"Oddities" in fantasy settings - the case against "consistency"

[Bedrockgames]

Nothing is, after the event. The issue is - at the point of proposed introduction of some idea or element, is setting "consistency" a constraint, or ought it to be?

Again the reason a player can’t be gollum isn’t setting consistency. Most fantasy campaigns would assume a character like gollum to be a possibility. The reason players don’t get to be a creature like gollum in say a standard D&D campaign, out of fairness, people pick from an established list of abilities. Some groups, some games might allow this sort of thing. Which is fine. But where it isn’t permitted has to do with balance

Now consistency could be an issue if you are playing a medieval fantasy campaign and someone wants to be the road warrior. Yes you could explain it after the fact but the consistency problem there is a clash with established premise, tone, genre etc. now if you want mad max to be able to show up in your game, fair enough. Kitchen sink gonzo campaigns can be fun. Trying to argue it should be allowed in a group that doesn’t want it or agreed to something else is where the problem gives in

 

[Bedrockgames]

But suppose that he was twisted and corrupted by the ring - and so could chill mortals with a touch.

Or suppose that he was twisted and corrupted by the ring - and so had turned into a wraith, like the Nazgul, and able to demoralise and even freeze with a terrible shriek.

Or suppose that he was twisted and corrupted by the ring - and so had wasted away to nothing and died with in a year of acquiring it.

Anything can be written here that fits within the broad idea of being twisted and corrupted by a powerful artefact, and then justified post hoc.

EDIT: @hawkeyefan - or as he's sometimes known, Gollum - ninja'd me with his tricksy, slimy, strangulating fingers!

Sure but it being done post hoc, which it might have been, it might not have been, and there being a number of possibilities to choose from, doesn’t matter. That doesn’t effect setting consistency so long as all those possibilities (or at least the arrived at possibility) and the post gif explanation is consistent with the setting. If the setting is A few Good men, then no, it’s inconsistent. If it’s middle earth, it fits

 

[MGibster]

Typically in my groups what happens before a campaign is a GM announces to a group of potential players what game and premise is on the table, those interested say so, and a campaign starts.

That's my typical experience as well. There are some games I've played and run where it's expected the PCs will have

How much Burning Wheel experience do you have? I think that what you say here has little connection to how the BW books present the process of establishing a setting, a starting situation, the place of the PCs in it, etc.

If this is a thread about Burning Wheel I think I missed that. Huh. It's right there in the OP though. Well my apologies for wasting everyone's time.

 

[Lanefan]

Why didn't its tremendous power wither him away, within weeks or months?

Because, Hobbit.

It's established elsewhere as a running theme through the books that Hobbits are tougher and hardier than they look. Gollum, for all his other faults, provides the ultimate example of that.

 

[pemerton]

Technically, the "Last Ship" is the one which Cirdan and Celeborn take some time in the Fourth Age. It must be after year FoA 171, as a note in the Thain's Book - transcribed from the Red Book of Westmarch says that Cirdan might still live at the Grey Havens. Arwen also has the opportunity to depart after Aragorn's death in FoA 120.

Appendix A says that "grievous . . . was the parting of Elrond and Arwen, for they were sundered by the Sea and by a doom beyond the end of the world", that "Arwen became as a mortal woman", and finally that Arwen "laid herself to rest upon Cerin Amroth; and there is her green grave, until the world is changed".

You are correct that "At the Grey Havens dwelt Cirdan the Shipwright, and some say he dwells there still, until the Last Ship sets sail into the West." Appendix A also notes that "In the days of the Kings most of the High Elves that still lingered in Middle-earth dwelt with Cirdan or in the seaward lands of Lindon." But Appendix B says that "after the passing of Galadriel in a few years [after the War of the Ring] Celeborn grew weary of his realm and went to Imladris to dwell with the sons of Elrond." I can't find anything in Appendix B that talks about Celeborn taking ship, and I can't find this either in the section of Unfished Tales on Galadriel and Celeborn.

The only Fourth Age ships mentioned in Appendix are the one that took Sam, and then after the death of Aragorn the grey ship build by Legolas in Ithilien that carried him and Gimli "down Anduin and so over Sea".

