D&D - Thinking outside of the box

[Gold Roger]

To think outside of the box, you need to establish the box first.

I don't like games filled to the rimm with succubus paladins, dragon PC's, over templated and anti-clichees, but that's never seen a righteous human paladin, a grumpy dwarfen fighter and marauding humanoids.

I like out of the box stuff, but it's the spice, not the meal.

 

[buzz]

In this thread, the question of the original poster was whether it was possible for a paladin to have a succubus cohort. Of course a combination like this is hard to imagine - which I suppose is the point - but the sheer number of people who said flat-out "No" surprised me nonetheless.

I'm not sure I understand the impetus for your rant. By the book, the people who said "no" are basically correct. But most of those people, as well as others, said that it also depends on the setting and how the campaign treats outsider alignments. A succubus paladin on WotC's site was also referenced. I didn't really see any "No, that's impossible!" answers, just, "No, not by the book."

I don't think the issue is "thinking outside the box." The issue is that D&D is its own genre; it's not a wholly generic fantasy engine. There are aspects of D&D that simply don't change (often) from setting to setting, basically because to change them would make the setting "less D&D." You're going to get "no" answers when asking the question in a D&D context, the same way you'd get "no" answers to certain questions in a Call of Cthulhu or Vampire context. Sure, people can fold, spindle, and dodger those systems' assumptions, too, but any general context question posed about them will elicit answers within their typical parameters.

D&D is not GURPS (nor HERO, nor FATE, nor...). You're never starting from ground zero in terms of context. Consequently, I don't think you can fault people for not assuming that the default context doesn't apply if not told otherwise.

Now, if the original question had been, "Could you conceive of a D&D setting in which a paladin could have a demonic cohort?", and the majority of the answers were filled with revulsion and astonishment, then you might have something to rant about.

 

[grimwell]

A note about creativity... I forget who it was but a wise man once told me that creativity isn't about getting yourself outside of the box and seeing what you can do -- it's about taking things out of the box and working with whats left to do interesting things. Turns that philosophy on it's head.

I use it in my own design every now and then to work from a reductionist frame of view and spark new ideas. I also merrily jump out of the box, or build a glass sphere instead, and use anything I can to come up with new ideas beyond my own conventions and assummptions.. but figured that this was a good tool to share in the general spirit of the thread.

What if you take paladins out of the campaign entirely and leave everything else alone? Who fills their role in your setting's churches then? That's a fun question to answer. Maybe the rogues do.. ;p

 

[Dykstrav]

I don't tend to think of D&D as a 'box' with discrete borders between what is and isn't outside the game. It's more of a menu, a list of options you can use for your games.

In the thread you're referring to, yes, it is technically possible under the rules as they are written to get a demon to turn to lawful good and thus be eligible to become a paladin's cohort. I think most people are rejecting the logic of the situation, not its validity or merit. Personally, I'd wonder about the state of the game if there wasn't a certain amount of internal consistency. Despite what a recent sourcebook claimed up front, D&D is still about knights and castles and dragons to many players. They enjoy playing from the baseline without wierd critters and newfangled classes. Doesn't make them bad players or bad people.

It's possible to play D&D without making references to Tolkien or western Europe. The thing is, if you stray too far from this model, you need to expect the players to need some time to get used to the ideas. It's a challenge to create a compelling party of human, elven, and dwarven fighters, clerics, and wizards. Usually the campaign takes a few sessions to gel and everyone to really feel like they're getting to know their characters and the campaign. Now imagine what happens when you have a half-troll swordsage with a vampiric bloodline, a neutral evil hound archon warlock, and an exalted spellscale favored soul. It's not inherently a 'bad' game based on the content, but it is different. It might not be what every player wants for their game.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Personally, I think D&D does D&D better than anything else on the market - and it doesn't do terribly well with anything that's *not* D&D. Not only is it not a generic game, it's a very specific game that, at this point, is close to completely self-referential. 3e actually made this more pronounced by taking existing tropes and updating them to more modern mechanics, whereas 2e was mostly exploring new tropes (with varying degrees of success).

If I wanted to play a d20 system game based on a specific fantasy world, or a fantasy world of my own imagining, I'd much more likely base it on d20 Modern than D&D, although some D&D material would be useful in most cases. Certainly for anything outside the fantasy genre (and by that I mean high/epic fantasy; sword and sorcery is right out), I'd pick a different system.

