple separeted settings.
As someone who loves the WoD setting I totally see where you coming from. Its sort of the kitchen sink issue put up by the OP but far far worse. The beauty of the system is that any two will mostly work side by side for a crossover-three becomes tricky and four (+) generally goes boom. It can work if one is fully developed and the others exist only enough to drive the story in the main rule set. Its basically something to allow any story to be told but trying to tell every story at once garbles them all. There is a reason thee are separate WoD games and that none need anything but the Blue Book (your mortal's guide). Do you think that is a world building issue or a storyteller reaching beyond what they can handle issue?

Xuc Xac

2012-09-17, 07:18 AM

Once you get past Medieval-/Renaissance-level tech, you're getting into guns (which they wouldn't develop and which wouldn't last), so finding a sword in the ancient crypts that looks only a bit different from a modern sword but glows like the sun under Detect-Magic-O-Vision makes sense. And since all of the enchantments in use are pretty obvious ("hit stuff better" or "fire everywhere!" or "make shooty thing shoot farther") I don't see why finding a flaming longsword in the ruins that works like a modern flaming longsword would be out of the ordinary.

This is one of my big pet peeves. Handguns predate two-handed swords and full plate armor. Any excuse not to develop guns applies equally well to any other technology. You can't say "they wouldn't develop guns because magic" when magic hasn't stopped them from developing anything else. If the wand of magic missiles hasn't killed the bow, why would it kill the gun? Why are they using armor when there are first level spells that can replace armor?

I already said that if a civilization has a magical infrastructure, expecting them to take a break from working on tried-and-true ways to shoot magical fire, fly magically, store knowledge magically, and so forth to start developing primitive, unwieldy technological equivalents doesn't make any sense. They already have the magical equivalents in the form of wands, magic carpets, and so forth.

They would do it because the technological equivalents of those magic items are a lot cheaper and more resource efficient. The same reason we switched from bows to muskets. Even though the muskets were much slower and less accurate, they could be fielded much more easily. Fielding an archer required weekly training sessions over the lifetime of the archer; he has to be raised from childhood and spend at least one day every week training to use a bow just to be a decent shot when he's a grown man. But you can teach a peasant levy how to use muskets in an afternoon and they'll be up to speed after a couple weeks of practice.

Relying entirely on magic makes sense for a wizard who intends to do everything single-handedly, but for a wizard who is just a part of a greater society, it makes sense for him to find some simpler solution that he can hand out to the masses.

also remember in a society with magic the very smartest people will be working magic rather then the smart inventors will be studying magic not technology dramatically slowing technological growth.
on top of that you can't just teach someone how to cast magic their are no shortcuts after someone invents a 9th level spell he can teach it to other people but if they want to use it they still need to be able to caste 9th level spells.

Sir isaac Newton revolutionized physics. He also studied alchemy, magic, and summoning angels. He's remembered for the physics stuff, because that's the stuff that actually worked for him. In a world where magic actually works, it wouldn't be competing with technology. It would be technology. "Magic" wouldn't be opposed to technology any more than "magnetism" would be. It's just another force of nature that can be harnessed.

And being unable to just hand 9th level scrolls to anyone is a pretty good reason to make user-friendly technology to apply those principles. Just like how real world computer experts and "super users" use the command line on their own computers but develop graphical user interfaces with simplified point-and-click options for normal users who don't understand what is happening inside the computer to make it tick.

that's not even including the tendency for wizards to horde and jealously guard their magic.

Wizards hoard and jealously guard their magic so lazy setting writers don't have to explain why they aren't sharing their knowledge for mutual benefit in order to develop their knowledge base at an exponential rate. In the real world, everyone with a trade secret still shares their knowledge with the other members of their trade so they can all get better and more powerful. That's how guilds, trade unions, corporations, and universities accomplish more than individual crackpots working in isolation.

PairO'Dice Lost

2012-09-17, 02:13 PM

FINAL INSOMNIA EDIT: Been looking over the thread. I hope the rest of you all are enjoying the show and sorry if Rolling Dante and I have highjacked the thread.

Yeah, I'm willing to take this to another thread or to PMs if people would like, or at least start spoilering my responses. In fact, I'll start spoilering them now.

@sktarq:
*snip about murder*

I'm going to stop arguing the murder vs. killing point, since I think we might be drifting close to crossing the "real-world politics" line. Suffice to say that murder is just a subset of killing and I feel that labeling killing as evil in a game about killing evil thing is not the brightest idea.

I see a total disconnect between the artifacts as you describe them and as they are written. In both 3.5e and 2e D&D. they are not JUST things that the current civilizations can not make. That is one of their traits to be sure by not the be all end end all of what makes an artifact. They have a significant number of special rules, unique destruction methods off the top of my head. And it does effect their rarity because if the old civ could build them as relatively easily as they could build any other magic item (on a similar sliding scale of expense) then why didn't they when they would be so useful? There are a ton of ways that level of magic would be all over. It seems inappropriate so use such special items as a baseline for what the previous civ could do on a regular basis. And that's my issue artifact (particularly greater ones) could never have been commonplace. The only time I've seen that addressed is in forgotten realms when the rules of magic changed with the Karsus. Artifacts exist in D&D largely to act as McGuffins and story - if applied to the game in any more common way the whole concept of "game balance" goes out the window.

Greater artifacts are certainly more MacGuffins than actually useful items, but lesser artifacts are more useful, as I said. Talismans of good, staffs of the magi, hammers of thunderbolts, and similar really aren't that much different from existing items, they're just slightly more powerful and currently not craftable.

I'm not trying to suggest that ancient civilizations were based on churning out copies of the Hand of Vecna or anything. I'm just trying to show that your argument "There hasn't been any progress because the ancient items are all the same as modern items" doesn't hold water because there's an explicit category of items that cannot be made anymore.

Yes. and if it has been happening for any length of time then there would be no more low level ruins to search after more than a few hundred years (being somewhat generous). Which means that low level adventurers need to find a different source of plot material. Its not that those things could not happen but it seems very inconsistent with the other material presented as normal in the majority of D&D.

That's true, assuming that all of the dungeons are known, on the surface, easily-accessible, etc. In the real world we're still stumbling across new ruins, new cave complexes, and similar all the time, and we have things like Google Earth and radar that can penetrate several dozen yards of rock.

Magic as technology entirely now. hmmm... Clockwork creatures-we still have not made those with 21st Century science so I'm fine in calling that magic. And frankly the same goes the above. The technology is there. Magic can be a tool for it but it is no more necessary than a physics degree is for being a blacksmith. So there is a ton of reasons to study non magical science and technology. also see below

It's not just clockwork creatures; things like clockwork armor and Mechanus plate also require magic, even though in the real world they're things we could manufacture fairly easily with our current knowledge. As to a blacksmith not needing a physics degree, science is knowledge while technology is application of that knowledge. You can be a smith and personally create a sword based on rote training without knowing a thing about metallurgy--most smiths did learn about metallurgy, but it's possible to go without. You can study chemistry, architecture, and other scientific fields without needing magic at all.

To actually create alchemical items or to create clockwork items without building the infrastructure needed to build the infrastructure needed to build clockwork items, however, requires magic. And as we've been discussing already, if civilizations are bootstrapping themselves based on found knowledge from prior civilizations, even if a prior civilization developed both the magical and the technological ways to accomplish those, it's much more likely that you'd have a clockwork golem wandering around that you could use to reverse-engineer the magical principles with than it is that there would be a clockwork factory still surviving in some ruin somewhere.

And the math doesn't come close to covering what you are asking them to do. Creating enough magic items and/or advancing in level enough to cast many of the more socially useful spells (as in useful to society not charm) eats a huge amount of XP. Society has limited amount of XP available at a time-because people are born, grow and die. And only a small part of that will directed at either magic item creation or supporting the levels of casters. Casters are not common enough (at least in DM Guide, and the Cityscape splat-book on character levels found in population centres after you account for all the experts, rogues, aristocrats, fighters, and other non casters) to fill the role in society you are asking them to. If all your upper level characters in a city were casters with no experts, cleric, fighters etc and they pushed themselves and had little or no lives of their own I could just barely see it working. Also as you advance in level casters would be actually slightly lower in XP totals than their peers as some has gone to build items-so that seems even more skewed (A fighter has nothing else to do with XP than sit on it). Three low level experts socially acting as druids studying the harvest generation on generation will provide more help over the long term than a caster druid in terms of plant growth over the same time. Is it three to one yes, but those three are about the same cost to hire. No spell-casting fees and those three can help others who can then help others in turn through techniques and technology. That caters depending on level could cast plant growth how often in his "spare time"? He/She/It has a life to lead -other things to do XP to earn-so say three or four days a week-anything more and he is no longer a Druid he is the local plant growth machine that can also walk-basically would have to life for the community instead of in it. So how many spells you could expect the local wizard to cast for the town on a regular basis? Not that many really-besides if they did do that very often the the prices charged in the DM manual makes NO sense at all. If they are giving them out free often enough to be counted on to replace technological advancement.
INSOMNIAC EDIT: Also making magic items is a massive drain on time-particularly the permanent ones like say flying carpets. Its a large process and during the construction time one can't be off earning that additional XP (which unless the DM is going to be VERY generous with RP XP then is dangerous and the NPC may well die-I basically say what works for the PC works for the NPCs just offstage) It just doesn't turn around very well. That wizard must be pretty high level to be making that item -that implies he/she/it has more important things to do with his time at least on a regular basis. So they can't punch out even enough flying carpets to satisfy a couple dozen people which would leave the rest of the city including those rich nobles who didn't have the connects to get a carpet, or even a family member who is jealous of his brother who did looking for a way to fly that doesn't need the one wizard in the city powerful enough to do it that way.

In the future, could you please try to use paragraph breaks to make your posts more readable?

Regarding the number of casters needed: if not destroyed, magic items last indefinitely. If you have just one wizard in one city making one flying carpet per year, after a hundred years that's a hundred flying carpets, plus however many are brought back by adventurers, plus however many the society had beforehand, and in the meantime he can spend the rest of his year making other beneficial items at a similar scale. If a society really wants a lot of flying carpets for whatever reason, that single wizard can make about 18 in one year. And all of that assumes no crafting time/gold/XP reduction, which a dedicated crafter would most likely have.

Regarding time and XP needed: You can only spend 8 hours a day crafting, so it's perfectly possible to adventure and craft stuff at the same time without either the adventuring or the crafting suffering. That's not to say all or even most casters would be adventurers, but it's not the case that you'd need to craft a bunch of XP away, go adventuring for more XP, craft more, adventure more, and so forth.

Regarding using the caster's time: The druid casting plant growth once per year at each community would take a few weeks in the spring, at best: wild shape into something fast, prepare plant growth in most of your slots, get to work. It's still efficient enough in the short term before you make enough plant growth items to go around that coming up with technological alternatives wouldn't necessarily be a good investment of resources.

No they don't and more importantly DIDN'T I wasn't making that up as a hypothetical. It is easier to control the crossbows and the few people who can make them than the larger number of people who could use a longbow. And if the crossbowmen become unhappy it is easier to take them away and hand them to somebody new than take away someone's longbow and give it to someone else (the power being in the user not the tool in a longbow). Also you can keep many extra crossbows for when you really need them and only have a few out "in circulation" at a time. Then when war breaks out hand them to the most loyal people who can be picked at that time. The only people who need to keep happy with crossbows are the few who can make them, the few who hold your supply and just enough people to use them at the time you want to. Its not JUST about being able to put down the revolt if it happens but to have a large dangerous army when you want it (something the longbows were better at) and being able to prevent that group from being able to overthrow, threaten, blackmail, or otherwise impinge on the freedom of the leaders during peacetime (which the cross bow was better at).
And as for your wand of scorching ray vs machine gun question. I'd want exactly two machine guns. One to give to a friend and one friend with another to point at the first if I ever want to take his machine gun away. Visa versa works too there. If anyone can use it I only need two friends who can be ANYONE I want-and I can change who-and they know that.

You don't have a choice of just two machine guns; you're using the wands or machine guns as your army's primary weapon. Do you want something that requires training to use, to ensure that only a subset of the population can use and that that subset would be trained to use safely (the bows or wands) or something that anyone could pick up without having the discipline and training to use it well and safely (the crossbows or machine guns)?

This is also edging close to gun control and thus real-world politics, so I'd prefer to drop this tangent as well, if you don't mind.

Actually you seem to be making my point from earlier that the nifty stuff that ends up in adventures bag's of holding is less useful than the forges and tools they so often leave behind. Grab those and you get the tech to make the tech and so on-rather quickly works too if you have access to basic spells and a modicum of communication-oh and a supply of ready, willing, brave and slightly foolhardy types to set off the traps for you. And looking at what is found in the treasure tables and even your earlier post about protected magic items the ready to wipe off and run into battle with type stuff does seem well "cannon". And If you've got a magic sword that's protected why not a magic gun? And as for figuring out how to use that metal tube putting the fire in one end and all - adventurers are already casting identify, commune, and other divination spells left right and centre in order to get the command words and ID for the magical items they found-why would the gun be any different? It would also put the idea in their head and start experimentation - which since they have a working model as a guide then it shouldn't take too long.

Hey, I'm not the one who said swords would be too damaged to use, you did; I just said that since we're talking about reverse engineering, you could posit useless rusted out swords and still learn more from them than from guns.

And as for forges and tools...again, bootstrapping. If an adventuring party walked into a car manufacturing plant--not a working one they could observe, but one that's been shut down for many years--how exactly are they going to learn from it? Sure, you can cast a bunch of divinations, but those will probably be of limited use ("Er, what did Boccob mean by 'generator' and 'touchscreen', anyway?") and there's no way you could reverse engineer the computing, robotics, metallurgical, and chemical knowledge necessary to get it back up and running, much less build another one. If they walk into a Model T production plant, it'll definitely be a lot easier to figure out what's going on and they're have a lot more success divining and recreating it...but because they use magic and not technology, it's not at all likely that the the Model T plant would evolve into a modern plant instead of just some +5 Factory of Model T Construction.

You're arguing on the one hand that ancient civilizations should have had much higher tech levels than we see in most settings, and on the other hand that it should be possible for them to figure out all this ancient tech and put it into use. You can't have it both ways; anything advanced enough to be more high-tech than enchanted Renaissance era stuff is going to be too advanced for easy reverse-engineering, and you're not going to go from enchanted Renaissance stuff to enchanted modern stuff because the existence and use of magic is going to necessarily cause their tech to go along different development paths.

You won't have technological revolution if nobody is working on technology. True. But that works on the assumption that nobody is. Which doesn't fly with me. Nor does it seem to account for the experts and non spell-casters with access to Knowledge (Engineering) or (Nature) let alone the social sciences-or the fact that only in D&D do you need magical ability to copy the alchemical things people do in the RW and did centuries ago (making drugs, paint, dyes and various other real world applications that would get otherwise put under Alchemy)-and If you want to call it craft specialties I suppose that works but those would also have a Knowledge base that would just as appropriate to grow technology from.

We're probably approaching this from different perspectives. If D&D chemistry requires alchemy and therefore magic, that tells me that either chemistry doesn't work for some reason (e.g. the four elements theory is true) or alchemy has been discovered to be better than chemistry. In many of the settings that I make for my own groups, I remove that requirement and allow for mundane crafting to make alchemical items, clockwork devices, and so forth--and in such a setting, I do include more advanced tech than the baseline.

Saying that D&D alchemy, clockwork, and similar shouldn't require magic is one thing, and one I agree with. But to complain that settings that take that assumption for granted (when was the last time you saw a non-steampunk setting remove the spellcaster requirements for that setting and then make use of that) don't have advanced nonmagical tech doesn't seem exactly fair.

And if a wizard want to make something fly yes he can get there in several ways. However, there are plenty of reasons not to use magic. The single largest is that magic is very expensive to buy and someone with technological skill will look to undercut the cost. I can buy wizardry acting as a brain drain to normal technological advancement but for every one that does you have a wizard who uses magic to learn how to make and sell airplanes or other technological gizmo much faster because of his magic and he can sell that tech cheaper than the wizard down the road can do with his spells-esp after you take getting the wizard to where you want the gizmo, rare components in magic item manufacture, repeatable treatment etc. The wizard who invented the technological version can even delegate the construction once he or she discovers it and use the proceeds to fund more research or an endless stream of hookers and "invigorate" potions. The spellcasting only wizard has to trudge off and actually cast the spell every time that king fellow wants it cast disrupting his day, he can only be in one place at a time (a few short term exceptions), his spell choice for the day is being set by someone else and if he wants to avoid that he has to give up some of his very self to pay the XP cost of the item - double bad if he isn't high enough to make a permanent item. Also the tech researching wizard can pass this new family business down to his children even if they are not casters. Thus it would make more sense for a wizard will his ability to analyze, support, fabricate, and conjure to use his skills to research new non arcane tech than almost anything else-at least from a financial point of view.-Like an Edison coming up with invention after invention as his employees toil away one his old designs that rake in gold from far away lands except where his competitors can be found like that damnable sorcerer Tesla!

Here's the thing, though: the existence and usage of magic introduces the problem of startup costs and conceptual biases.

Regarding startup costs: Sinking funding into developing nonmagical means of flight profits later. Enchanting more of the same known, reliable means of flight profits now. The Wrights' first functional airplane used bicycle parts they had on hand from their shop, an engine from a car manufacturer, and other things that required a technological society's existing infrastructure and economy of scale to bring down the cost to the level that two hobbyists could build it. Not every wizard would try to figure out and build all of that from scratch when he could just enchant something to fly for a fraction of the effort and cost.

Regarding conceptual biases: Coming up with airplanes is hard and unintuitive. A lot of first efforts to build a flying machine tried to duplicate flying creatures' motion, which, as we know, doesn't work too well for human-scale machines. So they moved on to experiment with other things. In D&D, though, it does work, with golems and animated objects and such, not to mention all the creatures like dragons who shouldn't be able to fly but do anyway. So one of two things would likely happen: one, they get stuck on the flapping wings model, because they're not just feeling around for a working model, they're trying to duplicate something that they know will work...or two, the flapping-wings model does work, because the same laws of physics that allow rocs and dragons to fly works for that too.

@Xuc Xac:
This is one of my big pet peeves. Handguns predate two-handed swords and full plate armor. Any excuse not to develop guns applies equally well to any other technology. You can't say "they wouldn't develop guns because magic" when magic hasn't stopped them from developing anything else. If the wand of magic missiles hasn't killed the bow, why would it kill the gun? Why are they using armor when there are first level spells that can replace armor?

Once again: you cannot assume the same development path as real-world history. We developed gunpowder at least as far back as ancient China, where it was used for fireworks at first rather than weaponry, and the recipe is simple enough that you can stumble upon it by accident and refine it from there. In D&D, they have dancing lights and other means to make pretty lights in the sky, and you have to be a magic user to do anything alchemical.

As for why they have anything at all resembling real-world weaponry, well, we got on this tangent due to a complaint that, given a several-thousand-year history of ancient civilizations, current civilizations should be much more advanced because they have the ancient civilizations' knowledge to draw upon, and we should see more advanced technology than Medieval/Renaissance tech. My point was that, given that they use magic instead of technology, that any advanced tech wouldn't be easy to reverse-engineer given a society that already knows, uses, and relies on magic, and that any technology advanced enough to rival magic (flying things, computers, etc.) wouldn't be bootstrappable from their perspective, it makes a lot of sense that they'd advance magically rather than technologically. I don't know why the ancient civilizations developed what they did (though I can think of several reasons: spells aren't permanent where physical items are, someone discovered that you can augment items with more permanent magic in ways you can't duplicate with spells, they developed this stuff before discovering magic, and more), I'm just arguing why, given the premise that the ancients have this stuff and magical versions of it, current civilizations would look more like that than like modern Earth.

They would do it because the technological equivalents of those magic items are a lot cheaper and more resource efficient. The same reason we switched from bows to muskets. Even though the muskets were much slower and less accurate, they could be fielded much more easily. Fielding an archer required weekly training sessions over the lifetime of the archer; he has to be raised from childhood and spend at least one day every week training to use a bow just to be a decent shot when he's a grown man. But you can teach a peasant levy how to use muskets in an afternoon and they'll be up to speed after a couple weeks of practice.

Relying entirely on magic makes sense for a wizard who intends to do everything single-handedly, but for a wizard who is just a part of a greater society, it makes sense for him to find some simpler solution that he can hand out to the masses.

See above response to sktarq regarding magic items being long-lasting enough to fill society's needs and individual casters' efforts being a sufficient stopgap measure while magic items are in production that technological advancement wouldn't necessarily happen.

Sir isaac Newton revolutionized physics. He also studied alchemy, magic, and summoning angels. He's remembered for the physics stuff, because that's the stuff that actually worked for him. In a world where magic actually works, it wouldn't be competing with technology. It would be technology. "Magic" wouldn't be opposed to technology any more than "magnetism" would be. It's just another force of nature that can be harnessed.

Exactly!

@sktarq and Xuc Xac: In case it's not clear, given all the tangents we've taken, I'm not at all arguing that real-world technology wouldn't or couldn't develop alongside magic. I'm just trying to show that it's not at all the cast that a society must develop real-world technology, integrated with magic or not, when they already have magic and are building off previous civilizations that also used magic. It's entirely possible to have magitech or magic-punk settings that have both magic and technology or use +3 laptops of enhanced graphics, I just don't think it should be anyone's pet peeve that a given setting doesn't have that.

jseah

2012-09-17, 05:03 PM

Waaay to many zeros for dates in the worlds past.
I sometimes err on the wrong side of this. There was one particular incident in the backstory of *insert that magic system*, where my original history involved a 90% die-off in the able-to-fight population due to a massive war. (now retconned to only about 40% dieoff; similar to the plague and such like)
Somehow one thinks that pre-Industrial civilizations cannot recover from that to original levels within 6 generations... (about 120-150 years) At least with historical growth rates.

Also I then noticed that the war involved going from first invention of a magic engine (without the steam) in a "western europe with magic" setting to supersonic flight and ray guns in about six years (although to be fair, stuff is alot easier due to magic).
Perhaps I overestimate the impact of the founding of the world's first magi-technological university, perhaps not.

The point being that you don't need to have ancient civilizations with super magic technology. This civilization you are in could be that super-magic civilization!

Someone had to do it for the first time, why not you? Tell the story of the Newtons and Faradays of your setting, or of the people and society around them that they change.

