D&D 4E 4e Design and JRR Tolkien

[I'm A Banana]

You figure all these REH licences, comics, reprintings etc. Have come about in the last four months? (Not to mention all the other pulp authors that have been brought up.)

Tsk tsk, your specificity missed the point.

Which was, incidentally, not about the Transformer's movie, but about how nostalgia sells.

Ain't nothin' wrong with that, but I don't think D&D should be in the business of selling 40-50 year olds their childhood back to them. I think D&D should be in the business of selling 14-15 year olds their awesome future memories.

 

[gothmaugCC]

Ain't nothin' wrong with that, but I don't think D&D should be in the business of selling 40-50 year olds their childhood back to them. I think D&D should be in the business of selling 14-15 year olds their awesome future memories.

You have a good point. To survive, they have to cater to the younger crowd. We're just old baggage thats going along for the ride.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Tsk tsk, your specificity missed the point.

Which was, incidentally, not about the Transformer's movie, but about how nostalgia sells.

Ain't nothin' wrong with that, but I don't think D&D should be in the business of selling 40-50 year olds their childhood back to them. I think D&D should be in the business of selling 14-15 year olds their awesome future memories.

Actually, REH is receiving critical kudos now. And I never read any of his boxing stories back in the day, so I can say clearly that my enjoyment of them is not nostalgia. OTOH, I bet that Transformers movie will not be lauded 50 years later by critics who recognize something missed by viewers now.

BTW, I saw your sea serpent encounter in another thread. Good stuff, mang!

RC

 

[JohnSnow]

Where did I hear that within the D&D rules Aragorn would probably be a 5th level character (fighter 1/paladin 3/ranger 1)?

I would have to agree, as the Fellowship are pretty feeble next to your average mid-level D&D party.

I would like to see a departure from so many of the Tolkien legacy items that still pervade D&D (Halflings etc).

People throw this quote out a lot. And they base it on the absurd theory that Gandalf is a 6th-level wizard. More on that later.

Now...Aragorn. He goes 135 miles in under 3 days. On foot. He faces orcs and kills them by the dozen. He faces and chases off three of the Nazgul armed with nothing more than a couple of flaming sticks. Show me a D&D character who can take on 3 Death Knights with no more help than three 1st level halfling fighters. Finally. let's take an actual quote from The Lord of the Rings, shall we? This is from Helm's Deep:

'There are among us names worth fifty battle-hardened warriors."

In case there's any doubt, the mentioned are Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli and maybe Eomer. It does NOT include Gandalf (who's not present when this line is said). Fifty. Battle-hardened warriors. Not 50 1st-level mooks. Aragorn may not be 20th-level, but he's well past 5th.

Back to Gandalf. Try this: Stat up a Balor. Think it's scary? Stat it up again. When you can possibly imagine it wiping out an entire stronghold of experienced warriors by itself and scary enough that THOUSANDS of orcs flee from it, it's scary enough. What is that by D&D standards? 18th level? 20th? 25th?

Now create a character who can stand against it in a fair fight. That is Gandalf. Just cuz we don't see his powers doesn't mean he doesn't have them.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Actually, REH is receiving critical kudos now.

Well, #1, critics are not immune to nostalgia. #2, I believe he received kudos back in the day too, right?

I mean, the decision to re-publish is ultimately: can we make this profitable (again)? Quality doesn't really enter into it (as is evidenced by Transformers, which was by any account a poor candidate for any level of artistry). Publishing REH again means that some suits somewhere think that people will eat it up. WHY will people eat it up? Because nostalgia is profitable. And if Tolkien's estate can still make bank on the LotR series, why shouldn't REH, which was around the same time period, not try to cash in on that?

I wouldn't say it's JUST nostalgia (though it could be), but I would say that it definitely is a major factor. The other major factor likely was the whole "fantasy is hot right now" thing.

But to the point of D&D, I still stand by my case that it shouldn't be re-packaging the popular fantasy of the '60's and '70's for the grognards, it should be constantly adapting itself to the new versions of fantasy that the kids these days are into (while retaining the heavy mod-ability that allows people to re-visit some of those classic kinds of stories). For better or worse, D&D is and should remain something that kids in middle school through high school discover. Just as it pretty much always has been (or at least has always been trying to be).

BTW, I saw your sea serpent encounter in another thread. Good stuff, mang!

Thanks for the kudos! There's a reason you haven't put me on ignore yet.

 

[M.L. Martin]

There's a genuine issue in the fact that 4e seems to be strangely off the path of standard fantasy. D&D 4e seems to be the version where D&D decides to start ignoring the source literature and start eating its own tail. A non-grognard who hears of an elf or a dwarf very likely has some idea of what you're talking about. But an eladrin and a tiefling? Not so much.

With the exception of your last example, I could change 4E to 3E in this quote and it would make as much sense to me, if not more so. Indeed, it sounds like 4E is jettisoning some of the old-school AD&D assumptions that made the game feel more artificial to some, such as the planar structure (all these different planes for minor nuances of alignment, and no Faerie Realm?) and there are hints that they're trying to get the monsters back to a more mythological feel. 3E, by contrast, was much more 'back to the dungeon' and 'back to 1E'.

The tiefling and eladrin are names unique to D&D, but I think that the 'demon-blooded human' and 'high elf/faerie lord' archetypes they represent are pretty recognizable.

 

[Baby Samurai]

Back to Gandalf. Try this: Stat up a Balor. Think it's scary? Stat it up again. When you can possibly imagine it wiping out an entire stronghold of experienced warriors by itself and scary enough that THOUSANDS of orcs flee from it, it's scary enough. What is that by D&D standards? 18th level? 20th? 25th?

As we know it is futile to try and represent LotR characters within the D&D rules/mechanics, but thinking about Gandalf I would say he would be something along the lines of a Celestial/Angel/Outsider.

I still stand by my stance on the Fellowship not being very high level, I mean, yeah sure, Aragorn had some gnarly encounters (I go by the book, not the film), but nothing like what a 10th level D&D fighter is capable of taking on.

 

[Aloïsius]

"
In fact, few of the characters given as an example of epic in the DnD rules have powers anything as outrageous as those of DnD.

Just read the Mahabharata. There you will find all the epic you need !

 

[shilsen]

Just read the Mahabharata. There you will find all the epic you need !

QFT. One of the reasons I've never had any problems with what PCs in D&D can do is because I tend to consider them (especially once they have a few levels under their belts) as analogous to mythological figures rather than normal, mortal human beings. D&D figures map much better onto things like the Mahabharata, the Ulster Cycle, and the Kalevala than they do onto Tolkien, Howard and Leiber. When it comes to Tolkien, it works much better to look at the Silmarillion for D&Desque power than the LotR.

 

[Baby Samurai]

When it comes to Tolkien, it works much better to look at the Silmarillion for D&Desque power than the LotR.

Yeah, totally, guys like Thingol and Gil-Galad are closer to D&D characters than the Fellowship.