I'd only use D&D as the basis of a game if I wanted to play D&D, because that's what D&D does really, really well. Same as I would only use, say, Vampire as the basis of a game if I wanted to play a game about angsty and/or politicking vampires with an intricate secret history. If I wanted to play a game of mortals vs. vampires, or vampires as solitary or pack predators adrift in a sea of normal humans, or vampires as aliens (etc.), I'd use a different system.

 

[Aaron L]

When I said no to demon paladins, I didn't care much about the standard D&D definition of demons. I was going by source material on what demons are. I quite dislike the built up mythology of D&D demons and devils and angels and such. I much prefer original source material for my Heavenly and Hellish spirits, and I throw the accumulated nonsense I don't like out the window. I definitely wasn't relying on how D&D defines a demon for my opinion.

 

[Umbran]

All this to me seems to be rather close-minded. Why not expand your ideas about what is possible and what not in gaming, instead of fretting about what is "true" to any supposed "core ethos" of D&D?

Well, because then the answers to all questions are "Yes", and there's no depth to the discussion. What you see here is a form of dialectic process in action.

And, perhaps more importantly - gaming is like poetry. Poetry is an art with a great many rules and conventions, and a truly great poet understands the rules - only with that understanding can the poet get the greatest effect out of strategically breaking the rules.

Thus, it is a good thing to have the first answer be what the core rules say, and then extend ito what you can coose to do outside that core.

 

[Arashi Ravenblade]

As far as a Succubus being a paladins cohort i would allow it under the condition that it was somehow redemmed. Their is a template for Sanctified creatures in the BOED. And in my game said succubus would have to be that.

As far as not allowing stuff. Some would say im a kitchen sink DM. Though there are things I do and dont allow. For example The Prestige Classes Green Star Adept, Jordain Vizier and anything that requires memebership in a guild not present in the Forgotten Realms are not allowed. I might run a game where they are allowed one day but they dont fit my vision for the current game I run. But i also think its a boring game to say Core books only (As in PHB, MM and DMG). Believe it or not I want my character concept and abilities to match, and thus want the options that are game legal to be made available to me.

 

[RangerWickett]

A few weeks ago in my game, the PCs were trying to locate a missing villager who had wandered into a fey forest. When they found her, she was a centaur. The story was that she had been torn in half, and her legs had been eaten by the fey, but one fey felt sorry for her, and so used magic to attach what was left to a horse and bring her back to life.

Then one player asked, "Can she teach me how she did that?"

I pondered for a moment, then said, "Sure."


Flash forward a month. The party tried to bring back the pet dog of one of the PCs by fusing it with a summoned creature (a lemure! brilliant idea!), creating a demon dog vaguely similar to the blood fox from Sagiro's campaign. One PC has died, and the party brought him back by fusing some dragon bits with him. They're 4th level. Sure, there have been some unforeseen side effects, but that's part of the fun.

This will be a fun campaign.

 

[Brimshack]

I didn't check that thread out, but for the record my immediate reaction was to think a demon cohort would be very interesting for a Paladin. Less a question of yes or no for me than one of under what circumstances and how would it work out. I can imagine worlds in which that could NEVER happen and I can imagine worlds in which it could. For me the most interesting is one in which it could, and in which the real drama would then be the control of the cohort and responsibility for all of its actions. Whether or not the campaign could survive the tension between the Paladin and his cohort, or how long the relationship would last, I don't know. But I like the tension.

I do think that many players endow rules for D&D with a normative value that is entirely unwarranted. It isn't uncommon for players to express the principles that guide their own gaming experience as absolutely binding on any and all possible games. Running rules structly in one's own campaign is fine, in fact you can accomplish some interesting things that way. What always mystifies me is the degree to which players often seem to assume the game has to be played that way as a matter of principle.

This goes hand in hand with a reluctance to play with creative house rules, and a tendancy to imagine that common patterns are normatively enforced within the rules. I have had arguments in which people swore up and down that a rule existed and the only basis for the rule was the fact that things usually worked that way, or that they had been playing that way for years, so there MUST be a rule on it somewhere. It becomes a kind of closed loop, as if to say: "I only play by the official rules and I play THIS way, so that's clearly the way the rules work." I tend to think of it as a variety of fundamentalism, myself. It doesn't involve actual religious belief, but it does encompass a certain link between norms and canonical texts.