My pet peeve:
Settings that have all the best deeds, legends and so on, in the past. I absolutely hate twilight era settings where all the cool stuff goes away... and the story is set when they have already gone.
Why not tell the story of the cool stuff? No one's gonna be writing epics about the time after the heat death of the universe. (which is what having a fading of past glories seems like to me)

Basically, I dislike too much "glorious past". I want that past to BE here. Not sit and look back and sigh about the good old days.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-09-18, 01:12 AM

My pet peeve:
Settings that have all the best deeds, legends and so on, in the past. I absolutely hate twilight era settings where all the cool stuff goes away... and the story is set when they have already gone.
Why not tell the story of the cool stuff? No one's gonna be writing epics about the time after the heat death of the universe. (which is what having a fading of past glories seems like to me)

Basically, I dislike too much "glorious past". I want that past to BE here. Not sit and look back and sigh about the good old days.

Eh... it really depends on the tone the setting is trying to set. It works in A Song of Ice and Fire, and it works in post-apocalyptic settings.

Standard heroic fantasy though? You're right, there's basically no way for the "we've destroyed what our ancestors built up for us and now we're all just waiting to die" tone to work.

Morph Bark

2012-09-18, 02:35 AM

I sometimes err on the wrong side of this. There was one particular incident in the backstory of *insert that magic system*, where my original history involved a 90% die-off in the able-to-fight population due to a massive war. (now retconned to only about 40% dieoff; similar to the plague and such like)
Somehow one thinks that pre-Industrial civilizations cannot recover from that to original levels within 6 generations... (about 120-150 years) At least with historical growth rates.

Well, didn't China have a population decrease of over 50% during the 14th century due to plague and Mongol invasions? They took 200-300 years to recover, IIRC.

Someone had to do it for the first time, why not you? Tell the story of the Newtons and Faradays of your setting, or of the people and society around them that they change.

Funny you should say that, one of the elves in one of my settings was a steampunk-style inventor by the name of Faraday Kilstead. :smallsmile:

Yora

2012-09-18, 04:33 AM

Settings that have all the best deeds, legends and so on, in the past. I absolutely hate twilight era settings where all the cool stuff goes away... and the story is set when they have already gone.
Why not tell the story of the cool stuff? No one's gonna be writing epics about the time after the heat death of the universe. (which is what having a fading of past glories seems like to me)

Basically, I dislike too much "glorious past". I want that past to BE here. Not sit and look back and sigh about the good old days.
Funny you say that. My current setting started out as "why not play during the good old days?" Bring on all the elven kings, dwarven cities, dragons, and giants.
I eventually got back a bit more to the point where the elven kings where still fighting to establish their empires and the building of underground cities was only starting to really become a thing. But it's so much more fun to do all the things than to loot the ruins some thousand years later and find the sword that once used to kill dragons. Get that sword fresh out of the forge or take it from the hand of its fallen last owner and get into the dragon killing game yourself.

Eldan

2012-09-18, 10:22 AM

Heh. Etherworld is post-apocalyptic, in that the world ended. It's been nearly a thousand years, the survivors are still only getting together thanks to just having invented the necessary travel technology, and already there are groups that are essentially about Prime World Nostalgia.

The fun thing being, of course, that no one actually has any good records of the prime world most people use it as more as a mystical paradise or metaphor without really knowing what it was like.

Just imagine that we were all living on terraformed asteroids in five hundred years and were talking fondly of Earth before the nuclear war, when there weren't any wars or poverty.

Man on Fire

2012-09-18, 03:49 PM

As someone who loves the WoD setting I totally see where you coming from. Its sort of the kitchen sink issue put up by the OP but far far worse. The beauty of the system is that any two will mostly work side by side for a crossover-three becomes tricky and four (+) generally goes boom. It can work if one is fully developed and the others exist only enough to drive the story in the main rule set. Its basically something to allow any story to be told but trying to tell every story at once garbles them all. There is a reason thee are separate WoD games and that none need anything but the Blue Book (your mortal's guide). Do you think that is a world building issue or a storyteller reaching beyond what they can handle issue?

World-building, because they already have populated the world with all those things and it's just confusing. That setting I was working on for example - it started with combining few similiar ideas, so I managed to get 4 types of characters in one setting, then I made backstory connecting them together. But as I worked on this backstory , that involved creatures from another dimension, I started to think about impact they made on the world and what they want, and suddenly I got myself Asia devastated by Demons from another dimension, Europe fighting loosing war against said Demons, Hong Kong as alone mega-city defending itself from them and each with their own characteristic types of player characters. And before I realized it, whole setting started to look more like an insane mashup that has no sense, rhyme, reason or climate at all. So I cut it into 4-5 smaller, but more focused. Just because GM wont reach for them, it doesn't change that those thing are already there and are messing with tone you are trying to estabilish. And I personally think that people have enough of settings who are supposed to be for as many people you can, and would rather preffer smaller settings, but aimed for specific audience.

2b) Everything assumes "medieval Western Europe plus magic" as a baseline, without actually taking into account what magic can do. This is similar to sktarq's #15, but more so: not just why individual casters don't do interesting and logical things with their magic, but why the world looks the way it does at all given the existence of magic. Something like the Tippyverse is one way to do it, where you start with a vaguely-medieval-European framework (there are normal cities, normal traders, normal currency, etc.), add spellcasters, and extrapolate, but there are lots of directions you can take this.

There is a good reason why magic haven't changed anything - it haven't canged anything yet, the possibilities are there, but nobody had tought about them until this point. Personal Computers and American Express were possible long before people revolutionize the world with them, but guys in charge tought they wouldn't catch up and investing in them would be a waste of money.

And Tippyverse is my turn-off - it's just wizard power fantasy and it's backstory basically goes how it goes because creator said so (I refuse to belive that large scale wizard war described in Tippyverse backstory wouldn't end with all wizard casters exterminating each other, heavily damaging the world in the process, but with some guys just deciding to stop and live in their small utopias to show how Tippy's favorite class is awesome).

5) Settings with nothing to do. The opposite of the "this setting is meant to run one plot" problem, these settings don't have anything to really hook you to run adventures in them. Spelljammer was an awesome setting thematically, and it was nice to have a "D&D! In! Space!" setting, but without an overarching theme (like "ongoing major war" in Warhammer 40K or Dragonlance or "explore everywhere" in Star Trek or Eberron) or a bunch of smaller hooks to let you run one-shots there or just wander around and interact with the world (like "escape the Mists" in Ravenloft or "explore the Outer Rim" in Star Wars) it kind of fell flat.

For me theme is the most important thing in a setting. One of the main reasosn why I dislike Tippyverse is that it was made without a central theme, around which you could build stories - it was made basing on exploration of the rules and that's, quite frankly, a big red light for me to get the hell away from any setting. Get the idea and theme first, then, if necessary, toy with rules to reflect what you want, but don't start with the rules, because then you get idiocies like this one. And don't tell me "but Tippyverse's theme is to explore how the world governed by 3.5 rules would look like" because that's exploration of the rules. When you think about theme and world, you should forget about rules entierly and once you're done with that, look for the system that fits your new world the best.

The problem with the concept of "fantasy country X" is that if the author and/or the readers are largely ignorant of the place being spoofed, then you have to resort back to big, meaty stereotypes to telegraph what's what.

Which is why people say that guys who knows feudal japan only from anime make terrible Legend Of The Five Rings players.

BRC

2012-09-18, 04:12 PM

I dislike Static settings. Settings where things have remained the same for generations, and the PC's are either trying to maintain the Status Quo by stopping the Big Evil Thing, or trying to change the Status Quo by defeating the Evil Thing that has been making life terrible for all these centuries. In a lot of settings everything interesting happened hundreds of years ago, or just under a year ago. I like my settings to feel like something happened last year, and the year before that, and the year before that, and the year before that. Like the current conflict is the result of a chain of events.

jseah

2012-09-18, 04:53 PM

Eh... it really depends on the tone the setting is trying to set. It works in A Song of Ice and Fire, and it works in post-apocalyptic settings.

Standard heroic fantasy though? You're right, there's basically no way for the "we've destroyed what our ancestors built up for us and now we're all just waiting to die" tone to work.
I don't like those kinds of settings. ^^ Post apocalyptic makes me want to play an engineer out to rebuild everything and do it better.

Standard heroic fantasy still has too much of the "ancient sealed evil in a can" and "ancient sword of the ancients" tropes for me to be fully comfortable reading a stereotypical one.

Well, didn't China have a population decrease of over 50% during the 14th century due to plague and Mongol invasions? They took 200-300 years to recover, IIRC.
Yeah, which was why a 90% dieoff taking only 120-150 years was a bit too short to believe. I retconned it to 50% dieoff so it was ok again. =D

(I refuse to belive that large scale wizard war described in Tippyverse backstory wouldn't end with all wizard casters exterminating each other, heavily damaging the world in the process, but with some guys just deciding to stop and live in their small utopias to show how Tippy's favorite class is awesome).

Get the idea and theme first, then, if necessary, toy with rules to reflect what you want, but don't start with the rules, because then you get idiocies like this one. And don't tell me "but Tippyverse's theme is to explore how the world governed by 3.5 rules would look like" because that's exploration of the rules. When you think about theme and world, you should forget about rules entierly and once you're done with that, look for the system that fits your new world the best.
I do a bit of both, but oftentimes, I let some exploration of consequences guide how my settings develop.

I don't build settings from top down, starting with themes and the world.

I start from the bottom, the magic system, the basics of the world (what is different or not about physics, etc.). And then I build up from there, choosing how the world develops to get to some final end point I want to see.

There is rather alot of flexibility in the extrapolation of various underlying explanations. Just because all wizards are proud and refuse to serve others does not mean that the setting builder could not have a few of the more cooperative types make peace and bunker down until everyone else is dead.
Or you could go the other way and have the ending magical war devastate the land until life has to start over. Either way is plausible, same starting condition and same underlying rules.

EDIT: alot of my stories tend to involve some form of progress or other. The impact of magic in society is one of the more common areas I explore with a fantasy story.
Most of the time, the end result is usually a magi-tech Post-Singularity society or a Tippyverse totalitarian utopia; but it's the process by which you get there that you have stories to tell about.

Tavar

2012-09-18, 07:11 PM

The biggest things I find off-putting are societies poorly conceived(usually suffering from Planet of Hat syndrome) and worlds that are irredeemable. The latter essentially means that it's a grimdark world, and on top of that no one is trying to make things better: even WH40k doesn't fall into this trap, as many are trying to make things better, they just often lack the means to fix everything or their focus is to narrow.

I don't like those kinds of settings. ^^ Post apocalyptic makes me want to play an engineer out to rebuild everything and do it better.

Standard heroic fantasy still has too much of the "ancient sealed evil in a can" and "ancient sword of the ancients" tropes for me to be fully comfortable reading a stereotypical one.
Interesting that you would say this, because most of the Poswt Apocalyptic stuff I've seen has a very strong undercurrent of "X screwed up, think you can do better?"

And Tippyverse is my turn-off - it's just wizard power fantasy and it's backstory basically goes how it goes because creator said so (I refuse to belive that large scale wizard war described in Tippyverse backstory wouldn't end with all wizard casters exterminating each other, heavily damaging the world in the process, but with some guys just deciding to stop and live in their small utopias to show how Tippy's favorite class is awesome).

For me theme is the most important thing in a setting. One of the main reasosn why I dislike Tippyverse is that it was made without a central theme, around which you could build stories - it was made basing on exploration of the rules and that's, quite frankly, a big red light for me to get the hell away from any setting. Get the idea and theme first, then, if necessary, toy with rules to reflect what you want, but don't start with the rules, because then you get idiocies like this one. And don't tell me "but Tippyverse's theme is to explore how the world governed by 3.5 rules would look like" because that's exploration of the rules. When you think about theme and world, you should forget about rules entierly and once you're done with that, look for the system that fits your new world the best.
All this right here just told me that you have no idea what you're actually talking about. There are several themes that you can build stories around while in the Tippyverse, especially if you alter when exactly in the history you go into things. He's run multiple games in the setting, at different points in the 'progression'.

Also, considering how much amazing stories happen in the Real World, which is constructed without such a guiding theme as far as we can tell, I seriously question your premise about mandating that the theme comes first. Yes, you need to match theme to mechanics, but nothing in that statement enforces any particular order.

Yora

2012-09-19, 08:01 AM

Yeah, which was why a 90% dieoff taking only 120-150 years was a bit too short to believe.
But that's pretty much the number for all of the Americans after the first colonialization. If you have a smaller and more densly populated area, it could likely even go much quicker.

I dislike Static settings. Settings where things have remained the same for generations, and the PC's are either trying to maintain the Status Quo by stopping the Big Evil Thing, or trying to change the Status Quo by defeating the Evil Thing that has been making life terrible for all these centuries. In a lot of settings everything interesting happened hundreds of years ago, or just under a year ago. I like my settings to feel like something happened last year, and the year before that, and the year before that, and the year before that. Like the current conflict is the result of a chain of events.
Which I think is another case of simply way too many zeros. Say all of recorded and still remembered history fits into 500 years and it should mostly be fine.

Man on Fire

2012-09-19, 10:20 AM

All this right here just told me that you have no idea what you're actually talking about. There are several themes that you can build stories around while in the Tippyverse, especially if you alter when exactly in the history you go into things. He's run multiple games in the setting, at different points in the 'progression'.

Don't care, for me good setting or game itself should provide the themes to explore itself, so GM and players would know what to expect when they sit down to the table. Sure, you can excuse generic systems, like GURPS, Savage Worlds or even D&D, but if I pick up specific game, I would like to know what to expect. If I play Dark Sun, the game is going to be about question "what could you do if circumstances were bleak enough?", if I play Vampire: The Requiem the game is going to be about pros and cons of immortality and if I play Exalted it's about consequences of our actions. Tippyverse doesn't give me the most important thing, the meat of the game. It's like if I came to restaurant, ordered steak, got all spices and was told to kill the pig and cook it for my own.

Also, considering how much amazing stories happen in the Real World, which is constructed without such a guiding theme as far as we can tell, I seriously question your premise about mandating that the theme comes first. Yes, you need to match theme to mechanics, but nothing in that statement enforces any particular order.

If I want real world, I take my dogs for a walk. I play the games for stories my character can be a part of.

Also, notice that I said "get the idea and the theme first", because most stories and games starts with an idea and then appriorate theme to that idea is found and injected by the author. Rules can come when you know what you actually want to do.

Tyndmyr

2012-09-19, 10:33 AM

1) "Clap your hands if you believe" and "a Wizard did it" - the whole concept of believing something making said something true is a mire of ridiculousness and too few people think deeply enough of the repercussions and logical end-result such phenonemon would have. In general, attributing loads of setting points to poorly defined common reason eats away my suspension of disbelief and logicality of a setting.

I am ok with this...but ONLY if the repercussions are explored. Small Gods is a fascinating book, for instance...

But yes, when used as an easy out to avoid explanation, it doesn't work at all.

8) "Writers have no sense of scale" - this is a bad problem with fantasy, with histories spanning millenia with nothing changing when you could easily condense the important events into decades - but it is even worse among Sci-Fi settings, where whole planets are treated like villages in a fantasy setting. In fact, I could say fantasy and sci-fi have opposite troubles - in fantasy, creators cram too much stuff in too small an area. In sci-fi, creators put in too little, when conceivably every planet, even the boring uninhabited ones, could have enough stuff to explore for a campaign or two.

So freaking true. Use the sense of scale appropriate to the story you're telling. If it's a hardscrabble life on the streets, well...one city is probably plenty for most of it.

Another thing I dislike are badly used "no stats" - characters who are said to be so powerful that players cannot match them. It's not really bad itself, I mean, Cthulhu in pathfinder is good example - power beyond anything, one that game overs you when he wakes up, because he is a very old god. Same with that giant bird from deadlands or Cain. But guys like Stone from Deadlands, who is just Revenant who made pact to get a lot of power, or that religious leader whose name I forgot - these are normal guys in that setting, jsut strong, nothing in their files puts them above players' usual level, there is no reason for them to be best in everything and have no stats.

God yes. I hate this so very much...it's one of my few pet peeves with Dresden Files, a LOT of chars are unstatted. I mean, don't get me wrong...I'm ok with very, very high stats, where justified. Throw the kitchen sink at it if they deserve it. They need not even follow standard char creation rules or the like.

But the entire point of me paying money to use a system, or reading and using it, is that you've done some of the prep work for me. It's that interactions are well defined, and not something I need to invent. I can ALWAYS ignore written stats if I need to. If no stats are there, I *have* to make stuff up.

If you throw a laptop, a few dozen books, and a Glock into an area full of bad weather, wild animals, deathtraps, and other hazards, they wouldn't last more than a few years at best. Throw a sword into the same conditions and it'll be battered but workable.

A sword is made out of steel, which rusts when exposed to the elements. Stainless steel is not really much of a thing in historical swords. A glock is made primarily from composites, and what metal it does have is vastly higher quality and is much, much more likely to survive.

I can conceive of no particular reason the sword would survive but the glock would not. And hell, we DO find even swords and books from long, long ago on occasion. Why shouldn't such things exist?

Tavar

2012-09-19, 12:00 PM

Don't care, for me good setting or game itself should provide the themes to explore itself, so GM and players would know what to expect when they sit down to the table. Sure, you can excuse generic systems, like GURPS, Savage Worlds or even D&D, but if I pick up specific game, I would like to know what to expect. If I play Dark Sun, the game is going to be about question "what could you do if circumstances were bleak enough?", if I play Vampire: The Requiem the game is going to be about pros and cons of immortality and if I play Exalted it's about consequences of our actions. Tippyverse doesn't give me the most important thing, the meat of the game. It's like if I came to restaurant, ordered steak, got all spices and was told to kill the pig and cook it for my own.
Once again, you don't seem to actually know what you're talking about: the setting has many themes you can build off, depending on when the game in question is set.

If I want real world, I take my dogs for a walk. I play the games for stories my character can be a part of.

Also, notice that I said "get the idea and the theme first", because most stories and games starts with an idea and then appriorate theme to that idea is found and injected by the author. Rules can come when you know what you actually want to do.
Care to actually read what I wrote, and reply to that, instead of something completely different?

Nothing mandates that you need a central 'theme and idea' in order to create a setting in which you can run a game that leads to stories. Yes, individual games likely need this, but a setting can be large enough to hold many games, likely with different stories, themes, and ideas. Exalted is actually a good example of this: consequences of our actions is one theme in Exalted, and certainly a prevalent one, but it's not the only theme, and it's certainly possible to run a game without large amounts of that theme present.

PairO'Dice Lost

2012-09-19, 12:58 PM

A sword is made out of steel, which rusts when exposed to the elements. Stainless steel is not really much of a thing in historical swords. A glock is made primarily from composites, and what metal it does have is vastly higher quality and is much, much more likely to survive.

I can conceive of no particular reason the sword would survive but the glock would not. And hell, we DO find even swords and books from long, long ago on occasion. Why shouldn't such things exist?

I don't want to start down this tangent and derail things again, but a recap of the argument:
Recall that we were talking not about what technology would be usable immediately by whoever found it but what would be reverse-engineerable by whatever civilization found it. We can (and have) taken swords that are rusted, pitted, fragile, and otherwise not suitable for combat and restored them to a museum-presentable state, and a D&D-level civilization would likely do the same, but that's because (A) both we and D&D people know how swords work and (B) they don't have to actually work after restoration, they just have to look like they'd work, and it's any replicas you reverse-engineered from the sword that would have to be serviceable.

If a magic-based civilization without any knowledge of guns, advanced composites, small piece manufacturing, or similar were to pull a Glock out of wherever it had been buried and filled up with dirt and sludge, the chances that they could figure out (A) how it worked, without a working gun or ammunition to tinker with, or perhaps even what it was supposed to do if it was damaged enough, and (B) how to recreate it, parts and materials and all, without the metallurgical and composites knowledge that RL technology presupposes are fairly slim. Further, even if the knowledge of its function was there and they figured out generally how to recreate it, they wouldn't have the technology needed to make the technology needed to make the gun, and as gunsmiths throughout history have discovered, trying to fire a gun made of inferior materials probably won't turn out well. And that all assumes that, in a world where you need magic to do chemistry for whatever reason, the people who discovered the gun could make gunpowder or an equivalent in the first place.

So the overall point of that and other examples is that even if prior civilizations had full-scale D&D magic and full-scale RL technology, current magic-only civilizations like those in standard D&D settings aren't guaranteed to develop technology along the same lines as RL technology as was asserted because higher-than-Renaissance tech, particularly anything relying on digital technology or chemistry or anything else magic substitutes for in D&D, would be both difficult-to-impossible to reproduce without the existing infrastructure of a RL-technological society and difficult-to-impossible to reverse-engineer due to the completely different conceptual and scientific worldviews the societies would have.

bryn0528

2012-09-19, 03:24 PM

Settings or worlds that function using unusual physics. I stop reading as soon as it becomes a discussion of how gravity functions on a mobius-strip shaped planet.

Eldan

2012-09-19, 03:35 PM

Settings or worlds that function using unusual physics. I stop reading as soon as it becomes a discussion of how gravity functions on a mobius-strip shaped planet.

Another one I love. My interest goes up as soon as someone writes a world that is on the inside of a cube with interior three small suns and seven giant moons that orbit each other.

Tyndmyr

2012-09-19, 03:39 PM

I don't want to start down this tangent and derail things again, but a recap of the argument:

Recall that we were talking not about what technology would be usable immediately by whoever found it but what would be reverse-engineerable by whatever civilization found it. We can (and have) taken swords that are rusted, pitted, fragile, and otherwise not suitable for combat and restored them to a museum-presentable state, and a D&D-level civilization would likely do the same, but that's because (A) both we and D&D people know how swords work and (B) they don't have to actually work after restoration, they just have to look like they'd work, and it's any replicas you reverse-engineered from the sword that would have to be serviceable.

Except that isn't what happens. You pick up the shiny magical sword, and if it's shinier with magic than your existing one, you immediately start swinging that one.

As for restoration, WW2 era submachine guns have been dug up and fired their entire magazine(buried with them) entirely without a problem. "pull trigger, thing on other side dies" is pretty easy to understand. If it wasn't, we wouldn't have crossbows. Anyone who can understand the repeating crossbow can pick up the precepts of the firearm.

If a magic-based civilization without any knowledge of guns, advanced composites, small piece manufacturing, or similar were to pull a Glock out of wherever it had been buried and filled up with dirt and sludge, the chances that they could figure out (A) how it worked, without a working gun or ammunition to tinker with, or perhaps even what it was supposed to do if it was damaged enough,

Guns frequently have ammunition in them. Modern ammunition is good for ridiculous periods of time. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together is gonna figure "hey, we best clean the dirt out".