See the note above regarding the date of the Last Ship. And the Gimli thing is definitely an "it is told" or an "if this be true" type thing; it is purposely placed in the region of speculation.

As is Cirdan's continued dwelling in the Havens.

the theme of exceptionalism is usually used purposely to illustrate deviation from what is normal, natural, the proper order of things and serves rather to strengthen the underlying motifs. This can be as the result of sorcery, the grace of the Valar, or Eru's personal intervention ("providence").

This may be so. It doesn't make the case for consistency, though. It's part of the case against it!

I think there's also a world of difference between "things we don't necessarily understand about Middle-Earth because they aren't made explicit" and "things which contradict established lore in Middle-Earth."

Well, the "established lore" is what has been written and published, and so in a sense it can't contradict itself: it is what it is. But "things we don't understand" (eg the relationship between, and timelines pertaining to, Galadriel and Celeborn) don't have some objective existence that we strive to uncover: there is no objective reality here that anchors our inquiry.

The fiction is written and our "understanding" flows from that. Consistency to prior "rules" or conceptions doesn't seem to be a particular constraint on JRRT's work.

These are functions of the corrupting influence of the Ring, and serve that motif.

As I posted upthread, the corruption could - considered in the abstract - manifest in any number of other ways, and from the point of view of setting consistency any would do as well as any other, and indeed consistency might be increased if the Ring either made Gollum more like a Nazgul, or obliterated him with its power.

Bombadil might be Eru or the author inserting himself into the story; he is certainly an exception. Goldberry is a "not-known" but we might reasonably infer that she is a maia; Old Man Willow is consistent with the remains of the Primeval Forest, and the notion of "Ents becoming tree-ish/trees becoming ent-ish."

<snip>

Boromir's journey is exceptional.

Pointing out that certain things are exceptions or exceptional doesn't seem to me to refute the case against consistency. It helps make it out.

There's an argument, in my view, that the whole of the Ent "arc" is an instance of this. Fangorn is full of these ancient peoples, and Celeborn and Galadriel live barely a stone's throw from them, and yet Treebeard (Bk VI, ch VI) laments that "It is long, long since we met by stock or by stone"; and earlier (Bk II, ch VIII) Celeborn warns the Fellowship not to "risk becoming entangled in the Forest of Fangorn. That is a strange land, and is now little known." Yet is seems that he and Galadriel know that Ents live there!

Again, illustrating the unnatural effects of sorcery.

<snip>

Well, the Witch-King, Galadriel and Sauron all "do magic," and I'm not sure that we're required to see the Mouth of Sauron do magic "on-screen" for his authenticity as a sorcerer to be confirmed.

But magic - and especially sorcery, the use of spells - is exactly whatever the story needs it to be, and no more. There is no consistent conception that I can see of what sorcery is, or how it works, or what effect it can have. (This contrasts, for instance, with A Wizard of Earthsea.)

I'm not sure whether you're referring to the Palantir of Minas Tirith or in the Tower Hills.

The latter.

 

[pemerton]

Because, Hobbit.

It's established elsewhere as a running theme through the books that Hobbits are tougher and hardier than they look. Gollum, for all his other faults, provides the ultimate example of that.

This is all post hoc. Hobbit's are resilient, but all this suggests is that the Ring should take longer to destroy Gollum than it would a human. I mean, there's no suggestion that Pippin's mind could withstand being blasted by the Eye of Sauron, mediated via Palantir, for more than a small amount of time.

These are storytelling decisions, not extrapolations from some conception of what the setting is and what its consistency demands.

 

[niklinna]

Again the reason a player can’t be gollum isn’t setting consistency.

A player can't be Gollum...in what game? In Burning Wheel, it sounds to me like a player could totally be Gollum, or something very similar.

Most fantasy campaigns would assume a character like gollum to be a possibility. The reason players don’t get to be a creature like gollum in say a standard D&D campaign, out of fairness, people pick from an established list of abilities. Some groups, some games might allow this sort of thing. Which is fine. But where it isn’t permitted has to do with balance

Oh, that game. Okay.

