First thing turning up by searching Ka the Immortal Dinousaur looks about rightEDIT - Also who is Ka the Immortal Dinosaur? They sound amazing but the internet has no record of them!
First thing turning up by searching Ka the Immortal Dinousaur looks about rightEDIT - Also who is Ka the Immortal Dinosaur? They sound amazing but the internet has no record of them!
Though if you search for the exact phrase in quotes, you get literally nothing whatsoever.First thing turning up by searching Ka the Immortal Dinousaur looks about right
Ka is an example of a in-universe Big Name(tm) (like Vecna, the various gods/avatars/chosens-of, or the named devils/demons of various AD&D settings), but in this case from the Mystara setting/BECMI Immortals (instead of gods) rules. Unlike most Immortals (who are generally Humans, Elves, Dwarves, and Halflings), he is an Ascended dinosaur. Most notably he is a protector of ancient cultures and created the Hollow World setting as a living museum for cultures that would otherwise be extinct. Alongside a few elemental forces-style Immortals who are old enough not to remember ever not being an immortal, he's one of the 'always depicted at the top of the pecking order' beings.EDIT - Also who is Ka the Immortal Dinosaur? They sound amazing but the internet has no record of them!
I think that's been true of every RPG setting that has official cannon and lore. The late-80s-through-90s was just the heyday of fully fleshed out D&D settings and of course the ever-plot-ful (and emotion-drawing) White Wolf World of Darkness original run. Also when a significant number of gamers first got online and started sharing (and fighting over) their game opinions.It was a weird time. Across a lot of RPGs, people took a lot of NPCs and setting elements very personally. Like as challenges or insults. I can't claim to be entirely innocent of it (I was pretty mad about Sam Haight), but I was a teenager! And a lot of the other people were in their thirties or later!
If she doesn't do anything, then where is the fannish fervor for her coming from?
Because there has historically been an illogical, if not downright rabid, hatred of the setting from vocal corners of the D&D fanbase. A hatred that has persisted for almost 30 years now. The vitriol is positively exhausting if you actually like to have fun in the setting.
Fundamentally, this all is correct. Every position in nerd-fandom is a piece of territory that must be fought over. Each side will see the other side as having fannish fervor for their position and rabid hatrid for the initial person's view, and each side will view themselves as having been abused (and, given that each side has some persons who will see their own perceived victimhood as an excuse for abuse toward the other side, they are both partially right in this regard). It's not unlike sports team fandom, but it is rather striking that, for all the talk of being a nerd in high school and the abuse the jocks gave, that the people that tend to be the worst to members of nerddom is other nerds peeing around trees. I have a half-formed thread on the subject perpetually in the back of my brain, that I never quite get to writing (in part because it's kind of calling out my own community, which honestly is another example of a nerd being mean to other nerds).Probably the same place, but opposite pole from where your hate for her comes from. Look into thy self and find the answer!,
Dont wait so long and just use the 1e deities n demigods.D&D ought to be a game of gonzo heroism. Isn't it unmanly that we're told that the Lady of Pain is an unknowable, unstattable, unkillable character?
It seems to me this situation:
1) Stokes the one-upmanship of the designers of the Planescape setting, so they can say "my overgod is better than all the gods of the D&D worlds"
2) Sets an "edgy" postmodern grey nihilism at the center of the 2e multiverse. Luckily Sigil got split off as its own right-sized astral dominion in 4e.
3) Reminds us that we're just fanboys who should bow and scrape to the published settings.
Immortal-level PCs ought to be able to eventually supplant any god, demon, pantheon, and overgod in every D&D world. And eventually rule any and all planets, planes, and multiverses as their personal dominion.
I was raised on Mystara, where we had official rules for becoming an Overgod:
Step 1: advance to 36th level
Step 2: ascend to Immortality
Step 3: advance to 36th level in the Immortal Class (total character level = 72)
Step 4: renounce Immortality and be reborn as a 1st-level mortal character
Step 5: repeat steps 1, 2, and 3, having adventured through 144 character levels.
Step 6: voila! my character becomes an Old One.
So. For 5e I'll be looking for stats for the Lady of Pain, the Dark Powers of Ravenloft, the Old Ones of the Mystara Multiverse, the High God of Krynn, and Lord Ao.
When our adventuring party reaches 144th level, we'll be knockin on their door.
Is anyone with me?
/shrug. Different strokes and all. If your first impulse on reading a setting is to immediately upend it and smash what makes it work, I'd say the setting isn't for you. But that doesn't make the conceits upon which it runs inherently bad writing (though there are plenty that are, I just disagree on this particular one). See also water creation spells not working in Darksun.Don't get me started on Paradox.
The late 80's and 90's style of design and writing as so hamfisted it was practically honeybaked.
I think the main change has maybe been the abandonment of metaplots, which were a constant in the '90s. World of Darkness, Shadowrun, Dark Sun (thanks to Troy Denning/The Prism Pentad), Planescape (sadly, thanks to Monte Cook) and many others had metaplots, and these often dragged the characters people got mad about into the spotlight and often shoved the PCs out of the spotlight.I think that's been true of every RPG setting that has official cannon and lore. The late-80s-through-90s was just the heyday of fully fleshed out D&D settings and of course the ever-plot-ful (and emotion-drawing) White Wolf World of Darkness original run. Also when a significant number of gamers first got online and started sharing (and fighting over) their game opinions.
The trouble is, in the very late '80s and '90s, it was about 50/50 as to whether stuff was just specific to a setting, to achieve a real goal, or just was hamfisted and clumsy. WW's own writers have discussed this. Justin Achilli for example said they had a continual and he felt unsuccessful battle with the people writing the campaign books/adventures to prevent them just turning into stories about NPCs where the PCs were involved more as witnesses than protagonists.Different strokes and all. If your first impulse on reading a setting is to immediately upend it and smash what makes it work, I'd say the setting isn't for you.