You don't need to know jack about small piece manufacturing for it to change society. So you have artillery pieces and long arms instead of concealable handguns. Still a massive setting change.

and (B) how to recreate it, parts and materials and all, without the metallurgical and composites knowledge that RL technology presupposes are fairly slim.

A gun is fundamentally easy to construct. It's something explosive or very flammable inside a pipe, with a ball after it. Oh, they ain't gonna make a glock first time around, but they damn well are going to figure out how to make a firearm and start down that technological path.

Further, even if the knowledge of its function was there and they figured out generally how to recreate it, they wouldn't have the technology needed to make the technology needed to make the gun, and as gunsmiths throughout history have discovered, trying to fire a gun made of inferior materials probably won't turn out well. And that all assumes that, in a world where you need magic to do chemistry for whatever reason, the people who discovered the gun could make gunpowder or an equivalent in the first place.

Explosives already exist. Hell, the reagents for fireball are pretty obviously a reference to gunpowder. Or, yknow, any explosive spell would also serve. It really doesn't matter HOW you get the explosion, and it need not be anything like modern formulations that are carefully designed for no smoke, a minimum of dust, and maximum power.

If you can make a sword, you can make a gun. Perhaps not in mass, or extremely accurately, or whatever, but you can definitely make one. From there on, natural discovery and improvement will result in development.

So the overall point of that and other examples is that even if prior civilizations had full-scale D&D magic and full-scale RL technology, current magic-only civilizations like those in standard D&D settings aren't guaranteed to develop technology along the same lines as RL technology as was asserted because higher-than-Renaissance tech, particularly anything relying on digital technology or chemistry or anything else magic substitutes for in D&D, would be both difficult-to-impossible to reproduce without the existing infrastructure of a RL-technological society and difficult-to-impossible to reverse-engineer due to the completely different conceptual and scientific worldviews the societies would have.[/spoiler]

Digital? Who said anything about digital? You can make a perfectly fine firearm without higher-than-renaissance tech. We know, because historically, they did so rather a lot.

PairO'Dice Lost

2012-09-19, 04:25 PM

Except that isn't what happens. You pick up the shiny magical sword, and if it's shinier with magic than your existing one, you immediately start swinging that one.

As for restoration, WW2 era submachine guns have been dug up and fired their entire magazine(buried with them) entirely without a problem. "pull trigger, thing on other side dies" is pretty easy to understand. If it wasn't, we wouldn't have crossbows. Anyone who can understand the repeating crossbow can pick up the precepts of the firearm.

I admit, using a Glock was a mistake on my part. The original point I made was that Renaissance-level guns, if subjected to the same stresses and damage as swords when buried in tombs or underground for centuries, would come out the other side looking like a metal tube with little hint to its function, and then I tried to make a point about modern storage (books and hard drives) by saying "throw a laptop, a book, and a Glock in a hole," when talking about bootstrapping guns should have been a separate point from that and I honestly started to get my arguments mixed up. Also, I assumed from the big deal made about the fact that AK-47s can be buried for years, dug up, and fired contrasted with guns' routine maintenance requirements that that durability was the exception, not the rule, for modern firearms.

If they're all that durable, I will concede the point that modern-style guns would be usable if left behind by ancient civilizations. I still maintain that producing more of them without modern metallurgy, manufacturing processes, etc. would be impossible, and that without the background knowledge we have from historical guns and without examples of Renaissance guns to work with (as those would not be as durable as modern ones nor as intuitive as point-and-shoot), getting from point A of no guns to point B of gun tech that is widespread, understood, and good enough to rival magic is not guaranteed at all.

You don't need to know jack about small piece manufacturing for it to change society. So you have artillery pieces and long arms instead of concealable handguns. Still a massive setting change.

A gun is fundamentally easy to construct. It's something explosive or very flammable inside a pipe, with a ball after it. Oh, they ain't gonna make a glock first time around, but they damn well are going to figure out how to make a firearm and start down that technological path.

Explosives already exist. Hell, the reagents for fireball are pretty obviously a reference to gunpowder. Or, yknow, any explosive spell would also serve. It really doesn't matter HOW you get the explosion, and it need not be anything like modern formulations that are carefully designed for no smoke, a minimum of dust, and maximum power.

While the material components for fireball are an in-joke reference to gunpowder, the fact that chemistry in D&D requires magical knowledge as noted before (and also, I suppose, that using it for a fireball is apparently more effective than just lighting it on fire) means that gunpowder and other chemical stuff might not work the same way it does in real life. Every explosive, flammable, caustic, etc. substance in D&D is alchemical as far as we have examples for, so (A) it's not as easy to accidentally stumble upon things like gunpowder or rubber or the like as it was in real life, if it's possible at all, and (B) it's possible that gunpowder might not work at all, even if it is discovered, without the appropriate alchemical preparation.

If you can make a sword, you can make a gun. Perhaps not in mass, or extremely accurately, or whatever, but you can definitely make one. From there on, natural discovery and improvement will result in development.

Natural discovery and improvement that are reliant on the laws of physics working as they do in the real world, the technological infrastructure necessary to make the tools for improvements and so forth, and the desire to work on that when a magical infrastructure is already in place that provides tools and weapons superior to their technological equivalents.

Digital? Who said anything about digital? You can make a perfectly fine firearm without higher-than-renaissance tech. We know, because historically, they did so rather a lot.

We weren't just talking about guns, we were talking about all modern technology.

In case you missed my note the first time around, I'm not claiming that you cannot have magic and technology coexist in the same setting, because it is possible for technology to advance despite magic and there are plenty of settings that combine the two. I'm claiming that people who think that technological development is inevitable in settings where magic is already well-entrenched and the laws of physics might be different from our world, and that technology must advance from Medieval/Renaissance levels to modern or near-modern levels or the setting is stuck in Medieval stasis and thus doesn't make sense, are wrong. I'm basically trying to provide counterexamples to those claims, which include the discussion about "But ancient civilizations must have had advanced tech and their stuff would be lying around too for current civilizations to duplicate" you're continuing.

Tzi

2012-09-19, 05:03 PM

This is one of my big pet peeves. Handguns predate two-handed swords and full plate armor. Any excuse not to develop guns applies equally well to any other technology. You can't say "they wouldn't develop guns because magic" when magic hasn't stopped them from developing anything else. If the wand of magic missiles hasn't killed the bow, why would it kill the gun? Why are they using armor when there are first level spells that can replace armor?

I totally get where your coming from on that. I think in my setting I attempted to resolve that by having both magic and technology be a work in progress.

Some societies will not develop a certain technology, others will develop it first. I also treat spells and magic as a form of technology or as something needing to be discovered. A lot of spells in the SRD I've labeled as not discovered yet. Basically nobody has thought of a way to cast such a thing just yet. I figure it can take years, even centuries to develop a new spell just like a piece of technology. Also the limited number of people who are able to cast spells, and even more limited number who can make magic items.

Also some societies won't even know how to cast specific spells. Like how the Amerindian civilizations never developed the wheel.

But yes, I too hate that "Well magic replaced technology." well why have any technology?

My presonal turnoff is when people try to cram everything they can int othe setting. Like in published D&D settings - every one must have Mind Flyers, Yuan-Ti, Beholders etc. I would really preffer if most of D&d unique monsters were unique and keept on one part of the world.

I agree whole heartily. However sometimes I don't think this is the fault of setting makers in some cases so much as its appealing to the players.

In my own homebrew setting, its basically just humans and maybe a few variations of human. And while some are like "Cool," others react pretty negatively that they can't be a drow, kitsune, half-elf or orc. I've got one player in particularly who pretty regularly tries to argue specifically for more player races on the basis that it would "make sense," or some such. Ultimately I think sometimes setting makers do it more to placate others then of their own free will.

jseah

2012-09-19, 07:36 PM

I'm claiming that people who think that technological development is inevitable in settings where magic is already well-entrenched and the laws of physics might be different from our world, and that technology must advance from Medieval/Renaissance levels to modern or near-modern levels or the setting is stuck in Medieval stasis and thus doesn't make sense, are wrong.
To a certain extent, when players get to play and mess about in a setting and it spontaneously breaks when they In-Character start asking inquisitive questions about how the world works and trying to build better things (aka. incremental improvements and general "let's make better stuff" attitude);
not advancing becomes something you have to explain instead of just assuming it happens.

I've seen it happen all too much and avoid playing a scientist/engineer-type character in too many games due to a feeling (from reading the background) that it would punch too many holes and get vetoed immediately.

I have yet to play a game with a pure scientist character whose main motivation is to dig into the setting knowledge; ask "why" and don't stop.

Man on Fire

2012-09-19, 08:10 PM

Once again, you don't seem to actually know what you're talking about: the setting has many themes you can build off, depending on when the game in question is set.

Like? Because I don't see any, this is a setting build on the simplest basis, without anything to build the themes around.

Care to actually read what I wrote, and reply to that, instead of something completely different?

Okay, now you pissed me off:

Also, considering how much amazing stories happen in the Real World, which is constructed without such a guiding theme as far as we can tell, I seriously question your premise about mandating that the theme comes first. Yes, you need to match theme to mechanics, but nothing in that statement enforces any particular order.[/qote]

Tell me, what part I don't answer to. C'mon, tell me how my line about not wanting real world in my game doesn't reply on your long line about real world. I don't want real world and I don't want real world's stories, how that doesn't answer your opinion that real world has amazing stories? How is my clarification of what I said not answering to you twisting my words?

[quote]Nothing mandates that you need a central 'theme and idea' in order to create a setting in which you can run a game that leads to stories.

Well, this is thread for our world-building turn-offs. This is my turn-off, my prefference, nothing have to mandate anything.

Yes, individual games likely need this, but a setting can be large enough to hold many games, likely with different stories, themes, and ideas.

But it's good to have one theme that ties them together, especially that it may keep you from throwing some ideas that just doesn't work together in one world.

Exalted is actually a good example of this: consequences of our actions is one theme in Exalted, and certainly a prevalent one, but it's not the only theme, and it's certainly possible to run a game without large amounts of that theme present.

But it is a central theme, THE theme game was intended with, just like theme that violence may be an easy choice, but rarerly a good one.

I don't know why are you so up the arms to defend tippyverse so much. This setting is rigged with things I find my personal turn-offs, especially that it puts emphasis on things I hate about 3.5 (overpowered wizards, spells to make everything easy, enforcing of status quo), why cannot you just accept that somebody may dislike it?

PairO'Dice Lost

2012-09-19, 09:37 PM

To a certain extent, when players get to play and mess about in a setting and it spontaneously breaks when they In-Character start asking inquisitive questions about how the world works and trying to build better things (aka. incremental improvements and general "let's make better stuff" attitude);
not advancing becomes something you have to explain instead of just assuming it happens.

Granted, you need an explanation, but how many stories have you heard about characters who "just happen" to come up with the idea of guns and gunpowder and then, when asked how and why their character would happen to come up with them, respond with something along the lines that it's "logical" for it to happen because it happened in real life? I'm all for incremental changes in settings, and I abhor Medieval Stasis as much as the next guy, I just find it vastly more immersion-breaking to equate having more RL technology with making progress and hamfistedly try to shove it into a setting instead of incrementally improving what's already there, magic and magical things.

If players ask why there isn't more apparent progress in D&D settings, just ask them what you would do with your time if you were a genius in a world where magic worked: would you rather be credited with the invention of the steam engine and the handgun, or the spell engine and the owlbear? :smallwink:

GenericGuy

2012-09-19, 10:58 PM

Trying to think of ones more unique to me (not easy).
Nation states have a moral alignment and act within that moral alignment: realpolitik what’s that?

Anyone can do magic: how can civilization survive like that without descending into anarchy? It’s like if everyone had the potential to construct an atom bomb in their basement, someone somewhere would set one off.

Magic users have free reign: in a setting where say mind control is possible with magic, no steps are taken by nations to limit the influence of magic users from dominating the court or any random village for their own gains. Any attempt to stifle a magic user’s freedom of movement and actions is a sign the nation is evil and bigoted.

Easy cross country, continental, oceanic travel: in the past a voyage across the sea might mean you’re not going to see home again for years. In most fantasy worlds I’ve read about, maybe a week tops.

Vampires are cool: I prefer my vampires to be disgusting creatures living in the sewers as parasites of civilization, not suave lady-killers that are the ultimate predator.

Empires Evil, Kingdoms good: plenty has been said on this on many other threads, but its major pet-peeve of mine.

There are no females of the bestial or monstrous race: The only non-human females are elves, who are just skinnier (aka prettier) humans with pointy ears.

Half-bestial or monstrous races are only the product of male monster raping a female human: well if they don’t have women of their own:smalleek:.

Yora

2012-09-20, 04:27 AM

Easy cross country, continental, oceanic travel: in the past a voyage across the sea might mean you’re not going to see home again for years. In most fantasy worlds I’ve read about, maybe a week tops.
Well, if you went all the way around Africa and to China perhaps. But Columbus made his first trip to America and back to Spain in seven months, which included a three months stay in America and a one month stay on the Canary Islands. During the Roman Empire, getting from Rome to any place on the Mediteranean Sea by a fast ship in good weather would take about a week. From Gibraltar to Alexandria abot two weeks.

Xuc Xac

2012-09-20, 09:15 AM

Except that isn't what happens. You pick up the shiny magical sword, and if it's shinier with magic than your existing one, you immediately start swinging that one.

That's the point that seems to be being missed. If the ancient high-tech civilization had guns and laptops and magic swords, then the current civilization doesn't need to find only pristine magic swords and rusted junk. There would also be Glocks +2 and Laptops of Wisdom in pristine condition too.

Anyone can do magic: how can civilization survive like that without descending into anarchy? It’s like if everyone had the potential to construct an atom bomb in their basement, someone somewhere would set one off.

"Anyone can do magic" doesn't mean "anyone can cast wish". A world where any first level commoner can cast magic missile once per day isn't as dangerous as a world where the first level commoners all have guns. Our world hasn't descended into anarchy and we live in a world where anyone could theoretically build an atom bomb in their basement. There was a 17 year old kid who made his own yellowcake uranium and built a nuclear reactor in his garage. Not everyone does it because it's really hard to do and you have to be smart and dedicated to pull off that high level engineering, but low-level stuff like making a lamp shaped like an elephant that lights up when you pull the trunk is within easy reach.

If they're all that durable, I will concede the point that modern-style guns would be usable if left behind by ancient civilizations. I still maintain that producing more of them without modern metallurgy, manufacturing processes, etc. would be impossible, and that without the background knowledge we have from historical guns and without examples of Renaissance guns to work with (as those would not be as durable as modern ones nor as intuitive as point-and-shoot), getting from point A of no guns to point B of gun tech that is widespread, understood, and good enough to rival magic is not guaranteed at all.

Guns would be usable if they were enchanted like the swords from that same civilization. If they are still usable, they can be reverse engineered fairly easily. Right now, at this very moment, knockoffs of AK-47s are being produced with Iron Age tools in workshops all over Africa and Central Asia. And why do they have to be good enough to rival magic? They have to be good enough to rival magic for wealthy adventurers to use them, but they only have to be better than a spear for the military to buy 10,000 of them.

Regarding the number of casters needed: if not destroyed, magic items last indefinitely. If you have just one wizard in one city making one flying carpet per year, after a hundred years that's a hundred flying carpets, plus however many are brought back by adventurers, plus however many the society had beforehand, and in the meantime he can spend the rest of his year making other beneficial items at a similar scale.

Well, when you put it like that, the Glocks+2 really are conspicuously absent.

You don't have a choice of just two machine guns; you're using the wands or machine guns as your army's primary weapon. Do you want something that requires training to use, to ensure that only a subset of the population can use and that that subset would be trained to use safely (the bows or wands) or something that anyone could pick up without having the discipline and training to use it well and safely (the crossbows or machine guns)?

History says "something that anyone could pick up". Most militaries didn't want to plan their wars 20 years in advance, so "two weeks to train a musket brigade" was deemed superior to "two decades to train longbowmen". The peasants might rebel but so what? They could have rebelled with bows too. Either way, they'll be fighting your loyalists who are similarly armed, so it's a wash.

Regarding startup costs: Sinking funding into developing nonmagical means of flight profits later. Enchanting more of the same known, reliable means of flight profits now. The Wrights' first functional airplane used bicycle parts they had on hand from their shop, an engine from a car manufacturer, and other things that required a technological society's existing infrastructure and economy of scale to bring down the cost to the level that two hobbyists could build it. Not every wizard would try to figure out and build all of that from scratch when he could just enchant something to fly for a fraction of the effort and cost.

Why would a wizard need to do all that from scratch when the Wright Brothers didn't? The wizard who makes an airplane would be doing it after previous generations of wizards had already set up that infrastructure. The wizard aviator would have the benefit of scavenging parts from earlier inventions too.

Once again: you cannot assume the same development path as real-world history. We developed gunpowder at least as far back as ancient China, where it was used for fireworks at first rather than weaponry, and the recipe is simple enough that you can stumble upon it by accident and refine it from there. In D&D, they have dancing lights and other means to make pretty lights in the sky, and you have to be a magic user to do anything alchemical.

You can't really say they wouldn't develop gunpowder for fireworks when they already have dancing lights, because they weren't looking for fireworks. They were looking for an immortality potion and mixing random things together based on symbolic properties rather than chemical properties. They stumbled across it like a thousand monkeys banging on a thousand typewriters and eventually producing "To be or not to be? That is the question!" at random. Gunpowder was discovered in the real world in the Middle Ages, but it didn't have to be. It didn't require any pre-existing infrastructure. It's just a mixture of three naturally occurring substances that can literally be picked up off the ground. It could have been discovered at any time before or after that if someone had just stumbled on the right mixture of stuff by chance.

A lot of world-changing things were discovered that way. Someone tries to make something, and it doesn't work, but they accidentally stumble across something else useful. Unfortunately, in most settings as they are written, research either works as intended or just fails.

And gunpowder isn't even necessary for a civilization to develop guns. They just need to have the concept of flinging stuff really hard. If they have the idea of the blowgun (or even the pea shooter), then someone could try to think of ways to make stronger guns to launch heavier and deadlier darts. Several countries experimented with using compressed air for rifles as a safer and more portable alternative to gunpowder (non-flammable and easier to resupply in the field), for example.

jseah

2012-09-20, 04:21 PM

I just find it vastly more immersion-breaking to equate having more RL technology with making progress and hamfistedly try to shove it into a setting instead of incrementally improving what's already there, magic and magical things.

If players ask why there isn't more apparent progress in D&D settings, just ask them what you would do with your time if you were a genius in a world where magic worked: would you rather be credited with the invention of the steam engine and the handgun, or the spell engine and the owlbear? :smallwink:
Well, I agree with you on the RL technology part, not every magic system will lead to technologies that look anything at all like RL. But I would disagree on the lack of impact of technology.

One of the very first things I have seen players do (and been that player at times) is to find a way to automate things. Wizards are expensive. People are expensive (or if not, prone to revolt).

You find a way around the need to have people do things to get things done (or reduce the number of people needed or reduce the quality of people needed).
That is the essence of technology. Requiring less people for the same result. (same number of people for better results is the same thing)

In a pseudo-medieval magical world, one of the first things I would be trying to do is to make a cart that goes without a horse or a wizard. This of course assumes that magic is automatable at all, which in some systems isn't.
If it isn't automatable, I have no interest and would set about finding some other way to get rid of that horse.

Yora

2012-09-20, 04:26 PM

jseah

2012-09-20, 04:33 PM

You can always just say "Your device does not work". Mixing charcoal, sulfur, and salpeter does not make gunpowder. You also have to know the right ratios and preper it in the right way, or you get something that just burns without a bang. And good luck with a combustion engine. Let me see how you get that crude oil to become an aerosol.
More like, "how does your character know that?"

The problem starts when your players reply: "Well, ok, I want to run so-and-so experiment" (which is an IC reasonable experiment to try) and the GM figures that the answer going to end up with floating volcanoes or something crazy.

Which, I hasten to add, happens rather often when a magic system isn't built from the ground up.

Case study:
As a troublesome prospective player to a game that hadn't worked out its magic system yet, I asked a few questions regarding the magic system (questions were encouraged so I asked).

As it turns out, defining "object" and "stationary" was a bit more difficult than it seemed at first glance. Some weirdness resulted with my thought experiments for mages in sea combat destroying the ship when he cast a defensive shield that slowed incoming projectiles (the ship he was on counted as moving under the definition of stationary).

PairO'Dice Lost

2012-09-20, 05:21 PM

@Xuc Xac, sktarq, et al.: People have said that they want us to drop the tangent, and I've received some PMs to that effect as well, so I'm not going to continue that line of discussion in this thread.

You find a way around the need to have people do things to get things done (or reduce the number of people needed or reduce the quality of people needed).
That is the essence of technology. Requiring less people for the same result. (same number of people for better results is the same thing)

In a pseudo-medieval magical world, one of the first things I would be trying to do is to make a cart that goes without a horse or a wizard. This of course assumes that magic is automatable at all, which in some systems isn't.
If it isn't automatable, I have no interest and would set about finding some other way to get rid of that horse.

Totally agreed, and that's part of my point. D&D already has technology of a sort in the form of magic items, and people who want to reduce reliance on spellcasters (including those spellcasters themselves, who are tired of being bothered to cast spells) would probably take the route of making more magic items. People who find that not dramatic enough, or who think there aren't enough casters around to make that feasible, would probably try to mix magical and mundane methods, such as making a magical means of pulling things that could be attached to carts, waterwheels, and such for maximum versatility instead of trying to make the cart itself move.

What I don't like is when players think it's most logical to ignore all of the magical stuff that's already there and try to duplicate real-life stuff like guns, nukes, and computers (or only use the magic to create the parts to make the modern stuff) while complaining about lack of progress. Why do the same old stuff when you can take advantage of things unique to a certain system? I can make an airplane or a tank in pretty much any system; you can't make immovable rod-based space elevators and prestidigitation-based Turing machines in every system.

To apologize for the earlier derail, some more of my setting turn-offs:

X) Mirroring good and evil as if they're just strict opposites and nothing more: as BoED and BoVD showed, saying that the opposite of something Good is automatically something Evil or vice versa, or saying that something is Good just because it's only applied to/used against Evil things, just doesn't hold up. Sure, in D&D alignment is fairly black-and-white, but you don't need a paladin of slaughter for every paladin of honor, or a talisman of good for every talisman of evil, or the like.

I'm not talking just about opposed magic or themes or whatever, since those are more nuanced; blackguards are different enough from paladins to have a place, and the Light Side and Dark Side in Star Wars aren't just mirror images. It's only when things get to the level of BoED's "Poisons and diseases are evil, but ravages are A-okay because they're poisons and diseases for evil people!" or Star Wars's "Force Lightning is totally evil, but Electric Judgment (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Electric_Judgment) is totally good, because Force Lightning is blue but Electric Judgment is green!"

