"Exceptional Fluff" - the bane of RPGs (ranty)

[Leontodon]

To me it boils down to the following.
The whole treadment of raise dead following D and D Rules is wrong, without wanting to offend any one I think that a regulary usage of raise dead hints at bad DM-ing and bad story development. Having the ability to raise dead as some kind of normal if expensive service would tear the fabric of pseudo-medieval societies apart.

Any novel not incorporating this major design-flaw gets thumps-up from me for thinking about logical consistency.

 

[Leatherhead]

To me it boils down to the following.
The whole treadment of raise dead following D and D Rules is wrong, without wanting to offend any one I think that a regulary usage of raise dead hints at bad DM-ing and bad story development. Having the ability to raise dead as some kind of normal if expensive service would tear the fabric of pseudo-medieval societies apart.

Any novel not incorporating this major design-flaw gets thumps-up from me for thinking about logical consistency.

I dunno, I kind of like immortal villains and heroes that come back from the dead.

 

[Nai_Calus]

Well, let's not forget with Raise Dead that you're going to have some problems.

It's not just a matter of having 5,000 GP plus the cleric's fee for casting the spell, it has to be 5,000 GP worth of diamonds. Most churches aren't going to have that laying around even if you show up with the needed money.

The soul also has to be willing and able to return. So they have to be OK with going back. Presumably their god has to be willing to let them go as well, chances are the god of the priest casting the spell has to be willing to allow their power to be used for that as well.

If Raise Dead or worse Resurrection or True Resurrection were used on a regular basis, diamonds would get scarce really quickly, plus not everyone is going to be OK with the idea of tampering with the afterlife like that.

Plus it kind of removes the entire point of having someone die in the first place.

It's not going to be easy to get in my campaign I'm running right now for exactly these reasons. Sure, one of the first NPCs they met is a 17th level Cleric of Corellon Larethian and three of them are elves. Doesn't mean either he or they is going to have 5,000 gp of diamonds on hand, or that he's going to be willing to interfere with the afterlife of them or anyone else lightly.

And some things are kind of obvious why they don't try to raise the dead in novels. The OP mentioned Elaine Cunningham, so to grab an example from one of her novels, why doesn't Amlauril have Zaor raised when he bites it in Evermeet, since we know full well she misses him terribly? It's fairly obvious if you've been paying attention up to that point, really. *shrug*

 

[Dire Bare]

I call BS on this. People buy high fantasy because they're lead to buy high fantasy. People don't buy books because they're good books - well, ok, some might, but not the majority - they buy books because of the names on them.

I would disagree with this. Brand name is undoubtedly very important, and I'm sure that more than a few crappy novels with the brand of "Dragon Age", "WarCraft", "WH40K", and "Dungeons & Dragons" have sold more than their fair share of copies by a wide margin. People buy brand name book series for the same reason they eat at national chain restaurants, comfort and the knowledge you'll probably get a decent meal like the last one you had while eating there.

If a "brand" series continues to pump out crappy books, it will die. Just like if every time you visited Wendy's, you got a nasty cheeseburger, you'd eventually stop going there.

People do purchase books for quality! But buying a "brand" reduces the risk you take. If I purchase a book from an author I've never heard of before, with no "brand", I'm taking a risk that I might be getting an awesome novel . . . or a craptastic borefest. If I purchase a novel from an author I'm familiar with, and/or a book from a "brand" series I'm familiar with, chances are I'll enjoy the book (although, of course, there's still a smaller risk it will be terrible).

As I've mentioned upthread, I own and have read almost every D&D novel since the 80s. I wouldn't continue to purchase these novels if I felt the majority of them were terrible. The D&D brand wouldn't be as strong as it is if most of these books were terrible. Sure, I've been disapointed more than a few times, and there are certain authors within the "brand" that I now avoid, but the vast majority of the books are good to excellent, IMHO . . . . and that's why I keep buying them.

 

[gizmo33]

It's not just a matter of having 5,000 GP plus the cleric's fee for casting the spell, it has to be 5,000 GP worth of diamonds. Most churches aren't going to have that laying around even if you show up with the needed money.

If you can't find 5,000 gp worth of diamonds in the area then wouldn't they be worth more? Are the PCs the only characters in the area in the market for diamonds? I would think even the church would have allies that it might want to raise, and so it would be in it's interest to at least know where to get diamonds. This strikes me more as DM fiat (the kind that came up with the 20% rule in 4E) than any sort of economic reasoning. IMO the key word here is "5,000 gp worth" - which actually tells you exactly how hard it is to find the diamonds, so changing that difficulty level strikes me as arbitrary an unsupported by any sort of simulationist reasoning.

 

[Derren]

Any novel not incorporating this major design-flaw gets thumps-up from me for thinking about logical consistency.

And for me not including something like this even though it is possible is a major writing flaw.
If you want to write a D&D novel make it an D&D novel, not an generic fantasy novel which happens to have D&D on the cover. Besides, I would call a world where the ability to raise people from the dead but no one uses it (and not because of religious are social reasons) not really logically consistent.

