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Morithias
2012-11-18, 07:20 AM
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NerdInEvilsHelmet

This is a basic outline of what I want to do, but that got me thinking.

In a fantasy world, what exactly would make you a "nerd"?

It can't be studying magic and liking books, the mages are the most powerful things!

And assuming the setting is half-way serious you can't have them making pop culture references.

I am intending to use this in an oriental campaign, but that's another problem. In oriental settings, playing Shogi and other games, are considers a status symbol, according to the Rokugan Campaign setting.

So what exactly, would make you a "nerd" in a fantasy setting. The type of person that when it's revealed that they're the tin tyrant everyone goes "wait, it was HIM/HER?!"

hymer
2012-11-18, 07:49 AM
Make it a smelly, lowly peasant, or muleskinner or something with no social skills but in-depth knowledge about their particular subject - which nobody but other peasants/muleskinners/whatever care about in the slightest. We're kinda like that, aren't we?

erikun
2012-11-18, 08:08 AM
A geek, or a nerd?

Because it is really easy to create a character who will gush and geek out over a particular topic, regardless of what the setting is. The explorer who goes on and on to anyone who will listen about mapping the ley lines of the world? Probably a geek. A character who wants to find and write down every ghost story, regardless of how silly? Quite the geek.

A nerd would be a bit more difficult, because the common nerdish activities (reading, studying, etc) tend to be very well rewarded in fantasy settings due to wizards. You could also have someone studying some lore or information surprisingly in-depth other than magic to avoid this; the mating habits and sea-voyage journeys of Eastern Ocean Turtles is not likely to result in great cosmic powers.

The other big nerd-ism involves pop culture references, but it will be quite difficult to be a nerd over in-universe culture unless the game focuses highly on said culture enough to make the character's obsession obviously nerdish. (I suppose if you are creative enough, you could ab-lib it enough to be recognizably nerdish.)

Water_Bear
2012-11-18, 08:17 AM
Well, if you want an XKCD / Bill Nye style nerd who geeks out over understanding the universe and our place in it through reasoned inquiry, then you just have a very enthusiastic Magic User/Wizard. Plus it fits more with the Hollywood "Nerds can do anything except stop talking" and "Science is magic" ideas which underlie a lot of our nerd stereotypes.

If you're looking for more of a dork / neckbeard / weeaboo kind of thing, I'm not sure what would work since there really isn't anything like Pop Culture to get obsessed with. Maybe as a Priest/Cleric, pouring over and re-translating ancient legends, keeping the Church Canon "pure" and calling everyone who disagrees with their analysis heretics, cos-playing as religious figures on festival days. Now that I think about it, theologians were probably the first geeks...

Yora
2012-11-18, 09:00 AM
It can't be studying magic and liking books, the mages are the most powerful things!
Why not? Physics, engineering, and electronics are the most powerful things in the real world.

Zorg
2012-11-18, 09:03 AM
If you're looking for more of a dork / neckbeard / weeaboo kind of thing, I'm not sure what would work since there really isn't anything like Pop Culture to get obsessed with.

Well, depending on the setting they could be obsessed with adventurers and adventuring parties - knowing all the top adventurers, their favourite weapons, tales of their epic battles etc.
Different people arguing over whether or not they really own a shard of Balthar Evil-Smasher's helmet (the one he found when slaying the dark liche or Ur-Shabor until it was sundered by a dark knight of K'darogorordoravan during the storming of Fort Bloodfear).

AKA_Bait
2012-11-18, 09:26 AM
Why not? Physics, engineering, and electronics are the most powerful things in the real world.

This. Also, the common nerdish activities of reading and studying tend to be rewarded quite well in the real world too.

Craft (Cheese)
2012-11-18, 10:09 AM
Why not? Physics, engineering, and electronics are the most powerful things in the real world.

Well, in fantasy, studying magic tends to have more... immediate and exclusive benefits. If people who studied physics in the real world could fly around and conjure up anything they desire with a thought, and people who didn't were stuck eating mud, we'd probably have a lot more physics students.

hiryuu
2012-11-18, 10:15 AM
Why not? Physics, engineering, and electronics are the most powerful things in the real world.

And large chunks of the population here don't believe in that stuff, either!

Slipperychicken
2012-11-18, 10:19 AM
Take the way we argue about D&D rules here. The meticulous intricacies of RAW wordings and the wide-sweeping RAI.