X+1) Simplistic alignment associations for gods. Gods of death are usually evil, gods of nature are usually neutral, gods of light are usually good, and so on, and all of the gods have fairly tight themes (gods of death tend to also be gods of icky/spooky things too, and gods of knowledge tend to be neutral and uncaring). There are some exceptions in published D&D settings, due to sheer numbers of published gods if nothing else, but not enough homebrewed settings have gods like, say, Pluto/Hades, who was good of "death" (the underworld) and also wealth and trade, due to associations of wealth and death with being underground...or gods of both death and nature who are Lawful Good and all about working with the pack/flock/clan, dying for things greater than yourselves, death being a natural part of the cycle to be cherished instead of mourned, and so on...or a pair of sibling gods, one of civilization and cities, one of trade and travel, who are both evil and have domain over smog, shipwrecks, and other bad aspects of their portfolios.

X+2) Monotheistic churches in polytheistic worlds. Too many religions in polytheistic 'brews have churches with Pope-esque leaders, a regimented hierarchy, established places of worship for laypeople, and so on. Sure, D&D religions started off as Catholic Church lookalikes with their paladins and clerics and restrictive domains/spheres, but it's not that hard to have religions that have decentralized authority and/or lack temples and shrines and/or worship some number of gods between "one or two of them" and "all of them" and so forth.

jseah

2012-09-20, 07:17 PM

What I don't like is when players think it's most logical to ignore all of the magical stuff that's already there and try to duplicate real-life stuff like guns, nukes, and computers (or only use the magic to create the parts to make the modern stuff) while complaining about lack of progress.
There are some things that are general though.

Like people. Most settings have people in the sense of "independent identities with independent goals and desires; that have some social order amongst themselves".
Most settings don't usually have useful things happening when people don't do them. Food doesn't normally fall from the sky. (replace with whatever other desire)

And the fundamental problem with people is one of economics.

Each person desires things. Each person can make some things (averaged over the whole population). Therefore, the more things you can make per person, the more things per person you have.

With the two common themes of people and "no free things" in most settings, it would be fair to say that in most settings, societies would pursue methods to increase the number of things each person can make. (some of them redefine people; aka slavery; the same forces apply to the masters)

It doesn't matter what your metaphysics are, what your societies' philosophy is. If your setting does not have this force of desiring and working towards needing less people, it is not a setting we understand and can play in. Or it has a plot hole.

And if you look at the stereotypical fantasy story, this is a plot hole.
This is something I dislike in settings.

EDIT: this is not to say you cannot explain it. You can explain it, but I *will* ask for that explanation.

Inglenook

2012-09-20, 08:30 PM

Not everyone does it because it's really hard to do and you have to be smart and dedicated to pull off that high level engineering, but low-level stuff like making a lamp shaped like an elephant that lights up when you pull the trunk is within easy reach.
Unless your name is Anthony Michael Hall. :smallfrown:

TheWombatOfDoom

2012-09-27, 07:47 AM

I'm not fond of settings that the characters are left to sandbox. What I mean is if you're building a world, you should also have some sort of idea for the players campaign. If it's just aimless and the characters just screw around, that doesn't scream very well organized. It's one thing if that's the intentions of the group.

On the converse side, I hate railroad plots, where the DM forces the group though an extended area whether the group is willing or not. This is also situational, but I'd rather not have long cutscenes of the party walking through a tunnel under a town. I'd rather roleplay that. I don't know if I'm making my points clear in either paragraph, but ah well, i'm tired.

I agree with much of what GenericGuy said earlier. I tend to think a race wouldn't become a populace of any sort through forcible reproduction, and more out of an alliance or actual interest in the other. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a race of its own, period.

Morph Bark

2012-09-27, 09:53 AM

I'm not fond of settings that the characters are left to sandbox. What I mean is if you're building a world, you should also have some sort of idea for the players campaign. If it's just aimless and the characters just screw around, that doesn't scream very well organized. It's one thing if that's the intentions of the group.

This is how I started with one of my settings, which I designed with exploration in mind and especially pirates (since the players would be pirates). As the campaign went on, I threw in more and more stuff that led to plot, but most of it was quickly run away from by the players. This was mostly because of trouble with local authorities (one of which had control over an otherwise-insane dragon), but at the end one of the players simply walked up to a lich who ruled a desert metropolis and got drafted subsequently. It was one of my best-designed settings, and was created entirely by winging it during sessions. My only better setting so far has been Ymaggion, but that one has had tons of development.

TheWombatOfDoom

2012-09-27, 10:38 AM

This is how I started with one of my settings, which I designed with exploration in mind and especially pirates (since the players would be pirates). As the campaign went on, I threw in more and more stuff that led to plot, but most of it was quickly run away from by the players. This was mostly because of trouble with local authorities (one of which had control over an otherwise-insane dragon), but at the end one of the players simply walked up to a lich who ruled a desert metropolis and got drafted subsequently. It was one of my best-designed settings, and was created entirely by winging it during sessions. My only better setting so far has been Ymaggion, but that one has had tons of development.

Yeah, it really depends on the person DMing. Some people it works for - others it falls very short. I'm pretty good at going off the fly, I've made whole dungeons that way, and stories, but as a player I've experienced some very disappointing games.

bryn0528

2012-09-27, 11:19 AM

That reminds me; settings without developed NPCs.

Everyone (or mostly everyone) well known in a setting should be realized--famous and infamous characters and especially leaders. Maybe not every character needs to be detailed exactly, but it helps to run a campaign with ideas in mind for who's who.

Zireael

2012-10-01, 01:31 PM

TheWombatOfDoom

2012-10-01, 01:55 PM

Hmm. I dislike the following:

- Black vs. White settings, where everyone is either Good or Evil; Lawful or Chaotic also falls under that
- Magic as Technology (trains running on elementals mentioned earlier)
-

What about other less crazy things...Such as casting permanent light on objects to be used as lighting, with shutters to turn them "off", or Other storage units of holding, such as shelves, homes, ice boxes, closets, trunks, pockets, so on. Rods of absorbtion's built into walls to absorb destructive spells. Magic carpets sewn together to make a derigible? Brain...I thought I said LESS crazy.

In other case, magic AS technology when done well I feel make good DM's. They take a system and integrate it into the world in creative ways. Train-elementals I don't consider to be one of them.

Yora

2012-10-02, 09:05 AM

If you use magic as technology, you pretty much have to make it victorian-style MagePunk. It's ancient and medieval campaigns were it really doesn't work at all.

That reminds me; settings without developed NPCs.

Everyone (or mostly everyone) well known in a setting should be realized--famous and infamous characters and especially leaders. Maybe not every character needs to be detailed exactly, but it helps to run a campaign with ideas in mind for who's who.
As much as people keep hating on Forgotten Realms, the people are the setting.
Well, technically everything but the PCs and NPC is what the word setting means, but a setting is just a stage. Only when people are doing something on that stage does it become interesting and alive.

For my own setting, I have the stage pretty much perfectly set, but it still feels like it's in a very early stage of development because there aren't any actual people yet. There are races and cultures, but to have any stories take place in it, it now needs to have some movers and shakers. People with conflicting goals and coliding values who cause the friction where there is anything for characters to do.

PairO'Dice Lost

2012-10-02, 12:37 PM

If you use magic as technology, you pretty much have to make it victorian-style MagePunk. It's ancient and medieval campaigns were it really doesn't work at all.

Greco-Roman-era magitech works pretty well, actually. The Romans invented a ton of stuff that didn't show up again for a long time, including the steam engine, and just didn't bother doing anything with it; for Roman magepunk, all you have to do is assume is that the stuff they invented has a magical basis instead of a scientific one (steam and concrete elementals!) and go from there.

And of course the Greek philosophers were all about perfection, geometry, abstract forms, souls, and that sort of thing, which lends itself to magepunk as well. Heck, imagine the path history would take if the Library of Alexandria was full of spellbooks and its librarians could cast protection from fire. :smallcool:

awa

2012-10-02, 04:55 PM

I also disagree that mage tech needs a victorian feel. just becuase you have mage tech doesn't mean you would develop those same technologies at the same pace. For example heavier then air flight is vastly easier in dnd then in the real world.

Salbazier

2012-10-07, 04:40 AM

Setting that trivialize religion and/or presented it as a caricature of itself. Mostly this is the case of presenting religious people as little more than irrational fanatics, but there also the case where the supposed divinity doesn't feel 'divine'.

awa

2012-10-07, 08:58 AM

on a somewhat related topic it always seemed weird to me the type of henothestic religion practiced in dnd. it makes very little sense to only worship a war god what happens when your wife is having a hard time having a baby are you supposed to pray to Hextor?

dnd presents gods in the polytheistic mold but then has people worship them as if they were henotheistic.

Henotheistic means worshiping one god but believing in the existence of other gods

Yora

2012-10-07, 12:12 PM

I don't think most D&D settings actually propose that. There are mentions in lots of settings that the chosen deity is merely the one that gets your soul, but people pray to whatever gods that apply to their situation.

Zireael

2012-10-07, 01:24 PM

Erm, non-native English speaker here, what does "henotheistic" mean?

Yora

2012-10-07, 01:36 PM

awa says worshipping a single god out of many. Though in academics, we call that monolatry.

Morph Bark

2012-10-07, 01:40 PM

Erm, non-native English speaker here, what does "henotheistic" mean?

Henotheism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henotheism). Basically, you worship one god, while accepting that there are (or may be) a number of other gods.

awa

2012-10-07, 02:21 PM

Wikipedia tell me that monolatry (which i was unfamiliar with) is slightly different

quoted from wikipedia

"Henotheism is closely related to the theistic concept of monolatry, which is also the worship of one god among many. The primary difference between the two is that henotheism is the worship of one god, not precluding the existence of others who may also be worthy of praise, while Monolatry is the worship of one god who alone is worthy of worship, though other gods are known to exist"

BRC

2012-10-07, 02:29 PM

X) Mirroring good and evil as if they're just strict opposites and nothing more: as BoED and BoVD showed, saying that the opposite of something Good is automatically something Evil or vice versa, or saying that something is Good just because it's only applied to/used against Evil things, just doesn't hold up. Sure, in D&D alignment is fairly black-and-white, but you don't need a paladin of slaughter for every paladin of honor, or a talisman of good for every talisman of evil, or the like.

Am I the only one who thinks that would actually be very interesting, not just as a vague concept, but as an actual RULE in the setting. If the Forces of good create a Holy Sword, they must also create an Unholy Sword with the exact same properties, same goes for the forces of Evil creating an Unholy Sword. If you destroy an item like this, it's "Twin" is also destroyed. Therefore, the forces of Evil keep building elaborate vaults in which to hide "Good" magic items (So they can use the Evil ones on the front lines), while the forces of Good do the same thing with the Evil items that they keep building while attempting to equip their own forces. If you manage to raid these vaults you get a bucketload of magic items that you can wield yourself, or destroy to deprive the enemy of the use of their twins.
Neutral, unaligned items can be created, but they can be used by either side, and can therefore be easily looted in battle.

Of course, this requires that the setting be based around some big cosmic struggle between "Good" and "Evil".

Unless each side refers to itself as the "Good" side, wielding "Holy" Weapons against their "Evil" foes, with each side excusing their crimes as "The Neccessities of War", while pointing to "The debased and vile nature of our foe" every time their enemy commits some atrocity.

Amechra

2012-10-07, 05:16 PM

The above sounds really fun, imho.

awa

2012-10-07, 05:27 PM

actually if you applied it to people it could come off as a good justification for not killing in super hero games. maybe add a loophole if it's done with an overly elaborate death trap you can bypass.

PairO'Dice Lost

2012-10-08, 12:02 AM

Am I the only one who thinks that would actually be very interesting, not just as a vague concept, but as an actual RULE in the setting. If the Forces of good create a Holy Sword, they must also create an Unholy Sword with the exact same properties, same goes for the forces of Evil creating an Unholy Sword. If you destroy an item like this, it's "Twin" is also destroyed. Therefore, the forces of Evil keep building elaborate vaults in which to hide "Good" magic items (So they can use the Evil ones on the front lines), while the forces of Good do the same thing with the Evil items that they keep building while attempting to equip their own forces. If you manage to raid these vaults you get a bucketload of magic items that you can wield yourself, or destroy to deprive the enemy of the use of their twins.
Neutral, unaligned items can be created, but they can be used by either side, and can therefore be easily looted in battle.

Of course, this requires that the setting be based around some big cosmic struggle between "Good" and "Evil".

Unless each side refers to itself as the "Good" side, wielding "Holy" Weapons against their "Evil" foes, with each side excusing their crimes as "The Neccessities of War", while pointing to "The debased and vile nature of our foe" every time their enemy commits some atrocity.

Interesting idea. The Saga of Recluce series by L. E. Modesitt uses something along these lines. The main struggle in the setting is between Order and Chaos, and mages are either "black" order mages (can use order to strengthen things, harden air into barriers, and such), "white" chaos mages (can use chaos to degrade things, shoot fire, and such), or "gray" druids (can use both order and chaos), and all of them have some shared tricks like bending light to turn invisible, knowing when people lie, and similar, though their methods of doing so depend on whether they use order or chaos.

See here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Saga_of_Recluce) for a full summary, but basically the most ancient empire in the world ran on chaos (essentially using it as a form of fusion power to run ships and power weapons), but eventually fell due to their technology failing and Order became ascendant. Order and Chaos traded ascendancy for a while, and we find out partway through the series that the Balance works to keep things balanced, so the more chaos there is in the world the more order there is as well and every "chaos focus" (extremely powerful chaos mage) is balanced by the rise of an "order focus."

The order forces develop ships running on chaos-engines contained by order-hardened iron, dramatically increasing the amount of both order and chaos in the world, and in fact they are deliberately increasing the amount of chaos in the world available to their enemies in the hopes of strengthening themselves, because most of the order is concentrated in one group while the chaos mages are widely dispersed. The cycle keeps escalating until it gets so bad that the druids have to pretty much wipe out most of the world's order and chaos to prevent Bad Things from happening.

Combining that with your suggesting, to make Law and Chaos conserved quantities as much as Good and Evil, would actually explain a lot. The Blood War, why magic items are stored in dungeons, the way villains seem to keep coming back unabated, why BoED and BoVD work the way they do, and more. I'll probably use something along those lines from now on.

TheWombatOfDoom

2012-10-08, 07:23 AM

ReaderAt2046

2012-10-15, 11:32 AM

My turn offs:

5. any non-demon race designated as always evil.

For that matter, even demons are not an Always Evil race, they're the evil portion of the angelic species. Or at least that's the way they are IRL, maybe D&D does things differently (though I'd prefer a different name in that case).

Eldan

2012-10-15, 11:47 AM

You can debate whether there were demons in hell before the angels fell.

Anyway, in D&D, outsiders aren't really species. They are concepts given form. People believe in evil, demons are made. People believe in good, archons are made.
It gets interesting once enough people believe that demons can be redeemed.

Iceforge

2012-10-15, 04:07 PM

For that matter, even demons are not an Always Evil race, they're the evil portion of the angelic species. Or at least that's the way they are IRL, maybe D&D does things differently (though I'd prefer a different name in that case).

Must say that part killed me :)

How demons and angels and such are "IRL" highly depends on which religion/culture you draw your inspiration from, but to answer your indirect question, the devils of DnD are kinda fallen angels, demons are another breed all together, and the fight between angels and the demons is what lead to the devils falling.

PairO'Dice Lost

2012-10-15, 05:01 PM

Must say that part killed me :)

How demons and angels and such are "IRL" highly depends on which religion/culture you draw your inspiration from, but to answer your indirect question, the devils of DnD are kinda fallen angels, demons are another breed all together, and the fight between angels and the demons is what lead to the devils falling.

That sounds like the 4e interpretation of demons. In AD&D and 3e, devils aren't fallen angels as a general rule though some devils and Archdevils are indeed fallen celestials, and demons fight more with devils (with daemons aiding both sides and demodands mostly staying out of the Blood War) because the celestials (composed of angels, archons, guardinals, and eladrin) leave them to their own devices in the hopes that the fiends are kept occupied and ignore the Upper Planes and the Prime Material.

Milo v3

2012-10-15, 05:09 PM

Iceforge

2012-10-15, 05:37 PM

awa

2012-10-15, 05:53 PM

personally i have no problem with always evil races provided you emphasize a non human mind set some thing like a mind flayer being always evil makes perfect sense. If they just act like evil humans then im less okay with it, if their society is completely nonsensical like many depictions of drow then i cant stand it.

more something i see in novels then game settings but whatever

when the villains are repeatedly described as stupid and or bumbling if the bad guys are so stupid how are they possible a threat. (note i have seen situations where this was actually done well so there are of course exceptions.)

when anyone who opposes the protagonist for any reason will be uniformly bad, morally, mentally physically inferior to anyone who chooses to assist the heroes.
this is especially grating if the society has some kind of negative trait such as women having lower social standing, every single non evil member of such a society will either not have this particular prejudiced or will rapidly abandon it despite it supposedly being deeply engrained in the society.

PairO'Dice Lost

2012-10-15, 06:08 PM

I was thinking their general "creation" history from Tyrants of Hell, where basically the story is that devils started as a group of celestials fighting the disorder of chaos that are the demons and grew evil in their methods to destroy them while remaining lawful, not that each individual devil started out as angels.

Never did read a lot of that material, only the story on the first few pages, as to be honest, its not really my thing and my experiences from games that includes the blood war is not good, so maybe I got it wrong, but when you read the start of Tyrants of Hell (Fiendish Codex II) it does sound like the origin of Devils (as a "species") was that they used to be angels/celestials but they diverted away from good

The FC2 material is a retcon of the Planescape material that both puts more of a Judeo-Christian spin on things with the new falling/corruption interpretation (because WotC is annoying like that) and gets plenty of stuff wrong (archons, not angels, are lawful, and the demons weren't the first evil or chaotic creatures around). For more information, see here (http://www.planewalker.com/forum/creation-myths#comment-46524).

Acanous

2012-10-15, 07:27 PM

I'm pretty good with Aberrations that are Always Evil.
Aboleths, for example, they think everything else that isn't an Aboleth is basically a nonsenient, like resources waiting to be tapped, exploited, or destroyed to prevent competition.

They don't care what your mission is, they don't particularly feel like lowering themselves to negotiate with you. If they DO deign to talk to you, it is to issue orders, not parley. If you're a threat, they will exterminate you with extreme prejiduce, and take your magical things so they can make some profit of the whole ordeal.

Basically, to Humans, Aboleths have unknowable goals, they either enslave or kill you, and if they enslave you, they'll probably have you go enslave your friends or family.
To Humans, that's horrible evil. To Aboleths, that's a properly exploited opportunity.

Iceforge

2012-10-17, 05:18 PM

The FC2 material is a retcon of the Planescape material that both puts more of a Judeo-Christian spin on things with the new falling/corruption interpretation (because WotC is annoying like that) and gets plenty of stuff wrong (archons, not angels, are lawful, and the demons weren't the first evil or chaotic creatures around). For more information, see here (http://www.planewalker.com/forum/creation-myths#comment-46524).

Ah, makes sense, I read them after a DM told me to read them to prepare for campaign and he is a pretty heavily planescape influenced guy, who almost always runs his cosmos the planescape way.

Anyway, enough about that, as its starting to go off-topic.

But on a related on-topic note:

I hate worlds where the books establish a creation myth as being the canon truth, while there is no way that people inside the world would actually know if it was true.

Think oWoD was guilty of this; Reading the VtM books made it pretty clear that the real creation myth was very close to the judeo-Christian creation myth with a few spins on it.

There was no reason any characters in the game world would have more certainty about it than characters from our world, but by establishing it as almost a fact in the canon, I had players who would get upset if there was any hint ingame that creation happened another way

awa

2012-10-17, 06:28 PM

actually every single group in old world of darkness had their own contradictory creation myth. i know werewolves could actually go visit their gods. actually if i recall correctly even different vampire groups had different views on the truth and the stuff presented in the book was just the camirilas (probably mangled that) take on it.

Yora

2012-10-23, 05:59 AM

Here is one: Names with unneccessary spelling. In some cases where there are two vowls next to each other but belong to different syllables, using an apostrophe or diacritics is permisable, but in those case they need to be used correctly. There are some languages in which apostrophes and diacritics are used as actual letters and not as pronounciation indicators, but if you write in English, use the English alphabet. Faerûn is okay because there are no other ways to indicate a long vowel in english like uh in German or uu in Japanese. The game Brütal Legend can get away with it, because it's a joke on the same practice by some heavy metal bands. But otherwise it's useless to people who don't know the symbols and just looks silly to people who do.

Man on Fire

2012-10-23, 02:16 PM

I have one, don't know if I haven't mentioned it already - giving new names to existing races and not changing anything else. This i so far my only complaint about othertwise excellent Fionavarn Tapestry books - we have Elves, who are exactly like Elves we all know, very Tolkien-vibed, more than some people got used to, but they are called Ios Afars. We have Orcs and Ogres who are as typical in being Orcs and Ogres as you can, all up to being slaves of dark lord, but they are called Sfart Afars and Urgachs respectively. If the only thing you want to change is the name, don't change it at all, there is no shame in using Orcs and Elves.

Eldan

2012-10-23, 02:48 PM

celtois

2012-10-23, 03:39 PM

Not something that really bothered me with Fionavar. Fionavar is supposed to the first world after all, full of legends which echo our own. Or more appropriately our legends echo their's. So seeing things we are familiar with is part of the magic of the world.

To top that off the Lios alfar (and svart), are based on the nordic myths, and the name is taken almost directly from them (though anglicized slightly). It's not just a renaming of Tolkiens creations. It's going back to the source material, and drawing directly from it.

In short, the names aren't randomly chosen, but drawn from sources older than Tolkien

Friv

2012-10-23, 03:45 PM

The Planescape version you described actually sounds pretty cool and makes a lot of sense. But yeah, WotC's planes and alignment are complete nonsense.

Oh, another one I just thought of:

13. The languages in 95% of settings, especially published ones. Common works fine as a lingua franca, sure, but in that case most people should speak it as a second language, rather than their primary. Sometimes people from different areas of the same country can barely understand one another in real life, so the idea of most of the world speaking the same language mutually intelligibly is mind boggling. Especially when most people are uneducated, and there are no global media to reinforce a language standard. And don't even get me started on the silliness that is racial languages (e.g. Dwarven) and environmental languages (e.g. Aquan).

