And the mystery race is...hated

[JoeGKushner]

I don't understand why people have so much trouble grokking gnomes. (heh. spell checker didn't react to "grokking") There are tons of great hooks and ideas that differentiate them from the other races, and they certainly have more personality going for them than elves ("We live in forests! Also, we like bows!").

Dig up Whizbang Dustyboots' racial description. Or take a look at what Paizo's doing with them in Pathfinder. There's a ton of potential there, and the designers' apparent inability to figure out what to do with them strikes me as a lack of imagination. Sure, those guys might be super-duper rule designers, but given things like Dragon Tail Cut, Emerald Frost, and their inability to figure out gnomes, I wonder if they shouldn't be outsourcing the fluff text.

Gnome Chili

Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 pounds ground gnome
1 small onion, minced
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 cups gnome stock
1/2 cup red wine
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 (28 ounce) can stewed tomatoes, lightly drained
7 sun-dried tomatoes, softened and chopped
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 (15 ounce) can black beans, drained
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon chili powder
2 teaspoons salt
ground black pepper to taste
1 pinch dried oregano
1 pinch dried sage
1 pinch white sugar
1 bay leaf
Cooking Instructions
In a large Dutch oven, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Brown the ground gnome until no longer pink. Drain most of the fat from the ground gnome.

Push the ground gnome to the sides of the pan and saute the onion and garlic in the middle until softened.

Pour in gnome stock, red wine, and balsamic vinegar. Stir in tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes, tomato paste and black beans. Mix thoroughly. Sprinkle in the cayenne pepper, chili powder, salt, pepper, oregano, sage and sugar, then add the bay leaf. Mix thoroughly.

Cover and simmer on lowest heat for 45 to 90 minutes.

 

[frankthedm]

...

Who laps pudding?

I prefer using chopsticks to eat pudding.

While I am not too enthused on the Dragonborn PC race, I'll take them over warfordged. And though it might seem like Wotc ought to have used lizardfolk, they honestly are not that grand of a PHB fit unless wotc tweaks them too much.. If making a new reptilian race is what it takes to keep Lizardfolk primitive, thick scaled, lacking empathy, and willing to eat their own who fall in combat, then so be it.

 

[Shortman McLeod]

As a general rule, if the main characters set out on an adventure without a single weapon beyond a knife for food and/or woodcarving (and they weren't in prison) and there isn't a single woman in the book, it isn't sword and sorcery.

Exactly.

Sword and sorcery = chain mail bikinis on women with unthinkably amazing bodies.

High fantasy = noble warrior who goes on Important Quest.

 

[Imp]

ooogh, my two cents after all of this:

I am used to banning PHB races, so I don't care too much. I've always liked saurian humanoids, but I've never really been able to get dragon-human crossbreed creatures. I can't see proud, reclusive dragons lowering themselves to breed with the little hairless monkeys, or being lowered to lab subjects by them, either... it just doesn't work for me. I don't use half-dragons, and I won't use dragonborn as written. If I can make it fly for a non-dragon-descended saurian race, then it's on.

Also, while I'm worried about tieflings because of their currently lacking flavor, I deeply dig the whole corrupted-race-descended-from-a-fallen-empire thing, maybe even a little too much, so if the concept they present is at all salvageable, they'll be in.

I hope one of them's a straight bruiser race.

 

[pawsplay]

Very much not sword and sorcery. There are very few swords, precious little sorcery and the main characters almost never use either. Swords and Sorcery, as a sub-genre, has violence and sex oozing out the sides. Tolkien's work, and particularly the Hobbit, has very little in common with the major themes that characterize sword and sorcery stories.

The Hobbit mentions three blades by name, Orcrist, Glamdrung, and Sting. Sorcery? You bet. Trolls? Yup. Violence? Dragon slaying, check. Rogues stealing treasure? Got that.