Now consistency could be an issue if you are playing a medieval fantasy campaign and someone wants to be the road warrior. Yes you could explain it after the fact but the consistency problem there is a clash with established premise, tone, genre etc. now if you want mad max to be able to show up in your game, fair enough. Kitchen sink gonzo campaigns can be fun. Trying to argue it should be allowed in a group that doesn’t want it or agreed to something else is where the problem gives in

I haven't seen anybody here arguing it should be allowed in a group that doesn't want it. I have seen people arguing that all groups (or rather, all GMs) will always, by default, by nature, and without exception—in spite of numerous presented exceptions—not want it.

 

[Alzrius]

I mean, all it takes is giving the characters meaningful elements to engage with. I find holding any setting ideas I have as GM loosely rather than tightly helps promote this. When a player has an idea, I’m more able to adapt or incorporate ideas into the setting.

As for backstories, not all are about accomplishment… the kind we’d typically ascribe to level advancement. No one is saying that the last mage needs to be some kind of 18th level archmage.

Often, it’s more about their place in the world. The people they know and love, the people they hate, the things they’ve seen.

And a lot of times… depending on the game and how all this kind of stuff is determined… all that stuff which we can assume is important to the player will amount to jack because the GM simply ignores it, or doesn’t know what to do with it, or can’t conceive how to reconcile it with other game elements.

This is why I personally prefer that all this stuff… setting creation and character creation… be done as a group effort.

I find it to be much easier (and ultimately more rewarding) to engage with elements that are found/developed over the course of play, rather than before the game begins. Working with what's there strikes me (and most of the players I've known) as being more rewarding than having most everything they want granted right from the get-go.

Backstories might not be about accomplishment per se, but if you're starting off by being able to flout the conventions that everyone else has to work within, well...that's effectively the same thing. If you're the last mage in a setting with no magic, then in terms of your impact on the setting and the NPCs who inhabit it, you might as well be a high-level character. I mean, if no one could use magic, and suddenly someone came along who inarguably could, there's a case to be made that at least the local part of the game world would revolve around them to at least some degree, simply because of what they are.

Which is, in my experience, why players want to overturn convention a lot of the time. Even if the GM doesn't decide to take their character's inherent qualities and turn them into the basis of the campaign, those same qualities are often things that mark their characters as being "above and beyond" everyone else, and the player tends to expect that to come up with regard to what they do. Said last mage is going to be able to show off that they're the last mage wherever they go, and will likely know that will color their interactions with every other character they encounter.

I do agree that these are things which should all be reconciled in the group before play starts. I just don't think that reconciliation necessarily means that the player should necessarily be given (some degree) of what they want. I know that there's a school of thought that GMs shouldn't say no (i.e. "yes or roll for it"), but it's not one that I subscribe to.

 

[Alzrius]

Well, I made up the order, the noble family, and the fact that he is the Last Knight of the Iron Tower; and yet in a sense the order still exists, as he has an affiliation with it.

I didn't choose from a list of orders provided by the GM, nor from a list of noble families or estates. And the ambiguity around the status of the order, and Thurgon's role in the order, has to date been left ambiguous in play.

So no actual conventions of the setting were overturned. And yet it sounds like you had sessions of play that were dynamic and engaging...which tells us that conventions really aren't the enemy of such things after all.

 

[Bedrockgames]

A player can't be Gollum...in what game? In Burning Wheel, it sounds to me like a player could totally be Gollum, or something very similar.

I understand there are plenty of games where a character like Gollum would be an issue. But I think what has been happening in a lot of this discussion is constraints around character creation that happen in games like D&D with class selection, and in a lot of other games (i.e. there are certain types of characters the system lets you make, but there are things in the game you can't be), with setting consistency. And those are two different things.

I think everyone in this thread understands there are games where things like this operate in a completely different way

Oh, that game. Okay.

I don't play D&D most of the time. But a lot of the OP seems to be speaking about games like that where there are these constraints (for games where it is allowed, it is kind of a non-issue).

I haven't seen anybody here arguing it should be allowed in a group that doesn't want it. I have seen people arguing that all groups (or rather, all GMs) will always, by default, by nature, and without exception—in spite of numerous presented exceptions—not want it.

I am unclear on this. I do think there are people in the thread who are suggesting players should take a more aggressive stance on things like this during character creation. Many haven't though. I haven't been arguing the latter at all