Now make that discussion about the Word of God, as put down in His Holy Text. RAW is the literal interpretation ("God put it down this way, so that's what he really wants"), RAI is the liberal interpretation ("It's a typo! It doesn't make sense! There's no way he'd want us to kill people just for disagreeing with him!"). See how long it takes for a schism to happen.

High-ranking clergy's opinions are FAQ (irrelevant to RAW, relevant to RAI), oracles are custserv (almost completely irrelevant, and completely opaque and incomprehensible. They might be false oracles anyway), the first holy texts are the primary source (like DMG/PHB/MM1, considered to override any other rules source). Additional widely-accepted "third party" texts (like Dante's Inferno would be a real world example) are sometimes used where the "first party" text is unclear.

tl;dr: Angry nerds theologians arguing about religion.

Water_Bear
2012-11-18, 10:34 AM
Well, in fantasy, studying magic tends to have more... immediate and exclusive benefits. If people who studied physics in the real world could fly around and conjure up anything they desire with a thought, and people who didn't were stuck eating mud, we'd probably have a lot more physics students.

Well, people who understood physics made aircraft to fly around and factories to conjure up previously rare goodies, so it's not an incredible stretch. In the 1700s-1900s most of the world was still at an Iron Age level of technology, with a significant portion below that, even as Britain the US and bits of Europe were using science to do things which certainly would have sounded like magic to someone just a few years prior.

And back then you really could have one smart guy up and found an entire scientific discipline and make tons of crazy inventions. Look at Benjamin Fanklin, or Thomas Edison if you don't mind him being a thief; they made pretty big steps in the sciences and put out tons of inventions still in use today which do things like re-direct and bottle lightning or capture moving images to be re-played later.

To them, it wasn't magic but understanding how the bits of the universe fit together (and in Edison's case, how to game the American Patent system), but to the rest of the world, barring a few like-minded people, they might as well have been witches. Look at Devil's Bridges (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil%27s_bridge) for a similar but earlier example.

Craft (Cheese)
2012-11-18, 10:44 AM
Well, people who understood physics made aircraft to fly around and factories to conjure up previously rare goodies, so it's not an incredible stretch. In the 1700s-1900s most of the world was still at an Iron Age level of technology, with a significant portion below that, even as Britain the US and bits of Europe were using science to do things which certainly would have sounded like magic to someone just a few years prior.

And back then you really could have one smart guy up and found an entire scientific discipline and make tons of crazy inventions. Look at Benjamin Fanklin, or Thomas Edison if you don't mind him being a thief; they made pretty big steps in the sciences and put out tons of inventions still in use today which do things like re-direct and bottle lightning or capture moving images to be re-played later.

To them, it wasn't magic but understanding how the bits of the universe fit together (and in Edison's case, how to game the American Patent system), but to the rest of the world, barring a few like-minded people, they might as well have been witches. Look at Devil's Bridges (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil%27s_bridge) for a similar but earlier example.

The problem with this analogy is, when factories and airplanes and light bulbs were invented, everyone felt the difference. They weren't confined solely to be used by their inventors and a small circle of people smart enough and knowledgeable enough to replicate the success themselves. Contrast to how magic works in most fantasy settings, where the only way to get the benefits of spellcasting is to become a wizard yourself, or very, very expensively hire one to do it for you. And that's assuming we use the D&D Wizard model where magic is something that can be learned and reliably used by anyone, given time and effort: Many settings violate this assumption.

Water_Bear
2012-11-18, 10:55 AM
The problem with this analogy is, when factories and airplanes and light bulbs were invented, everyone felt the difference. They weren't confined solely to be used by their inventors and a small circle of people smart enough and knowledgeable enough to replicate the success themselves. Contrast to how magic works in most fantasy settings, where the only way to get the benefits of spellcasting is to become a wizard yourself, or very, very expensively hire one to do it for you. And that's assuming we use the D&D Wizard model where magic is something that can be learned and reliably used by anyone, given time and effort: Many settings violate this assumption.

Magic Item creation and permanent spells are the reason this falls apart though; even though only a small number of engineers Wizards can actually make these technological devices Wondrous Items doesn't mean they aren't in wide use or have widespread effects.

