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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.
I said to him; "A bear? Not a fiendish half-dragon dire bear?"
He restated it had been a typical black bear in the 2e Monster Manual.
That exchange got me thinking though...
A large amount of criticism is lobbed at 3e (and especially 4e) for removing the "mundane" from fantasy. This charge came in many forms: races (half-genies, half-angels, half-dragons), magic items (belt buckle of warding), monsters (thundertusk boars, half-fiendish vampiric blackguard minotaurs), armor (mithril chain shirts) and weapons (adamantine fullblades), not to mention the near constant drumbeat of class-based power expansion (from the lowly rogue gaining evasion to nearly every martial power in 4e).
It seems like a dude in chainmail and a sword fighting a bear and dying has become blase', and I guess in a world full of wizards lobbying fireballs at ice-breathing white dragons, it would. I mean, who really wants to play a game set in a fantastical world of vampires and ogres and druids only to be made a meal from a real-world animal? Who wants mundane real-world steel swords in a world where your mage buddy gets a wand of infused magical essence allowing him to shoot lightning from it? Besides, if the world was as infused with magic as the core rules seem to assume (with its large catalog of magical items, mythological beasts, and spells-a-plenty) why would it be a world where dudes in mundane chainmail die at the claws of normal bears?
Still, when one looks in the monster manual for "scorpions" and finds scorpions that deal lightning damage from their tail instead of large, poisonous "real" scorpions, something feels odd...
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?
It seems like a dude in chainmail and a sword fighting a bear and dying has become blase', and I guess in a world full of wizards lobbying fireballs at ice-breathing white dragons, it would. I mean, who really wants to play a game set in a fantastical world of vampires and ogres and druids only to be made a meal from a real-world animal? Who wants mundane real-world steel swords in a world where your mage buddy gets a wand of infused magical essence allowing him to shoot lightning from it? Besides, if the world was as infused with magic as the core rules seem to assume (with its large catalog of magical items, mythological beasts, and spells-a-plenty) why would it be a world where dudes in mundane chainmail die at the claws of normal bears?
Still, when one looks in the monster manual for "scorpions" and finds scorpions that deal lightning damage from their tail instead of large, poisonous "real" scorpions, something feels odd...
This is why the desire for "grim and gritty" or "low fantasy" (or whatever you want to call it) variations comes up again and again -- and why D&D is periodically referred to as a superhero game with a fantasy skin on it.
Speaking only for myself, I much prefer the guy in chainmail fighting a bear. My exact words on flipping through the 4E MM the first time: "Zombies with wings? What the heck is THAT about?" I love having magic and the supernatural spice up the background -- but like spice, too much of it and it becomes an irritant instead.
Somewhere in 2e I started to feel like D&D was dangerously skirting the realm of "over-the-top"-ness, but that could be mitigated by staying at lower levels. 4e, as far as I can tell, has blown all that away by having everybody and their brother full of superpowers from day one. I'm sure the WAR artwork (et al.) doesn't help, but whenever I look at or in a 4e book, I see neon lights and hear bad metal music turned up way too loud.
I prefer my fantasy turned up to around 8.5 or so, thanks. I don't want it turned up to 11.
-The Gneech
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I actually like seeing animals from real life in DnD, I even like how they can be a real threat. I was actually very dissapointed to see the lightning Scorpion and will probably change it to a poisonous one (although perhaps a bit larger) and perhaps make a level 1 swarm of scorpions to compensate.
I mean, I can swallow lightning Scorpions if there are more normal scorpions. then at least I could say that they are mutated by magic or some other unnatural origin. Things are scarier when they have unnatural or unholy origins. When Lightning Scorpions seem normal and every day they lose a lot.
I mean, who really wants to play a game set in a fantastical world of vampires and ogres and druids only to be made a meal from a real-world animal?
Myself and practically everybody I have played with.
