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2020-11-12, 01:35 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Dragonlance/Faerun] Anyone here met any Cataclysm/Wall of the Faithless defender
There have been repeated issues with dev failures of understanding basic statistics and dice probabilities through the last 3 editions, especially with regards to the outcomes of things with multiple rolls. Since mid-3e it's been my habit to check the math for anything they do that involves more than one roll.
That's actually semi-off thread, but there have been enough face-palms over the years that I don't assume the devs really know basic math any more.
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2020-11-12, 03:31 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Dragonlance/Faerun] Anyone here met any Cataclysm/Wall of the Faithless defender
If all rules are suggestions what happens when I pass the save?
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2020-11-12, 07:48 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Dragonlance/Faerun] Anyone here met any Cataclysm/Wall of the Faithless defender
Tabletop gaming developers are generally writers by training, not statisticians, mathematicians, or people in any other field with a high degree of numeric literacy. Heck, Gary Gygax's training as an insurance underwriter probably puts him well ahead of average in terms of mathematics training among TTRPG devs. Also, TTRPG design teams are small. These aren't big corporate projects overseen by huge groups of people with multiple departments. Whole game systems are put together by 6-8 people on a regular basis, and even large gaming books can be composed entirely by one person and only edited by one other person. This is definitely true in 5e, which has a tiny design group (3e's was larger, probably the biggest its ever been for any TTRPG).
Consequently math errors and continuity errors with regard to fluff are extremely common, doubly so among books that are produced by the method of writers contributing largely independent sections that are then cobbled together by a single design tasked with oversight. To get a continuity error like the Wall of the Faithless in 5e all you need is one person to misremember something, and one other person to not question the factoid and bother to double check. This is especially likely since the actual writers may not be especially familiar with the setting, certainly not on the same level as many of the biggest fans.
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2020-11-12, 07:54 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Dragonlance/Faerun] Anyone here met any Cataclysm/Wall of the Faithless defender
And even more likely an error when the person doing the writing is not even part of the main dev team. That book was farmed out to Green Ronin. So you have a non-core-dev writing stuff, likely influenced strongly by earlier editions, without checking with the main team. Plus the usual error of the main team contact person not checking it even if the 3rd party does check in.
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2020-11-13, 01:35 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Dragonlance/Faerun] Anyone here met any Cataclysm/Wall of the Faithless defender
This isn't stuff that needs a team of professional statisticians. You can wander down to a university coffee shop and get the analysis you need from a student half way through their first stats class. The coffee fund will cover the expense. It just takes someone caring enough to ask if the "easy" X successes before Y failures trial really is easier than the hard one.
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2020-11-13, 05:13 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Dragonlance/Faerun] Anyone here met any Cataclysm/Wall of the Faithless defender
So, about this "Wall of Mirrors" that got mentioned several times in the thread.
From this fan wiki:The novel Crucible: The Trial of Cyric the Mad states that Kelemvor also replaced the Wall of the Faithless with a mirrored wall that showed the false and the faithless their reflections in such a way as to reveal the follies and life choices that led them to be sent to his realm. However, the more recent Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide sourcebook still describes faithless souls being mortared into the Wall for eternity.
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2020-11-13, 06:43 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Dragonlance/Faerun] Anyone here met any Cataclysm/Wall of the Faithless defender
That novel did come out in 1998. From what I can tell after a bit of research, the Forgotten Realms Campaign setting from 2001 still mentions the Wall of the Faithless. (Dunno how things were in 4th edition.) So, either that is a long-lasting continuity error, or the Wall of Mirrors was retconned out.
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2020-11-13, 10:27 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Dragonlance/Faerun] Anyone here met any Cataclysm/Wall of the Faithless defender
Originally Posted by Theoboldi
...the Forgotten Realms Campaign setting from 2001 still mentions the Wall of the Faithless.
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2020-11-13, 10:33 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Dragonlance/Faerun] Anyone here met any Cataclysm/Wall of the Faithless defender
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2020-11-13, 10:44 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Dragonlance/Faerun] Anyone here met any Cataclysm/Wall of the Faithless defender
Originally Posted by Theobaldi
Sounds like not quite either, then? The Wall of the Faithless is supposed to be eternal, right?
"This mold prevents them from escaping the wall and eventually breaks down their substance until the soul and its consciousness are dissolved."
In this context, "eventually" could be centuries or millions of years, and it also doesn't really detail what they're dissolved into, since presumably this is spiritual substance we're talking about.
