So that's why you like it

[Rechan]

I don't the get the importance of character death. Or rather, I don't get the importance of being required to create another (roughly equal) character after suffering certain in-game failure conditions. I mean, D&D is the original game with infinite continues.

At least for me? I want to play a million characters. I don't get so attached that I'd want to continue after they die. I'd rather just shift to something new. Death is the opportunity to play something new.

I also just don't like the idea of raise dead. I think it's a copout, and just boring to go "Oops, I died? Okay, that's annoying. See you guys in a few minutes." It's utterly metagamey, to use a phrase.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I don't the get the importance of character death. Or rather, I don't get the importance of being required to create another (roughly equal) character after suffering certain in-game failure conditions. I mean, D&D is the original game with infinite continues.

The value of character death depends on the level of continuity and consistency desired by the campaign participants. I was never aware of any requirement for another character to be "roughly equal" to one that died in play. If there are no possibilities for failure then there can be no victory. An infinite supply of "extra men" type game would mean that there would effectively be no risks or rewards. Playing this style of "Gauntlet" type game wouldn't be wrong but it wouldn't hold my attention for very long because I play tabletop games to get a different experience than what is offered by an electronic console. YMMV.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

Long post here, folks.

I don't get the appeal of bullywugs, catfalk, lizardfolk and all other "they're like people but superficially animalistic" races.

These two posts offer most of the good answers:

There are multiple reasons for the interest. But before I get into it, allow me to ask a rhetorical question:

Why is there interest in any race but Humans? Why bother with elves, dwarves, etc?

The answer is: because they're different than humans. In some fashion, at least, people choose to not play a human either for the mechanical benefits, or for the story benefits.

1) Same idea. It's just that animalmen are further from human than demi-humans. This is one reason why I like them; they're inhuman. A nice distance from the typical elf/dwarf/halfling.

Not only aret they far enough from humans/demi-humans to be interesting, but familiar enough to be rationable. We all understand animals, their behaviors/habits and appearances. So something that is partially animal is a little less alien to us than say, something that's part plant. We don't understand how a sentient plant would behave.

Because we can understand animals and their behavior, it's a great inspiration for characterization. I can tell you right now I can use a cat as inspiration for my catman's behavioral patterns/personality. From Aesop to Redwall, animal = personality traits, so it's a very easy shortcut. Also, taking those animal elements and implementing it into their culture is rather easy and interesting.

2) Variety. Aesthetically, animalmen are so very diverse. There's a lot of different visual forms out there. Way more diverse than the spectrum of humans.

3) Design inevitability. You can only make so many different humanoids that look like a human with long ears or green skin before they start all looking together. This is similar to #2, in that the animal kingdom offers more variety of different humanoids to use.

4) Mythology. There have been animalmen for centuries. Many of various gods have animal heads. The Minotaur. Faeries have animal parts (Satyrs and centaurs, particularly). Not to mention lycanthropes. Besides, it makes sense that a God with a Jackal Head might create Jackalmen in his own image.

5) ) Environmental appropriateness. It just makes sense for lizardmen to live in swamps, and live there comfortably. When you need to have inhabitants int he swamp, or something to encounter in the swamp, you look for what lives there and, like #7, give it weapons and intelligence.

6) Nostalgia. Many of the various animalmen have been around for a long time, and so some may have very fond memories of the first time they fought Bullywugs.

7) Everyone has a favorite animal. Or "If you could be an animal, what would you be?" So, it makes sense that someone who thinks snakes are badass might really like Yaun-ti.

8) Fear. We all have instinctive fears. The thought of a tiger leaping onto us and mauling us. Snakes underfoot. So being able to give those fears swords, and intelligence, allow them to be used to pose a better threat than just a wild animal.

9) Furries.

Rechan covered this pretty well, but I have a couple of things to add. The reason that I like anthropomorphic animal races is due in large part to being exposed to them quite a bit in the formative years of my interest in fantasy. What really got me interested in the fantasy genre were various SNES-era Japanese RPGs. Among them was an RPG series called Breath of Fire where the main cast looks like this. (Note that the one guy in the center who looks like a human is actually a dragon). So from early on, antropomorhpic animal races in fantasy was a familiar concept to me.

Since then, I have been exposed to a lot of literature, anime, and videogames that have also featured animal races. For example, my favorite piece of literature these days is the the Hindu epic, the Ramayana, in which one of the coolest characters is a monkey god named Hanuman.

But there's still one I can think of that hasn't been mentioned:
Physiological experience. Some people like to be animals or near-animals so they can spend their imagining time imagining what that kind of body would be like. I'd extend this to any monster that's clearly not human. It's similar to playing a guy with big muscles when you're a scrawny weakling.

*Moral absolutism and irredeemable evil in humanoids or more "natural" monsters. Everyone I've seen who doesn't like irredeemable races have nothing wrong with, say, demons/devils being always evil, or saying ghouls are evil, etc.

Well get ready to meet one: I don't like anything to be irredeemable evil. It's boring. Boring because it's expectable. I prefer everyone in my settings to have the ability to be any sort of alignment so then you never know.

Here's the ones I don't get:
Settings written with conflict happening or about to happen.
I can't see the draw. It feels like the people don't matter, that everything's just another part of the inescapable march of history and we're all just going to be another chapter in some textbook.
Dark and/or post-apocalyptic settings.
Either the fight is hopeless/already lost or the world is just really, really hard to live in. Why do anything? If you can't win or can't accomplish something big why try? If the world is terrible why try to save it?