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Who wants mundane real-world steel swords in a world where your mage buddy gets a wand of infused magical essence allowing him to shoot lightning from it?
If it can be enchanted or I can find an enchanted sword, I do. And by enchanted, I don't mean casting fireballs, death rays, fire auras or frost auras.
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Besides, if the world was as infused with magic as the core rules seem to assume (with its large catalog of magical items, mythological beasts, and spells-a-plenty) why would it be a world where dudes in mundane chainmail die at the claws of normal bears?
Not everyone plays in the default setting or assumes the default setting is full of a large catolog of magical items and mythological beasts. For many of us, those are options to placed as we see fit.
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Still, when one looks in the monster manual for "scorpions" and finds scorpions that deal lightning damage from their tail instead of large, poisonous "real" scorpions, something feels odd...
Honestly, scorpions shooting lightning out of their tails makes me groan. Then again, I despised most of WOTC's new monsters created for 3e and the same is already true for 4e.
I'll take the giant poisonous scorpions everyday of the week and twice on Sundays.
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So has D&D drifted too far from mundane into fantastical?
Imo, yes.
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Is it a bad thing?
Again, imo, yes. The same for my friends based on what they have said.
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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?
Yes. For example, choose and place your magical and fantastical elements with care. Maybe, aberrations , most magical beasts, etc. are unique creatures. Place most of them ahead of time in particular areas with legends surrounding them (e.g, think the Medusa, the kraken, and the Hydra from Greek Myth). Or maybe, they are something that nobody has seen until the characters encounter the wizard that created them.
Similarly, place thought into the non-human races of your setting. You don't have to allow everything. Nor, do you have to allow every possible PC race because WOTC printed it somewhere.
__________________ "The designers of the newest edition built so much reliance on rules right into the game, to make it easier to play. As one of those designers, I occasionally think to myself, 'What have we wrought?' " -Monte Cook
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It's like if you had nothing to eat but cake. After a while it might still be enjoyable, but it loses its specialness. Contrasts is one of those things that can make something more enjoyable.
Also I think when you try to cram too much "awesome" into something it can turn silly, this is often a problem I have with the aesthetic of a lot of JRPG's for example.
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Giant poisonous scorpions are more fantastic than giant lightning-clawed poison-tailed scorpions. (Or if you've got kobolds inadvisably feeding them scraps from the hold of a ship that fell out of the Astral Sea, giant star-clawed mindcrush-tailed scorpions.)
Scorpions that eat thunder and crap lightning are obviously fantastic and can be any size at all. Normal Scorpions But Bigger just kinda violate the square-cube law and expect you to take it.
Giant poisonous scorpions are more fantastic than giant lightning-clawed poison-tailed scorpions.
Wait - removing lightning from a giant poisonous scorpion makes it more fantastic?
__________________ You are not entitled to your opinion, you are entitled to your informed opinion. If you are not informed on the subject, then your opinion counts for nothing.
Wait - removing lightning from a giant poisonous scorpion makes it more fantastic?
Well, more unbelievable, how about?
Believability's kind of an uncanny valley thing, where realistic things like tiny scorpions are believable, and patently unrealistic things like giant scorpions that eat thunder et cetera are believable under their own weird logic, but something that's not unrealistic enough, like a giant poisonous scorpion that somehow has more potent venom but fills the same ecological niche and is presumably just as natural a creature as a regular-sized scorpion except it can't possibly exchange enough oxygen through its spiracles to not suffocate, just raises all kinds of uncomfortable questions.
I don't really care how mundane or fantastical a campaign/setting/game system is. What concerns me is the quality of the presentation.
A man fighting a bear with a sword isn't inherently more interesting than a man fighting a bear that shoots lightning out of ass with a sword made of antimatter. Both can be done well, though the latter case might strain even my ability to dignify unadulterated wahoo.
For the record, my current campaign tends toward the "11" (more for fantastical perversity than for epic scale... Synnibar it ain't). My group recently compare it to the video for Muse's "Knights of Cydonia". They meant it as a compliment.
