Dwarves don't sell novels

[Zander]

And there have been D&D movies and they haven't been as popular as Star Wars movies. Neither's failure to be as popular as the other in particular media has little to do with the content, and almost all to do with the execution of the creators. Indeed, in computer games Star Wars and D&D have been almost equally successful.

Which in itself is remarkable given the relative sizes of the franchises and therefore the resources that can be devoted to "the execution of the creators". If the fantasy of D&D didn't have some some appeal in its own right, computer games Star Wars and D&D wouldn't be "almost equally successful".

Straw men, all...

I am curious to know why you think I would set up sham arguments for the purpose of knocking them down which is what a strawman is. I stand by everything I have said in this thread so far; I'm not playing devil's advocate.

 

[WayneLigon]

While psionics can claim a sci-fi heritage, they cannot claim an enduring fantasy one.

Psychic powers have been with us as long as modern fantasy has; Howard (coming, as he was, just after the greatest upticks of interest in psychic powers - the Spiritualism craze of the late Victorian period and the similar interest in the US during the 1920's - not to mention that his own father used hypnotism in his practice and heavily annotated books on Eastern mysticism - psychic abilities were tremendously influential in his writing) uses them as extensively as he does actual magic and ritual sorcery: mesmerism, hypnotism, astral projection, 'force of will' and various other psychic powers are all intermixed with magic in his writing.

Most early modern fantasy writers had to cloak their work in science fiction terms just to make a sale, even after the success of Tolkien in the US in the later 60's, so much early Fantasy has a definate SF edge to it.

As fantasy came into it's own in the 80's and early 90's, I think you have to remember the artificially large imprint Tolkien left on the American fantasy scene thanks to greed and shortsightedness. Publishers, smelling money much like sharks scent blood in the water, started telling authors 'write more stuff like this' and for many years stopped buying anything that wasn't a Tolkien rip-off. Fantasy went through the same artifically stunting experience that science fiction earlier endured under the shadow of John W. Campbell.

Things have gotten better since the mid-90's, with fantasy once more becoming more experimental and publisher willing to look at material that it's elf/dwarf/disquised halfling. Genre mixing is something you're going to see more of, not less.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

I am curious to know why you think I would set up sham arguments for the purpose of knocking them down which is what a strawman is. I stand by everything I have said in this thread so far; I'm not playing devil's advocate.

Why? I don't want to attempt amateur psychoanalysis. But you did nonetheless.

KM wasn't saying D&D should encourage knights on bicycles. He said it wasn't useful to set a limit that knights on bicycles be forbidden without examination. He wasn't saying that D&D should ditch elves, dwarves, giants, dragons, etc., to be more popular. He was saying that a heritage shouldn't forbid blending new additions that are already proven popular. He wasn't saying that D&D should add Uzis and lasers, his point was that the game should make allowances that there could be.

That's why I called them strawmen. He didn't make those arguments, you made them up and implied that he argued such.

 

[Hussar]

In some ways, Frankenstien is a great metaphor for D&D, but I'll go with a cooking one, something like gumbo. Gumbo doesn't taste much like anything it's composed of. D&D doesn't taste much like romantic literature or Homeric epics or Tolkein or Star Wars. You can pick bits out here and there, and some less-identifiable bits, too. But it's all mixed into a pot and stewed together. You can pick out the parts you don't like, but they're gonna sell the gumbot that's popular this season -- and if a lot of pork is in, you'll get a lot of pork, and if you don't like pork, you'll have to pull it out. There's no One True Gumbo (though I'm sure I will get called on this. ), there's no archetypal Gumbo. There's no archetypal D&D genre, there's no one true D&D flavor, even D&D's own kind of flavor is more the spice that blends everything together.

QFT. This is just a great image.

D&D has never been about any single genre. It has borrowed, begged, stolen (sometimes outright) elements from anything that worked and sold books. While I agree with Rounser in that I'm not such a huge Lovecraft fan, I would hardly attempt to pass off my personal preferences as any sort of general policy that should be followed.

Zander, if you insist on including thousands of years of stories in fantasy, then how can you draw the line at SF? It's ridiculous. If epic romance poetry is fantasy, then why isn't Stephen King?