 

[fanboy2000]

Why do you like Monster minis? I just don't understand why it's worth the cost, storage, and effort when a piece of paper or a little bead will do the same task of indicating where the monster is.

I used to use paper tokens. I bought a set back in the early days of 3e. I stopped using them for while and used dice. Unfortunately for the players, I used dice to represent trees as well. My friend Anton snuck-up on a tree, thinking it was an orc and got a really good roll. At that point, he and another player, decided to buy me miniatures. I could have just gone back to using the paper tokens, but I decided to continue using the miniatures and bought more. (At the time it was $10 for 8 minis, IIRC)

I continued to use them because once when I was playing, I saw all the miniatures there and it looked really impressive to me. There is something awe-inspiring about grabing a dragon miniature and saying, this is what you see. It gets even better when I use a poster map like the kind from fantastic locations or the new 4e adventures.

 

[billd91]

Why do people like:

Gnomes
They're based around levity. They're practical jokers, the ones who use deceptive illusions. Based on 1e: Elves like their dancing and singing in the woods. Dwarves toil and like wealth. Halflings like comfort and food. Half-orcs like to intimidate and kill. Humans and half-elves are somewhat more flexible, but gnomes like a good joke.

Drizzt
Salvatore took an idea that was actually already well out there - the good Drow PC - and made a few good reads with this upstanding guy from a messed up family/society who engaged in enough self-reflection in his rebellion to be fairly interesting and worthy of a bit of respect. Then he ran the series into the ground. But before that, the character was actually fairly interesting.

Critical misses
They add the possibility of losing or damaging your own stuff through your own actions. They make your gear a resource that can be lost through use rather than just capture/item saving throws/other DM-based action. Without them, attacking costs you nothing but the time.

Lovecraftian horror
Some of us like the idea that there are things that you don't know and that you DON'T WANT to know, that the mysteries of the universe aren't just cool things to explore, but things that will warp your mind and make you wish you have never sought them out... kind of like certain pictures on the internet. You know the ones I mean!


But what I don't get is why people are so obsessed with ninjas and pirates and the contest between them...

 

[Vael]

Forget Drizzt, I don't get Salvatore in general. I tried to read Vector Prime, and one of his non-DnD fantasy novels ... I just don't like the author.

 

[Mournblade94]

I dislike Drizzt for one reason: I beat R. Salvatore to the punch by years with a PC of mine (Darkethorne, a male drow Rgr/Druid/MU 2WF outcast), and to this day, people who don't know call him a Drizzt clone. Also pre-Drizzt characters in that campaign were Darkethorne's younger brother (Ftr/Ass 2WF) and a female F/MU/Th (2WF with all kinds of speed magic).

And for the record, I never read ANY of the D&D books, either. I didn't know of Drizzle's existence until someone badmouthed Darkethorne.

Quite honestly just about every group in the 80's had a drizzt pregenitor. You have a cool character name but you are certainly not alone.

I had Rizzen (A name incidently used in the second trilogy, just coincidence though I thought it was cool))
Rob had Dalkor
and Eric had Derek

 

[Mournblade94]

I'm going to go with a risky suggestion, and point you to this thread which asks "What's so special about FR?"

In general, I want to avoid "To answer your question, I refer you to another thread..." but, it just seemed like a perfect opportunity.

But to sum up, as far as I can tell:

FR is really, really old. It was one of the first box sets or something like that. So, Nostalgia/familiarity.

FR is high magic. Magic magic magic. Epic magic. Magic geegaws and whatsits. For someone who likes magic out the whazoo, it's there.

Novels. Let me tell you, there are people who have read every single FR novel and FR gaming book, so these guys can tell you the history of any location spanning multiple ages. This level of lore and depth of history is attractive to some players.

Also I like the parralels to real world civilizations and the pseudohistorical parralels. I like history, so I like worlds that reflect historical civilizations.

 

[Bumbles]

Long post here, folks.
Here's the ones I don't get:
Settings written with conflict happening or about to happen.
I can't see the draw. It feels like the people don't matter, that everything's just another part of the inescapable march of history and we're all just going to be another chapter in some textbook.

But that's when people *can* matter! Big earth-shattering events guided by a band of intrepid champions! Or so it appears to them anyway. This may not be realistic, but it's the way heroes are made.

Dark and/or post-apocalyptic settings.
Either the fight is hopeless/already lost or the world is just really, really hard to live in. Why do anything? If you can't win or can't accomplish something big why try? If the worlds is terrible why try to save it?

Because it's the only world you got and you've got to do something!

To put it another way, why play in Candyland? Gumdrops and Lollipops aren't that much of a challenge.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

Note: I'm not trying to argue that my viewpoint is the "right" viewpoint. I'm simply stating what I find wrong with the explanation in order for people to understand and possibly to try to answer my confusion.

But that's when people *can* matter! Big earth-shattering events guided by a band of intrepid champions! Or so it appears to them anyway. This may not be realistic, but it's the way heroes are made.

And then later you become some footnote in a history book. Because you didn't do anything that hadn't been done before.

Settings with stuff going on have been done, and done in the real world.

Settings where nothing's going on and then something happens leave those who challenge the happening as central and forever unique.

To jump on the example bandwagon:
Would LotR have been as interesting if what happened in it was known to have happened every hundred years or less?

Because it's the only world you got and you've got to do something!

No, you don't. You can just sit back and let the world die. It's not like it's worth anything. Heck, help out with the destruction. The faster you get it done the less the world has to suffer.