Yeah, I know Common is supposed to be an abstraction to represent whatever the PCs and DM speak, and I know it's super nitpicky. I'm a linguistics major, though, so this completely destroys my suspension of disbelief. Similar to how a biologist must feel when he looks through the Monster Manual, I suppose. :smallfrown:
I tend to assume that Common and racial languages are the languages that the gods of those races speak, and they've more or less used their temples to prevent linguistic drift from happening. ;)

Yora

2012-10-24, 03:39 AM

I think at least one AD&D book says that Common is a stand-in for whatever is the common language for a given region, not any specific language.

Inglenook

2012-10-24, 02:19 PM

Oh God, that makes even less sense. :smallsigh: *shudders*

Eldan

2012-10-24, 02:33 PM

Well, I guess that also assumes that if you go into a distant region, you won't understand the local common.

C.J.Geringer

2012-10-25, 11:12 AM

Oh God, that makes even less sense. :smallsigh: *shudders*

Why so? I think it makes sense, if you are in England, common would refer to English, in Germany to German, in Portugal to Portuguese and so on.

It assumes your campaign occurs in a region where humans are the dominant race, but it is easy to adapt, for example if you were to make a campaign centered in an elven kingdom, you could substitute elvish for common.

Grimsage Matt

2012-10-25, 11:50 AM

Seeing how this has all the people who look at the "Chiche" camapains, want to ask some things about one I'll try running.

It's postapoclyptic earth. The Aztecs where half right. The world didn't end, but human civilzation collapsed. Toronto (where it takes place), has your average freaks. There are Cylocp Smiths in the Nuclear power plant, that are making nuclear power weapons/armor/monster trucks. The University of Toronto is now home to wizards... and turns invisible about 9 times a week. Tesla is back from the grave, and has converted the CN tower into a new mad science lair. The Necromancers are mantianing the graveyards. The Arch-Bishop is calling for a crusade.

The races use the custom build rules (mutations and all) but they all use the human lifespan.

The only 3 base classes are the Generic Expert, Spellcaster and Warrior from Unearthed Arcana.

You can meet (a) god. He's in a irish bar. You can also find JC, in the jewish temple.

The Angels are so anal retentive and "All that is not pure must be purged" that people mistake them for demons. Heck, the Demons/Devils? They form the community watch.

New York is overrun with Lovecraft like creatures, and the bible belt has been wiped out so utterly that people say it's "in hell".

So, how does it look? Trying not to make it cliche/a poorly designed world, so asking you guys.

awa

2012-10-25, 01:48 PM

the 2012 prediction refer to the mayans not the aztec.

edit
also ive never been entirely clear on the religion rules on this form but i think that violates it

edit x2
also it should probbaly be in home brew world building section assuming the religious refrences dont kill it and im increasingly thinking thats likely

edit 3
thats what i get for having two tabs open forget wich section im in

Inglenook

2012-10-26, 01:17 AM

Why so? I think it makes sense, if you are in England, common would refer to English, in Germany to German, in Portugal to Portuguese and so on.
But if this is the case, then why (by RAW) can you traverse the entire globe and communicate perfectly with everyone who speaks Common?

And if the "Common is used to mean each region's version of Common" thing is what they intended, why say Common (England) and Common (Germany) when what you really mean is English and German?

I could maybe buy it for other races, though, if their mindset is alien enough that they can happily share a single standardized way of speaking without the incessant human need to create slang and dialects that later grow into full-blown languages. :smalltongue:

Eldan

2012-10-26, 04:31 AM

In AD&D, at least, the book pretty specifically told you "We, the designers, can't think of everything. Change the rules if you think they don't make sense in a situation".
That would be such a case.

Yora

2012-10-26, 05:42 AM

And if the "Common is used to mean each region's version of Common" thing is what they intended, why say Common (England) and Common (Germany) when what you really mean is English and German?
Because there are a lot more languages in both England and Germany than just English and German. And while 99% can understand Standard German and are mostly able to make themselves understood in it, I'd say at least two thirds of all people can also talk in ways that people from other parts of the country can't understand. And that's without getting into foreign languages like English or Turkish.

Also, a rulebook does not know what countries there are in a campaign and what languages the people speak. So they says "the language that people primarily use in the area where the campaign takes place".
Of course, that was decades ago and newer editions of D&D don't have anything like that, and I'm not even sure it appeared in more than one book on campaign design. But it does make a lot of sense.

C.J.Geringer

2012-10-26, 05:49 AM

But if this is the case, then why (by RAW) can you traverse the entire globe and communicate perfectly with everyone who speaks Common?

By this rules, you can´t. They were made for a campaign set in a specific region. Each region would have it´s own language which would be "Common" for them.

And this also happens where common is more of a lingua franca (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_franca). For example:

In Faerun(3.0), Common was a trade language used as a lingua franca, however, it was specific for the heartlands, if you traveled to a remote village, with no outside trade they would not speak common. If you went to the far east you would not understand their common language.

And if the "Common is used to mean each region's version of Common" thing is what they intended, why say Common (England) and Common (Germany) when what you really mean is English and German?

Because the designers had no idea in which setting/region you campaign would take place. and "common" is shorter and easier to use/write than "the appropriate dominant language for the region where the campaign is taking place"

Edit: Yora beat me to it

I could maybe buy it for other races, though, if their mindset is alien enough that they can happily share a single standardized way of speaking without the incessant human need to create slang and dialects that later grow into full-blown languages. :smalltongue:

This rules(which were made to be practical and simple, not realistic for a complex setting), assume that either, the other races, are not that numerous, and thus share a language, that the specific language is specific to the ones near the campaign(e.g.:the "Dwarven" language is the language of the dwarves in the neighboring mountains, and thus of the dwarves commonly found int the campaign, not necessarily of all dwarves), or that it is a race's version of common(e.g.:each dwarven real has it´s own language, but they use "Dwarven" as a lingua franca).

C.J.Geringer

2012-10-26, 05:58 AM

Eldan

2012-10-26, 06:01 AM

And if the "Common is used to mean each region's version of Common" thing is what they intended, why say Common (England) and Common (Germany) when what you really mean is English and German?

As Yora said, German has a Common Language. It's the one we write in, which is often quite different from what people speak. I can not understand some people who live within 200 kilometers from here when they speak their own dialect. Not a word of it. It's still German. And that's not going into some of the weirder stuff that is spoken in Germany.

TheWombatOfDoom

2012-10-26, 06:29 AM

As Yora said, German has a Common Language. It's the one we write in, which is often quite different from what people speak. I can not understand some people who live within 200 kilometers from here when they speak their own dialect. Not a word of it. It's still German. And that's not going into some of the weirder stuff that is spoken in Germany.

That's actually very intriging. Curious about the dialect varancies and how they differ, and are still alike. Is it basic pronounciation?

Yora

2012-10-26, 10:04 AM

Pronounciation is the most important factor. I am from the very north and most people under 50 from that region speak very similar to the German used on TV and in movies. But I know some young people from central Germany and they have a hard time understanding older people who grew up in rural areas in the north. Other regions have much more variation in pronounciation and with older people you might get the situation that "foreign Germans" can't understand their speech at all. I lived quite far in the south for almost 8 years and I still keep asking people to repeat what they said to me for a second and a third time instead of just saying "okay" and skipping over it.
Then there is also vocabulary, which has lots of words that are used only in specific regions and don't exist in others. You'd have a hard time finding Gör, Griepsch, Flunsch, krüsch, kacheln, drömeln, or Plünn'n in any English-German dictionary. And I'd guess 200 km from my home, nobody else would know those words either.
And that's just how young urban people talk at home with their parents. When my grandparents are chatting with their friends, even I have a hard time keeping up. And my Gradfather grew up in the same city as I did, just 50 years earlier.

TheWombatOfDoom

2012-10-26, 10:34 AM

awa

2012-10-26, 10:41 AM

even in just america their are fairly strong acents between diffrent locations not to even counting slang and such

Yora

2012-10-26, 10:43 AM

I guess so. But I'm not sure if we actually have a good compairison for those. After all, we usually get to hear americans, irish, and australians only from TV shows and movies, and that's always limited to a degree to be understood at least by native english speakers from other countries or even foreign speakers.
I wouldn't be suprised if there are some rural backwaters in England or Australia, where older people still speak in ways that are unrecognizable by cityfolk.
The exception are programs made for local audiences, but those usually never get any widespread exposure for the same reason. Here's a scene from a north german movie (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOfEMn4R3qI#t=2m25s) and they all really get into it. The two guys at the table are rather moderate, but that old farmer is hardcore. Even I only understanf 90% of what he's saying. I would guess most people who don't speak German wouldn't even guess that it could be German by the sound of it.
I wonder if Eldan can understand anything of it. :smallwink:

TheWombatOfDoom

2012-10-26, 10:53 AM

Hm. So, because of dialect differences, if I were to go visit the town that was named after my last name (or perhaps visa versa because I'm not sure of the history), I might not be able to understand the people there even if I learned/knew "common" German?

Umbraeques

2012-10-26, 11:00 AM

And indeed similar to English within England. Some cities, 50 or so miles apart can have accents so different that it takes quite considerable effort for each to understand the other. Local slang and even word order in some sentences can vary tremendously.

The same is true even within the US; take the stereotypical New Yorker say, and drop them deep in the country in Louisianna and see how well they can communicate with the locals.

TV has homogenised the language somewhat, but local variations exist that almost could be a seperate language. I suspect this may be true for all nations and/or languages (with sufficient speakers/locales).

Anyways, back to the OP. Something that occurs to me is that many worlds have multiple nations, and races, most if not all with armies, castles and the like - many disliking each other, yet no major conflicts appear to be ongoing or have happened recently.

Yora

2012-10-26, 11:03 AM

Communication would be possible. Because almost everyone except for recent immigrants knows Standard German and can speak it reasonably well, even if most of us don't use it at home. It could be difficult depending on how strong the regional accent of a given person is, but if you have a reasonably good pronounciation as you learned in language classes, everyone would be able to understand you.
In urban centers, it is much more common to be around people from other parts of the country, so urban people unconsciously switch to Standard German pronounciation and have lots of practice in it. In rural areas that have basically no "foreigners" moving there, people speak dialect almost all the time, so they have almost no practice with the standard pronounciations. And that can be quite difficult.
But you can read all books and newspapers, listen to radio shows, and watch TV, unless it's specifically made to use a regional dialect. Because Standard German is the common language that everyone knows in addition to their regional local dialect.

TheWombatOfDoom

2012-10-26, 12:02 PM

So to be more on topic - Standard German is "Common" in the setting of "Germany", and the regional dialects would be perhaps "undercommon" or a variated dialect. Then you have foreigners who speak other languages or "other races that speak their own languages".

So, in this case, I actually agree with D & D's thing with this, save perhaps making a ruling or guidelines for subsets of language for advanced DM's.

I'd say the simplification is fine for normal or beginner DM's, but there could be an optional thing to go into, such as regional speak for each language and so on. Or perhaps on a DM's discretion, they can implement it on their own accord.

I'm reminded of this by: I once had the DM hand off the reigns to a party to me by throwing the group (save mine) through a dimension door into another world. The common was completely different and no one understood them. They managed to get an item that could comprehend languages for them, but they were costly. I also messed around with the values of their money, multiplying their money by ten since the former DM was skimpy on character worth and they were severly disadvantaged in that area. The solution was simple - metals had a different worth there! I do that often within the same world too. Different nation? Different worth. Maybe not 10 times as much, but variancies.

Blightedmarsh

2012-10-26, 05:39 PM

Rainbownaga

2012-10-27, 03:24 AM

It gets odd when you conciser pictographic languages like the Chinese script. They don't tell you how to say them, they just have a fixed meaning; if you know that meaning then you can read them without knowing a single word of any of the spoken Chinese languages, an actual Chinese person would read the same meaning from the same words but in a completely different language. The Japanese do it all the time.

Technically Chinese script does tell you how to say it since every symbol has its own pronunciation (unlike in Japanese where they can have two or three) but only for a given dialect. Thus a Cantonese and a Mandarin speaker can read the same text with unambiguous pronunciation on their in their own languages but still be completely unable to communicate with each other.

This is probably one of those things that would be decried as imerssion breaking in a setting (this is one town over and they use the same text, how come they can't understand what I'm saying!).

Similarly, causing evil for evil's sake happens in the real world, mainly as a form of psychological empowerment for the perpetrator against someone 'beneath them. Bullying, which is a very similar thing, happens all the time, even moreso among those society considers 'pure' i.e. children and animals. While it does have some rule in establishing and enforcing a social structure, this isn't always apparent even to the perpetrators.

As for personal guns, it's surprising they developed in the real world, let alone a fantasy one. While cannon were useful in sieges, early guns were slower, less accurate, no easier to use and more temperamental than the crossbows and longbows they were supporting. The only real advantage was that they made a big scarey bang that could theoretically scare horses. Eventually they became cheaper and easier to use as anti armor weapons, but even then they weren't much better than a 'poor man's longbow' for centuries.

Also, remember that in the d&d world there is more focus on using legendary heroes than there is in arming the masses to deal with a problem. At times in real history this was almost the case, but there could never be the same distinction between peasant levies and elite knights as there is in d&d (even before you bring mages and magic weapons into the picture, which favor even more elitism).

In the real world two handed swords, rapiers and fullplate were post-gunpowder weapons, but which would your PC rather have, those, or the awful DMG renaissance muskets and pistols?

Personally I think a little lack of apparent verisimilitude is a good thing. The characters can't always know how the world works, and the real world has things that don't seem to make sense until you dedicate a lot of thought and reaserch to them (which typically makes other stuff not make sense) but too much can be a problem.

Morph Bark

2012-10-27, 04:36 AM

All the talk of German/Common and dialects make me think that it would be a good idea to include Int checks of DC 20 or so to determine if you can understand someone speaking in a different dialect from yours (or different from standard German/Common at all, at least).

It also makes me wonder if I should try my hand at a low-magic, low-level game about some rural folk getting into some serious* adventuring business.

*I had to retype this word twice, because I kept spelling it in other languages.

Eldan

2012-10-27, 05:15 AM

Here's a scene from a north german movie (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOfEMn4R3qI#t=2m25s) and they all really get into it. The two guys at the table are rather moderate, but that old farmer is hardcore. Even I only understanf 90% of what he's saying. I would guess most people who don't speak German wouldn't even guess that it could be German by the sound of it.
I wonder if Eldan can understand anything of it. :smallwink:

Part of it. The young ones work. The Old farmer, I understand some single words and sometimesI can puzzle together a sentence. Not any more of it.

Let's see for counterexmaples.
A totally overdone cliché TV ad in a moderately understandable dialect. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5NuuHxVhwI)
And a synchronized classic in a dialect I barely understand. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF-yioIfGKw) Though there's harder ones than that.

Yora

2012-10-27, 05:38 AM

Eldan

2012-10-27, 05:56 AM

I understand Kaffe, Teelöffel, heiß Wasser, Zucker, natürlich, and Milch. But that's because of the visual clues. Audio only, I wouldn't understand a word.
Written down in standard spelling, I probably would understand everything. :smallbiggrin:

Well, thats not bad. Me and my brother here watched the Werner clip three times until we were sure what the first sentence was (Lasst mal den Kopf nicht hängen). And that was the only sentence we got.

Xuc Xac

2012-10-27, 06:07 AM

It gets odd when you conciser pictographic languages like the Chinese script. They don't tell you how to say them, they just have a fixed meaning; if you know that meaning then you can read them without knowing a single word of any of the spoken Chinese languages, an actual Chinese person would read the same meaning from the same words but in a completely different language. The Japanese do it all the time.

Chinese characters actually have a lot of phonetic components, but you don't need to know them to learn the meanings of the characters. Understanding those phonetic components does help to explain some of the odd combinations of characters.

A small minority of characters are purely symbolic like "sun" or "tree". A larger minority are ideograms like "'rest' is made from 'man + tree' to represent a man resting by leaning on a tree". A majority are basically equivalent to things like spelling "I love you forever" in English as "Eye heart U 4ever". For example, if you look at the numbers from 1 to 4, you'll see that "one", "two", and "three" are just one, two, or three lines. The character for "four" is 四, which is derived from a picture of a nose because the word for "four" rhymes with the word for "nostrils".

Sometimes when you see a character made by combining two simpler characters, it represents a concept by example (such as "man + tree = rest"); however, it usually means "a concept related to this symbol that rhymes with the word represented by this other symbol". For example, "water" + "tree" means "to wash yourself", because you use water to wash yourself and the verb "to wash yourself" is pronounced just like the noun "tree". "Tree" + "tree" means "small forest", but "water" + two "trees" means "to pour" because that's a liquid related word that rhymes with the word for forest.

Of course, this only makes sense in the original Chinese as spoken by the people who wrote the characters in the first place. If you use those characters for a different language like Vietnamese, Japanese, or Korean, you end up with a lot of people saying "Damn, this is confusing!" That's why Vietnamese is now written with a phonetic Latin script, Korean has a purely phonetic syllabary, and Japanese uses a phonetic syllabary to write the pronunciations of rare or unusual kanji so people will recognize the word (or at least know how to say it so they can ask "hey, what does X mean?").

Blightedmarsh

2012-10-27, 06:12 AM

I always imagined the elvish script as something like this. It would be complicated and artistic to the point of being next to impossible for anyone who hasn't spent centuries immersed in it to get a full read of it. Its another way of excluding other races from elven culture and knowledge.

Yora

2012-10-27, 06:38 AM

Well, thats not bad. Me and my brother here watched the Werner clip three times until we were sure what the first sentence was (Lasst mal den Kopf nicht hängen). And that was the only sentence we got.
You can write it down in non-standard spelling and then the differences become apparent.
- Nu lat mal dat Kopp nie hängn.
- (Nun las mal den Kopf nicht hängen.)

- Ick hebt da een Lied kompiziert, dat is lustich, dat speel ick ji nu för.
- (Ich hab da ein Lied kompiziert, das ist lustig, das spiel ich euch jetzt nun vor.)

- Na, dann nich. Ick setz zu nu erstmol ein in.
- (Na, dann nicht. Ich gieß euch jetzt erstmal einen ein.)

- ??????

- Nu riet di mol tosomm, dat gift schlimmres.
- (Nun reißt euch mal zusammen, das gibt schlimmeres.)

- Ick kann ji da och ni hölpen. Ick? Nenene... Ick hevt och nich jümmers wat in kopp. Morgen sücht de Wült ganz anners ut.
- (Ich kann euch da auch nicht helfen. Ich? Nenene. Ich hab auch nicht immer was im Kopf. Morgen sieht die Welt ganz anders aus.)

- Wat...? Wat...? Mönsch, da wer doch wat. Mönsch, Kinnech, da wer doch wat. Wer dat dor? Ne, dor wer dat nich. Oh, wo wer dat denn? Wer dat dor? Ne, dor wer dat och nich. Zun rotzedorigen schitt, wer wer dat denn?
- (Was...? Was...? Mensch, da war doch was. Mensch, Kinder, da war doch was. War das da? Ne, da war das nicht. Oh, wo war das denn? War das da? Ne, da war das auch nicht. Zum [rotzedorigen] Schei0, wo war das denn?)

- HOLD DIEN SABBEL!!! Ick hef dat glieks. ... Dat wer damols. Damols wer dat. In'n Kriech. Nu weyt ick dat. Nu weyt ick wo dat wer.
- (HALT DEINEN MUND!!! Ich hab das gleich. ... Das war damals. Damals war das. Im Krieg. Nun weiß ich das. Nun weiß ich wo das war.)

- Oh, nu issas wieder wech. Wo wer den denn?
- (Oh, nun ist das wieder weg. Wo war das denn?)

- Jau, da wer dat. Nu hebt ick dat weder. Dat wer so:
- (Ja, da war das. Nun hab ich das wieder, das war so.)
- Wat wer so?
- (Was war so?)

- Ick sücht dat noch ganz genau, als wer dat hüt. Da wer op eenmol, son' swatte Wolk an'n Himmel. An denn is he avsmeert. Dat wer een Ami west.
- (Ich seh das noch ganz genau, als wäre das heute. Da war auf einmal so eine schwarze Wolke am Himmel. Und dann ist er abgeschmiert. Das war ein Ami gewesen.)

They are trying to use a heavy bomber engine from world war two to build a motorcycle.

Eldan

2012-10-27, 06:51 AM

Yeah, if you spell it out, it becomes easy. Don't even the standard version, the written dialect is decipherable.

Swiss counter-example:

I ha scho gäng gseit
Ich habe schon lange gesagt
I've said it for a long time

Äs feins Caffee
Ein feiner (fein heisst hier schmackhaft) Kaffee
A good coffee

Isch schnäu gmacht
Ist schnell gemacht
Is easily/quickly made

Zwee löffu Incarom, häiss wasser
Zwei Löffel Incarom, heisses wasser
Two spoonful of Incarom, hot water

Chli zucker, wemme ma
Ein bisschen (klein) Zucker, wenn man mag
A little sugar, if one likes that

Uh natürli cli möuch, Gäu lieseli?
Und natürlich ein bisschen milch, gell (nicht wahr) Liese?
And some milk, right, Liese?

But that is a sort of special Swiss Advertisement dialect. People dediced, at some time, that Bernese is the most sympathetic, calm Swiss dialect that other Swiss people most like to hear on TV. This is a sort of cleaned up, easier to understand version of it. Doesn't include any dialect-specific words that wouldn't show up in other dialects.

This is the extreme opposite. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bESS6fhJ03s&feature=related) Same dialect, but read by a comedian who is trying to build an entire text only made up of words no one outsid the dialect will get. In fact, he invented a lot of them himself, but did a good enough job that some of htem were integrated into the dialect as new words (Trischaage: to annoy).

awa

2012-10-27, 10:28 AM

As for personal guns, it's surprising they developed in the real world, let alone a fantasy one. While cannon were useful in sieges, early guns were slower, less accurate, no easier to use and more temperamental than the crossbows and longbows they were supporting. The only real advantage was that they made a big scarey bang that could theoretically scare horses. Eventually they became cheaper and easier to use as anti armor weapons, but even then they weren't much better than a 'poor man's longbow' for centuries.

guns were much cheaper to produce and easier to learn then long bows and you are vastly underestimating the psychological effect of guns. Scare horses nothing scare people. Think about it your some peasant conscript all the bad guys line up in a row and then suddenly boom a a thunderous roar like nothing you have every seen before a vast cloud of foul smelling smoke and a bunch of your buddies just drop dead.

the psychological effect of massed fire was far more effective then it's raw killing potential.

edit
something that bugs me is when a setting does not explore how their magic or different species would affect their setting. for example dnd setting where people make use midevil tactics despite having wizards and clerics running around.

