General RPG DiscussionDiscussion of all RPGs and non-system-specific topics. DM/GM/player issues, settings, etc. Rules discussion belongs in one the forums below.
More Elric, Conan and Ffarhd please, less being mauled in the woods by common animals while you take a leak.
Um ... you might want to check your sources. Conan particularly (at least as written by REH) fought mostly beasts and men, with the occasional otherworldly horror. He's the epitome of the low-fantasy model that you've just decried.
Fafhrd slightly less so -- when he fights wolves, they're ghosts, but they're still, er, "mundane" ghosts.
I haven't read enough Elric to know how he fares on the fantasticometer either way. But my point is, if you want more fantasy in your fantasy, you don't want more Conan and Fafhrd.
-The Gneech
__________________ gneech.com -- My writing, comics, and art, including NeverNever, The Suburban Jungle, and the Brigid & Greg Fictionlets.
"Not everybody likes the same sort of games.
Everybody ought to play the sort of games they like.
It's not a stupid idea to sometimes try something you're not sure if you like or not.
Just because somebody likes or dislikes something you feel differently about doesn't make them (or you) stupid or a jerk.
Except Julie Andrews. If you dislike Julie Andrews, you're a jerk. And Golden Retriever puppies." --Barsoomcore
"There is a handsome and mysterious stranger in your future. He will try to kill you and take your stuff." --Sejs
I felt the way the OP did when playing earlier editions, I was careful to husband the occurrence of magical beasts and aberrations, I used a lot of humanoids, specifically whatever I had decided lived in that part of the world.
With 4e I decided just to cut loose, there were drakes instead of ravens, kobolds had more than one caster per tribe, their is a unicorn in the Inn stable. The chickens ARE blessed by a god. Its not just a story from far off parts, that turns out to be exaggerated its actually happening.
Simulation bows out to the game.
Can this be sustained? Is a world that ignores certain logical details more fun? I'm not sure, thats why my group is calling it a test campaign.
Besides how often would a bear attack a well armed and armored group of men? How many wolf attacks involved a group of healthy humans?
__________________ Game Quote:
"Shut up! a giant blue smurf eats your character...zzzz"
(sometimes its important to stop gaming and sleep)
"You all are the worst emissaries, ever!" the silver dragon declares, shaking with rage.
"Its a game, a game, I'm only playing. " E. Wiggen My PbP games , Roll Dice
So has D&D drifted too far from mundane into fantastical? Is it a bad thing? Can a balance between truly magical and fantastical elements (warlocks, demons, potions of fire-breath) be struck with historical or mundane elements (grizzly bears, fighters, bec-de-corbins?) without one or the other suffering?
This has been a significant element of my dissatisfaction with 4e from the day I paged through the 4e Monster Manual. Too much way out stuff and not enough bread-and-butter critters to challenge a lower level party or for a more mundane game.
And even in 3e, i generally do what I can to keep to a more mundane game. The PCs encounter animals quite often that I try to have react in a natural and realistic manner. My primary opponents are more likely to be humanoids with levels than peculiar monsters.
__________________ Bill D
"There's a fine line between a superpower and a chronic medical condition."
- Doctor Impossible
I think people have really, really lost track of how fantastical the 'mundane' can actually be. A fight with a bear could be very exciting IMO. I remember the first time I read Lord of the rings, how terrific the battle with a few orcs and and ogre was in the Mines of Moria. To me that was the archetypal dungeon adventure. And yet today that wouldn't rate as anything but a minor encounter to snag a few XP.
I think about the classic fantasy books I read like the original conan, fafhred and gray mouser, cugel the clever, they were actually very grounded in history and mythology. They were essentially low fantasy books in which the magic stood out vividly against a background something like a hard bitten detective novel, realistic and gritty.
Like somebody else said, when dinner is cake and icecream desert just doesn't seem as special.
I believe the general escalation of fantastic themes into the hyper realm, though it works for some people and can probably be done well, to me represents a failure of the imagination.
__________________
Check out the historically-based combat system that has gamers talking around the world: The Codex Martialis, your gateway to the elegant, lethal Martial Arts of ancient Europe and Japan. Fast-paced, cinematic combat is available for your OGL game today. Find out why all the reviewers raved over this system. Make combat exciting again!
Discuss the Codex Martialis system with other players and game designers, learn about new ideas and beta test upcoming releases at www.codexmartialis.com
I felt the way the OP did when playing earlier editions, I was careful to husband the occurrence of magical beasts and aberrations, I used a lot of humanoids, specifically whatever I had decided lived in that part of the world.
With 4e I decided just to cut loose, there were drakes instead of ravens, kobolds had more than one caster per tribe, their is a unicorn in the Inn stable. The chickens ARE blessed by a god. Its not just a story from far off parts, that turns out to be exaggerated its actually happening.
