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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arrgh! Mark!" data-source="post: 2807594" data-attributes="member: 14559">I think our problem lies in a dual nature. There are those who dislike mixing their traditional, westernised fantasy with the eastern variant. This is fine. I personally prefer restriction to propagation. Those who prefer their non-melting pot ideas probably have a particular feel that their campaign is trying to emulate, which adding high-kicking cliff-dancing wire-fu shaolin priests to would be harmful. I feel this way for my Midnight campaign. I really wouldn't like wire-fu, cheap philosophy, or pseudo asian backgrounds in a land that simply doesn't support it. In my campaign there is a defender, and she kicks orcs around. She doesn't have the pseudo-magical abilities and enlightenment stuff that your average monk does. She's a determined resistance fighter that simply has certain abilities to disarm and neutralise opponents over sheer damage. Thats it. So thats all good. Sometimes things simply hurt the campaign by their mere existence. A melting-pot style game tends to be more supportive of all types, (Or at least bad anime stereotypes propagated by adolescent-minded GM's...) and when done well can integrate these ideas well together. It's only too easy to play such a game without proper treatment of it, in my opinion; such games only too quickly devolve into the previously mentioned bad stereotypes. Our second problem lies on the nature of blatant acceptance of class abilities and fragrance. Our monk smells like Asia and thats a fact. It's not exactly well done Asia at that, but thats how it is. It's certainly possible to change the idea and work abilities for oneself, but a lot of players see the class and go "Kung foo master! yeah!". In a game that I played in, I amazed a younger player by playing a "Monk" - a tonsured, going-to-flab monk with western monastic flavor. My class was Paladin. He was playing the average kung-fu master and immediately challenged me to a dual, assuming I also played a monk-class with a fascination with kung-fu. Taking this individual as a general idea is a leap, but in this case the majority of monks that have been played (Or other classes for that matter) tend to define their characters by their class. Individuals do differently; as a general rule, most will play characters named Wong Fei-Hung. The reasons for contention over the monk is basically that 1. they don't truly fit with our basic setting as they are due to their class and abilities names, not their actual function. Their pseudo magical abilities bypass the S+S duality between physicality (Warriors, theives) and mentality (Mages, intellectuals.) For the monk to fit, extra elements must be added - generally a spiritual and internalised dimension that fits neither of the previous two categories. Fantasy fiction, especially S+S, tends to see excessive spirituality as a waste of time, if not leading into some form of cult. In itself, western fantasy assumes spirituality does not give external power, which is one of the key notions of the monk. It would easily allow a mage to cast a spell to float down a cliff, or a warrior to have trained so well as to seem like it, or for a trick, but rarely will it assume a combination of meditation, spiritual force, and training to allow our monk to rapidly punch a wall to go down slowly. Western fantasy would even prefer divine providence over inner strength as realised in reality through meditation and training.People don't like the monk because it subconciously forces them to change their internalised hero-myth to one not normally in their culture, to integrate other culture's fantasy. In this respect, change to incorporate other peoples likes and dislikes is neither good nor bad. People like what they like; you are not more enlightened because you prefer other things. 2. People don't like the standard monk because of it's funky abilities. It's not very good at anything; in effect, the GM tends to have a monk-solution to allow the player to do something. The Fighter is better at fighting, the Thief at sneaking, and the pseudo-magic the monk possesses tends to be much more internal than external, effecting little. Again, the GM must make special allowences for our spiritual monk. People also don't like it because it has a spiritual element, which is unfortunate for those who don't want that. 3. Briefly mentioned before, the Monk in standard fantasy is non-upgradable. Unlike our christmas tree fighters or mages, Monks tend to rely on their own bodies. This makes them even weaker than before in a standard D+D game.*Blinks* I went on forever.Anyway, if people are after a nifty monk-like with no eastern flavor at all, the Survivor in Thieves World is rather nice for a low magic item game. The Defender is also nice from Midnight. I like hand-to-hand fighters. I just don't want shinto/shaolin priests messing with my english kuh-ni-cgh-ts.</blockquote>

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