D&D General D&D is now Steampunk (poll)

[Paul Farquhar]

Well, I disagree (at least in part), so expect some pushback.

Which part? Pretty much everything I have said is matter of fact, not of opinion.

 

[nevin]

It seems that "medieval fantasy" no longer applies to D&D. It's more of a steampunk game, despite some of the art. Here's why:

• Default technology: the SRD offers PCs muskets, pistols, and airships.
• The Clarke rule: sufficiently advanced technology seems to be everywhere, given the number of classes and subclasses using magic.
• Species: the English word is post-middle ages, but Darwin made it pretty official in the 19th century.
• Cosmopolitan travel: it's not impossible to see a halfling and a dragonborn hanging out together, one of which could have arrived quickly, from distant lands, via Broom of Flying, Carpet of Flying, or the aforementioned airship. These travel modes rival, if not exceed, the speed of a locomotive engine.
• Industrial labor: cantrips, i.e. unlimited-use-spells, can do things like purify steel (acid splash), perform hard labor (mage hand), refrigerate (ray of frost), generate electricity (shocking grasp), and heat a boiler (fire bolt). In addition, rock gnomes can create, at will, "clockwork devices."
• Mass production: there's no mention of scarcity in the weapon, armor, or gear tables. (It does seem to apply loosely to magic items.)
• Apparatus of the Crab: enough said.

Agree? Disagree? Why isn't D&D now a steampunk game by default?

Well Kwalish's apparatus has always been there. Remember Merlund had ties to gamma world setting.. we also had the barrier peaks module where the starship somehow had an interdimenssional accident and crashes I barrier peaks (name of the module).

Even back in the day with less rules DND was the system where you could do any type of game world you wanted and just go with it. So yes if you use it all and allow magic to be used logically instead of with arbitrary limits it could be steampunk or even a modern world like I. Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos where lycanthropes have strobe lights that can trigger their transformation and often join the military to be special forces. Or Flying carpets are mass produced along with combustion engines. And witchcraft is something you can get a PHD in.

But the game has always been that.

 

[Reynard]

I would agree that there are better systems out there if you want to run a full-on Conan-esque setting. But there have also been scads of lines written about how you can't do X with D&D, yet that doesn't stop people from trying. Sometimes they make it work, sometimes not.


That article is such a fascinating glimpse into the past. I've long said that "mathom" needs to get more use.

The problem is, "Conan-esque" is even more elusive than "Tolkien-esque" as a term to nail down a kind of fantasy. Not only did Howard's own work vary wildly -- some Conan stories were repurposed Kull and Bran mak Morn stories -- but films and comics, not to mention 70s butchering jobs on the books, all create different definitions and expectations for "Conan-esque."

And that's not even to mention the late night show.

 

[nevin]

Well Kwalish's apparatus has always been there. Remember Merlund had ties to gamma world setting.. we also had the barrier peaks module where the starship somehow had an interdimenssional accident and crashes I barrier peaks (name of the module).

Even back in the day with less rules DND was the system where you could do any type of game world you wanted and just go with it. So yes if you use it all and allow magic to be used logically instead of with arbitrary limits it could be steampunk or even a modern world like I. Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos where lycanthropes have strobe lights that can trigger their transformation and often join the military to be special forces. Or Flying carpets are mass produced along with combustion engines. And witchcraft is something you can get a PHD in.

But the game has always been that.

The problem is, "Conan-esque" is even more elusive than "Tolkien-esque" as a term to nail down a kind of fantasy. Not only did Howard's own work vary wildly -- some Conan stories were repurposed Kull and Bran mak Morn stories -- but films and comics, not to mention 70s butchering jobs on the books, all create different definitions and expectations for "Conan-esque."

And that's not even to mention the late night show.

Well and DND is tolkieneque/ elric of Melnibonesque/narniaesque/dying earthesque etc. it was built out of all of those ideas and more. It's amusing to see people who apparently never saw barrier Peaks, or Isle of the Ape modules thinking Gygax's DND was like tolkiens fantasy. It was a Hodge Podge bucket of stuff.

 

[Reynard]

Well and DND is tolkieneque/ elric of Melnibonesque/narniaesque/dying earthesque etc. it was built out of all of those ideas and more. It's amusing to see people who apparently never saw barrier Peaks, or Isle of the Ape modules thinking Gygax's DND was like tolkiens fantasy. It was a Hodge Podge bucket of stuff.

Sure, but the post I quoted was not saying that D&D was Conan-esque, it was asking if you can even DO "Conan-esque" in D&D anymore. To which I answer with the challenge: define "Conan-Esque."

 

[nevin]

Sure, but the post I quoted was not saying that D&D was Conan-esque, it was asking if you can even DO "Conan-esque" in D&D anymore. To which I answer with the challenge: define "Conan-Esque."