Simulation bows out to the game.
Can this be sustained? Is a world that ignores certain logical details more fun? I'm not sure, thats why my group is calling it a test campaign.
Besides how often would a bear attack a well armed and armored group of men? How many wolf attacks involved a group of healthy humans?
See... sometimes our assumptions about "mundane" reality fall way short of how crazy it can actually get.
The first victims of the wolf were a pregnant woman and her unborn child, attacked in the parish of Septmont on the last day of February. Diligent locals had taken the infant, a scant four or five months old, from the womb to be baptized before it died when the wolf struck again not three hundred yards from the scene of the first attack. One Madame d'Amberief and her son survived only by fighting together.
On 1 March near the hamlet of Courcelles a man was attacked by the wolf and survived with head wounds. The next victims were two young boys, named Boucher and Maréchal, who were savaged on the road to Paris, both badly wounded. A farmer on horseback lost part of his face to the wolf before escaping to a local mill, where a boy of seventeen was caught unawares and slain. After these atrocities the wolf fled to Bazoches, where it partially decapitated a woman and severely wounded a girl, who ran screaming to the village for help. Four citizens of Bazoches set an ambush at the body of the latest victim, but when the wolf returned it proved too much for them and the villagers soon found themselves fighting for their lives. The arrival of more peasants from the village finally put the wolf to flight, chasing it into a courtyard where it fought with a chained dog. When the chain broke the wolf was pursued through a pasture, where it killed a number of sheep, and into a stable, where a servant and cattle were mutilated.
The episode ended when one Antoine Saverelle, former member of the local militia, tracked the wolf to small lane armed with a pitchfork. The wolf sprang at him but he managed to pin its head to the ground with the instrument, holding it down for roughly fifteen minutes before an armed peasant came to his aid and killed the animal. Saverelle received a reward of three-hundred livres from Louis XV of France for his bravery.
__________________
Check out the historically-based combat system that has gamers talking around the world: The Codex Martialis, your gateway to the elegant, lethal Martial Arts of ancient Europe and Japan. Fast-paced, cinematic combat is available for your OGL game today. Find out why all the reviewers raved over this system. Make combat exciting again!
Discuss the Codex Martialis system with other players and game designers, learn about new ideas and beta test upcoming releases at www.codexmartialis.com
Crocs: Crocodile attack - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Crocodiles can slow their metabolism to such an extent that a tree with an intruder hiding in its branches may be guarded continuously for several weeks, without breaks for food. )
__________________ [A]ny good dungeon will have undiscovered treasures in areas that have been explored by the players, simply because it is impossible to expect that they will find every one of them.
RCFG - My free mostly-OGC OGL game! RCFG is intended to be a fusion between OS & NS playstyles, giving the advantages of SRD-based gaming coupled with quick character and adventure generation and an Old School feel.
__________________
Check out the historically-based combat system that has gamers talking around the world: The Codex Martialis, your gateway to the elegant, lethal Martial Arts of ancient Europe and Japan. Fast-paced, cinematic combat is available for your OGL game today. Find out why all the reviewers raved over this system. Make combat exciting again!
Discuss the Codex Martialis system with other players and game designers, learn about new ideas and beta test upcoming releases at www.codexmartialis.com
Last edited by Galloglaich; 1st October 2008 at 06:45 AM..
Hunh. Glad to know I'm not the only one to feel that way. I've always been about the Grim and Gritty fantasy, and that's been my comfort area. But, with 4e, I said "you know what? I'm going to run it as-written, and see what happens." And, even though it's a different fantasy than I'm used to, I like it.
So far, in my campaign (I run two different groups in a shared locale), we've seen:
* Goblins invading a town (fairly low key), the town being the hub of numerous races trading and celebrating a town's centennial (also low-key, but more Tolkien than Howard).
* An eruption of demons, forcing much of the populace to live in orc-infested islands (a background event, but a fairly mid fantasy event)
* Phantasmal Orcs reliving an eternal battle against teleporting Eladrin (fairly high fantasy)
* A room that shifts between the mortal realm and the feywild at random, against the spiritual remains of a once-proud Eladrin Lordling, now a screaming wraith protected by his skeleton children (high fantasy, but not gonzo)
* A lizardfolk Spellmage with an aura of cold magic that can channel latent magical energy around him (about as high fantasy/video game as I've come, so far).
Those all spring into mind, and I don't think any of them really break character for my setting. Really, I'm followign the book, and I don't truly find it too crazy in magic content.