A telescope in D&D costs more than a fully-charged Wand of Cure Light Wounds and equipping a Knight (even with all non-magical equipment) costs more than commissioning a thin folder of Scrolls of Fireball. If a setting ignores the world that implies, it is IMO weaker for it. You don't need a Tippyverse, but Faerun and Eberron have about the right idea as far as the frequency of Magic Items and their impact on the setting.

toapat
2012-11-18, 11:03 AM
The problem with this analogy is, when factories and airplanes and light bulbs were invented, everyone felt the difference. They weren't confined solely to be used by their inventors and a small circle of people smart enough and knowledgeable enough to replicate the success themselves. Contrast to how magic works in most fantasy settings, where the only way to get the benefits of spellcasting is to become a wizard yourself, or very, very expensively hire one to do it for you. And that's assuming we use the D&D Wizard model where magic is something that can be learned and reliably used by anyone, given time and effort: Many settings violate this assumption.

Although everyone benefited from Lightbulbs within a few years, Aircraft didnt benefit Civilians for 57 years, because until then comerical flight was too expensive.

Slipperychicken
2012-11-18, 11:06 AM
Well, in fantasy, studying magic tends to have more... immediate and exclusive benefits. If people who studied physics in the real world could fly around and conjure up anything they desire with a thought, and people who didn't were stuck eating mud, we'd probably have a lot more physics students.

That situation actually happens more in 3rd world countries, where you either get educated and live a good life (buy anything you want, fly around in a plane to GTFO), or try to scavenge enough money/food to survive without getting killed by bandits.

There was a study done in a Kenyan slum (literally full of garbage, the stuff piled as high as the buildings in the street. No clean water, starvation rampant.), and there was a survey asking participants to rank a list of priorities (things like food, water, shelter, education, etc) in order of lowest to highest. Scholarships ranked higher than food, precisely because their only option other than education was to eat dirt and live in a garbage-filled slum.

Just about everyone who can afford it tries to get an education (unless they're really fixed on car repair or whatever). Whether it's physics specifically, or engineering, medicine, social sciences, or number-twisting, it's a lot better than the alternative.

Craft (Cheese)
2012-11-18, 11:06 AM
Magic Item creation and permanent spells are the reason this falls apart though; even though only a small number of engineers Wizards can actually make these technological devices Wondrous Items doesn't mean they aren't in wide use or have widespread effects.

A telescope in D&D costs more than a fully-charged Wand of Cure Light Wounds and equipping a Knight (even with all non-magical equipment) costs more than commissioning a thin folder of Scrolls of Fireball. If a setting ignores the world that implies, it is IMO weaker for it. You don't need a Tippyverse, but Faerun and Eberron have about the right idea as far as the frequency of Magic Items and their impact on the setting.

In D&D? Yes, though all indications point to this being the result of incompetent design rather than anything intentional. Many systems make mass-production and distribution of magic items, if they're even possible at all, impractical to say the least.


That situation actually happens more in 3rd world countries, where you either get educated and live a good life (buy anything you want, fly around in a plane to GTFO), or try to scavenge enough money/food to survive without getting killed by bandits.

There was a study done in a Kenyan slum (literally full of garbage, the stuff piled as high as the buildings in the street. No clean water, starvation rampant.), and there was a survey asking participants to rank a list of priorities (things like food, water, shelter, education, etc) in order of lowest to highest. Scholarships ranked higher than food, precisely because their only option other than education was to eat dirt and live in a garbage-filled slum.

Just about everyone who can afford it tries to get an education (unless they're really fixed on car repair or whatever). Whether it's physics specifically, or engineering, medicine, social sciences, or number-twisting, it's a lot better than the alternative.

This is a good point, although the situation is still, I think, not quite comparable. In the third world an education helps you get a good job: In a stereotypical medieval fantasy setting, not so much.

Water_Bear
2012-11-18, 11:09 AM
In D&D? Yes, though all indications point to this being the result of incompetent design rather than anything intentional. Many systems make mass-production and distribution of magic items, if they're even possible at all, impractical to say the least.

Talking about Fantasy RPGs means talking about D&D or it's army of clones and past editions. There are alternatives, many of them excellent systems (I like The One Ring for maximum Tolkien-osity) but they are so far below the radar they might as well be underground.

hymer
2012-11-18, 11:09 AM
You could consider it a weakness of the economic rules instead, W_B. Anyway, the particular pieces of equipment you mention are limited use (and would require UMD or that specialized training), compared to the knight's equipment, which by the same rules doesn't wear out even if he lives to be a hundred.
Or to put it another way: A single fireball scroll costs 375gp. Used correctly, it could definitely tip the scales of a battle. But so could the, what, 50 able mercenaries you might hire for the same amount. And they could do it more than once, too.