I know I was simply pointing out that you'd have to then try the same thing with a dozen or so other hard to pin down ideas. I wasn't arguing with you.

 

[Desdichado]

But you said no.

I said technically no, but I voted yes. I've said that and then quoted it again, and now I'm explaining it yet a third time. I don't know how else to say it.

D&D only resembled the medieval insofar as it overlapped with Chainmail. Otherwise it was straight up sword and sorcery and weird fiction.

D&D was always based on Gygax's own Medieval historical wargaming hobby. This is, if it wasn't already, immediately obvious before, when you read his Gord the Rogue stories they get really into Medieval armies, troop movements and equipment and logistics, and social structures. Talking about D&D overlapping with Chainmail doesn't make much sense unless you're talking about mechanics early on; it's clear that both were from the same "setting" and they weren't seen as anything different, other than that the D&D "alternative" combat rules eventually won out and were what were published later on.

I'm a little more dubious as to how well D&D actually looks like sword & sorcery and weird fiction, although that's a tangent for another discussion. It clearly borrows liberally from that tradition, but nothing in Greyhawk really looks like Lankhmar or the Hyborian Age exactly; because it's too Medievalist in tons and tons of ways. Heck, even the inclusion of the cleric "archetype" which is clearly a Medieval crusading priest with a dash of Van Helsing has no analog whatsoever in sword & sorcery, and yet that was one of the three original classes. D&D makes no sense for years without having a decent understanding of Medieval history. Only later could you fill in the blanks with pink sludge vanilla high fantasy the likes of which you refer to below instead of Medieval history to make sense of D&D.

Late 1E and early 2E was really the only period where it looked like all the rest of the fantasies on the book shelf. I think we here "remember" D&D as medieval fantasy because those were most of our formative years with the game. But it was really a quite brief period, and even then its medievalism was more of the Renn Faire variety than the historical.

Not me. I remember D&D as it was. If anything the bookshelves in the 80s filled with the likes of David Eddings, Terry Brooks, Raymond Feist, or whatever were often much less Medieval than D&D, as it was presented. And the period that you're calling Medieval is the period I'm saying where the Medievalism was actually much more subdued than it had been previously. More ren faire rather than historical, as you say.

 

[Reynard]

I said technically no, but I voted yes. I've said that and then quoted it again, and now I'm explaining it yet a third time. I don't know how else to say it.

D&D was always based on Gygax's own Medieval historical wargaming hobby. This is, if it wasn't already, immediately obvious before, when you read his Gord the Rogue stories they get really into Medieval armies, troop movements and equipment and logistics, and social structures. Talking about D&D overlapping with Chainmail doesn't make much sense unless you're talking about mechanics early on; it's clear that both were from the same "setting" and they weren't seen as anything different, other than that the D&D "alternative" combat rules eventually won out and were what were published later on.

I'm a little more dubious as to how well D&D actually looks like sword & sorcery and weird fiction, although that's a tangent for another discussion. It clearly borrows liberally from that tradition, but nothing in Greyhawk really looks like Lankhmar or the Hyborian Age exactly; because it's too Medievalist in tons and tons of ways. Heck, even the inclusion of the cleric "archetype" which is clearly a Medieval crusading priest with a dash of Van Helsing has no analog whatsoever in sword & sorcery, and yet that was one of the three original classes. D&D makes no sense for years without having a decent understanding of Medieval history. Only later could you fill in the blanks with pink sludge vanilla high fantasy the likes of which you refer to below instead of Medieval history to make sense of D&D.

Not me. I remember D&D as it was. If anything the bookshelves in the 80s filled with the likes of David Eddings, Terry Brooks, Raymond Feist, or whatever were often much less Medieval than D&D, as it was presented. And the period that you're calling Medieval is the period I'm saying where the Medievalism was actually much more subdued than it had been previously. More ren faire rather than historical, as you say.

So which part of medieval history does the beholder come from?

 

[Micah Sweet]

So which part of medieval history does the beholder come from?

Fantasy medieval, @Reynard . Fantasy.

 

[Desdichado]

Gary always* said that he was more inspired by swords and sorcery than high fantasy. However, if so, he 'grudgingly' added Tolkien-esque elements to the game when it was still Chainmail, which had everything from hobbits to ents to hero characters specifically shooting dragons out of the sky. From there on out, it was a hodgepodge of both, plus plenty of western tropes as many have realized, and such. *Gary (patron saint of inconsistency) never 'always' did anything, but you know what I mean.

Gary said a lot of things. This one in particular is so fraught with blatantly obvious ulterior motives that it's impossible to repeat it with a straight face.

That said, I'm sure that he was sincere when he said that he didn't particularly love Tolkien, and didn't mean to emulate Tolkien very specifically except in the department of world-building.