Dwarves don't sell novels

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Magic is a great tool. You can replace ANYTHING with magic and it works.

Yup, I'll re-quote Arthur C. Clarke: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

 

[Turjan]

Yup, I'll re-quote Arthur C. Clarke: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

This is definitely the usual way how high tech is used in fantasy. The flying cars in the Dying Earth were also a technology that was far beyond the capabilities of their users. In principle, there's nothing wrong with describing a metal wand of fireballs with 50 charges and use a laser pistol as image. Mechanically, there is no difference.

 

[Storyteller01]

*blink*

Halflings? Not sexy? Not even slinky, leather-clad, got-that-petite-hot-thing-going Lidda?

Someone's still thinking of hairfeet. Disappointing, really.

Done correctly, all the races are sexy. I can even think of sexy gnomes and half-orcs I've seen. Someone in the novel department needs to see more art.

Fortunately Dragon Mag doesn't see things that way. Look at the cover of issues 120 and 180.

 

[vulcan_idic]

Of course Dwarves don't sell novels - they sell gems, metal and other nifty things they mined from the ground...

 

[Zander]

Tolkien was a novelist, Homer was an ancient greek storyteller, D&D is a roleplaying game.

Saying D&D is not as enduring as Homer is like saying that motorbikes are less enduring than than horse carriage. It's not even apples and oranges, since both apples and oranges are fruits that are grown on trees. More like comparing potato puree with cuban cigars.

I've already said I disagree with your lumping of all of fantasy's inspiration sources as fantasy itself. Unless you now claim that, for example, military conquests in the antiquity were just big LARPing events, I don't see how you could pretend that RPGs are, like fantasy novels, something that already existed in Homer's time.

The media do, of course, have differences as I've already noted. However, they share a common heritage in fantasy.

RPGs are a niche. Novels are mainstream. You can't compare directly the popularity of an RPG and that of a novel. That's dishonest.

I'm not setting RPGs up in an unfair competition. It's simply a statement of what is. It may well be that hundreds of years from now, the popularity of RPGs will rival or even surpass that of other media of the fantasy genre. But for now, that's something we can only speculate about.

And despite that, D&D has certainly been much more influential to today's fantasy culture than Lord of the Rings. Peter Jackson's LoTR elves have pointed ears -- that's taken from D&D, because Tolkien never described elven ear shape. Likewise, the popular depiction of orcs is taken from Warhammer -- big, musclebound, stupid, green, and tusked. Tolkien's orcs were nothing like that. Petty, cruel, violent, and avaricious, yes. Mentally retarded to the point of painting their chariot red because "red goes faster", no.

Gamer culture is now omnipresent in fantasy and soft sci-fi novels, comics, and computer games. Even people who've never even seen a D&D book have been exposed to many D&Disms, because they're so prevalent now.... And of course, pointy ears. Does that match up with Tolkien's elves? Nope. Does that match with up with D&D's elves? Completely.

D&D, Warhammer and other fantasy games are indeed contributing to current views of fantasy. Note though that for the most part, they have added to it, not replaced what was already there. Tolkien didn't describe his elves as having pointy ears but he didn't say they didn't either. As for orcs, the 3.5 orc is closer to Tolkien's simian description than the 1E porcine version - so it seems that Tolkien continues to influence the game.

 

[Zander]

Hang on a tick. Perhaps I've been misreading this all along. Maybe our POV aren't as divergent as I thought. Is your problem with adding SF elements to D&D with the science only? Or is it adding any SF element?

That depends what you mean by "SF element". If an element happens to have been created by an author that is better known for SF than fantasy, that isn't in itself a problem unless that element is associated with science (or pseudo-science) or advanced technology. Simply relabelling such a scientific, pseudo-scientific or advanced technological element as magic may not suffice to divorce it from its origins.

If it's a "science only" problem, well, that's not really an issue. You can replace science with magic and it works... Mind Flayers work despite being solidly an SF construct (or possibly horror) just because psionics and magic are pretty much the same thing under different names.

No, psionics (and for that matter, science) and magic are not at all the same thing. Psionics, a portmanteau for psychic electronics, is rooted in the idea that the electrical activity of the brain can substantially affect the world beyond the nervous system. It has a pseudo-scientific rationale and it is the introduction of a rationale that makes it incompatible with a magical universe. While psionics can claim a sci-fi heritage, they cannot claim an enduring fantasy one.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

But they can claim an enduring D&D heritage....

