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Legends & Lore 3/17 /14
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<blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6278178" data-attributes="member: 2067"><p>So the way that I'd propose -- "options, not assumptions" if you're into soundbites. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> -- both preserves the old lore and makes it possible to have entirely new lore, by recognizing that each one is specific to a given kind of game or setting. </p><p></p><p>Because it lets us say, for instance, "Mariliths in the Planescape setting are demonic generals in the unending Blood War where demons fight devils for supremacy over the concept of Evil itself."</p><p></p><p>But then turn around and also say, for instance, "In the Forgotten Realms, Mariliths are servants of chaotic evil deities, especially Loviatar, the Maiden of Pain." (that bit of FR lore might be wrong, I'm no scholar on the stuff)</p><p></p><p>And then you could even go the extra mile and say "Mariliths on the Dragon Isles serve the Red Dragon as consorts and spies, and are born out of red dragon blood being infused into mountain fey called Oreads." (all new lore!)</p><p></p><p>But you don't just say "Mariliths are creations of Zehir the Snake God" and leave it at that. Though you could say, "Zehir, a god in the Nentir Vale, is the creator of Mariliths there."</p><p></p><p>The idea being that it's not four different kinds of mariliths fighting to be called <em>The One True Marilith</em> (ie, the one the game assumes as a default), but rather four different kinds of mariliths that can all exist independent of each other, or even alongside each other (Mariliths serve evil gods and red dragons and also are generals in a plane-wide Blood War, why not? Or maybe there's different factions among the Mariliths!). </p><p></p><p>The list doesn't need to be exhaustive (and if I had my druthers, each one might come with its own ability or trait that tied it more to any given setting -- maybe PS Mariliths get some Warlord/leader-style commanding strike ability, maybe Dragon Isles Mariliths get a little elemental rock ability for being descended from Oreads, maybe Nentir Vale Mariliths can shed their skin to heal HP, whatever). In fact, you could just choose one version, and go with it, but mix in different settings. Mariliths from the Dragon Isles. Balors from Planescape. Galbrezu from the Forgotten Realms. Rutterkin from the Nentir Vale. Whatev. That'd take up no more space than in a normal MM. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I guess where I disagree is that I don't see players who make the assumptions that the writers of the books clearly intended them to make as obnoxious. They're mislead. Under-informed. They listened to someone who promised to tell them the way things were, but the thing that they listened to wasn't entirely honest. It omitted a lot of how things are. It showed you the color orange and said "rainbows are this color," which is true, but they're also a lot of other colors. It elided the interesting complexity in the world in favor of....well, I don't know, exactly. To throw a bone to a brand team that is terrified of honest complexity? To make the designers' amateur fiction-writing dreams come a little bit true? There's value in the stories that the designers tell, Mearls says. What he doesn't say is why those stories are so valuable that they need to be presumed standard. Why is that worth the (admittedly, small in most cases) hassle of contradicting a player who presumes that rainbows are orange or that jackalweres are Grazz'zt-related?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="I'm A Banana, post: 6278178, member: 2067"] So the way that I'd propose -- "options, not assumptions" if you're into soundbites. ;) -- both preserves the old lore and makes it possible to have entirely new lore, by recognizing that each one is specific to a given kind of game or setting. Because it lets us say, for instance, "Mariliths in the Planescape setting are demonic generals in the unending Blood War where demons fight devils for supremacy over the concept of Evil itself." But then turn around and also say, for instance, "In the Forgotten Realms, Mariliths are servants of chaotic evil deities, especially Loviatar, the Maiden of Pain." (that bit of FR lore might be wrong, I'm no scholar on the stuff) And then you could even go the extra mile and say "Mariliths on the Dragon Isles serve the Red Dragon as consorts and spies, and are born out of red dragon blood being infused into mountain fey called Oreads." (all new lore!) But you don't just say "Mariliths are creations of Zehir the Snake God" and leave it at that. Though you could say, "Zehir, a god in the Nentir Vale, is the creator of Mariliths there." The idea being that it's not four different kinds of mariliths fighting to be called [I]The One True Marilith[/I] (ie, the one the game assumes as a default), but rather four different kinds of mariliths that can all exist independent of each other, or even alongside each other (Mariliths serve evil gods and red dragons and also are generals in a plane-wide Blood War, why not? Or maybe there's different factions among the Mariliths!). The list doesn't need to be exhaustive (and if I had my druthers, each one might come with its own ability or trait that tied it more to any given setting -- maybe PS Mariliths get some Warlord/leader-style commanding strike ability, maybe Dragon Isles Mariliths get a little elemental rock ability for being descended from Oreads, maybe Nentir Vale Mariliths can shed their skin to heal HP, whatever). In fact, you could just choose one version, and go with it, but mix in different settings. Mariliths from the Dragon Isles. Balors from Planescape. Galbrezu from the Forgotten Realms. Rutterkin from the Nentir Vale. Whatev. That'd take up no more space than in a normal MM. I guess where I disagree is that I don't see players who make the assumptions that the writers of the books clearly intended them to make as obnoxious. They're mislead. Under-informed. They listened to someone who promised to tell them the way things were, but the thing that they listened to wasn't entirely honest. It omitted a lot of how things are. It showed you the color orange and said "rainbows are this color," which is true, but they're also a lot of other colors. It elided the interesting complexity in the world in favor of....well, I don't know, exactly. To throw a bone to a brand team that is terrified of honest complexity? To make the designers' amateur fiction-writing dreams come a little bit true? There's value in the stories that the designers tell, Mearls says. What he doesn't say is why those stories are so valuable that they need to be presumed standard. Why is that worth the (admittedly, small in most cases) hassle of contradicting a player who presumes that rainbows are orange or that jackalweres are Grazz'zt-related? [/QUOTE]
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