By contrast, the only direct mention of eternal punishment I see is for the False, who are a different category than the Faithless and not involved with the wall per se:
"The False are punished according to their crimes in life and serve their sentence in the City of Judgment for eternity."
So without reading this carefully, some people on the forums may be confusing the False and the Faithless, and may be assuming that the eternal punishments meted out to the False somehow apply to the Faithless as well. Again, I'm not familiar with the details of setting lore on this point, much less from other editions, so the wall may have been changed to an eternal sentence in some other source.
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2020-11-13, 11:06 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Dragonlance/Faerun] Anyone here met any Cataclysm/Wall of the Faithless defender
Well, I don't actually have the book myself, not being a huge Faerun fan. Just going off what information I can find online. All I was really concerned with was the canonicity of that "Wall of Mirrors" thing, which seems to have only been in one novel and no setting material beyond that.
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2020-11-13, 11:11 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Dragonlance/Faerun] Anyone here met any Cataclysm/Wall of the Faithless defender
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2020-11-13, 11:18 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Dragonlance/Faerun] Anyone here met any Cataclysm/Wall of the Faithless defender
"Historical fantasy" is fantasy set in a version of historical Earth where either (A) magic is real but hidden (like an urban fantasy-style masquerade) or declining to the point that it will be essentially gone in the modern day or (B) the world has been changed by the overt existence of magic but still basically resembles historical Earth (like, say, a setting where magic replaces technology and World War 2 is a clash between Allied dragonriders and Axis necromancers, totally ignoring the effects might have had to alter history up to that point), and it nearly always involves making mythical things real and/or borrowing from real-world magical traditions instead of inventing things whole-cloth.
Since Three Hearts and Three Lions involves traveling to a world where the legends of Charlemagne and Ogier the Dane are real and the plot revolves around a war a clash between an alternate Holy Roman Empire and alternate Saracens, it's pretty solidly an example of the second version of historic fantasy. You can see the influence of historical fantasy on early D&D in the fact that all the human nations in Mystara and most of those in Blackmoor are basically fantasy-ified versions of different real-world nations and cultures, in contrast to early Greyhawk where there are certainly real-world influences but most of the nations and cultures there are X-meets-Y blends of real-world cultures rather than straight-up ports and there are plenty of nations without any real-world analogs.
The Narnia books aren't historical fantasy, because while the nations of Narnia heavily draw on real-world cultures for influence and there are portals between Earth and Narnia through which cultural influence could flow, it's still a separate world (and a flat one, at that) with its own culture, geography, history, etc. However, if Narnia were merely a parallel Earth using the actual British Isles, Scandinavia, and the Middle East in place of "Narnia" and "Ettinsmoor" and "Calormen" and so forth, and the Dawn Treader's journey East took them to totally-not-India or totally-not-China, then it could potentially be classified as historical fantasy.
Originally Posted by Jason
Similarly, the Dying Earth and Westeros both have fragmented and mysterious ancient magics and magical beings reemerging after being hidden away for many years or centuries, but magic in The Dying Earth is explained as being a creation of advanced mathematics and physics, many magical artifacts are actually poorly-understood ancient technological devices, and the magical entities are higher-dimensional beings of various sorts, while magic in A Song of Ice and Fire is pure-fantasy bloodlines and prophecies and mysticism and such.
The major science fantasy influence in early D&D was psionics, where psionic potential in (demi)humans arose from random brain mutations and all of the sciences and devotions had much more modern and scientific-sounding names than spells did, and the various blatantly-technological-but-the-natives-think-it's-magic stuff like the "Nucleus of the Spheres" (an ancient crashed starship reactor core) in Blackmoor or the "golems" (maintenance and security robots), "talismans" (security access cards), and "blasting wands" (laser pistols) from the crashed starship in the Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.
Originally Posted by PalananLast edited by PairO'Dice Lost; 2020-11-13 at 11:35 AM.
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2020-11-13, 11:30 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Dragonlance/Faerun] Anyone here met any Cataclysm/Wall of the Faithless defender
Originally Posted by Theoboldi
All I was really concerned with was the canonicity of that "Wall of Mirrors" thing, which seems to have only been in one novel and no setting material beyond that.
Originally Posted by PairO’Dice Lost
I don't think I've noticed anyone conflate the two thus far in the thread.
Originally Posted by PairO’Dice Lost
Certainly people have described being imprisoned in the Wall as an eternal punishment, but if "having your mind and soul dissolved by magically-radioactive mold over bazillions of years" isn't considered a punishment, I don't know what is.
