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Why A GM Can Never Have Too Many Bestiaries
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7690692" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>All of them seem to boil down to the fact that I don't agree with you.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>First of all, your assumptions regarding the state of my knowledge are ridiculous. Secondly, I'm not ignoring the creative output of people you write about, just learning my lesson that actually being critical of peoples creative output tends to be rather unwelcome. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I'm not sure you know what the word 'critic' means. As a critic, if I actually recommended everything I read, I wouldn't be worth much as a critic would I? The whole point of a critic is that they are critical, so that when the give an endorsement to something you can have a reasonable expectation that it indeed is of very high quality. I have a very close friend who is a great guy, but as a critic he's worthless because he likes absolutely everything, so that if he recommends a restaurant you know that often as not you should save your money and stay well away. So when you give the recommendation, "You can never have enough Bestiaries", as a critic it's really hard to take that recommendation seriously or that it actually says anything positive regarding the things you are recommending.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>We appear to have a fundamental disagreement regarding what is useful about public discourse.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I didn't say that. I said that the degree of utility was low for the page count. But sure, there are certainly lots of Bestiaries that are far worse. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Creative yes. I can definitely agree that flail snails, carbuncles, flumphs, al-mi'rajs and the like are creative.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>That explains a lot.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Sure. But the thing about 'retreads' as you call them, like zombies, vampires, ogres, trolls, dragons, giants, and all the like even just poisonous snakes, is that they tend to have mythic resonance, since they feature in more than one story and are a part of the human folk lore tradition. When you pull those off your shelf, you are bringing with them all sorts of power. Even if you adapt them or alter them slightly to be unique to your setting and to give your own unique take on them, you still inherit their legacy and people's prior relationship with them. It's a whole lot less work to make that monster a being, and not merely a stat block or game obstacle.</p><p></p><p>You finish your original piece by referencing "happy little trees", and in doing so you are doing exactly the same thing I'm doing with a swarm of bats, a poisonous viper, a troll or a dragon. You are connecting the reader to their past experiences and knowledge and shared culture via reference, and you did so because it is a powerful technique. Of course, you throw that line out there without actually having thought it through very well, because one of the thing that Bob Ross was noted for was using a very limited palette of color, and encouraging his students to create their own color through variation and experimentation within that limited palette. This is actually the opposite of the technique you are espousing in your essay, where you suggest that the appropriate approach is to buy every color that comes out and use those numerous shades broadly and wildly. The Bob Ross in this discussion, who likes a limited palette of classic "Happy Little Monsters" and is encouraging people to experiment with variations within a that limited palette, is actually me.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7690692, member: 4937"] All of them seem to boil down to the fact that I don't agree with you. First of all, your assumptions regarding the state of my knowledge are ridiculous. Secondly, I'm not ignoring the creative output of people you write about, just learning my lesson that actually being critical of peoples creative output tends to be rather unwelcome. I'm not sure you know what the word 'critic' means. As a critic, if I actually recommended everything I read, I wouldn't be worth much as a critic would I? The whole point of a critic is that they are critical, so that when the give an endorsement to something you can have a reasonable expectation that it indeed is of very high quality. I have a very close friend who is a great guy, but as a critic he's worthless because he likes absolutely everything, so that if he recommends a restaurant you know that often as not you should save your money and stay well away. So when you give the recommendation, "You can never have enough Bestiaries", as a critic it's really hard to take that recommendation seriously or that it actually says anything positive regarding the things you are recommending. We appear to have a fundamental disagreement regarding what is useful about public discourse. I didn't say that. I said that the degree of utility was low for the page count. But sure, there are certainly lots of Bestiaries that are far worse. Creative yes. I can definitely agree that flail snails, carbuncles, flumphs, al-mi'rajs and the like are creative. That explains a lot. Sure. But the thing about 'retreads' as you call them, like zombies, vampires, ogres, trolls, dragons, giants, and all the like even just poisonous snakes, is that they tend to have mythic resonance, since they feature in more than one story and are a part of the human folk lore tradition. When you pull those off your shelf, you are bringing with them all sorts of power. Even if you adapt them or alter them slightly to be unique to your setting and to give your own unique take on them, you still inherit their legacy and people's prior relationship with them. It's a whole lot less work to make that monster a being, and not merely a stat block or game obstacle. You finish your original piece by referencing "happy little trees", and in doing so you are doing exactly the same thing I'm doing with a swarm of bats, a poisonous viper, a troll or a dragon. You are connecting the reader to their past experiences and knowledge and shared culture via reference, and you did so because it is a powerful technique. Of course, you throw that line out there without actually having thought it through very well, because one of the thing that Bob Ross was noted for was using a very limited palette of color, and encouraging his students to create their own color through variation and experimentation within that limited palette. This is actually the opposite of the technique you are espousing in your essay, where you suggest that the appropriate approach is to buy every color that comes out and use those numerous shades broadly and wildly. The Bob Ross in this discussion, who likes a limited palette of classic "Happy Little Monsters" and is encouraging people to experiment with variations within a that limited palette, is actually me. [/QUOTE]
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