Seriously, you could replace Bilbo with the Gray Mouser, replace Gandalf with Corum, the dwarves with a gang of Norwegian soldiers, and Smaug with a giant evil snake, and you'd be good to go. It's true, there's not a lot of sex... but this is a children's story. It does have the heroes looting ruins, which is a theme of swords-and-sorcery, not traditionally of high fantasy.

Also, it should be pointed out that the epic high fantasy genre has lots of sex in it too (Eddings, I'm looking at you). The relatively light amount of sex in LOTR is a peculierity of Tolkien's writings particularly, not of epic high fantasy. High fantasy, swords-and-sorcery, chivalric romance, British epic, and classic myth ALL traditionally have lots of sex.

Aragorn is a lost king who goes off in the wilderness to be manly, romances hot elf babes, slays the undead with his manliness, and tracks like a bloodhound. If LOTR is not a swords-and-sorcery novel, someone needs to tell Aragorn that he's in the wrong book!

Gandalf, Sauron and the other mystical elements are hardly out of place compared to the Elric mythos.

 

[Particle_Man]

I hope one of them's a straight bruiser race.

Dwarf?

 

[AWizardInDallas]

Ok, it just feels to me like every decision WOTC is making is being shoved down our throats. D&D has always flourished because of it's general vague setting. Why are they hardcoding setting into our game. If I had wanted dragonlance, I would have bought the setting, same thing with planescape. I'm sorry, but I don't think elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, humans, half-elves, and half-orcs are really that boring. I don't need horns and scales to make my game more exciting. Let the people choose, stop making setting choices for us.

Bravo! I agree entirely. So this means that with every edition of the game, and let's face it this isn't the last, WOTC gets to cut whatever THEY want out of YOUR game, which they did from 2E to 3.0 and then from 3.0 to 3.5, then charge you for it to boot. No way am I supporting this edition of D&D.

 

[Doug McCrae]

The Hobbit mentions three blades by name, Orcrist, Glamdrung, and Sting. Sorcery? You bet. Trolls? Yup. Violence? Dragon slaying, check. Rogues stealing treasure? Got that.

Aragorn is a lost king who goes off in the wilderness to be manly, romances hot elf babes, slays the undead with his manliness, and tracks like a bloodhound. If LOTR is not a swords-and-sorcery novel, someone needs to tell Aragorn that he's in the wrong book!

Good points about The Hobbit. It has a very different feel to LotR. The first printing wasn't even set in Middle Earth, Tolkien retrofitted it. Mind you it doesn't feel much like Conan to me. I'd place it alongside other British children's fantasy fiction like Narnia, Alice in Wonderland or The Marvellous Land Of Snergs.

Lord Of The Rings can't be Sword & Sorcery as it's the textbook definition of not Sword & Sorcery ie High Fantasy. There is some stuff that is really hard to place on the S&S/HF axis - Moorcock's fiction, especially Elric, being the outstanding example - but LotR ain't.

 

[Voss]

The Hobbit mentions three blades by name, Orcrist, Glamdrung, and Sting. Sorcery? You bet. Trolls? Yup. Violence? Dragon slaying, check. Rogues stealing treasure? Got that.

Uhhuh. 3 swords they happen to just pick up, and they each essentially use them once.
The trolls died by being stupid. And sunlight and trickery. In S&S the heroes would have already had swords, and there would have been much lopping of limbs.
The dragon dies to a single arrow. By someone else. While the heroes are hiding. *that*, more than anything else, is not sword and sorcery.
Almost all violence happens off camera. In S&S its front and center.
A non-rogue steals a grand total of two pieces of treasure, (if by steal you mean picks it off the ground when no one is looking) and fails at pick pocketing. He mostly steals food. And leftovers at that.

Seriously, you could replace Bilbo with the Gray Mouser, replace Gandalf with Corum, the dwarves with a gang of Norwegian soldiers, and Smaug with a giant evil snake, and you'd be good to go.