I’m quoting the distinction between the punishments received by the False and the Faithless. According to the text on p. 259 of the FRCS, the wall by definition isn’t eternal punishment, while residence within the City of Judgment is.
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2020-11-13, 12:39 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Dragonlance/Faerun] Anyone here met any Cataclysm/Wall of the Faithless defender
Originally Posted by Theoboldi
At the end of the day, retaining the Wall of the Faithless causes more conflicts with canon than using the Wall of Mirrors does--Kelemvor's canon personality in 3e came about as part of the same events that led him to create the Wall of Mirrors; Kelemvor lives in the Crystal Spire instead of the Bone Castle, and he transformed the Castle into the Spire at the same time he transformed the Wall of the Faithless into the Wall of Mirrors; neither Wall is mentioned in any 3e material after the FRCS, with Kelemvor's F&P entry not mentioning anything about his realm and GHotR not mentioning Kelemvor's and Mystra's trials when describing Cyric's trial; and so on--so treating the Wall of Mirrors as canon is the more consistent option, and that goes double with WotC now acknowledging their prior mistake with errata.
I’m quoting the distinction between the punishments received by the False and the Faithless. According to the text on p. 259 of the FRCS, the wall by definition isn’t eternal punishment, while residence within the City of Judgment is.
Yeah, the fact that the Faithless don't spend literal eternity being dissolved while watching everyone else getting to go off of to a real afterlife or at least have a "life" while toiling in the City, merely spending an indefinite and unbounded period of time there, is somewhat of a mitigating factor on its terribleness. Not that it makes much of a practical difference to the Faithless involved.
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2020-11-13, 01:11 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Dragonlance/Faerun] Anyone here met any Cataclysm/Wall of the Faithless defender
Well, maybe. It's much more a fairy tale than any attempt to be realistic or historic, and the clash is really between law and chaos, with the Empire and Saracens being pawns of the two sides. I picture "historic fantasy" as something a little more grounded in reality. "Reality but with magic."
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2020-11-13, 01:28 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Dragonlance/Faerun] Anyone here met any Cataclysm/Wall of the Faithless defender
Originally Posted by Jason
Well, maybe. It's much more a fairy tale than any attempt to be realistic or historic….
Originally Posted by Jason
I picture "historic fantasy" as something a little more grounded in reality. "Reality but with magic."
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2020-11-13, 05:01 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Dragonlance/Faerun] Anyone here met any Cataclysm/Wall of the Faithless defender
The historical fantasy genre is about how closely the peoples, cultures, and other trappings correspond to those of a particular real historical period, the involvement of iconic historic or mythic figures in fantastic events or the introduction of fantasy elements to historic events, and so on, not about power levels or grittiness or the like.
Gaslamp fantasy and wuxia are considered sub-genres of historical fantasy, and both vary widely in degree of grounded-ness. The former includes lots of less-grounded works like the Temeraire series (dragons everywhere!), the Shades of Magic series (multiple alternate Londons with more magic than ours!), and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel (adventures in Faerie and worlds beyond!)--the latter of which has much the same fairy tale feel that Three Hearts and Three Lions does--and the important part is that they're all set in a reasonable facsimile of Victorian-ish era England. The latter includes a ton of stories involving greater or lesser amounts of magical martial arts, the most famous being Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and the important part is that they're all set in a reasonable facsimile of ancient China.
Meanwhile, a story being a "fairy tale" is fairly fuzzy from a scholarly perspective (just to start with, there's lots of debate as to whether a story can be considered a fairy tale if it's not authentic folklore even if it otherwise meets all the relevant criteria) but in general it has much more to do with plot elements (archetypal characters, often defined by their role more than their individual existence; repetition in the narrative, especially things coming in threes; "just-so" plot points and setting elements that "just happen," lacking explanation in the story; clear moral lessons at the end, whether explicit or implicit; and so on) than about setting. Indeed, the magical realism genre is basically the fairy tale genre with the traditional historical or fantastic setting swapped out for a contemporary one.
Personally, I could see characterizing Three Hearts and Three Lions as both a historical fantasy and a fairy tale, but D&D only really borrowed the historical fantasy elements and eschewed the fairy tale ones.
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2020-11-13, 05:55 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Dragonlance/Faerun] Anyone here met any Cataclysm/Wall of the Faithless defender
Originally Posted by PairO’Dice Lost
The historical fantasy genre is about how closely the peoples, cultures, and other trappings correspond to those of a particular real historical period, the involvement of iconic historic or mythic figures in fantastic events or the introduction of fantasy elements to historic events, and so on, not about power levels or grittiness or the like.
