Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is LIVE! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
D&D Older Editions
Kara-Tur Supplement for 4e - Ideas?
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6767577" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>Samurai was a class of lesser nobles, and a description of what they did. It was a distinct group of people, had distinct codes of conduct and dress, and occupied a specific social function and class. The word translates roughly as 'servant', but probably 'aid' or 'subordinate' might capture the sense of it better. Its no more or less a valid concept than 'knight' in Western European culture, such people did exist. I'm not entirely sure when the specific term 'samurai' was introduced, but as a distinct group they existed at least as far back as the Edo Period. </p><p></p><p>And the 'sword culture' wasn't simply something that was made up in the 19th Century. Maybe it was used as an excuse for hanging onto swords at that time, but the value of the swords, culturally, already existed. No doubt most samurai weren't a whole lot like Musashi Miyamoto, but that was still an ideal, just like there were ideals of western knights that inform how gentlemen of various eras thought about themselves. In a fantasy game it makes a fairly good model to start from.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Warlock literally means nothing more or less than 'male witch' in actual folklore. I was using the term in its 4e D&D sense to mean "a character class which gains power through a pact with an extra-planar entity or higher power." Both the West and the East had models for someone like say John Dee, who acted as an advisor to Queen Elizabeth I. He was a highly knowledgeable 'sage' who (notionally of course) could command an understanding of hermetic mysteries to tell the future, etc. In the East such a character would probably be considered a 'Wu' or a Taoist priest perhaps, or one or another form of traditional wonder worker (of which many terms and different stories and explanations were told). 'Wu' however has other specific connotations as well, and is a much more religious type of figure than John Dee, who might well have been burned for witchcraft himself if the inquisition had made it to England in 1588. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Of course the real world offers many models for these things. The OA 'Wu Jen' is just a pretty unclear one as the term isn't even found in the original context, so it was to some degree made up by the authors. And yes, I've read your references, or the same material, many times. I think you'll find the article on 'Wu' in the Wikipedia pretty much says what I just said. In fact I'm not real sure we're disagreeing here, Wu Jen isn't a very good term for a rehash of the D&D book wizard. The warlock, perhaps druid, or maybe the elementalist, might work better, though I agree that none of the folklore is precise enough to exactly delineate different classes. </p><p></p><p>This is why Gygax chose to have simply 'magic user' as the class. The issue he then had was he was stuck inventing some mechanics for it for gamist reasons, which then pigeonholed it as 'academic wizard' and left out a lot of conceptual space, which then got filled with other classes, creating fine distinctions that weren't in the base material.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 6767577, member: 82106"] Samurai was a class of lesser nobles, and a description of what they did. It was a distinct group of people, had distinct codes of conduct and dress, and occupied a specific social function and class. The word translates roughly as 'servant', but probably 'aid' or 'subordinate' might capture the sense of it better. Its no more or less a valid concept than 'knight' in Western European culture, such people did exist. I'm not entirely sure when the specific term 'samurai' was introduced, but as a distinct group they existed at least as far back as the Edo Period. And the 'sword culture' wasn't simply something that was made up in the 19th Century. Maybe it was used as an excuse for hanging onto swords at that time, but the value of the swords, culturally, already existed. No doubt most samurai weren't a whole lot like Musashi Miyamoto, but that was still an ideal, just like there were ideals of western knights that inform how gentlemen of various eras thought about themselves. In a fantasy game it makes a fairly good model to start from. Warlock literally means nothing more or less than 'male witch' in actual folklore. I was using the term in its 4e D&D sense to mean "a character class which gains power through a pact with an extra-planar entity or higher power." Both the West and the East had models for someone like say John Dee, who acted as an advisor to Queen Elizabeth I. He was a highly knowledgeable 'sage' who (notionally of course) could command an understanding of hermetic mysteries to tell the future, etc. In the East such a character would probably be considered a 'Wu' or a Taoist priest perhaps, or one or another form of traditional wonder worker (of which many terms and different stories and explanations were told). 'Wu' however has other specific connotations as well, and is a much more religious type of figure than John Dee, who might well have been burned for witchcraft himself if the inquisition had made it to England in 1588. Of course the real world offers many models for these things. The OA 'Wu Jen' is just a pretty unclear one as the term isn't even found in the original context, so it was to some degree made up by the authors. And yes, I've read your references, or the same material, many times. I think you'll find the article on 'Wu' in the Wikipedia pretty much says what I just said. In fact I'm not real sure we're disagreeing here, Wu Jen isn't a very good term for a rehash of the D&D book wizard. The warlock, perhaps druid, or maybe the elementalist, might work better, though I agree that none of the folklore is precise enough to exactly delineate different classes. This is why Gygax chose to have simply 'magic user' as the class. The issue he then had was he was stuck inventing some mechanics for it for gamist reasons, which then pigeonholed it as 'academic wizard' and left out a lot of conceptual space, which then got filled with other classes, creating fine distinctions that weren't in the base material. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
D&D Older Editions
Kara-Tur Supplement for 4e - Ideas?
Top