And the mystery race is...hated

[pawsplay]

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.

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser had domestic partners (or wives, can't remember which). People of the Black Circle has a sorcerer running off with a girl when they fall in love. So the whole romance/marriage/children thing happens in S&S, too.

King Arthur impregnages his half-sister. Lancelot has an affair on his wife with a queen and a sorceress. The whole Lancelot/Gwenivere sex thing destroys the round table. Merlin gets seduced by Nimue.

In Dragonlance, Kitiara has lovers of her own convenience.

Odysseus has sex with nearly everything female he encounters.

As I said, Tolkien is the rarity, however LOTR is classified.

 

[Mad Mac]

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.

They don't sound paticularly dragoney, honestly. They're supposedly pure reptilian, not half-breeds or anything, so saying that they're "kin" to dragons is probably not much different than saying that kobolds are--it's more like suggesting a common ancestor than anything else.

They also don't get any really dragonlike abilities (wings, breath weapons) until high-levels, so your average Dragonborn is (probably) just going to be a smarter, more civilized lizardman. If you ban those paticular options, than they stay that way. In any event, there's a big difference between a race where everyone has wings and can fly, and one where a handful of epic heroes have been known to breathe fire.

I was meh on the race when the rumours first came out, but it's starting to grow on me, precisely because they sound more like civilized lizardmen than anything else. If standard lizardmen are still around, it would be a very interesting contrast...Dragonborn might look on lizardfolk the way humans would neandrethals...

 

[Voss]

But those are not traits of sword and sorcery*. They're common elements, but they aren't defining traits. Its a well defined genre. Part of its purpose was to purposefully NOT be epic High Fantasy. To NOT be Tolkien. Really, that was a goal for some S&S writers. Blood, guts, sweat and uh, lust. Not epic quests of good vs. evil.

The mythological emphasis (and medieval romance, check out his version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight) is one of things that make LOTR high fantasy. Tolkien was essentially ripping Celtic, Anglo-Saxon and Norse mythology. (Gandalf and the dwarves are right out of the list of dwarven names in the Eddas).

The Belgariad is a weird beast. By his own admission, Eddings doesn't (or at least, didn't) read fantasy. At all. His basis was medieval romances, and little bit of myth. Its one of the reasons his stories are so trite and filled with stereotypes. And why he writes the same story 4 times. Sigh.


*Well, OK, mighty-thewed heroes are, but uh, no one in LOTR is mighty-thewed.

And for the time and place he was writing, the complete lack of women in LOTR isn't odd at all.

But we've probably derailed this thread about races enough.

 

[pawsplay]

But those are not traits of sword and sorcery*. They're common elements, but they aren't defining traits. Its a well defined genre. Part of its purpose was to purposefully NOT be epic High Fantasy. To NOT be Tolkien. Really, that was a goal for some S&S writers. Blood, guts, sweat and uh, lust. Not epic quests of good vs. evil.

Swords and sorcery was a mature genre before LOTR was ever published. And the Elric novel and LOTR both appeared in 1955, according to Wikipedia.

 

[neceros]

I don't hate the mystery race.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Dragonborn--those guys who love Bahamut enough to willingly rebirth themselves from a big egg? That's going to be a core race? That didn't come from left field, that came from an angry ump's mitt right into the back of my head!

 

[neceros]

Dragonborn--those guys who love Bahamut enough to willingly rebirth themselves from a big egg? That's going to be a core race? That didn't come from left field, that came from an angry ump's mitt right into the back of my head!

Same name, different beast.

 

[Lurks-no-More]

Swords and sorcery was a mature genre before LOTR was ever published. And the Elric novel and LOTR both appeared in 1955, according to Wikipedia.

Stormbringer came out in 1965; Elric first appeared in a short story written in 1961.

You're right on S&S preceding LotR, however (although not Tolkien's work; IIRC, the first parts of what would eventually become Silmarillion go back to early 1920s or so).

 

[Shadeydm]

Nice job RC now I am stuck thinking of them as the Barneyborn...

 

[Raven Crowking]

Nice job RC now I am stuck thinking of them as the Barneyborn...

My work here is done.