As for your definition, seems clear you have a different one than Jason and I, or else we’re remembering the book very differently from you.
Originally Posted by PairO’Dice Lost
…but D&D only really borrowed the historical fantasy elements and eschewed the fairy tale ones.
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2020-11-13, 11:20 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Dragonlance/Faerun] Anyone here met any Cataclysm/Wall of the Faithless defender
Have you read the book?
Regenerating trolls are straight from this book, a direct borrow by D&D. Then there's the world being fought over by the forces of Law and Chaos, the swanmays, witches with damiliars, Hugi the forest dwarf (gnome), a werewolf, etc. D&D didn't borrofamiliars, more historic Empire or Saracen backdrop at all.
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2020-11-16, 09:59 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Dragonlance/Faerun] Anyone here met any Cataclysm/Wall of the Faithless defender
Phrases like "grounded in reality" and "reality but with magic" are generally code for "gritty low fantasy," and you contrasted those with the cosmic-scale Law vs. Chaos conflict. It looked to me like you were concerned with grittiness and "street-level" conflict when defining the genre, but if not, apologies for misinterpreting that.
As for your definition, seems clear you have a different one than Jason and I, or else we’re remembering the book very differently from you.
Apart from the swanmay, which draws on swan-maiden folktales which are represented in cultures from all around the world, and which has been incorporated into several editions of the game.
The fairy tale elements of 3H&3L are things like how he just has a knight's steed and armor dropped in his lap immediately upon appearing in a forest in a fantasy world, and then immediately stumbles upon a witch's cottage who gives him a Faerie guide and sets him on a quest, and then encounters three archetypal monsters in the wilderness on the way to the next town, and then is told by a stereotypical wizard to go fetch a mystical sword of English kings guarded by a different set of three archetypal monsters, and so on and so forth.
One of the key points of fairy tales is that the specific character and setting details in them usually barely matter, because the general stories are told and retold and reretold with lots of different variations in the details to the point that you can cluster them all together in a big index of the common themes. The swanmay is a creature from folklore that could have been swapped out for any other beautiful female creature love interest like a nymph or an alfr or whatever else without changing the overall shape of the story, in the same way that Holger could have turned out to be Wayland the Smith or King Arthur instead of Ogier the Dane (with the Saracen and the sword altered appropriately) to fit the general sleeping hero archetype and fulfill that role in the story.
You are aware that, aside from regenerating trolls (which Gygax and Arneson specifically acknowledged as an original creation they lifted for D&D), all of those are in fact from real-world myths and folktales and not invented by this book, right?
And it did indeed borrow familiars (see: Magic-Users/Wizards in every edition), though 3H&3L is of course not the only source of those, as well as the Holy Roman Empire and Saracens backdrop (see: the Empire of Thyatis and the Emirates of Ylaruam in Mystara, which are respectively a blatant HRE expy and a blatant Crusades-era Middle East expy, and they even have the same rivalry going, though Thyatis is more concerned with Alphatia, the blatant Atlantis expy).
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2020-11-17, 08:01 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Dragonlance/Faerun] Anyone here met any Cataclysm/Wall of the Faithless defender
Originally Posted by PairO’Dice Lost
Phrases like "grounded in reality" and "reality but with magic" are generally code for "gritty low fantasy,”….
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2020-11-17, 09:51 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Dragonlance/Faerun] Anyone here met any Cataclysm/Wall of the Faithless defender
Of course, but it is fairly obvious that it is basically the versions from the book that D&D borrowed, not the "authentic folklore" versions.
My point being that it's mostly the fantastic elements that influenced D&D, not the historical elements. That makes sense, because the focus of the book is also on the fantastic elements, not the historic ones. The Law/Chaos elements of the alignment system seem to have been particularly influenced by the book, as well as the paladin class.
Edit: Three Hearts and Three Lions may also be the first book with a Scottish dwarf. That certainly had far-reaching consequences.
Also, I would say Thyatis is more of a Roman Empire/Byzantine Empire expy than a Holy Roman Empire expy, as is made clear from the artwork, the gladiatorial arenas, and names used (Latin and Greek-derived, not Germanic). For instance the Thyatian-colonized Grand Duchy of Karameikos (Greek) has Specularum (Latin) as its capital.Last edited by Jason; 2020-11-17 at 10:24 AM.