__________________ Current Campaign:The Shattered Isles Homebrew - Hammer (Minotaur Fighter 8), Kirra (Drow Rogue 8), Shedin (Dragonborn Paladin 8), Zahar (Half-Eladrin/Half Drow Bard 8), and Seahorse (Halfling Rogue 8). Currently the group is in the Feywild, trying to discover who is poisoning the drow.
I think a lot of it, in terms of not... Low Fantasy vs. High Fantasy but simply "Mundane and Fantastical" depends a fair bit on how you approach it.
You can have a setting that has lots of fantastical elements. BUT! The way both the players and the DM approaches it, it can feel much more mundane and almost real-lifesque.
If you emphasize, that it is a "half-demon spirit posessed minotaur" then it will be more fantastical. If you emphasize its sickly form, how it grunts, squeals, etc. and make it more seem like a real beast it feels more mundance.
I came late to reading the Conan stories. Read my first one just a few years ago.
One thing that really stood out to me was how Howard generally limited himself to one supernatural element per story. Which really showcased that one element.
I have also found that, in role-playing games, it helps for the game world to be as similar to the players’ world as possible. It (generally) means less confusion and more time to focus on the adventure.
That said, one of my favorite campaigns was a gonzo, the-fantastic-everywhere-you-look sort of thing. That can have it’s appeal too.
I agree with those who say there is no right or wrong in this matter.
One thing I always prefer to avoid, however, is systemizing the fantastic elements to the extent that they become mundane with a fantastic façade. This can be a hard thing to guard against in role-playing games.
__________________ (^_^)
Anything I type is only my opinion unless explicitly stated otherwise, which should go without saying. Please assume that I've left out a smiley after every sentence. Thank you.
Um ... you might want to check your sources. Conan particularly (at least as written by REH) fought mostly beasts and men, with the occasional otherworldly horror. He's the epitome of the low-fantasy model that you've just decried.
You may want to read the books rather than just watching the films.
While Conan fights a lot of men there are also great hordes of demons, giant serpents, devolved humans and other monstrasities.
About the only thing he fights which might be called a "normal" animal is the occasional giant ape thing.
I had another conversation with a friend (a life-long D&D player from 2e on, like myself) in which he innocently recalled one of his PCs being mauled to death by a bear.
"Don't you mean platypus bear?"
"No, it just says, 'bear'."
"Certainly you mean his pet skunk bear?"
"Or his armadillo bear?"
"Gopher bear?"
"Just, 'bear'."
"This place is weird."
__________________
- a 4E setting for urban adventures! Join the ENWorld Urbis Group!
As a long time Hârn GM, using HârnMaster rules, I still treasure the first time the characters disturbed a boar in the woods. The combat ended with them enjoying a meal of roast boar, but not until after one of them had sustained a serious wound from the tusks, and two of the other three had hastily taken to the trees. A critical success by the only Shek-p’var (mage) in the group and a similarly successful spear attack seriously wounded the boar; it still took them a long time to finish it off.
Since then they’ve fought gargun (goblins) a few times, nolah (trolls) three times and vlasta (don’t ask) twice and a gulmorvrin (the undead worshippers of Morgath) once. The latter they don’t even know about, and they won’t until he tracks them down for revenge (they think they drowned him). The rest of the time they’ve been up against other humans. Whenever they face a critter it’s a major event for them.
It is, of course, whatever floats your boat. I never liked the preponderance of creatures introduced in the Fiend Folio, never mind MM2 and that harks back to my days playing AD&D. So I moved worlds (from Greyhawk to Hârn) and systems (from AD&D to HârnMaster). I’ve never looked back.
__________________ Samantha is a qualified croupier, and often works at an exclusive Soho club where gamblers pay top money to play Roulette all day, and Poker all night.
You may want to read the books rather than just watching the films.
While Conan fights a lot of men there are also great hordes of demons, giant serpents, devolved humans and other monstrasities.
About the only thing he fights which might be called a "normal" animal is the occasional giant ape thing.
I have read all of the original REH Conan stories (they are currently available in a three-volume set), and while it is true that Conan fights a number of monstrous creatures -- giant spiders, giant snakes, the occasional (pretty weak, by D&D standards) demon -- what he fights the most are human beings. And most of those human beings are not even wizards.
I can, if need be, go through each story and list everything that he fights, so that the mundane vs. the fantastical can easily be seen. As a fan of REH's writing, I am more than willing to do so if necessary to demonstrate the much less Wahoo! nature of Conan's world than is being implied here.
There are a few things Conan faces that might have appeared in the 4e MM. Specifically, a form of "living water" comes to mind (Conan flees for all he is worth) in one of the more fantastic stories. Other than that, even the "fantastical" is more mundane....giant serpents and devolved humans (I think you are conflating Conan with Bran Mak Morn here, and if so I imagine that you read the "fixed" Conan stories of deCamp, rather than the originals as Howard wrote them?) are more in line with giant scorpians than giant scorpians that shoot lightning out of their claws.