Anyway, all this is D&D 3.5 Who knows what system we're talking about here?

toapat
2012-11-18, 11:18 AM
The problem with this analogy is, when factories and airplanes and light bulbs were invented, everyone felt the difference. They weren't confined solely to be used by their inventors and a small circle of people smart enough and knowledgeable enough to replicate the success themselves. Contrast to how magic works in most fantasy settings, where the only way to get the benefits of spellcasting is to become a wizard yourself, or very, very expensively hire one to do it for you. And that's assuming we use the D&D Wizard model where magic is something that can be learned and reliably used by anyone, given time and effort: Many settings violate this assumption.

Although everyone benefited from Lightbulbs within a few years, Aircraft didnt benefit Civilians for 57 years, because until then comerical flight was too expensive.

Morithias
2012-11-18, 11:33 AM
Anyway, all this is D&D 3.5 Who knows what system we're talking about here?

I planned to use the character in a 3.5 campaign, but I think that point has passed....

hymer
2012-11-18, 11:37 AM
@ Morithias: Well, I hope you got something useful before the thread imploded. :)

LibraryOgre
2012-11-18, 11:43 AM
It can't be studying magic and liking books, the mages are the most powerful things!

Tell that to nuclear physicists... they like books and study the most powerful thing in the world.

However, with Rokugan, go with a person who is not obviously powerful. All he cares about is his garden. Time away from his garden is a burden, but socially necessary. If you meet him at a celebration, you'll see dirt on the knees of his fancy kimono, and he is peeved that he has to be out dealing with things like this... but if you get him on the subject of his garden (and he'll bring it around to that subject), he will talk for HOURS. He knows the lineage of every plant in there. He's worried that his chrysanthemum is getting too much/not enough/the wrong kind of sun/water/fertilizer. He'll ask your opinion, and then answer you with his opinion before you get a word in edgewise. If you dare to venture the WRONG opinion (and trust me, your opinion is wrong, unless you've got the gardening score to keep up with him), then you are obviously feeble-minded and of no interest to him.

Meanwhile? His garden is his passion... but he's also well connected. The Emperor's gardener asks him advice. Gardeners of great houses come to him, speak to him, and he's willing to instruct them. If a noble approaches him correctly with a gardening issue, he is more than happy to instruct them, and give them advice on their gardening issues. In his garden, he is comfortable, gracious, and, while a bit protective of his plants, he can be ruthless with the gardens of others.

His obsession with gardening explains why he always carries a kunai (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunai) tucked into his obi, you see.

Pick up "Path of the Assassin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_of_the_Assassin)". I know the Houston Public Library carries it; you might try your local library.

Eldan
2012-11-18, 12:20 PM
There was an injoke in one my games for a while. The magical university has the Naturalism department. It had three people in shabby robes who were never given any funding. What they studied was the natural laws of the world when no magic at all was involved. Which required incredible amounts of magic to set up strong enough antimagic fields, ironically. They'd sit there for hours, with a stopwatch spell and a rock dropping in an antimagic field from different heights, just calculating.
Nothing useful ever came from it, of course. The field is so exotic, it has no real world applications whatsoever. Because in that world, almost everything was magic. The sun was a magical barge sailing across the heavens. The stars were the distant palaces of the fey nobility. The rock they were dropping probably had to have its elementals removed first.

LibraryOgre
2012-11-18, 12:26 PM
To avoid polluting Morthios's thread, I'm gonna respond to Eldan in another thread.

Slipperychicken
2012-11-18, 12:27 PM
The guy could love history or anthropology. This would lead to books, but not to magic. His motivation to be the BBEG might be an obscure past empire which he thought was super cool and wanted to bring back.

You can also have game-nerds, too. Just they're mostly talking about Chess, Checkers, a soccer-equivalent (like rugby or something), or Jousting. Or any bizarre fantasy-sports invented for the setting.