Well, let's not forget with Raise Dead that you're going to have some problems.

It's not just a matter of having 5,000 GP plus the cleric's fee for casting the spell, it has to be 5,000 GP worth of diamonds. Most churches aren't going to have that laying around even if you show up with the needed money.

The soul also has to be willing and able to return. So they have to be OK with going back. Presumably their god has to be willing to let them go as well, chances are the god of the priest casting the spell has to be willing to allow their power to be used for that as well.

If Raise Dead or worse Resurrection or True Resurrection were used on a regular basis, diamonds would get scarce really quickly, plus not everyone is going to be OK with the idea of tampering with the afterlife like that.

Plus it kind of removes the entire point of having someone die in the first place.

Sounds like a very interesting setting. I wish some authors would write about world like that instead of the highly illogical "mediveal europe + magic"

 

[Ed_Laprade]

So, all game-novel writers are "lower tier" . . . .


And you've never read any of them . . . .

Way to judge based on no direct experience. You win internet points!

Actually, I imagine you've at least attempted to read at least one or several game-novels over the years to develop your opinion, or at least I hope so. But even then, the small handful of books you may have read and disliked versus the entire genre? Sigh.

Besides, what's your idea of "lower tier"? Are authors who regularly make the NYT bestseller lists "lower tier"? Are authors who sell tons of books to eager fans "lower tier"? How is this determined? Or are you, like many in this thread, just someone who likes to insult artists (and their fans) with no basis in reality?

(Sigh) Sorry, I keep forgetting to add disclaimers. Yes, I've read a few. And what I read wasn't really bad, it just didn't grab me. Added to what I've read and heard about them from others, I gave up on them pretty early on. (Luckily I didn't realize Elizabeth Moon's Paksenarrion was a game based story until after buying it, or I'd have missed one of the best fantasy stories around.)

As for lower tier writers, that was rather snobbish of me. I have little idea as to who's actually writing them as I pay so little attention to them. (Early on it seemed that most anyone who wrote one was of the lower tier, and I still consider them as such if they made their rep by writing game-based books. However, that is only a generalization. After all, the very first game based book was writen by the Grand Dame of science fiction: Andre Norton! - Although its also the only book of hers that I didn't care for.)

 

[Leontodon]

And for me not including something like this even though it is possible is a major writing flaw.
If you want to write a D&D novel make it an D&D novel, not an generic fantasy novel which happens to have D&D on the cover. Besides, I would call a world where the ability to raise people from the dead but no one uses it (and not because of religious are social reasons) not really logically consistent.



Sounds like a very interesting setting. I wish some authors would write about world like that instead of the highly illogical "mediveal europe + magic"

Who would read a DandD novel and for what reasons? What draws you to it, is not perfect implementation of the rules into a novel (honestly, that would be a pain to read) but a setting, its characters and so on. I just get the feeling that many people get the reason why raise dead was incorporated wrong. It is a hopefully rarely used way for the DM and the players to correct their own mistakes (as in presenting monsters that are too hard).

Just imagine a setting where a king slain on the battlefield is easily resurrect to reign on. Anticlimatic isn't it? In that case if you would want to have a story where a king gets really slain, you would always have to provide circumstances that prevent him from being raised. The result is a cold sterile world over which the rules lawyer reigns supreme.

 

[Fenes]

Who would read a DandD novel and for what reasons? What draws you to it, is not perfect implementation of the rules into a novel (honestly, that would be a pain to read) but a setting, its characters and so on. I just get the feeling that many people get the reason why raise dead was incorporated wrong. It is a hopefully rarely used way for the DM and the players to correct their own mistakes (as in presenting monsters that are too hard).

Just imagine a setting where a king slain on the battlefield is easily resurrect to reign on. Anticlimatic isn't it? In that case if you would want to have a story where a king gets really slain, you would always have to provide circumstances that prevent him from being raised. The result is a cold sterile world over which the rules lawyer reigns supreme.

There are a lot of ways to kill a king in D&D despite raise dead. I remember an assassination attempt on King Azoun in "Cormyr: A Novel" that used an original way around the fact that usually, poison can be cured easily.

And even so, "the soul does not want to return" is a way to stop raise dead as well - and unlike ignoring those spells, it feels more D&D than "generic fantasy".

 

[Slife]

To me it boils down to the following.
The whole treadment of raise dead following D and D Rules is wrong, without wanting to offend any one I think that a regulary usage of raise dead hints at bad DM-ing and bad story development. Having the ability to raise dead as some kind of normal if expensive service would tear the fabric of pseudo-medieval societies apart.

Any novel not incorporating this major design-flaw gets thumps-up from me for thinking about logical consistency.

Clearly you haven't read any of the Dragaera novels. It's possible, but insanely expensive, and there are ways of preventing it.