No. No you couldn't. You can explain this if you want, but I really don't see any correlation between any of these characters, and I'm familiar with them all. An apprentice wizard turned thief with an eye for death, jewels and whores isn't anything like a well-to-do country gentleman who's never worked a day in his life, and essentially lives off his family's money.

It's true, there's not a lot of sex... but this is a children's story. It does have the heroes looting ruins, which is a theme of swords-and-sorcery, not traditionally of high fantasy.

There is NO sex. Because there are NO women. Even if you go to LOTR, there are... 3? And Arwen is barely even implied.
What ruins get looted? The troll's treasure is stuffed in a nearby cave, and its the dwarves' home.

Also, it should be pointed out that the epic high fantasy genre has lots of sex in it too (Eddings, I'm looking at you). The relatively light amount of sex in LOTR is a peculierity of Tolkien's writings particularly, not of epic high fantasy. High fantasy, swords-and-sorcery, chivalric romance, British epic, and classic myth ALL traditionally have lots of sex.

A lot of romance and a lot of begat-ing, but not sex. Theres a big difference between picking up a whore or a slave girl and romance/marriage/children.

Aragorn is a lost king who goes off in the wilderness to be manly, romances hot elf babes, slays the undead with his manliness, and tracks like a bloodhound. If LOTR is not a swords-and-sorcery novel, someone needs to tell Aragorn that he's in the wrong book!

Aragorn is a royal heir who is wandering the wilderness to avoid his destiny, doesn't romance a practically non existant character (does not, in fact, even speak to her at any point in the actual text. They get married and continue the royal line of Gondor, yay, the passion.), doesn't kill any undead, but yes, is a good tracker.

Gandalf, Sauron and the other mystical elements are hardly out of place compared to the Elric mythos.

Sauron isn't, but sadly a generic dark lord isn't out of place in any fantasy anymore. Gandalf gets nicked more than anything else in LOTR, but really wouldn't fit in Elric. Except as Yet Another Victim for Stormbringer. He certainly doesn't have in place alongside Conan, isn't creepy enough to mentor the Grey Mouser.

These genres are really very different. The Fight for the Loot is very different from The Quest.

 

[pawsplay]

Lord Of The Rings can't be Sword & Sorcery as it's the textbook definition of not Sword & Sorcery ie High Fantasy. There is some stuff that is really hard to place on the S&S/HF axis - Moorcock's fiction, especially Elric, being the outstanding example - but LotR ain't.

What textbook are you reading? Before LOTR, there really wasn't a high fantasy genre, you have to look at what genre it would have been in at the time. It has swords, it has sorcery. It is not pulp, but then, neither is the Elric stuff, as you point out.

LOTR:
- Is set in a prehistorical Earth.
- Has swords. Has sorcery.
- Has mighty-thewed heroes overthrowing brigands, monsters, and unnatural horrors.

The Belgariad is similar in tone to LOTR, but is not set in a prehistorical Earth and has less mighty thews and more miraculous spells. Thus, while it is similar to LOTR, it does not have those traits which make LOTR similar to other swords-and-sorcery series.

Note that I am not making the claim LOTR exemplies s&s. Rather, I am pointing out that LOTR can be viewed, and is often useful to do so, as a swords and sorcery work that varies in some substantial ways from other S&S. It is also one of the most important foundations of epic high fantasy. Mainstream high fantasy, however, diverged quite a bit from LOTR. LOTR can also be read as Anglo-Saxon fairy tales/romances, along the lines of King Arthur and so forth. LOTR is difficult to categorize. The only reason it is so readily categorized as high fantasy is because of the profound importance it has in the appearance of that genre.

It is the same as trying to categorize Frankenstein as a "science fiction story." Although it entered and influenced the category of SF, it was written before that genre existed, and can be understood simply as a wondrous story. Likewise, the adventure yarn 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, nowadays recognized as one of the founders of modern SF.