I could see nerds obsessed with armor/weapon-smithing, or siege equipment too. Highly competent, but gets irritated and abrasive if you try to talk to him while he's working (one-syllable answers, annoyed tone of voice. "Can it wait a bit? I'm in the middle of some calibrations..."), and will quickly grow bored and start drifting off if you try to talk about anything other than his obsession.

Morithias
2012-11-18, 12:29 PM
To avoid polluting Morthios's thread, I'm gonna respond to Eldan in another thread.

Actually you gave me a great idea. Although it's more "Otaku" than nerd. Thanks!

"Thios"..."thias"..."Thesis"...hmmm..

Sorry just looking at my name, I'm still not sure I've spelled it right.

It's meant to be a play on "Morris Thesis" or "Death Thesis" basically it was originally the name of an assassin. I'm still not sure what the latin word for thesis is, so it might not be really all that proper of a name.


The guy could love history or anthropology. This would lead to books, but not to magic. His motivation to be the BBEG might be an obscure past empire which he thought was super cool and wanted to bring back.

Actually his motivation is that he's an perverted harem seeker who has a thing for women. Basically the main character from every harem anime ever, except he's actually attempting it, rather than leaving it to chance.

That's why I'm trying to make him a nerd. His weakness/berserk button is his insecurity about being on top. His enchanter powers and sword skills enable him to control his empire and the girls, but he's not as strong willed as the front he puts up.

Of course he's still evil...kinda goes with the whole "lustful mind control" thing.

Eldan
2012-11-18, 12:31 PM
Thesis is a Latin word. Well, it was Greek first, but it is also used in Latin.

LibraryOgre
2012-11-18, 12:32 PM
I decided responding would be too much work, anyway.

Morithias
2012-11-18, 12:33 PM
Thesis is a Latin word. Well, it was Greek first, but it is also used in Latin.

Well that's convenient.

Eldan
2012-11-18, 12:34 PM
I decided responding would be too much work, anyway.

Pity. What were you going to say? Just a short version? Complaint? Disagreement? Agreement? Amusement?

Arcanist
2012-11-18, 12:44 PM
Take the way we argue about D&D rules here. The meticulous intricacies of RAW wordings and the wide-sweeping RAI.


Now make that discussion about the Word of God, as put down in His Holy Text. RAW is the literal interpretation ("God put it down this way, so that's what he really wants"), RAI is the liberal interpretation ("It's a typo! It doesn't make sense! There's no way he'd want us to kill people just for disagreeing with him!"). See how long it takes for a schism to happen.

High-ranking clergy's opinions are FAQ (irrelevant to RAW, relevant to RAI), oracles are custserv (almost completely irrelevant, and completely opaque and incomprehensible. They might be false oracles anyway), the first holy texts are the primary source (like DMG/PHB/MM1, considered to override any other rules source). Additional widely-accepted "third party" texts (like Dante's Inferno would be a real world example) are sometimes used where the "first party" text is unclear.

tl;dr: Angry nerds theologians arguing about religion.

Take all of my Yes, Want, a cookie and 3 internets :smallbiggrin:

LibraryOgre
2012-11-18, 01:08 PM
Mostly, "In a world where there is magic, magic is part of physics".

Eldan
2012-11-18, 01:11 PM
OH, absolutely. I completely agree with that one. That's why they were a weird esoteric discipline and no one took them seriously. And I didn't call them "Physicists".

It was just a small joke anyway.

Prime32
2012-11-18, 10:21 PM
Try a collector. Could be coins, weapons, lizards, anything.

Darius Kane
2012-11-18, 10:55 PM
Wizards are nerds, Sorcerers are jocks.

hiryuu
2012-11-19, 12:52 AM
Wizards are nerds, Sorcerers are jocks.

I always figured the sorcerer was that one kid who never showed up to school except for the tests, aced them all, goofed off, and had the soul patch if they were a dude.

tbok1992
2012-11-19, 12:54 AM
I'm now thinking of a convent of female clerics dedicated to what is essentially writing shipping fanfics for the gods, for some obscure theological reason that would take about an hour to explain. And it is glorious.

I especially like thinking of the theological schizm resulting from the debate over Grumuush/Lolth OTP Vs. Corellon/Lolth OTP. And don't get me started on those who think that Lolth/Tiamat is the one true way.

snikrept
2012-11-19, 01:06 AM
Sufficiently advanced nerds are indistinguishable from mages.