Or even worse a setting where only one person has ever done any kind of inovation

Inglenook

2012-10-29, 11:27 PM

re: the topics of dialects and stuff on the previous page …

I know there are huge dialectal differences within countries. The point I was trying to make was not that everyone in Germany speaks the same language, but rather that "Common" couldn't function the way C.J. described.

Someone who speaks the type of Common (Essex) could get talk to someone who speaks Common (U.S. South) with relatively little difficulty—mostly just different accents and a tiny bit of different vocab. But someone who speaks Common (Essex) isn't going to be able to communicate with someone who speaks only Common (Japan). The trouble isn't that each region hypothetically has its own version of Common like C.J. said, but rather that all versions of Common are lumped into a single entity and the game doesn't distinguish between them.

I think the Common-is-an-ill-defined-blob thing is mostly a homebrew issue, though, as far as I can tell. I'm only overtly familiar with Toril, but the Faerûn version of Common is a trade language/lingua franca (not an every-region-has-a-different-Common thing), and there are actual regional languages. WotC actually did an okay job on this front. :smallbiggrin:

awa

2012-10-30, 08:59 AM

A disadvantage to ever nation having it's own language and no common tounge is languages are hard to learn in dnd. Your average human fighter will have one unless he want to blow all the skill points he got for a level on a cross class language skill

Inglenook

2012-10-30, 11:43 AM

Yeah, it's definitely a good solution for ease of play. The concept of it just bugs me, is all. :smallfrown:

awa

2012-10-30, 01:58 PM

its like forcing players to purchase a balnced diet of the entire food pyrmid every time they gather supplies in town or hitting them with scurvy shure its realistic and sometimes realism can improve imersion. But furstrating mechanics can break imersion even faster regardless of how realistic they are.

wonderfulspam

2012-11-03, 06:58 PM

In defense of some of the flawed parts to world creation, especialy on language, the creation of a world gets complex enough as it is. As someone who finds world creation fascinating I have often tried to create worlds that have good solid foundations and it makes the adventure slow, simply because of overcomplication. Basicly a "homebrew" world that has one common tongue may get on peoples nerves, but the adventurers trying to peice together the different languages would get rid of the suspention of disbelief even more. Furthermore some of the annoying aspects of campaigns that you discussed are simmilair, they are just ways that people simplified a world, they are all valid but have simply been used too many times and have become cleched (sorry about the spelling).

crayzz

2012-11-04, 09:03 PM

I hate it when one type of magic is deemed inherently evil, like necromancy or blood magic in Dragon's Dogma.

If I'm trying to protect a bunch of villagers from some darkspawn or whatever, why is it evil to use blood magic to do so? People are going to die if I fail, and I'd like to have every edge I can get. Sure it means I could take over the minds of others if I wanted, but the potential to do evil does not make blood magic evil anymore than the potential to kill another makes swords inherently evil. I understand that there'd be a general unease towards it, considering how dangerous it could make you, but I shouldn't be labeled evil by the game for trying to protect myself.

And necromancy. I get that stealing another's corpse and making it your slave is a bad thing. But what if the man or woman donated their body to medical research, and you reanimated their body for research into how their musculature functioned? Or maybe some little village couldn't properly protect themselves from the orc raids, so they'd raise the bodies of their fallen soldiers to help protect themselves. Or maybe a university keeps the willing souls of their deceased as resources for information.

Really, I don't like it when an action is taken to be immoral with no consideration for ones intention or the consequence of said action. Magic is just the biggest offender I know of.

I actually have a setting idea where in one part of the land, there's a small city that protects itself by placing portions of souls of their best soldiers into metal automatons. These would stand guard, and in times of war would be tireless warriors, calling upon the instincts of great deceased masters of martial warfare. Truly powerful one would be created upon the death of the high priest of their god, the death of the high king (who would also be their general), or the death of a master wizard. In such a case, a year long tournament would be held. The twelve best warriors, if they are willing, would be sacrificed, and an automaton containing the souls of 12 martial masters and one master wizard/high priest/general would be made. I also think the city folk should be terrified of leaving their city, because something outside the walls made such drastic measures necessary. Maybe their civilization was responsible for igniting war with the fey, who were once the dominating group on the continent, and both groups became decimated in the resulting 47 year war.

awa

2012-11-04, 09:50 PM

Grimsage Matt

2012-11-04, 09:53 PM

Eh, energy is energy. Just becuse you run off negative rather then positve don't mean yer evil.

Also, Blood magic. I love stuff like dat. Biological energy used for magical purposes. Nothing "evil" about it. If you only use your or volenteers anyway:smallbiggrin:

awa

2012-11-04, 09:56 PM

in the right setting.

enslaved children and a wind mill both provide energy. one may be considered less good then the other

Grimsage Matt

2012-11-04, 10:00 PM

Yup, thats what I'm going for.

Is the energy merely tapping into the Arcane wellspring/winds of magic/whatever poorly worded metaphysical plot device you get yer mojo from, a Leech (think divine caster), or do you rip, tear and maim your energy from somewhere?

Windmill? Good source of renwable enegy. Not as much at once, but good in the long term. Those enslaved kids? Big short term gain, you lose long term (supply, corruption, heros etc...)

crayzz

2012-11-04, 11:07 PM

personally i don't mind if a magic is evil or considered evil.
inherently dangerous magics like in 40k or cthulu mythos which can corrupt a user.

magic like defilers in dark sun setting where you can gain extra power if you
are willing to destroy the very fragile environment possible leading to mass starvation.

even magic cast by sacrificing virgins has it's place in the right setting

now i don't mind subversion like a good necromancer but it make sense in the right settings.

See, I don't think it does make sense. Magic, to me, is a tool. I can call you, your means and methods, and your goals evil. I can say you're evil 'cause you kidnap virgins, sacrifice them and trap their souls to fuel your own life force, thereby continuing your reign over your evil empire. But I can't call the metaphorical hammer you use evil. Dangerous, maybe. I don't mind if the NPC's think you're evil for using "evil" magic. But when the fluff or the GM tells me the magic is evil, or that I can't have a chaotic good alignment because I'm building a necromancer, I start to get annoyed.

I'm also increasingly annoyed with morals in general. Mostly in video games, though. I'm often labeled evil for things I have no problem with (will not go any further than this to avoid argument about real life morals).

awa

2012-11-04, 11:34 PM

that is one valid interpretation of magic but it's certainly not the only one.

lets use necromancy as a possible example. Creating a zombie might cause damge to the soul of the creature you summon. The magic used to make undead may be a corruption on the land blighting crops causing deformities or even tipping the scale in some cosmic balance of good and evil. It might leave stray scraps of negative energy that accumulate to create uncontrolled ghouls that run around eating people
Now lets say their are lots of other safe magics out their someone who deliberately chose to consistently use a more dangerous form magic when safe alternatives were available might not be evil but their certainly not good.

alternatively the very nature of the magic could be corrupting such as in the Dresden file universe where use of evil magic actually alters your personality you might start out trying to use it for a good purpose but that wont last as each use corrupts you a bit more.

crayzz

2012-11-05, 12:22 AM

that is one valid interpretation of magic but it's certainly not the only one.

You're right, I should have been more specific. I dislike it when some form of magic is arbitrarily deemed evil. If it harms others and there is no way around this, then sure, it's evil.

But even then, it seems like an ass pull sometimes. It can be done right, but to me it usually isn't. I don't think The Dresden Files ever actually explains why breaking the 7 laws changes you. It still comes across as the author telling me that this type of magic is evil without showing why. He's just given it a bit of a hand wave.

And in the end, there are all kinds of ways magic can be evil. But it's almost never really the magic, it's the side effect of the magic. Maybe I learn the magic just in case, for those few cases where I'd need it, to avert some greater disaster (like the evil lich's tomb can only be open via necromancy and if we don't stop him soon he'll kill millions). I might just end up with a risen ghoul nearby, and some poor boy might lose his mother, but at least he didn't lose his entire country (including himself). But no, I studied and used necromancy, I'm evil.

PairO'Dice Lost

2012-11-05, 12:40 AM

I don't think The Dresden Files ever actually explains why breaking the 7 laws changes you. It still comes across as the author telling me that this type of magic is evil without showing why. He's just given it a bit of a hand wave.

He does, sort of. Spoilered for Dresden Files tangent.First of all, not all of the Laws are about evil; the last three (no necromancy, no time travel, no summoning Cthulhu) don't make you evil, they just tend to lead to Bad Things happening as a side effect.

For the first four Laws, it's all about intentions. Dresden Files magic relies on belief and state of mind, and mind-control magic is evil because (A) to perform it you have to completely believe that your own will is more important than your victims' and (B) using it leads to using more of it, which causes a vicious cycle of evil. As Dresden explains in Proven Guilty:

“It…” I frowned. “Getting into someone’s mind like that is difficult and dangerous. And sooner or later, while you’re changing them, you start changing yourself, too. You remember Micky Malone?”

Murphy didn’t exactly shudder, but her hands stopped moving for a minute. Micky Malone was a retired police officer. A few months after he’d gotten out of the game, an angry and vicious spiritual entity had unleashed a psychic assault on him, and bound him in spells of torment to boot. The attack had transformed a grandfatherly old retired cop into a screaming maniac, totally out of control. I’d done what I could for the poor guy, but it had been really bad.

“I remember,” Murphy said quietly.

“When a person gets into someone’s head, it inflicts all kinds of damage—sort of like what happened to Micky Malone. But it damages the one doing it, too. It gets easier to bend others as you get more bent. Vicious cycle. And it’s dangerous for the victim. Not just because of what might happen as a direct result of suddenly being forced to believe that the warlock is the god-king of the universe. It strains their psyche, and the more uncharacteristically they’re made to feel and act, the more it hurts them. Most of the time, it devolves into a total breakdown.”

Same for killing, shapechanging others, and mind-reading. Giving a violent/unstable/inexperienced/etc. person the freedom to spam dominate person, detect thoughts, finger of death, and baleful polymorph is a Bad Idea by itself, and the fact that casting them makes you want to cast them more just makes things worse.

crayzz

2012-11-05, 01:33 AM

The Dresden files gets some stuff right for this one. I don't think it's totally wrong, but I'm pretty picky. Mind control magic I can see changing you. It makes sense. When you invade another's mind, your own becomes vulnerable like when Lash makes a heel face turn after being in Harry's head for way to long. Murder and the like changing you doesn't make as much sense to me.

And the Dresden Files admits it's 7 Laws system is flawed. Ebenezar is the Blackstaff, is capable of doing the most evil magic without being harmed by it, and is supported by the council to do so if need be. The enforcers of the 7 Laws admit the system is not perfect. This isn't a case where the author is dictating to me what is good and what is bad. So that I don't mind. Now, were I to play a game based on the dresdenverse and have the GM argue with me about my alignment after I mind control someone to stop killing hundreds of people, I'd be annoyed. True, I'm taking a risk using dangerous and potentially harmful magic, but c'mon. People will definitely die if I don't act.

Really, I don't like cumbersome alignment rules that cannot be adjusted for the extreme cases. If I'm playing a morals heavy game, the only fun cases are the extreme cases. And I like my morals heavy games.

ReaderAt2046

2012-11-05, 09:35 AM

This is going to sound crazy, but I would argue that it's possible for a good person to use evil magic for good reasons in circumstances like those you describe. It hinges on the principle of "lesser of two evils". For example, breaking the law is wrong, but breaking the law is less wrong then, say, turning Jews over to the Nazis searching for them (which was the choice for a lot of Germans). So using evil magic to, and only to, stop a far greater evil might be actually a good (or at least justified) action.

awa

2012-11-05, 12:10 PM

even in dnd one use of an evil spell will not make you evil its repeated use of the magic that's the problem. particularly when there are other alternatives.

so assuming not a jerk dm (and the dnd alignment system) you would not turn evil over that one event but if you repeatedly used it to stop mass murderess it would twist you. Soon you would need less and less justification to break out the mind control. Eventually if not stopped you might start grabbing politicians to try an enact the types of laws you favor justifying it as preemptive life saving. And then before long you just decide to become good king of the world because if you control the entire world and every one is your mind slave no one will get murdered.

an alignment change for repeated use of mind control seems perfectly logical within the setting.

Man on Fire

2012-11-06, 06:10 AM

Magic, to me, is a tool.

And here i where I disagree with you. Magic must be more than just a tool for me. Magic isn't just an energy, it's a part of the world in the same way laws of physics are - it cannot be just a swiss-army knife of deus ex machinas and get-out-of-jail cards you can use without consequences, because then it's not a real part of the world, it doesn't fit the setting. When you're designing magic system you should consider not only the pros but also cons. And you should set in stone what your magic can and can't do. I always preffer there being some sort of boundaries to magic. In Black Company the one who knows wizard's true name can permamently depower them, so wizards tend to murder their entire family and friends and erase all traces of their names. In Earthsea using magic has consequences on the world - summoning rain will cause drought somewhere else. In Fionavar Tapestry wizards have to form a bond with another person and use their vital power as a source, if they get separated, they're powerless, if source dies, they're depowered for the rest of their lives.

Now, evil magic is a tricky question, but you can deal with it. Magic that is destructive to einvorement or can cause user to go insane - yeah, I can see something like that as evil, if it existed in the world and caused a lot of trubles, it would be seen a evil because it causes more trouble than it's worth. Somebody trying to use such evil magic for good purposes, trying to fight back it's consequences would make a good story.

Magic being evil just because it's evil in other stories, like it's usually with necromancy - that's something else. I could understand some kinds of magic being a taboo however and good guys refusing to use them on that ground. And I could buy guy who is evil and he is using say necromancy, because he wants to inflict fear it causes because of being a taboo.

tl;dr: Magic isn't a tool, it must be a part of setting, consistent both with the culture and with the laws this worlds operates on.

Yora

2012-11-06, 06:38 AM

Good way to put it.

Though magic doesn't neccessarily have to have bad qonsequences. Using gravity, evaporation, friction, drag, and mechanical action to run a water mill doesn't kill the planet and drain the life force of the environment. That is, beyond the cutting of trees, diversion of waterflows and the clearing of forests for lumber or the growing of grain. That's still consequences, but using the power of gravity does not damage the nature of the universe, it just does what it always does, people just arranged that something positive would come out for them.
But there still needs to be rules what magic can do and what it can't do, and how it is done. Even if the people doing it havn't figured it out yet.
Even if you don't know the physics of combustion, people know that it produces a lot of heat and burns things to ash, so nobody would get the idea to use the power of combustion to cure a virus. Now there are cases in which gunpowder was used for medicinal uses, but that was for other chemical properites of the ingredients and didn't have anything to do with making it burn or explode. Similiar, even the most mystical wizard would see it as obvious that magic that can create and remove curses and see into the future, or even alter the future, can not create gold or and elephant out of thin air. Making someone find gold that already exist or causing an elephant to move to his location would be different things as this would fall under the sphere of altering the future. But even the most fuzzy description and definition of magic should include a basic concept of what it can and can't do.

ShneekeyTheLost

2012-11-06, 06:44 AM

As a counterpoint to 'way too many zeros, why haven't they advanced technologically yet?', I posit this, and in fact use it occasionally in my homebrew.

In real history, technology has risen and fallen as empires and nations have risen and fallen. Case in point: the Romans had the ability to mass-produce steel, the Greeks first came up with the Atomic Theory, and had Rome not declined, they may well have imported oriental gunpowder and made it widespread some thousand years before its eventual spread. Of course, we all know what happened to Rome, and the resulting Dark Age knocked civilization back to mere subsistence. The Black Plague wiped out two-thirds of the population of Europe.

Things like this happen. When a civilization starts to become stagnant, they tend to decay, and Bad Things start to happen, generally resulting in the fall of the culture, and going back to more primitive roots.

I will say, however, that precise dating for ancient artifacts is rather silly in most midevil settings.

"Those are ancient ruins."
"How old?"
"Who knows? They've been here as long as we have recorded history."

Oh, that does bring me to a pet peeve... Ancient ruins that have stood for thousands of years, and yet no one has plundered them before the party shows up? No signs that any other intruders have been there and taken some of the loot? This goes double for ones near significant populations. Some noble or another would have decided to go plunder it long ere the party got there, either for altruistic reasons (for the historical value) or selfish (loots!).

It's possible that there is some treasure in ancient ruins left, but it won't be obvious, and all of the readily accessible areas have already been searched dozens of times. You're going to need to get to somewhere deep within that no one has gotten to before. That's not going to be something that a group of level 1 people are going to manage.

Throw in some evidence that it has been ransacked many times before. Have 'secret' concealed passageways left lying open on the first few levels, rubble where walls were broken through, traps disabled.

I'm reminded of a scene in one of the Elemenster books where he was stocking a tomb with treasure for the next group of adventurers to follow. It made me laugh, because it pointed out how absurd that NO ONE would have searched ruins that are commonly known about.

Eldan

2012-11-06, 07:10 AM

It depends heavily on what magic is in the setting. If it's an underlying scientific principle of the universe, there may still be dire consequences, but they would be closer to what we see in the real world. Mining gold pollutes rivers with mercury. Burning coal leads to greenhouse effects. The consequences may not be obvious at first, but you can research and quantify and even avoid them.

But since the Dresden Files came up... in the context of the setting, it makes sense. Magic is powered by emotion and experience. Ghosts fight by throwing strong memories at each other. Angels and the divinely gifted burn up parts of their soul (which is accumulated positive feelings, in a way) to power constructive magic. Wizards are stronger when angry. Vampires are repelled by love.
In that kind of setting, it makes sense that using certain kinds of destructive, vile magic, has a feedback effect on you. The intent to kill or control others are dark, dark emotions. Magic empowers those emotions further, makes them have physical effect. But in turn, the magic also makes you more likely to feel more of the same emotion. Warlocks, from what Dresden tells us, start out as teenagers who don't know any better. They perhaps influence pretty girls to go out with them, or blast school bullies in anger. But from there, it spirals out of control, until many of them are literally frothing at the mouth like rabid dogs and the wardens put them down.

TheWombatOfDoom

2012-11-06, 07:46 AM

Can't you have magic be something that exists in the setting as part of the setting AND be a tool?

Eldan

2012-11-06, 07:52 AM

TheWombatOfDoom

2012-11-06, 07:56 AM

Certainly you can. I think I said that? It depends on the setting. In some settings, there is emotional feedback, in others there isn't. I like magic with consequences. But then, I think everything has consequences.

I was mainly referencing Man on Fire, but yeah. I'll be posting my setting shortly, and part of that involves magic. I say in the description that for this people, magic is a tool, so I wanted to see why Man disagreed with that.

Xuc Xac

2012-11-06, 08:04 AM

This is going to sound crazy, but I would argue that it's possible for a good person to use evil magic for good reasons in circumstances like those you describe. It hinges on the principle of "lesser of two evils".

The "lesser of two evils" is still evil. That doesn't do anything to change the "this magic is evil" thing that some people don't like. I think they are looking for an answer like "no, it isn't" rather than "yes, but there are worse evils".

Eldan

2012-11-06, 08:24 AM

The "lesser of two evils" is still evil. That doesn't do anything to change the "this magic is evil" thing that some people don't like. I think they are looking for an answer like "no, it isn't" rather than "yes, but there are worse evils".

Additionally, I think using evil magic for good ends becomes much more interesting if there's an actual sacrifice involved. If the consequences of using evil for good are terrible, you are martyring yourself for good by using evil. Bam, tragedy right there.

Yora

2012-11-06, 08:43 AM

How is something still evil when it's used for good?

Man on Fire

2012-11-06, 08:50 AM

I was mainly referencing Man on Fire, but yeah. I'll be posting my setting shortly, and part of that involves magic. I say in the description that for this people, magic is a tool, so I wanted to see why Man disagreed with that.

Sure you can have both, we use laws of physics and chemistry as a tools. You should consider through why people see magic only as a tool and nothing else.

How is something still evil when it's used for good?

When it has bad consequences that outweigths the good it caused, or when it's uncontrolable and dangerous.

TheWombatOfDoom

2012-11-06, 08:51 AM

This is why for me, magic isn't aligned. The caster is. Magic doesn't kill people. The caster bending it to it's will kills people.

Yora

2012-11-06, 09:02 AM

Evil is what evil does. Otherwise we could also call natural processes evil.

Radiation is dangerous and uncontrolable, but the sun is not evil. When I push big rocks down a slope, they are dangerous and unctrollable, but neither rock nor gravity is evil.

Man on Fire

2012-11-06, 09:29 AM

Evil is what evil does. Otherwise we could also call natural processes evil.

Radiation is dangerous and uncontrolable, but the sun is not evil.

And what with nuclear weapons?

Okay, this one argument defeats itself becaue it's just another way to use the radiation...olay, lets say it this way:

Most people would agree that nuclear weapons are evil and would futher argue, that it's still evil even when used for good cause. Most people however wouldn't find radiation evil.

Moving out of dangerous subject - we can say that magic as itself isn't evil, but certain ways it can be used can be seen as evil even when used for good cause. Good example would be SCP Foundation, they have an SCP that is a little girl who, if not regurally put through terrible traumatic experience, will give a birth to ...something, but that something will be diastrous. So they put her through terrible traumatic experience, then delete her memory about it. And they do consider this act to be evil, to the point they deploy criminals to do it, then terminate them.

awa

2012-11-06, 09:45 AM

except depending on your setting magic itself can have a form of will or even out right goals and desires.
In a setting like that magic might be twisted so no matter what you try and use your magic for you end up causing more harm then good.

TheWombatOfDoom

2012-11-06, 10:12 AM

And what with nuclear weapons?

Okay, this one argument defeats itself becaue it's just another way to use the radiation...olay, lets say it this way:

Most people would agree that nuclear weapons are evil and would futher argue, that it's still evil even when used for good cause. Most people however wouldn't find radiation evil.

Moving out of dangerous subject - we can say that magic as itself isn't evil, but certain ways it can be used can be seen as evil even when used for good cause.

The only correction I might put to your "dangerous subject" might be actions in which using the nukes might save the world, such as destroying an incoming meteor, or hostile alien ships or other such things. Though I would say these things would be a rare thing, and the aliens might still see the nuke as evil.

But overall, I can agree that the use of a specific magic can be deemed as evil. In D & D, generally things like necromancy and evil planar being summoning falls into this category. Summoning or bringing something back from the dead isn't evil. The way in which they are done is.

Blightedmarsh

2012-11-06, 10:12 AM

On the issue old unlooted ruins I have three solutions:

1) The geography is unstable and probably quantum: Those ruins may be ancient, they may be as old as the hills but they still weren't here yesterday.