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I like the fantastical. I play a fantasy game so I can encounter the fantastical. Too much insistence on things being mundane and there's no point in playing the game.
That being said my personal opinion is that the fantastical backfires on games like D&D because they concentrate it too much: the wrap it up in their monsters, magic items, fantasy locations, and their PCs and then expect everything else to stay normal. And so long as that concentration remains in those categories you can't add more without eventually creating a feeling of the normal stuff being loomed over by the fantastic like a bunch of tall trees.
Some people like to cut down the number or height of the concentrations of fantastic so they don't loom so much. That's a perfectly valid way to do it, but if you like the amount of fantastic but hate the looming there's another way: spread it out. Take the fantastic from the monsters and PCs and spread it out over the rest of the world: have people raise sheep with colored wool and ride horse-sized goats into battle; increase the range of natural hair colors; just little increases in the fantasticness of other stuff. Doing this it should be possible to keep the total level of fantastic constant but reduce the looming effect.
There's no right or wrong way here, there are only preferences. However, it's incredibly difficult to create a campaign with both preferences.
Let's say one person wants to play an everyman villager who found a strange arrow one day. He spends years carrying it around until one day his wife dies of the flu, he leaves his village and heads out to find the man who shot that arrow. He's built a simple fighter, but he's put a lot of backstory and thought into his character.
Another person has watched the movie Ninja Scroll and is inspired by a rocklike creature in the movie. He wants to play a character who has those powers, so he creates a goliath ninja/duskblade. He too comes up with an interesting backstory that involves revenge against an ogre mage.
While it's possible to satisfy these two players, sometimes if you try to please everyone you please no one. The same is true with a game system. 3.5 and prior had such a strange mix of the mundane and the fantastic that you had to do a lot of work just to explain what was and wasn't allowed in your game. With 4th edition it's very clear from the onset that using the default rules you're getting high fantasy and high powered action adventure. It does what it sets out to do very well.
Now this doesn't mean the mechanics don't allow for low powered campaigns. I'm sure we'll see more from 3PP, and at some point Wizards will probably release a 4E Greyhawk and show how it can be done too. But like a DM making a campaign, I think it's best to present a default campaign setting as either high or low. Mixing the two causes even more problems for the DM down the road as different types of players are attracted to the 'same' game.
#1 I agree with the sentiment that "this is too much."
But...
#2 I think we all sound like a bunch of old men complaining about these young gamers today...
There are about 100 systems out there from no magic fantasy to brand new "Hey my belt buckle is magic" 4e. No singular system is "right". If someone wanted to play Magic to 11, this is it. Of course, no one can ever take away our Rule Zero; "There are no rules, only guidelines." The best thing about RPG's is we can decide what to use, what to modify and what to ignore.
Some systems just have more to ignore than others.
My largest setting-oriented gaming experience of late has been directing the War of the Burning Sky campaign saga. It's really hard to keep a consistent style and feel over the course of 20 levels.
The first adventure saw an army attacking a city. Yes, the army had wyverns who dropped 'bombs' of alchemist fire, but there wasn't too much magic.
The second adventure had a forest spirit keeping the woods alive despite a 40-year-old forest fire. Very high magic, but I felt it thematically appropriate.
Third adventure had a magically conjured hurricane, but it was a key plot point that we built to over the course of the whole adventure, and it tied into a villain later with a storm theme.
And so on and so on. There was a lot of powerful magic, but I believe we kept a consistent feel and tone, without 'lasersharking' (a term I now love). Sure the challenges had to increase as the heroes got higher level, but I tried to develop them organically from elements already in the setting, rather than adding new whizbang stuff. If there was amazing, powerful magic, it was firmly established that the person using that magic had to go to great lengths to gather and control it.
I don't know if we ever had a half- anything (except a couple half-elves).