Kelb_Panthera
2012-11-19, 01:31 AM
Sufficiently advanced nerds are indistinguishable from mages.

Got that backwards. As a nerd, I can assure you that I have no ability to throw fire with my bare hands, much as I wish that wasn't true.

Nerds can't tell physicists to "suck it," mages can.

Unless of course physicist and mage are interchangeable, as Mark Hall put foward a few posts back.

Fhaolan
2012-11-19, 01:44 AM
Honestly, if this was set in a society like RL medieval period, nerds would be scribes and monks. Copying books, living in commune-like conditions, etc.

In D&D terms... cloistered clerics maybe?

Craft (Cheese)
2012-11-19, 01:49 AM
I'm now thinking of a convent of female clerics dedicated to what is essentially writing shipping fanfics for the gods, for some obscure theological reason that would take about an hour to explain. And it is glorious.

I especially like thinking of the theological schizm resulting from the debate over Grumuush/Lolth OTP Vs. Corellon/Lolth OTP. And don't get me started on those who think that Lolth/Tiamat is the one true way.

Oh please, you know fangirls never write het pairs. Corellon/Gruumsh OTP!

Ravens_cry
2012-11-19, 01:53 AM
Wizards are definitely my go to choice for scientists of sorcery, and science is a pretty nerdy pursuit.

snikrept
2012-11-19, 02:18 AM
Got that backwards. As a nerd, I can assure you that I have no ability to throw fire with my bare hands, much as I wish that wasn't true.

Nerds can't tell physicists to "suck it," mages can.

Unless of course physicist and mage are interchangeable, as Mark Hall put foward a few posts back.
I was mangling Clarke. I think it's apt.

Bat guano and sulphur and True Speech; gunpowder and steel and precision optics. Depends on how your world works, really.

hiryuu
2012-11-19, 03:51 AM
I was mangling Clarke. I think it's apt.

Bat guano and sulphur and True Speech; gunpowder and steel and precision optics. Depends on how your world works, really.

That's not a bad idea to think about. What's nerdy is entirely based on our cultural context. Shop class and smoking used to be nerdy. Roger Bacon and and Newton and Linnaeus were nerds in their day.

Lix Lorn
2012-11-19, 08:40 AM
I'm now thinking of a convent of female clerics dedicated to what is essentially writing shipping fanfics for the gods, for some obscure theological reason that would take about an hour to explain. And it is glorious.

I especially like thinking of the theological schizm resulting from the debate over Grumuush/Lolth OTP Vs. Corellon/Lolth OTP. And don't get me started on those who think that Lolth/Tiamat is the one true way.
I love it. May I sig this?

Water_Bear
2012-11-19, 10:10 AM
Nerds can't tell physicists to "suck it," mages can.\

You kidding? I always stop by my local Physics Department to flip them the bird. Biology FTW! :smalltongue:

Eldan
2012-11-19, 10:25 AM
Biology high-five!

I mostly make fun of the engineers across the road.

Craft (Cheese)
2012-11-19, 10:40 AM
Biology high-five!

I mostly make fun of the engineers across the road.

Interdepartmental rivalries are so juvenile.

Unless, of course, you're making fun of prescriptivist grammarians. What idiots!

Water_Bear
2012-11-19, 10:44 AM
Interdepartmental rivalries are so juvenile.

Unless, of course, you're making fun of prescriptivist grammarians. What idiots!

Oh, man those guys are so obnoxious; whenever they tell me not to end sentences with prepositions, I really like to give'em what for.

Eldan
2012-11-19, 10:55 AM
Interdepartmental rivalries are so juvenile.

Unless, of course, you're making fun of prescriptivist grammarians. What idiots!

I do it because I'm jealous of their amazing robots. Seriously, our university is winning international engineering contests of some kind or other all the time.

We don't have any grammarists. The university is science and engineering only.

Joe the Rat
2012-11-19, 01:14 PM
And this thread pretty much shows what you need for a nerd in any setting: Passion, Enthusiasm, and Too Much Information.

So load up on Knowledge ranks in your thing or related things, talk incessantly about it, and you're golden.

Kelb_Panthera
2012-11-19, 10:36 PM
You kidding? I always stop by my local Physics Department to flip them the bird. Biology FTW! :smalltongue:

Addendum: mages can tell physicists to "suck it" because they can bend physics over the nearest bar-stool and do very bad things to it, even when they're "half in the tank" at the afformentioned bar.