Regardless of what kind of fantasy you like, the Conan stories are a lot less infused with Wahoo! elements than you think.
RC
__________________ [A]ny good dungeon will have undiscovered treasures in areas that have been explored by the players, simply because it is impossible to expect that they will find every one of them.
RCFG - My free mostly-OGC OGL game! RCFG is intended to be a fusion between OS & NS playstyles, giving the advantages of SRD-based gaming coupled with quick character and adventure generation and an Old School feel.
Regardless of what kind of fantasy you like, the Conan stories are a lot less infused with Wahoo! elements than you think.
I think we are talking past each other here.
I am not suggesting that Conan contains some of the more Gonzo elements of rpg's. I am suggesting that the occurence of mundane animals is unusual. There is a wide gulf between fantastic and gonzo.
My main Conan reference is the recent compiled collection of the original stories. I have no idea who Brak Mak Morn is. My devolved humans comment was specific to Howards essay on the Hyboria setting where he talks at length about the rise and fall of civilisations throughout the ages.
Conan certainly encounters elements of those fallen civilisations on more than one occasion, the Picts spring to mind immediately.
If you have the three-volume compilation, there is a similar one for Bran Mak Morn (The Worms of the Earth alone makes it worth while, and is perhaps the best "devolved human" story ever written), Kull, Solomon Kane, etc. There are also two volumes of cross-genre REH stories. I own them all, and haven't regretted a single purchase.
If you enjoy the Conan stories, I would recommend Solomon Kane and Bran Mak Morn at the very least. Really good stuff.
RC
__________________ [A]ny good dungeon will have undiscovered treasures in areas that have been explored by the players, simply because it is impossible to expect that they will find every one of them.
RCFG - My free mostly-OGC OGL game! RCFG is intended to be a fusion between OS & NS playstyles, giving the advantages of SRD-based gaming coupled with quick character and adventure generation and an Old School feel.
Since then they’ve fought gargun (goblins) a few times, nolah (trolls) three times and vlasta (don’t ask) twice and a gulmorvrin (the undead worshippers of Morgath) once. The latter they don’t even know about, and they won’t until he tracks them down for revenge (they think they drowned him). The rest of the time they’ve been up against other humans. Whenever they face a critter it’s a major event for them.
It is, of course, whatever floats your boat.
I wonder if it's an attention span issue. I know I'd be a lot more interested if I had to fight weird creatures more often then I fought regular people probably because my brain would shut down quickly with the same old thing. Of course, if the people were weird somehow that might mitigate it somewhat, but then that would be equivalent to unleashing another weird thing.
I can, if need be, go through each story and list everything that he fights, so that the mundane vs. the fantastical can easily be seen. As a fan of REH's writing, I am more than willing to do so if necessary to demonstrate the much less Wahoo! nature of Conan's world than is being implied here.
I'd like to see that. Not because I doubt your assertion. I just think it would be cool to see.
__________________ Iain Fyffe
Original member of the Rouseketeers!
I have played 4E. And just like all other editions of D&D, it is awesome!
no one quotes me in sigs - Crothian
For some reason, this doesn't fill me with rage. I must be interwebbing wrong. - Cadfan
You may want to read the books rather than just watching the films.
Wow, I was just about to say the same thing to you.
Quote:
While Conan fights a lot of men there are also great hordes of demons, giant serpents, devolved humans and other monstrasities.
About the only thing he fights which might be called a "normal" animal is the occasional giant ape thing.
Lessee ... lions in the Tower of the Elephant, apes in Jewels of Gwalhur, an enormous but fairly mundane lizard (referred to as a "dragon") in Red Nails...
Yes, each story had at least one supernatural beastie, usually either undead or some variety of otherworldly horror -- but that's a far cry from the current vogue of Spellwoven Flamecrickets, Crystalborn Shockmice, and Dragonborn Bladeflickers we're dealing with now.
-The Gneech, card-carrying Howardian Purist
__________________ gneech.com -- My writing, comics, and art, including NeverNever, The Suburban Jungle, and the Brigid & Greg Fictionlets.
"Not everybody likes the same sort of games.
Everybody ought to play the sort of games they like.
It's not a stupid idea to sometimes try something you're not sure if you like or not.
Just because somebody likes or dislikes something you feel differently about doesn't make them (or you) stupid or a jerk.
Except Julie Andrews. If you dislike Julie Andrews, you're a jerk. And Golden Retriever puppies." --Barsoomcore
"There is a handsome and mysterious stranger in your future. He will try to kill you and take your stuff." --Sejs
)
eaths due to animal attacks - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linear Mode
And yet another word from our sponsors