2) Restocking: some agency is restocking or repairing the ruin continuously; be it goblins, magic or renegade nanotech. If this is the case then it could well be that the "ruin" was never inhabited at all.

3) Existential anomaly: the ruins are a twisting semi-real dimension-scape where the contents depend more on the minds of the people who come in than what is actually there. The reason its been not been looted out is that it isn't the same dungeon twice; it doesn't actually exist in the times between anyone being there.

Xuc Xac

2012-11-06, 11:12 AM

How is something still evil when it's used for good?

If the material component of your spell is a newborn infant and the somatic component is strangling that infant with his mother's intestines, then you're still a baby-killing murderer if you cast that spell to save a bunch of kids from a burning orphanage. Like the process for becoming a lich with its unspecified but mandatory "evil acts", there is more going on than just using a morally neutral tool for good or bad purposes.

Eldan has a good point about accepting that it's evil but doing it anyway for the benefit of others. Like the operative in "Serenity": "I'm a monster, but what I do is necessary. I'm helping to build a better world, but I'm not going to live there. There's no place for me there."

Ultimately, the ends don't justify the means, because there are no ends and only a continuum of means.

Wyntonian

2012-11-06, 09:22 PM

Relevant Dresden Files quote is relevant (and half-remembered, please be gentle.)

Nicodemus gazed levelly at me. "You know, we're not so different, Dresden. We're both passionate, fighters, willing to sacrifice for what we believe in."

I closed my eyes, and thought about Shiro's body on the altar, about (Other bad things Nicodemus has done).

"I think, Nick, that we have some pretty seriously different ideas about who gets sacrificed and who does the sacrificing."

If there's consequences for [bad magic thingy], and it's "evil", is it still evil if you take on those consequences for yourself? It makes me think of the character of John Coffee, in the Green Mile. He can cure people's sicknesses by taking them upon himself (not literally, it just hurts him really badly). He cures a guy's bladder infection, a woman's terminal brain cancer and saves a mouse.

If he had transferred the sick person's wounds onto a baby, that's evil. If he willingly sacrifices himself, even if he uses the Dark Ritual of Badguyblood Grimgloom McChaoticStupid, he's doing a good deed.

Question to ponder:

A paladin holds a portal from hell, preventing the demons within from exiting it until it closes, even though it means his death in a blaze of holy glory. In doing so, he saves a dozen babies.

A priest happens upon an orphanage afflicted with a plague. He performs a ritual which involves the skull of a dying woman who willed it over to him for this purpose, a pint of blood from a willing donor, and a sword used to kill a noble man, given to the priest after the murderer's redemption, to cure them. In doing so, he saves a dozen babies.

Aside from the aesthetics, what's the difference? One looks "evil", but the intention and the end result is the same. Magic is used as a tool, and one with consequences, but as long as they can be responsibly and morally managed, it seems morally sound.

awa

2012-11-06, 09:36 PM

what you have described is not evil magic you have described dangerous magic and/or magic with an unpleasing aesthetic.

Wyntonian

2012-11-06, 10:18 PM

what you have described is not evil magic you have described dangerous magic and/or magic with an unpleasing aesthetic.

I know. That's kinda the point. :smallsmile: Just because something is unpleasant, or conducive to being a jerk (How much easier would it be to just kill a guy wit a sword and take a pint of blood and his skull?) doesn't mean it's evil.

Xuc Xac

2012-11-06, 11:19 PM

I know. That's kinda the point. :smallsmile: Just because something is unpleasant, or conducive to being a jerk (How much easier would it be to just kill a guy wit a sword and take a pint of blood and his skull?) doesn't mean it's evil.

I think you're missing the point. You're thinking scientifically instead of magically.

To a scientist, a pound of lead and a pound of feathers are the same weight because a pound is a pound. In magical thinking, a pound of lead is heavier because lead's essential character is "heaviness" and the essential character of feathers is "lightness".

To the scientific mind, blood is blood whether it's generously donated, a byproduct of a fair boxing match, mopped up from the floor after a kitchen accident, or drained from an unwilling victim bound on an altar for a painful sacrificial slaughter. To the magical mind, those are all very different things. The blade of a redeemed murderer is very different than the blade of an unrepentant serial killer because they symbolize different things. In traditional Finnish witchcraft for example, antique knives are magically active but newer knives are inert because a knife can't be used for magical purposes until the craftsman who made it has died. There is no physical change in the knife, but from the magician's perspective it becomes a conduit to the "other side" when its maker dies.

If a spell requires "the blood of pain and loss mixed with the tears of a mourning maiden", you can't just get those from a young woman who says "Oh, sure, let me just prick my finger to give you a blood sample and cut some onions to make my eyes water. I'm happy to help." Trying that is pointless, because not just any blood and tears will work.

awa

2012-11-06, 11:32 PM

i really liked that idea of magic

ReaderAt2046

2012-11-07, 05:52 PM

Semi-relevant example: I've been working on an idea for an Avatar RPG campaign. The relevant bit is that after discovering the existence of bloodbenders, an ex-firebender trades his soul to the devil for the power to annihilate every waterbender everywhere and ensure that none will ever be born again. The two interesting factors:

1. This guy believes with every fiber of his soul that stripping a firebender of his power will cause him to turn completely and utterly evil, and condemn him to an eternity of justified torment. So he believes he is trading one soul (his) for countless others (everyone whom the bloodbenders would still if he didn't annihilate waterbending)

2. Since he himself has been stilled, he believes the devil will get his soul anyway.

If what he believed was true, would he have made the right choice.

P.S. I know there's no devil in Avatar. Technically, he traded his soul to the "Spirits of the Void", but "devil" conveys the proper idea better.

awa

2012-11-07, 08:14 PM

no hes evil even if it were correct. It would be evil even if he did not make a deal with the devil to do it.
blood benders are incredibly rare, blood benders who can remove bending even rarer still. So the number of fire benders that would ever lose there bending is a tiny number while water benders are at bare minimum 2 ethnic groups and 3+ nations.

So it's a raw numbers game he is hurting thousands or even millions now for the possibility of maybe saving a small number in the future.

that's not even going into all the stuff about putting the world out of balance.

ReaderAt2046

2012-11-07, 10:05 PM

Grimsage Matt

2012-11-07, 10:09 PM

On the topic of magic being evilish or not, I've been working on some d20 moder stuff. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=260708) The first one, is basicly a Leech. He wants magic? Sorry, humans don't pocess enough to normaly cast spells. So why not drain enough so they have some?

And the Binder ones? They have magical powers only because they bind a Spirit into their body, and fuse it with their soul. And theres the possibillity that it could go out of control, consume them and start going "DESTROY" on everything nearby. Even the angel one.

awa

2012-11-08, 12:14 AM

as far as i know in the cannon of avatar one blood bender (now dead) has that ability and all the people so afflicted were cured anyways.

so a hypothetical threat vrs the murder of a thousands or millions

hes evil no question.

Sgt. Cookie

2012-11-08, 08:32 AM

http://eightarc.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/phoenix-wright-objection.jpg

We say he's evil, simply because we're onlookers. To him, the evil here is condemning a firebender to an infinite torture. Even just one person condemned to that is an evil infinitely greater than the genocide he will commit.

From his point of view, genocide is the right thing to do because just the threat of such an evil is too great to allow to exist.

awa

2012-11-08, 10:40 AM

Honestly i find this premise fairly stupid. But taking it at face value i don't believe relative morality applies here, were talking about mass genocide to prevent something that will probably never happen and can be reversed even if it does.

By that logic killing every literate person on the planet is a good act becuase one might start a nuclear war destroying the whole planet and becuase that is an inffintly worse the very threat of it happening justifies the act even though it's incredibly unlikely and virtualy 100% of the pepole killed have nothing to do with the threat.

on a related not this has nothing to do with the thread topic so im done with it.

BRC

2012-11-08, 11:09 AM

On the subject of "Evil Magic", I have had, for some time, an idea for a setting where Spellcasters gain their power by making pacts with some variety of supernatural entity: Djinns, Faries, Elementals, and of course, Demons.
Here's the thing. It's not considered evil to make a pact with a Demon, in fact, making a pact with a Demon is considered one of the safest ways to gain magic.

Let me explain.
Every type of pact comes with some risks, as the entity on the other end of the pact can change things or influence you in order to further their own agenda. The Fae, for example, are constantly in search of amusement. If you make a pact with them, you are basically getting magic in exchange for keeping them entertained. If you don't amuse them, they will amuse themselves at your expense. You might find your powers failing or misfiring in ways that your patron finds entertaining.

Djinn are prideful. They won't make a pact with somebody they see as weak, and they have a habit of withdrawing their powers if the opponent is too "Weak", or using their influence to provoke conflict with powerful opponents.

Even Celestials are dangerous to make pacts with, as they tend to be rather quick on the trigger when they see "Evil" happening. If a man, with blood on his hands and stolen diamonds in his pocket, shouts his innocence while being hauled away, a celestial sorcerer will have to very patiently explain to his patron why it's wrong to help him. Also, Celestials have a habit of withdrawing their powers if they don't think their sorcerers are doing enough "Good" in the world. Many celestial sorcerors end up penniless as they are forced to give generously to every charitable cause that comes along, or else risk losing their powers.

Demons, by contrast, are safe because they are predictable. They all use the same playbook. First, you make a pact with a sorcerer with very generous terms, then you act as a good little patron, giving your sorcerer power whenever they ask for it, until one day when they need more power and you tempt them into making a second pact, one that grants you lots of influence. THEN you set about turning them into an avatar of death and destruction.

The thing is, the world at large knows about this. They know that demons will ALWAYS try to tempt you into a second pact, and that the second pact ALWAYS gives them the ability to turn you into a monster. People who DO make the second pact are called "Warlocks", and are usually hunted down and made examples of. Most sorcerors just make the first pact, and happily use the demon's powers for years, ignoring the demon occasionally saying "You know, if you want more power..."

awa

2012-11-08, 11:50 AM

I like that one to done right it could be very interesting.

Edit personally i like non-humans to feel non-human, particularly things like outsiders. Celestial/ demons with no understanding of how the human mind works because their own is so alien appeals to me.

Kadzar

2012-11-08, 05:23 PM

I don't like most of those patrons because they sound like they're being played rather stupidly to me. The Fae are okay, and I'm going to assume you mean that the Djinn want their users to go up against powerful opponents rather than not, and I just got confused by your formatting. But I have to disagree with the Celestials and the Demons.

For the Celestials: why would a mere mortal know more about someone's innocence than divine beings? I could see disagreeing with their opinions on right and wrong or just not wanting to devote one's entire life to the cause of good, but, if your spirit buddies with extra perception into the nature of the universe say someone is innocent even when they don't look like it, it might be a good idea to look a little closer.

And, as for Demons, they shouldn't just target the few people mad enough to take up a stupid bargain; that's a horrible return on their investment. Instead of giving people power and then waiting until they happen to not be busy to ask if they want a little more, they should wait until their users have reached their hour of greatest need and desperation, then come by to offer them the power to solve their problems, if they'll just sign on the dotted line. Think of the ordeal with V and the archfiends; if they had come at any other time he/she would have turned them down. Instead they came when his/her family was threatened, and (nearly) the only way to save them was to make a literal deal with the devils.

BRC

2012-11-08, 06:12 PM

Part of it is that the Celestials who make pacts with petty sorcerers are pretty young, stupid, and innocent. Deceit simply isn't in their nature. They know Evil if they see it, but they are pure good, and before making a pact, they rarely know anything besides other celestials.
They see the city watch dragging a man away in chains, they see the man shouting that he is innocent. From their perspective, the only violence that they see is being performed by the City Watch. They struggle with the idea of assuming the man is guilty from circumstance.

As for Demons, every pactmaking demon does wish for the day that their sorceror finds themselves in dire straights, but they'll never get that chance if they don't make a pact in the first place.

Hrmm, I should think about the rules of these Pacts. When a Pact is made, the Patron gains the ability to manifest in the world, but only in close proximity to the Sorcerer. These manifestations are incorporeal, but they can see, hear, and speak.

Demons and Celestials are beings of the Outer Planes. They can manifest in certain locations on the material plane, and a sufficiently powerful sorceror can conjure a physical form for their patron to take. But otherwise, these are the only ways they can influence the world, and a Sorceror must actively seek out a Patron. So, a Demon can't just wait for a potential warlock to be in dire straights, unless those dire straights happen to occur someplace the demon can manifest and make it's offer.
This is WHY the Demon must make that first pact, so that when the sorceror finds themselves with their back against a wall, with no hope in sight, they can appear and say "Hey, I can help".

Consider Demons and Celestials like eager summer interns, knowing that only a few of them will be hired come September. The way they make an impression is by influencing the material plane, which means they MUST make pacts.

Lesser Demons, being backstabbing, greedy, and ambitious, will therefore make a pact with anybody who stumbles into a damned cave asking for a little magic. More powerful demons (Usually, those who have outlived a few Sorcerors) are usually a little more discerning.

The same goes for Celestials. More experienced celestials will only form pacts with those they believe are ideally positioned or willing to do good. Newborn Celestials on the other hand, are so eager to make an impact on the world, that they will make a pact with just about anybody.

Usually, after they've outlived a patron or three (Depending on how long the partnership lasted), celestials or demons go off to fight in the great cosmic war, with only some of them returning to make new pacts. So the overwhelming majority of pact-seeking outsiders are of the "Eager Beaver summer intern" variety.

Djinn and Fae follow totally different rules. It's more difficult to get them to agree to a pact. They've got plenty of power already, and they don't need anything from you.

Djinn DO have physical form on the material plane. They tend to reside in lavish homes full of paintings and statues of themselves, or in the harshest wilderness, killing great beasts and composing poems about themselves. A sorceror wanting to make a pact with a Djinn usually says something along the lines of "I heard stories about how great and powerful you were, and I had to see for myself". You never propose a Pact to a Djinn, you just give them an opportunity to propose it. You say something like "There's this dragon threatening my home, but there's no way I could beat it" or "Then the Warlock said that not even the mighty [Insert Djinn's Name Here] Could defeat him", at which point the Djinn, like your fitness nut coworker who keeps trying to get you to go to the gym with him, will say "I CAN HELP WITH THAT! Let me give you a hand!".

Fey can flit between dimensions as they see fit, but they cannot take action outside their mystic groves or castles, both of which usually appear one night, stay around for a few days, then vanish at sunrise according to some pattern nobody can figure out (Except the Fae, and they're not talking). Because of this, seeking out the Fae is both difficult and dangerous. However, they can appear somewhere and make an offer, which is what they usually do. Usually, they seek out somebody stupid enough to make a deal that gives them lots of control.

While most people who make pacts with the Fae are idiots, on average Fae sorcerors tend to be very intelligent. The stupid ones don't last very long. Their patron gets bored with them, then takes away their powers at the worst possible moment. Smart Sorcerors keep their patrons entertained. Many Fae Sorcerors live their life like actors on the stage, Adopting flamboyant personalities and seeking out drama and adventure. When a Fae Sorceror turns down a perfectly functional suit of armor because it "Dosn't look cool", that's a legitimate survival strategy. Same goes for making quips or using needlessly exotic weaponry.

Basically, you make a pact with a demon by indicating that maybe, someday, you might become the type of person who would slaughter a village "For The Lols". You make a pact withe a celestial by being a good person who is willing to tolerate something with the intentions of a human rights activist and the judgement skills of a four year old. You make a pact with a Djinn by agreeing to become something they can brag about, and you make a pact with a fae by agreeing to become a reality TV star.

ReaderAt2046

2012-11-09, 07:13 AM

Gbrngfol

2012-11-16, 06:49 PM

A thing that always irritates me is when someone makes a magic system for the sake of having a magic system. If magic plays no part in the world except as a way for PC's to get tougher then it's just pointless.

xBlackWolfx

2012-11-17, 05:47 AM

In my setting (which is actually designed for a series of books I might right, rather than an RPG), magic is used as an analogue to science. New spells are constantly being discovered, and some spells actually reshape the world after their discovery. The one school of magic in which this is most obvious is 'biomancy', an analogue to medicine. This school of magic allows ones to remove most diseases and even repair damage to the body, some individuals have even discovered ways to use it to sustain themselves indefinitely, giving them immorality. But it also has a dark side, just as they can destroy disease, they can also create it, and the world has been ravaged more than once by artificial plagues. Also, a sub-set of biomancy is in alteration of living beings. One of the earliest examples of this was a spell that allowed two creatures of different species to mate with eachother and produce a fertile hybrid, even if they naturally could not (for example, they could make a half-human half-wolf, even though those two species obviously could not reproduce through natural means). This was once used to create a variety of super-soldier races simply (like orcs). But soon enough, these artificially created races escaped into the wild. Now, creatures like orcs are multiplying out of control destroying everything they can purely because they were bred to be insanely aggressive and uncaring. They made a mindless killing machine, now they've situated themselves in the wild and are destroying entire ecosystems and ravaging cities for no reason other than to sate their endless inborn lust for violence.

A recurring theme is magic is a double-edged sword, similar to science, it has its advantages, but also has caused huge problems for their world, more than once. In some nations infact, magic is illegal purely because of the harm it has brought in the past, and even in nations where it is legal the general populace is often paranoid of most forms of magic (except for the biomancers that fix them up when they get sick or injured) since most the schools of magic can do alot more harm than good.

If you care to know what the schools of magic are, there are seven:

biomancy: I have already explained for the most part, only thing I didnt mention is that biomancers can enhance their own physical abilities using their magic (its easier to use biomancy on yourself than someone else, so sadly they cant do this for other people all that well), infact biomancers fill the role of monks in DnD, though they also have cleric-like abilities.
alchemy: changing materials into other materials, mostly a crafting profession
conjuration: making things appear out of nowhere, such as fire or lightning, unlike alchemy conjured things are only temporary and typically dissipate within moments
enchanting: giving materials properties they normally couldn't have, I might change this into rune-making since the traditional idea of enchanting overlaps too much with biomancy, if i do change it to rune-making it'll be the only school of magic that does not require one to be born a mage
spiritlogy: i really need a better name for this. simply this school allows one to mess with people's souls, such as killing people through eye contact or even transfer their own soul into a new younger body (it is the most widely dispised school of magic, infact you cant learn it in schools normally, the only spell of this school that is tolerated is the one that allows you to analyze someone's soul, its the only way to detect a lich, someone who has transfered their soul into another body, but this is problematic since if you even learn one spell in a school, you can rather easily figure out more, so there's always the risk that your lich-hunter could decide to abuse his powers)
psionics: the ability to control and alter people's minds simply, they're often called warlocks
mysticism: the ability to control magic itself, countering spells, increasing one's resistance to magic, even causing the mana in a mage's body to 'combust', which almost always kills the unfortunate mage, obviously a widely feared spell among mages of all sorts, though it has few ways to influence the material world beyond messing with spells others have cast.

One thing that magic teaches in my setting, is that some things are better off never being discovered. Science in our world has also brought horrible things that this world would be far better off without.

As for my races, they are somewhat monocultural (though they dont inhabit single nations, all the city-building races have multiple countries which are often at war with eachother, the various dwarven kingdoms for instance are well known for their endless conflicts with eachother, resulting in most dwarven nations being highly militarized). Each race was designed as a thought experiment, simply what human civilization would be like if our instincts were different. For example, elves aren't nearly as prone to passion or being overwhelmed by their emotions, they're very logical and practical. Dwarves only have to sleep every few days, and can easily work tirelessly for most of a day, they typically perceive other races as lazy purely bc they cant work nearly as hard as they can, and of course need to sleep and rest alot more than dwarves do.

There are also gods in the setting, which do exist, though the main theme behind them (and the story in general) is that people in power often aren't very trustworthy, and even most gods can't be trusted, since most are indifferent or openly hostile towards mortals, and the few nice ones are often foolish or questionable, for example some good gods won't judge others, they're happily aid both good and evil individuals regardless of the consequences. Infact, there's only one god who really can't be construed as evil in anyway, and all he really does is try to keep the world from being destroyed. well, maybe there's two if you count the goddess of death, ironic i know but she isnt exactly a clone of hades, infact she actually overthrew the original god of death whose sole interest was erasing reality because he found it to be too miserable and depressing, she herself actually allows souls to continue to exist, infact her primary domain is rebirth rather than death

I dont think highly of real-world religions myself, so I put real gods in my setting to show why you shouldn't blindly trust such beings, real or no.

Obviously, one thing I don't like is the whole good vs evil thing. Wheather or not pure good or pure evil exist in the real world is a highly debateble topic, and just bc someone does something with good intentions does not mean it'll have a good outcome.

Yora

2012-11-17, 05:58 AM

Craft (Cheese)

2012-11-17, 06:04 AM

Please elaborate. What pointless magic systems are you thinking of?

Magic that, if removed, means the world would change in precisely 0 ways, except that the PCs couldn't be wizards. I've never seen an offender quite that bad, to be honest: Most worlds with low-impact magic systems at the very least have villains and monsters that have magic.

Yora

2012-11-17, 06:09 AM

Star Trek comes to mind. Every season or two there's one episode with a supernatural element, that immediately is never mentioned again. But that's a sci-fi setting and every third or fourth episode an incredible technology is introduced that is also immediately forgotten.

Milo v3

2012-11-17, 06:42 AM

spiritlogy: i really need a better name for this.

How about Animology or Animancy? It's based off Anima which is Latin (always good for magic) for soul or breath of life.

Also, I like how you put in both the positive and negative uses of your magic.

Amaril

2012-11-17, 01:04 PM

Another possibility for spiritology would be auramancy, or "breath magic", since the latin "aura" for "breath" is tied closely to the concept of the soul or spirit.

Gbrngfol

2012-11-17, 11:15 PM

Magic that, if removed, means the world would change in precisely 0 ways, except that the PCs couldn't be wizards. I've never seen an offender quite that bad, to be honest: Most worlds with low-impact magic systems at the very least have villains and monsters that have magic.

Thank you. You explained that much better than I can.

The Grue

2012-11-19, 01:30 AM

Being a paralel world to the real world.

This one I have to defend. Parallel histories can make for very interesting campaign settings.

The obvious and too-used one is "what if Germany built the atomic bomb first", but there are plenty of other diversion points in human history. What if the Roman Empire never fell? What if China ruled the seas and colonized the New World, centuries before Europe even heard of them? What if the American colonies lost the War of Independance? Or if France won the Seven Year War? Or if the Aztecs or any other civilization native to the Americas developed gunpowder before Europeans started landing? If the Soviet Union won the space race, would it have still fallen in the 1980s? If the Challenger disaster never occured, would the US Space Program have kept chugging away, and what would come of that?