Nerds can only do so as a means of saying, my field is better/more important/more useful, when this may or may not be quantitatively true, and can't be proved (un)true in any case.

Other nerds make physicists angry. Mages just make them cry.

SuperPanda
2012-11-19, 11:23 PM
Basically, make Ducky from NCIS and your good.

-Incredible skill at what he does, first to be called when his skills are needed, full of actually interesting stories that he goes on about at all the wrong times.

tbok1992
2012-11-20, 12:22 AM
I love it. May I sig this?
Yes! Yes you may!

Slipperychicken
2012-11-20, 01:03 AM
Other nerds make physicists angry. Mages just make them cry.

Mages would make engineers fall in love, that's for sure. 99 different ways to make infinite free power forever, solve all the world's problems by waving some bat guano around.

Kelb_Panthera
2012-11-20, 01:25 AM
Mages would make engineers fall in love, that's for sure. 99 different ways to make infinite free power forever, solve all the world's problems by waving some bat guano around.

They sure could. Especially when you think about the fact that a permanent wall of fire around a boiler is pretty much the exact same thing as the reactor in a nuclear power-plant.

The perpetual energy thing is one of the reasons mages make physicists cry. That and summoning creatures that are made of solid fire.

Think about that. It's fire, basically ionized plasma and the aerosolized products of a chemical reaction, but it has no fuel source and behaves in all ways as though it were a solid object; plus its a sapient creature that can talk to you. I'm not even a real physicist* and that makes my brain hurt.

*Just an amateur with a solid interest.

hiryuu
2012-11-20, 02:01 PM
They sure could. Especially when you think about the fact that a permanent wall of fire around a boiler is pretty much the exact same thing as the reactor in a nuclear power-plant.

The perpetual energy thing is one of the reasons mages make physicists cry. That and summoning creatures that are made of solid fire.

Think about that. It's fire, basically ionized plasma and the aerosolized products of a chemical reaction, but it has no fuel source and behaves in all ways as though it were a solid object; plus its a sapient creature that can talk to you. I'm not even a real physicist* and that makes my brain hurt.

*Just an amateur with a solid interest.

Well, why? I mean. That's how fire works in D&D, doesn't it? It's got a different set of rules. Under those rules, wizards are physicists. They're good enough at physics they can make it do the sorts of things that can clearly happen naturally: lots of undead just happen when certain conditions are met, but wizards are better at making them. Lots of magical phenomena are assumed to happen in the default setting, wizards can force them to happen.

It's important to remember that D&D is not "like our world, but with magic attached" but rather "totally alien physics model that happens to look similar to ours." Wizards do not break the laws of their physics model, they make the laws behave as desired.

Tengu_temp
2012-11-20, 02:23 PM
Not every nerd in fantasy is a wizard, just like not every nerd in real life is a scientist. In fact, most aren't.

Akal Saris
2012-11-20, 06:33 PM
Oh, man those guys are so obnoxious; whenever they tell me not to end sentences with prepositions, I really like to give'em what for.

This is the sort of English up with which I will not put!

Kelb_Panthera
2012-11-20, 06:35 PM
Well, why? I mean. That's how fire works in D&D, doesn't it? It's got a different set of rules. Under those rules, wizards are physicists. They're good enough at physics they can make it do the sorts of things that can clearly happen naturally: lots of undead just happen when certain conditions are met, but wizards are better at making them. Lots of magical phenomena are assumed to happen in the default setting, wizards can force them to happen.

It's important to remember that D&D is not "like our world, but with magic attached" but rather "totally alien physics model that happens to look similar to ours." Wizards do not break the laws of their physics model, they make the laws behave as desired.

I very much get that. I was talking about real physicists there, not in-game physicists (a thing that may or may not exist).

Making the concious decision to treat in-game physics as though the classicists (the guys that thought everything was a blending of the four classic elements) were right was the only way I could make sense of the game and not have my mind snap under the weight of the dissonance between fantasy and reality.

Acid isn't a blending of chemicals that have too much oxygen and consequently is highly-reactive. It's just what happens when the elemental energy of water is changed by an angry or hungry water spirit. Earth isn't a hodge-podge mix of crumbled silica and other minerals, it's just earth. Metal is what happens when earth is inhabited by a particularly doughty earth spirit.

