gizmo33 said:
Oops, I missed this point earlier when you made it in the form of "why do you think bards have to be Celtic bards" (or British Isle bards, what-have-you).
My rant that started this thread, and subsequent points, have *definitely* made the assumption that the bard's technique is part of his ability. I mean - IMO the bard is a master of the spoken word, and his knowledge is contained in the poetry. A bard who does not hear and speak IMO is not a bard because my definition of bardic lore is certainly tied up in the medium.
Which will be the fact historically since humans have a limited number of senses. However once you branch over into a supernatural universe with active involvement by dieties, dragons, restless dead, and fey creatures then you have to distance yourself from reality and extend the bard's nature to reflect their stories.
Your notion of the bard would do well in the more historical settings (IIRC Slaine is one that would be right up your alley) but IMO is far too limited to be a proper bard in the D&D fantasy universe.
Because, then, poetry is the medium of choice for bards, I do not consider exclusively written knowledge, including heiroglyphs, to be an area of interest to bards.
Which, if it were the case, would mean we would not have any of the Egyptian lore and little of the Greek and Roman mythos. My, what a waste.
As I suggested earlier, I believe it to be the case that members of socieities without writing thought bardic knowledge to be ALL knowledge, and if a DM were to want to treat bardic knowledge favorably, they would take this into account.
The key here is that in D&D virtually all races *have* written language. The proliferation of true magic would encourage it. Casters may restrict the written language to maintain control over the masses but that will only work for isolated groups. Written knowledge, to a culture without the notion of written language, is secret and hidden knowledge; a form of magic. How else can two beings communicate without the use of words? It would be as if the literate individual were prescient. "Careful, there is danger here. Beware of falling rocks."
The secret of written language will cease to be a secret once the oral-only culture encounters a written-word culture.
IMO, to take bardic lore as I would have it, it parallels written knowledge about the world. As I said earlier, if it's written down, if someone knows it, then it's a candidate for information to be learned.
And the DCs for the check reflect this. Of course, most bards have to be high level to get significant use out of it but there's lots of information out there.
I constantly see bardic lore interpreted as a sort of "gather information" check.
Bardic lore *is* a gather information check, even in your paradigm. You have it gathered from some mystical source of knowledge but it still requires some form of check to determine whether your character has found it & remembered it or can find it right now.
3E Players Handbook: "A bard picks up a lot of stray knowledge while wandering the land and learning stories from other bards." (emphasis mine)
But I'm petitioning for some respect in the core rules and in the FRPG community, even outside of DnD, for bardic knowledge. Calling it "stray knowledge", I believe, does not do the archetype of the bard justice.
"Stray knowledge" is exactly what the bard archetype should know. The adjective definitions of stray are "wandering or lost, Scattered or separate." So "stray knowledge" is scattered, separated, and lost knowledge. If it was known and in a concise compilation it would make the bardic ability equal to "check index."
For the record, my personal image of the bard is an idealized scottish piper. The historian, lawyer, judge, diplomat, and signal corps. The current bard can do that.