Using Carrie as an example. Sure, she's maybe redundant. OTOH, we give Carrie several levels in wild mage, and see what happens. Firestarter is pretty close to an evoker. I had players clamouring to play Roland from the Dark Tower series after those books started coming out fifteen years ago. Hrmm, evil spirits possess some sort of machine that goes around killing people - sounds a lot like a golem to me - a la Christine. It? Tommyknockers? The Stand - classic end of the world story with the battle between good and evil? This is bread and butter for D&D. Cujo? Would make for a pretty sweet low level adventure - dire dog terrorises town.

 

[Odhanan]

(I kinda think if WOTC wrote books as cool as Lord of the Rings, that claim would be quite questionable)

You've got my opinion about the topic right here, but then, maybe it has to do with Tolkien not wanting to write something because of market research and because Allen & Unwin (the original publisher of LOTR) trusted his skill and opinions on the matter. He wrote what he thought was a good story, in a way that was going against the accepted standards. He wasn't dumbing down. He was following the inspiration of the moment rather than clear plot frames he would have designed prior to the writing. At the end of the day, he trusted his readers to know the difference between a good story and a bad one. He won his bet by a very large margin, if you ask me.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

ZanderPsionics, 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.

Zander, you're correct as to the origins of the word "psionics," but you miss out on what WayneLigon put succinctly in his last post (and what others have been trying to tell you as well):

Psychic powers have been with us as long as modern fantasy has; Howard (coming, as he was, just after the greatest upticks of interest in psychic powers - the Spiritualism craze of the late Victorian period and the similar interest in the US during the 1920's - not to mention that his own father used hypnotism in his practice and heavily annotated books on Eastern mysticism - psychic abilities were tremendously influential in his writing) uses them as extensively as he does actual magic and ritual sorcery: mesmerism, hypnotism, astral projection, 'force of will' and various other psychic powers are all intermixed with magic in his writing.

And Howard wasn't alone.

Most early modern fantasy writers had to cloak their work in science fiction terms just to make a sale, even after the success of Tolkien in the US in the later 60's, so much early Fantasy has a definate SF edge to it.

You'll find such intermixture in the works of Lieber and many others that followed.

"Psionics" has lost its original meaning and has just become a generic shorthand for "mental powers"- whatever their origin. Usually (but not always), in RPGs they are distinguished from "magic."

Zander

Eric Anondson
And there have been D&D movies and they haven't been as popular as Star Wars movies. Neither's failure to be as popular as the other in particular media has little to do with the content, and almost all to do with the execution of the creators. Indeed, in computer games Star Wars and D&D have been almost equally successful.

Which in itself is remarkable given the relative sizes of the franchises and therefore the resources that can be devoted to "the execution of the creators". If the fantasy of D&D didn't have some some appeal in its own right, computer games Star Wars and D&D wouldn't be "almost equally successful".

The difference in the successes of the respective franchises is largely due to the quality of the films that started them off. Lucas was a cunning thief (and I mean that as a compliment). He knew a good story when he saw it (Akira Kurosawa's 1958 film The Hidden Fortress), and reshaped it to tell his own space opera story. The movie was pretty well cast and acted. He had a decent budget to work with.

D&D the movie was drek, start to finish, and underfunded drek at that.

OTOH, the computer games have gotten roughly equal treatment at each stage of production, and the results show up in roughly equal success.

 

[Hussar]

Bashing the Stephen King horse a little more.

The Shining would make a bloody fantastic adventure.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Not if it were ghost written by Stephen King. :\

 

[Hussar]

I dunno. Stephen King's books are pretty good for the most part. Then again he writes so bloody many of them, that he's gotta have a decent one once in a while . But, yeah, if King wrote the module, it'd be Tomb of Horrors all over again.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

If King ghostwrote an RPG module based on his work, I'd expect results no better than the movies he's made from his work.

I still remember his miniseries version of The Stand, the first night of which included, among other things, 2 good guys getting into nearly identical struggles over handguns, and each walks away from the struggle with the gun having fired into the gut of the "bad guy."

And his recent forays into TV have also been less than stellar.

I have a feeling he'd design an encounter of some kind, and repeatedly use it...