Water_Bear
2012-11-20, 09:18 PM
Acid isn't a blending of chemicals that have too much oxygen and consequently is highly-reactive.

No, no it isn't. Acids are electron pair acceptors, usually chemicals which react to form hydronium ions in solution (hence pH; Power of H+).[/Pedant]

But yeah, I absolutely agree with everything else you said; applying a modern understanding of molecular chemistry and subatomic physics to a world with infinite extra-dimensional realms corresponding to the classical elements is silly.

Emmerask
2012-11-20, 09:32 PM
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NerdInEvilsHelmet

This is a basic outline of what I want to do, but that got me thinking.

In a fantasy world, what exactly would make you a "nerd"?

It can't be studying magic and liking books, the mages are the most powerful things!

And assuming the setting is half-way serious you can't have them making pop culture references.

I am intending to use this in an oriental campaign, but that's another problem. In oriental settings, playing Shogi and other games, are considers a status symbol, according to the Rokugan Campaign setting.

So what exactly, would make you a "nerd" in a fantasy setting. The type of person that when it's revealed that they're the tin tyrant everyone goes "wait, it was HIM/HER?!"

Depends on the setting really, if magic requires some spark, lineage or similar and those who donīt have it simply canīt use it then you could still have a geek who knows everything about magic there is to know without ever being able to use any of it.

Similarly you could ask your dm if you could make someone who is for some reason incapable of using any active magic (armor etc still works) but no wand spells etc and get Spellcraft/magic lore whatever the particular system uses as a class skill.
It also gives the dm something interesting to work into his campaign, why canīt you use magic when everyone else could use it (with the stats and training).

Kelb_Panthera
2012-11-20, 10:28 PM
No, no it isn't. Acids are electron pair acceptors, usually chemicals which react to form hydronium ions in solution (hence pH; Power of H+).[/Pedant]

But yeah, I absolutely agree with everything else you said; applying a modern understanding of molecular chemistry and subatomic physics to a world with infinite extra-dimensional realms corresponding to the classical elements is silly.

Darnit, I knew I was getting that wrong even as I tapped it out.

It's been a few years since I cracked a chemistry textbook. :smalltongue:

QuidEst
2012-11-22, 01:15 PM
Hmm. I would probably treat Bards as the fantasy nerds. A wizard could fry them, a fighter could curb-stomp them, and a rogue has a better range of skills. If you reveal that the BBEG is a bard, that's going to get a reaction. The biggest problem, of course, is that they're built around having social skills.

So… make a bard that isn't a skirt-chaser. He practices his instrument of choice a lot, and he has lots of ranks in all the "useless" knowledge skills (history, engineering, nobility- anything that can't tell you about a monster). Grab a fistful of classic plays (preferably Greek ones, since Shakespeare is really well known) and substitute those for cultural references.

scurv
2012-11-22, 10:20 PM
Socrates If you read accounts of his dialogues and such would most likely of been a nerd.

Prime32
2012-11-24, 09:19 AM
They sure could. Especially when you think about the fact that a permanent wall of fire around a boiler is pretty much the exact same thing as the reactor in a nuclear power-plant.

The perpetual energy thing is one of the reasons mages make physicists cry. That and summoning creatures that are made of solid fire.

Think about that. It's fire, basically ionized plasma and the aerosolized products of a chemical reaction, but it has no fuel source and behaves in all ways as though it were a solid object; plus its a sapient creature that can talk to you. I'm not even a real physicist* and that makes my brain hurt.

*Just an amateur with a solid interest.The entire point of science is to prove existing knowledge wrong. If you handed a scientist the opportunity to prove that much science wrong at the same time... they wouldn't be upset, they'd be wondering whether they'll need an extension to their house to store all the Nobel Prizes they're going to win. :smalltongue:

Slipperychicken
2012-11-24, 11:04 AM
The entire point of science is to prove existing knowledge wrong. If you handed a scientist the opportunity to prove that much science wrong at the same time... they wouldn't be upset, they'd be wondering whether they'll need an extension to their house to store all the Nobel Prizes they're going to win. :smalltongue:

Well, they'd just make a bunch of theories/science around magic. He'd win another houseful of Nobel prizes for all the free-energy shenanigans which he'd immediately develop.


Newspaper headline: "Scientist Solves Energy Crisis With Magic"