I think I've made my point; being a parallel history to our own world is hardly a World-Building No-No.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-11-19, 01:36 AM

This one I have to defend. Parallel histories can make for very interesting campaign settings.

The obvious and too-used one is "what if Germany built the atomic bomb first", but there are plenty of other diversion points in human history. What if the Roman Empire never fell? What if China ruled the seas and colonized the New World, centuries before Europe even heard of them? What if the American colonies lost the War of Independance? Or if France won the Seven Year War? Or if the Aztecs or any other civilization native to the Americas developed gunpowder before Europeans started landing? If the Soviet Union won the space race, would it have still fallen in the 1980s? If the Challenger disaster never occured, would the US Space Program have kept chugging away, and what would come of that?

I think I've made my point; being a parallel history to our own world is hardly a World-Building No-No.

I *think* he meant like Narnia or something, where it's a completely unrelated fantasy world you can reach from the real world through secret magic portals or something.

SiuiS

2012-11-19, 03:52 AM

Greco-Roman-era magitech works pretty well, actually. The Romans invented a ton of stuff that didn't show up again for a long time, including the steam engine, and just didn't bother doing anything with it; for Roman magepunk, all you have to do is assume is that the stuff they invented has a magical basis instead of a scientific one (steam and concrete elementals!) and go from there.

The Romans didn't have the necessary metallurgy to actually utilize it though. Recreations using the same materials explode. So they understood steam, they just weren't anywhere near harvesting it properly.

I was thinking their general "creation" history from Tyrants of Hell, where basically the story is that devils started as a group of celestials fighting the disorder of chaos that are the demons and grew evil in their methods to destroy them while remaining lawful, not that each individual devil started out as angels.

Never did read a lot of that material, only the story on the first few pages, as to be honest, its not really my thing and my experiences from games that includes the blood war is not good, so maybe I got it wrong, but when you read the start of Tyrants of Hell (Fiendish Codex II) it does sound like the origin of Devils (as a "species") was that they used to be angels/celestials but they diverted away from good

That's what the fiendish codec said, yes. But both FC books actually had huge gaping issues with their fiction. Fiendish codex 1 wants you to think that the Abyss is both the abyss and Limbo, and ignore the real limbo entirely, for example. As alternate rule sets you could use they are okay, but as anything approaching canon they are attrocious.

And indeed similar to English within England. Some cities, 50 or so miles apart can have accents so different that it takes quite considerable effort for each to understand the other. Local slang and even word order in some sentences can vary tremendously.

The same is true even within the US; take the stereotypical New Yorker say, and drop them deep in the country in Louisianna and see how well they can communicate with the locals.

TV has homogenised the language somewhat, but local variations exist that almost could be a seperate language. I suspect this may be true for all nations and/or languages (with sufficient speakers/locales).

AD&D had a nod to that, actually. The alignment languages existed because of an ancient pact, wherein almost everything Good teamed up with each other and declared war on all Evil. The two sides developed languages of divine sympathy with each other, which over time began to evolve chaotically and lawfully base on cliques and patterns within each side.

I especially like that the coalition of all good things broke up because after curb-stomping evil into the darkest pits and recesses, they wanted to follow tem into the trenches and burn them out. Genocide. The more goodly portion couldn't abide such even more blatantly evil acts, and the gran army fell apart. It also explains why goblins and orcs and such were just straight evil, and always murdering the player races; they are still basically living in the dug-outs and bomb shelters from the prior genocide, and are still fighting the war that most of the world has forgotten. It's also when Llolth corrupted the drow.

I actually find first edition AD&D had a very rich, well-woven implied setting that the authors and creator were just too dense to actually pass on.

Anyways, back to the OP. Something that occurs to me is that many worlds have multiple nations, and races, most if not all with armies, castles and the like - many disliking each other, yet no major conflicts appear to belongoing or have happened recently.

Or the opposite, where there's a war, but it doesn't matter. I hate war campaigns because invariably it doesn't work out.

Eh, energy is energy. Just becuse you run off negative rather then positve don't mean yer evil.

Also, Blood magic. I love stuff like dat. Biological energy used for magical purposes. Nothing "evil" about it. If you only use your or volenteers anyway:smallbiggrin:

This actually gets into a lot of things. It makes sense as an entire package, but not if you cherry-pick. Necromancy is evil because the body is sacred as you are defiling it for your own ends, and creating a twisted creature of evil because you think you're important enough to shuck the rules. If violation of the sacred rest Of the dead is not a Thing, then necromancy isn't as cut-and-dried evil. Same with undead being evil (ironically, undead are evil because violating their rest is evil and perverts them, just as often as being an evil bastard in life will use you with undead caricaturization in death), and with ends not justifying the means. It's an entire system which works, but pick away a single block and the whole Jinga tower falls.

How is something still evil when it's used for good?

Objective morality, where evil is not a concept based on human philosophy but a tangible, measurable phenomenon akin to radiation, which can not only corrupt you via exposure (similar to being irradiated or contaminated), but can also eventually solidify into matter, generate cells, conglomerate a living creature of ephemera, which then gains sentience which it uses solely to propagate more evil.

If you use subjective morality, then yeah.

Evil is what evil does. Otherwise we could also call natural processes evil.

Evil is a naturally occuring thing, though. That's one I the more whitewashed beliefs that feed midieval style games. Wolves are evil, because they are a natural evil thing. Lions are good, because they are naturally good and majestic. Etc. Ulceration of wounds is a natural process, but still considered evil, and a sign o evil contamination. Moreso when diseases is caused by demonic influence and not any actual pathogen.

Radiation is dangerous and uncontrolable, but the sun is not evil. When I push big rocks down a slope, they are dangerous and unctrollable, but neither rock nor gravity is evil.

Rolling rocks down a hill can be evil. It depends on what's in their path and how much you knew about it.
Rolling rocks downhill, and rolling rocks downhill onto sleeping campers are not the same act whatsoever, even though they have some overlap (rocks, hills, rolling).

This one I have to defend. Parallel histories can make for very interesting campaign settings.

The obvious and too-used one is "what if Germany built the atomic bomb first", but there are plenty of other diversion points in human history. What if the Roman Empire never fell? What if China ruled the seas and colonized the New World, centuries before Europe even heard of them? What if the American colonies lost the War of Independance? Or if France won the Seven Year War? Or if the Aztecs or any other civilization native to the Americas developed gunpowder before Europeans started landing? If the Soviet Union won the space race, would it have still fallen in the 1980s? If the Challenger disaster never occured, would the US Space Program have kept chugging away, and what would come of that?

I think I've made my point; being a parallel history to our own world is hardly a World-Building No-No.

the problem with those world building techniques is you get stuff that starts to become less interesting once you veer off. Take Terra Fulminata, a game system based around the roman empire discovering and using gunpowder to make guns. The history in it is rich and lush, and then you get tithe point where they stop using real history and it sort of pales in comparison to the stuff that actually happened.

One of my turn-offs in worldbuilding, or settings in general, is a sense of replicability. The feeling that if something can be done in isolated incidences, it can be replicated perfectly every time by everyone anywhere, and the kinks are all worked out. You see this a lot in magic. The reason spells were as quirky as they are in D&D and similar settings is because these formulas always work. But playin around with spontaneous thermal generation is dangerous. It's not just a matter of deciding what else you can do with a level three effect and dumping money into it.

Romans had steam power, so they should have trains, power tools, etc., right? Well, no. Because steam power isn't as consistent or harnessable. There's a world of difference between knowing that necromancy can animate zombies, say, and safely summoning a thousand evil spirit's to power a thousand zombies all seen together into a war machine. Or back to the steam power, knowing a steaming kettle generates force doesn't tell you how to get the most steam for your buck, what to burn, how to bleed off excess heat and pressure, why metals can withstand it, which configuration of pipes is necessary, how to vent the steam without losing all of it, etc.

But consistently you get things designed from a 20th century viewpoint; "Just use metal to corral it!", with absolutely no nod to the difficulty involved, all the planning and engineering that goes on before hand. You get a lot of assumptions about possibility which are ahead of their resource capacity, and after a while it gets mind-numbing. Breaks verisimilitude.

Weirdlet

2012-11-19, 04:13 AM

Leon

2012-11-19, 04:14 AM

Calling something a homebrew world, then taking the standard pantheon from the main book.
This tells me that the gods are not important in anyway and that they don't play a role in the campaign.

Why should they be?

PairO'Dice Lost

2012-11-19, 05:18 AM

The Romans didn't have the necessary metallurgy to actually utilize it though. Recreations using the same materials explode. So they understood steam, they just weren't anywhere near harvesting it properly.

Hence my point with Roman magitech working well. In reality, they worked out a few prototypes, saw that they couldn't scale the steam engines up beyond toys, and went "Ah, who needs steam power, we have slaves." Add in hardness and fabricate and such, and now you're cooking with gas. Er, steam.

One of my turn-offs in worldbuilding, or settings in general, is a sense of replicability. The feeling that if something can be done in isolated incidences, it can be replicated perfectly every time by everyone anywhere, and the kinks are all worked out. You see this a lot in magic. The reason spells were as quirky as they are in D&D and similar settings is because these formulas always work. But playin around with spontaneous thermal generation is dangerous. It's not just a matter of deciding what else you can do with a level three effect and dumping money into it.

Romans had steam power, so they should have trains, power tools, etc., right? Well, no. Because steam power isn't as consistent or harnessable. There's a world of difference between knowing that necromancy can animate zombies, say, and safely summoning a thousand evil spirit's to power a thousand zombies all seen together into a war machine. Or back to the steam power, knowing a steaming kettle generates force doesn't tell you how to get the most steam for your buck, what to burn, how to bleed off excess heat and pressure, why metals can withstand it, which configuration of pipes is necessary, how to vent the steam without losing all of it, etc.

But consistently you get things designed from a 20th century viewpoint; "Just use metal to corral it!", with absolutely no nod to the difficulty involved, all the planning and engineering that goes on before hand. You get a lot of assumptions about possibility which are ahead of their resource capacity, and after a while it gets mind-numbing. Breaks verisimilitude.

Well, to be fair, most of the time when 20th century engineering principles are applied to D&D settings it involves wizards doing it, i.e. exceedingly-intelligent scientifically-minded people who can conjure up all the material and labor they could possibly need given enough time and money. Someone who already knows enough chemistry to work with alchemy, enough thermodynamics to work with fire spells, enough craftwork to work with fabrication, and so forth--not to mention all of the mathematical and material science knowledge implied by arcane formulae and material components--should have little trouble coming up with and testing wacky inventions.

Once one guy has the principles down, spreading the knowledge to the common folk who lack all of that background knowledge will be more difficult, which is why every setting isn't currently steampunk, but there are enough Intelligent people with the right Knowledge to implement things if it's beneficial enough for society.

xBlackWolfx

2012-11-19, 01:30 PM

Re: Spiritology-

The original definition of necromancy is the binding and talking with and general association with dead spirits. Since 'spiritology' involves messing with spirits, including your version of a lich via spirit transfer, and seems to be just as ill-regarded and forbidden as mucking around with undead- why not call it necromancy? If a player mixes it up at first, it already sounds like there'll be some redefinitions from the status quo, so it doesn't upend too many expectations.

heh, actually, they would make sense. Someone who uses that type of magic can also create a zombie, of sorts. Remember when I said that they can kill someone simply by making eye contact? What they're actually doing is severing their soul from their body, but since the body itself isn't harmed in the process, it continues to live on, and can be controlled and programmed like an automaton if the mage also knows psionic magic. If left to its own devices, it'll act highly impulsively, not 'eat your brains' impulsive, but acting like his mental faculties have been dramatically reduced, since without a concious soul the body will only carry out automatic instinctive actions. Someone with psionic magic however can remedy this and make it appear as if the person is still alive and well, minus the fact that they're no longer concious and their will is actually that of the mage controlling it.

They also have the ability to astral project, though I havent thought up much practical use for this yet.

So yeah, necromancy would be an ideal name, outside the fact that in modern fantasy fiction most people think of necromancers as mages who make armies of walking rotting corpses.

Wardog

2012-11-19, 05:03 PM

BRC

2012-11-20, 04:04 PM

Something that bugs me is aliance/morality stasis.

As an example:

I've been laying SW:TOR recently, and when I arrived on Alderaan, I learnt that there is a civil war between the various noble houses, with House Organa supporting the Good/Republic side.

Because of course, if Princess Leia's adopted family is good, then all their ancestors 1000 years must also be good. :smallsigh: On top of that, I later discovered (via a lore unlock) that House Organa have basically been The Good Nobles for thousands of years, ever since Alderaan was first settled.

Now that is longer than most real-world nations have existed, or even civilizations. The idea that one nation/clan/family would consistently be "they good guys" for even a fraction of that time is absurd.

It would be nice, for once, to have a setting where - when the story revisits a setting a few hundred years later - we find that, for example, the "good church" has become corrupted and /or schismed; the noble houses have merged/split/etc so that the current heroes are decended from earlier villains, the militant order of religious fanatics have calmed down and become a harmless charity/social club/etc; the orc ravening hordes have established a nation that is no better or worse than any other kingdom, and enjoys just as good/bad relations with them as they do with each other; etc.
I think something like that happened in the "Red Faction" series, of which I have only played Guerilla (The third game)

IIRC
In the first game, it's the martian colonists fighting against the oppressive Ultor corporation, with "Red Faction" being the main rebel group. They win when word of Ultor's abuses get back to earth, and the EDF (Earth Defense Force) shows up, kicks out Ultor, and takes over the Martian Colony.

Red Faction 2 just kind of happens on earth.

Red Faction Guerilla: The EDF is oppressing the martian colonists in order to force the colonists to send lots of resources back to earth. Red Faction is now a Martian independence movement.

Heh, that would be a fun series of campaigns

Part 1: "The Goblin Warlord Krazah has found an ancient artifact and is uniting the Monstrous races for war! The council of five kings has ordered you (the PC's) to retrieve the artifact and stop his armies before it's too late!"

Part 2: "You are goblins/orcs/whatever. Ever since the Champions of the Five Kings killed Krazah and stole the artifact, the Council of Five Kings has been using it to put your entire race into forced labor. You (The PC's) must lead the resistance against the oppressors, strike down the Five Kings, and bring peace to the land."

Part 3: "Ever since the Five Kings were killed by assassins working for the Sons of Krazah, the land has been in chaos. The five kingdoms, as well as the Goblins, are all embroiled in a massive war. Only YOU (The PC'S) can find the lost artifact and bring peace to the land."

Part 4: "When they found the artifact, goblin and human alike hailed them as Peacemakers. At last, the long cycle of violence could end. However, as we crowned them our new rulers, we learned that they were not wise. They were cruel, greedy, petty-minded thugs who killed without mercy, financing their reign by looting the possessions of their victims. Only YOU (The PC'S) can defeat these tyrants"

Amechra

2012-11-20, 04:41 PM

That sounds pretty damn fun.

Wyntonian

2012-11-20, 11:27 PM

Heh, that would be a fun series of campaigns

Part 1: "The Goblin Warlord Krazah has found an ancient artifact and is uniting the Monstrous races for war! The council of five kings has ordered you (the PC's) to retrieve the artifact and stop his armies before it's too late!"

Part 2: "You are goblins/orcs/whatever. Ever since the Champions of the Five Kings killed Krazah and stole the artifact, the Council of Five Kings has been using it to put your entire race into forced labor. You (The PC's) must lead the resistance against the oppressors, strike down the Five Kings, and bring peace to the land."

Part 3: "Ever since the Five Kings were killed by assassins working for the Sons of Krazah, the land has been in chaos. The five kingdoms, as well as the Goblins, are all embroiled in a massive war. Only YOU (The PC'S) can find the lost artifact and bring peace to the land."

Part 4: "When they found the artifact, goblin and human alike hailed them as Peacemakers. At last, the long cycle of violence could end. However, as we crowned them our new rulers, we learned that they were not wise. They were cruel, greedy, petty-minded thugs who killed without mercy, financing their reign by looting the possessions of their victims. Only YOU (The PC'S) can defeat these tyrants"

I would play the living snuggle out of that.

SiuiS

2012-11-22, 01:56 AM

Hence my point with Roman magitech working well. In reality, they worked out a few prototypes, saw that they couldn't scale the steam engines up beyond toys, and went "Ah, who needs steam power, we have slaves." Add in hardness and fabricate and such, and now you're cooking with gas. Er, steam.

That's a good point, but (despite how PCs skew the dynamic) magic is supposed to be rare, as a standard. Once you've got the magic to do so on a regular basis cost-effectively, I can't see why you fulfill a contract for thousands of government utility works when it interferes with continued study of newt eye as it relates to thaumaturgical workings using Kriorpt's principle of vortices or something. It relates to my second point, really. I'm not sure which is the progenitor though.

Well, to be fair, most of the time when 20th century engineering principles are applied to D&D settings it involves wizards doing it, i.e. exceedingly-intelligent scientifically-minded people who can conjure up all the material and labor they could possibly need given enough time and money.

That's the thing, though. Say conjuring up all that material and getting the labor and all is possible but unlikely. I don't get how "at great cost, with laborious care and over a long, long period of time" becomes a done deal any schmuck with leel our spell access can do; it cuts out the limitin factors that are most important; initiative, focus, discipline an drive. It like saying humankind can come up with schematics and you can buy basically anything, do every one of us has a smelting forge in our backyards. It just strains my belief.

Wizards and such are scientific minded, but they are also independent-minded. It comes with wanting to bend reality to your whim. A wizard can generate lasers, a scientist needs a device, a power source, and he can't transport it.the kind of person who learns fireball and lightning bolt for use is the kind of person who doesn't go in for public works (admittedly a generalization).

Someone who already knows enough chemistry to work with alchemy, enough thermodynamics to work with fire spells, enough craftwork to work with fabrication, and so forth--not to mention all of the mathematical and material science knowledge implied by arcane formulae and material components--should have little trouble coming up with and testing wacky inventions.

I agree. But there is no testing; there's success. No prototype. No refinement. No process. It's a binary switch, from no to yes with no side effects. We go from living in caves to having clean, renewable energy with no emissions an almost no overhead. It's the magnitude of the ahift, I suppose. There's no granularity. No advancement, just a sudden surge.

I can only seem to describe it slant wise. Part of the trouble with world yielding is that stuff gets glossed over, so it's only really a turn-off when it's presented as a lack of understanding on the creator's part. And part of it is personal choice; I'd rather play out the science than roll a successful spell raft check and have the ST say "you succeed, and your city aims +1 science".

PairO'Dice Lost

2012-11-22, 09:51 PM

That's a good point, but (despite how PCs skew the dynamic) magic is supposed to be rare, as a standard. Once you've got the magic to do so on a regular basis cost-effectively, I can't see why you fulfill a contract for thousands of government utility works when it interferes with continued study of newt eye as it relates to thaumaturgical workings using Kriorpt's principle of vortices or something. It relates to my second point, really. I'm not sure which is the progenitor though.

Magic really isn't all that rare if you look at the demographics. Even a small thorp of 20-80 people has a 5% chance of having a magical power center such as "a temple full of priests or a single sorcerer cloistered in a tower" with the possibility of a full caster being "the actual, official ruler of the town," and that rises to an 87.04% chance for a metropolis of over 25,000 people; to put this in perspective, Rome at the height of the Roman Empire had at least 18 times that many people and 19th century London had about 1 million people, so it isn't hard for a city to qualify for metropolis status. Such magical power centers have a 61% to be good-aligned or Lawful Neutral, and thus have a good chance to want to improve the city's technology levels, standards of living, etc. either by having the citizens' interests at heart or by wanting to improve the city's efficiency and such.

In the largest cities, the highest rolls can give you lots of casters. You can end up with a result of 496 spellcasters, 248 wizards and sorcerers (each has 4 16th, 8 8th, 16 4th, 32 2nd, 64 1st) and 248 clerics and druids (4 18th, 8 9th, 16 4th, 32 2nd, 64 1st). Even if you assume that druids wouldn't contribute to the infrastructure, sorcerers can't be relied upon to have the right spells, you need to be at least 5th level to have enough slots to contribute, and only half would be of the appropriate alignment to care about urban development, that leaves 2 18th level casters, 2 16th level casters, 4 9th level casters, and 4 8th level casters, and you can do a lot with 12 mid-high level casters.

And that's all assuming no non-core full caster/manifester base classes and PrCs (which, if included, would at least quadruple the number available), no scaling up the chart for larger cities (ELH has the Planar Metropolis which allows for epic casters, but even without going epic that gives you more high-level casters) or multiplying proportionally (e.g. a city of 50,000 people has double the numbers above, London would have 40 times that number, etc.), and other variations.

That's the thing, though. Say conjuring up all that material and getting the labor and all is possible but unlikely. I don't get how "at great cost, with laborious care and over a long, long period of time" becomes a done deal any schmuck with leel our spell access can do; it cuts out the limitin factors that are most important; initiative, focus, discipline an drive. It like saying humankind can come up with schematics and you can buy basically anything, do every one of us has a smelting forge in our backyards. It just strains my belief.

Wizards and such are scientific minded, but they are also independent-minded. It comes with wanting to bend reality to your whim. A wizard can generate lasers, a scientist needs a device, a power source, and he can't transport it.the kind of person who learns fireball and lightning bolt for use is the kind of person who doesn't go in for public works (admittedly a generalization)

The point is not that any schmuck with spells can make any technological advancement, it's that any wizard who does come up with an advancement can immediately use his resources to put it into production. In the real world, a talented inventor can come up with a great idea, but he has to convince people to finance him, create the infrastructure to produce his invention, secure the materials, etc.; even if a humanitarian inventor comes up with the solution to world hunger or something, there's no guarantee that the invention is actually practical, and if it is that it will actually be implemented.

A humanoid-itarian wizard, on the other hand, is his own board of investors, engineering team, marketing department, mining corporation, and so forth, so the barrier for an invention entering mass production is much lower, and the only hurdle he has to clear is his own time, energy, and motivation. On top of that, once a wizard invents a spell he can make scrolls of it and allow others to learn it and reproduce the invention perfectly, and the methods of production of magic items, constructs, etc. can be taught directly or propagated via golem manual-like means. Thus, not only is the wizard his own invention infrastructure, any other wizards can assist him by adding production time and resources with no more specialized knowledge needed than the actual invention itself.

So in a magical world, improving the technology level looks less like a medieval process, with guild secrets and trade caravans and government ownership of resources and such, and looks more like modern engineering with open-source designs and free availability of resources and independent startups and such.