I hate monks

[WayneLigon]

That said, I agree that the new Monk core class steps away from the European Monk core class of AD&D 1e and more towards the later Eastern Monk of Oriental Adventures

The what? The AD&D Monk was in no way ever meant to resemble any European monastic order.

 

[WayneLigon]

Let me tell you about Jeremiah MacCree. Jeremiah is a human who was born to one of the very few human families in a primarily dwarven mining community. Like all members of the community, he grew up working the mines, digging for precious stones and gems. He got to know the earth and the stone as well as any non-dwarf possibly could.

I've been working on a campaign setting where humans and dwarves are very intermixed. That is a fantastic idea, completely. You could probably substitute a few abilities and make a 'Monk' class for each elemental type. Kind of like the Witch class in Arcana Unearthed.

 

[fusangite]

NOW you're talkin'! Where do I plunk down $40 for THAT wellspring of awesome?

No need. Just go to Encounter Critical fansite.

This seems unessecarily exclusionary to me. Unless you're trying for some ideal of European homogeneity (which isn't something I think D&D should or is trying for), what's wrong with the bastard-child of the East being there?

Let me put it this way: suspension of disbelief is a weird thing in fantasy and sci-fi. In order to maintain it, things have to conform to some kind of internal logic because they certainly don't conform to the logic of the world in which we live. Maybe it's a weird internal logic; maybe it's an arbitrary internal logic but there we are. In my personal experience, the monk is one of the things that most often causes problems with suspension of disbelief in D&D. It certainly causes problems for me when it comes to suspension of disbelief.

hey don't stick out as a sore thumb any more than technicolor dragons

In my experience, they do for an awful lot of D&D players. For instance, in my current game, the GM and I are total history geeks. Two of the other players mock us for being history geeks and don't give a damn about history and anthropology and one guy is just so really easy-going. Yet, even though none of us knew eachother when we formed our opinions on this, we all find the monk does stick out like a sore thumb. At the beginning of the campaign, a player who later dropped out really wanted to play a monk and we let her but we found that the incongruousness of the character did actually mess with everybody's suspension of disbelief a bit.

I'm not a fan of core D&D containing anything that is likely to cause such a significant portion of the players to find the game world less credible. Now, I understand that for some people, the colour-coded dragons also do that. But neither I nor my current gaming group find, at the personal level that that particular bit of arbitrary weirdness makes game worlds seem less believable the way the monk class does.

It sounds like your experience is different from mine, that very few people you game with have the same trouble with monks that the people I encounter in gaming do. I find that interesting but, my experience of different gaming groups is broad enough that I can feel somewhat confident that even if not the majority, the number of people in the hobby who react to the monk the way that I do is large enough that my proposal for improving the core rules with respect to monks is worth considering.

or "player economy" or squid-headed psychics or six different species of fiends or the Great Wheel or dragon-blooded sorcerers or shape-shifting druids.

I'm the same way, actually, with the Mind Flayers and the Great Wheel (the other things you list don't seem to mess with my suspension of disbelief) but I don't recommend they get torn out of or reinforced in the core rules because I find that people who share my view on those things are a much much smaller portion of the hobby than those who share my views on monks.

So, having laid to rest the idea that Eurocentric D&D is a worthy goal, what purpose does excluding the monk serve?

Making it easier to suspend disbelief. For me, maintaining suspension of disbelief is one of the three most important jobs for a GM; I want core rules that make that easier not harder. Hence my demand that the monk either get yanked or provided with enough context that it doesn't have that effect. I really don't care which.

Eurocentric D&D is not a worthy goal in and of itself. D&D in which people can easily feel immersed in the story and world are worthy goals. Often, a level of cultural or mythological consistency helps to achieve those goals. I don't fundamentally care what mythological or cultural tradition D&D draws from; I just want D&D to feel consistent with itself. In my view, the biggest contributor to suspension of disbelief is self-consistency. People playing D&D anticipate encountering roughly the kind of world that they would expect to find in a successful fantasy novel.

Anymore than excluding the Elves to some tome of Elvish history,or excluding Paladins for some Crusades-style campaign, or reserving gnomes for a supplemental book on Fey serve?

Remember those "one of these friends doesn't belong" puzzles you were handed when you were six? So, here are your four squares:
Square 1: Picture of an elf drawing a bow
Square 2: Picture of a swordsman clad in mail
Square 3: Picture of a dryad or faerie
Square 4: Picture of a shuriken-wielding shaolin monk
Which one of these friends doesn't belong? Most people who read fantasy novels or watch fantasy movies will pick square #4. They just will. That's why the monk is different.

The monk is like everything else in D&D: a bastardized take on myth and faith and history

So are the three musketeers. So are Australian aboriginal dream shamans. So is Dr. Jeckyll. They don't belong in the core PHB either. Just like the monk, they belong in supplements, unless core D&D is prepared to put enough resources in the core PHB that they don't look out of place either.

Why should we limit the core rules to mutliating Tolkein and Le Mort D'Arthur and reserve the Monk for some specially formatted setting to mutilate?

Because I think mutilation projects should be self-consistent. Otherwise, by your arguments, there is nothing that doesn't belong in D&D. I don't want a 2-page spaceship section in the PHB; I don't want a 2-page radioactive mutant section in the PHB. What I want is a game that's about something, not a game that just takes all possibly interesting stories and ideas and sticks them in a blender.

 

[fusangite]

The what? The AD&D Monk was in no way ever meant to resemble any European monastic order.

Yep. If you want to argue about that, go to the old Gary Gygax threads and read his response of this topic. Even the guy who put the monk in the rules in the first place is crystal clear that it's not meant to resemble any European monastic order.

 

[ForceUser]

This is complete and utter poppycock and has been debunked by science decades ago.

Correct. Biologically speaking, there is only one human "race"--homo sapiens. Everything else is imposed by culture.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Correct. Biologically speaking, there is only one human "race"--homo sapiens. Everything else is imposed by culture.

To be more specific, there's only one subspecies of human as well (Homo sapiens sapiens).

The stuff about "mixing of bloodlines" was silly, anyway. You can have transmission of cultural ideas, whether there's mixing of bloodlines or not.

 

[Imret]

Say, fusangite?

Thanks for clearly articulating and typing out my exact opinion so I didn't have to.

Except for mind flayers. The only thing I dislike about illithids is everyone knows about them.

 

[Eridanis]

Talking about real-life races of humans starts sniffing around into territory that will get people good and mad. So please keep it on-topic, game-related, and let cool heads prevail, please.

 

[Ranger REG]

and that is one of my problems with it all. He is an Oriental Class in a European-Inspired Game.

I thank you for proving my point regarding your POV on Dungeons & Dragons.

 

[ForceUser]

Talking about real-life races of humans starts sniffing around into territory that will get people good and mad. So please keep it on-topic, game-related, and let cool heads prevail, please.

But that's the underlying issue--culture. This thread is a skirmish between those who believe that the core game is multicultural enough to allow other-than-European material, and those who believe that it shouldn't. It is, at its core, an ethnic issue with a scope far beyond D&D.