Perhaps the most ridiculous thing we've had has been the scene -- when you're 16th level -- where some enemies animate a 90-ft. tall statue that appeared in the first adventure, and you have to fight it. But it didn't shoot lasers from its eyes or have ninjas with light-saber-nunchuks.
So it's possible to have fantastic fantasy without it feeling forced. I don't think 4e pulled it off, though.
__________________ Ryan "RangerWickett" Nock
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There are creatures in the real world that are weirder then giant scorpions with electrified claws. Ever see a documentary on some of the crazy stuff that lives in the ocean?
It's not too much of a stretch for me to think in a reality that condeeds different planes of existance, gods, and magic to be true and taking an active role in the world would have weird creatures. Who knows how many are actually native to the prime material plane as opposed to some weird cross between the prime and some other random plane... That a creature could manage to exist WITHOUT some kind of weirdness is pretty amazing.
Aside from that... just make the electro claws do ongoing normal damage. It hurts you by crushing you instead of shocking. Voila... normal giant scorpion.
#1 I agree with the sentiment that "this is too much."
But...
#2 I think we all sound like a bunch of old men complaining about these young gamers today...
Heh. I'm glad you posted this before I did something grumpy.
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Originally Posted by Masada
There are about 100 systems out there from no magic fantasy to brand new "Hey my belt buckle is magic" 4e. No singular system is "right".
This is obviously correct.
I'm a 2E guy also, steeped in the "feel" of Ansalon, Barovia, Athas and the Rock of Bral, so when I look at the 4E MM I think "Whoa, this is even more bizarre than Spelljammer", which in my head is the litmus test for silly fantasy.
But the best thing about the MM is that it's all optional. I keep it there in my back pocket in case I ever need it, but for the most part I continue to make due with limited palettes so that nothing "looms" over the play experience. My players are readers of fantasy novels first, not D&D players, so this is the "right" dial setting for them. Oliphants and worgs? Yes, definitely. Nazghoul or Shelob? Occasionally. Half-Dragon Vampires with crystal greatswords? No.
I'm still a fan of 4E though. The mechanics (the hardest part of any game) work for me, and I can pick, choose and repurpose monsters and fluff as I see fit.
I should note though that what's a normal moster palette for "the world" doesn't apply in the Feywild, Shadowfell or Elemental Chaos. And of course if you are stupid enough to wander in the Abyss or some random Astral Dominion, anything goes. And an Epic Lich-template Aboleth is always nice when I feel like running a Cthulu investigation without telling my players ahead of time. "Here are your Sanity tokens. Don't lose them. (Ha ha - 'Don't lose your Sanity' Get it?) Seriously, this'll be fun. Guys?"
__________________ I don't "tell stories" when I play D&D. I adventure. Afterward, when the gold is counted and the bodies piled high, we may tell stories about how it all went down. Or not.
Of course, I've seen grizzly bears in the wild (trip to the Yukon), and I sure as heck had no desire to get any closer.
Weird monsters are cool, but IMHO they are best in moderation....so that they actually come across as weird when used. YMMV.
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Of course, I've seen grizzly bears in the wild (trip to the Yukon), and I sure as heck had no desire to get any closer.
Weird monsters are cool, but IMHO they are best in moderation....so that they actually come across as weird when used. YMMV.
And This:
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Originally Posted by The_Gneech
I love having magic and the supernatural spice up the background -- but like spice, too much of it and it becomes an irritant instead.
but also this
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Originally Posted by Mallus
My group recently compare it to the video for Muse's "Knights of Cydonia". They meant it as a compliment.
Good stuff!
However it's all about balance.
In terms of the bear mauling a character... so be it. I invest quite a bit into any character I create so as long as the DM presented the bear as a significant challenge, huge bone crushing jaws are just as nasty as several flashes of electrical awesome. I'm not jaded by the mundane nor the fantastic quite yet.
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Herremann the Wise
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