 

[Hussar]

Meh. Psionics is magic by another name. There's absolutely no actual science there. Might as well call it The Force. It's about the same thing. How is "I think it and it happens" substantially different from, "I say this funky word and it happens"? Psionic ability is used in SF because SF writers can't call it magic.

And, it's generally used by SF writers that are extremely close to fantasy. Anne McCaffery, while there is a very thin veneer of science that's been pasted onto Pern in recent years, wrote fantasy stories and called the SF. There's precious little science in the first three books and lots of swords and dragons. Star Wars, while it does have some SF bits and pieces, is pretty much fantasy with ray guns.

Just a point about orcs in Tolkien. Throughout his books, he never actually directly describes an orc. There are no physical descriptions anywhere in LOTR or The Simiralian. So, any picture we come up with for an orc is just as good as another. The pig orcs are pretty much pulled straight from the original LOTR movie. The later 3e orc is no more a Tolkien construct than the first.

I think your cutting off fantasy at an entirely arbitrary point.

 

[Gez]

The media do, of course, have differences as I've already noted. However, they share a common heritage in fantasy.

That's not a retort to what I was saying.

I'm not setting RPGs up in an unfair competition. It's simply a statement of what is. It may well be that hundreds of years from now, the popularity of RPGs will rival or even surpass that of other media of the fantasy genre. But for now, that's something we can only speculate about.

So you cannot say that D&D is not as enduring as Homer. The Iliad and the Odissey survived from their creation to nowaday. D&D survived from its creation to nowaday. Therefore, D&D is as enduring as the Iliad and the Odissey, because all survived from their creation to nowadays.

Tolkien didn't describe his elves as having pointy ears but he didn't say they didn't either.

He also didn't say they don't have elephant trunks and a pair of antlers. If I was starting, say, a webcomic were elves have a trunk and antlers; and then a few years later many other comics/novels/games/movies/whatever depicted elves with antlers and trunks, I could argue that my elves influenced pop culture, and you would be there, arguing that it's actually Tolkien's elves, not mine, because Tolkien never wrote the elves didn't have such protuberancies...

As for orcs, the 3.5 orc is closer to Tolkien's simian description than the 1E porcine version - so it seems that Tolkien continues to influence the game.

As was pointed out, there are no clear description for Tolkien's orcs either.

Simply relabelling such a scientific, pseudo-scientific or advanced technological element as magic may not suffice to divorce it from its origins.

Uh, yes it is.

No, psionics (and for that matter, science) and magic are not at all the same thing. Psionics, a portmanteau for psychic electronics, is rooted in the idea that the electrical activity of the brain can substantially affect the world beyond the nervous system. It has a pseudo-scientific rationale and it is the introduction of a rationale that makes it incompatible with a magical universe. While psionics can claim a sci-fi heritage, they cannot claim an enduring fantasy one.

No. Psionics is rooted in the idea that a cheap pseudoscientific explanation was needed to insert magic into the sci-fi genre. Psionics are not admitted in hard sci-fi, but they're a staple of science fantasy.

You should read a few books from Julian May's Many-Colored Lands. Or Wendy & Richard Pini's Elfquest, it's the same thing. They're an attempt at telling a classical fantasy story, with a classical fantasy setting, but in a sci-fi style. So, elves are described as aliens and magic is described as psionics, etc.

 

[rounser]

No. Psionics is rooted in the idea that a cheap pseudoscientific explanation was needed to insert magic into the sci-fi genre. Psionics are not admitted in hard sci-fi, but they're a staple of science fantasy.

And in a setting which already has magic, like D&D, they go for the double whammy: redundant and anachronistic!

Doesn't mean they have no place whatsoever (they're good at emphasising stuff which is supposed to be alien, like illithids), but the very fact that it's good at conveying the alien and weird and sci fi in D&D should be a big hint that it's out of place as a major theme, except in a world which is trying to be alien, like Dark Sun.

But they can claim an enduring D&D heritage....

Gygax has said that he regrets their inclusion. So far as I can see, they're a haven for those jaded with magic, for those looking for a workaround to break the game, for using it as a soapbox for a spell point alternative to vancian magic, or for those looking to feel special about their character or setting (mages and magic in general are too common in your typical D&D game to be special to such folks). Add these to the anachronism factor, and the endless balance problems, and psionics should have been shown the door long ago - but it's popularity for "the wrong reasons"* is what sustains it, so far as I can see.

*: Not bad wrong fun, but I have little sympathy for causes of those seeking to break the game, seeking to feel like special unique snowflakes, consider psionics inclusion as a major part of their setting original and groundbreaking, or see no problem with anachronism and redundancy it brings alongside vancian magic. None of that screams "legitimate" to me.