Mundane vs. Fantastical

[billd91]

What warrior wouldn't want to go down in the annals of history? The greatest last stand ever recorded. To die with honor amongst your companions...

Indeed. If the story is a good one, going down while fighting the good fight isn't a bad way to go out.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

Uhm...ok, that's why I preceded my comment with the whole "for you" thing. But you aren't the only person playing D&D.

I noticed. I just thought you were making a comment about how I shouldn't do that, while I was saying that I can't figure out any other way to do it.

Ah, and here you have totally missed the point of my example. In both examples...dragon's are real. Now whether they are common and you trip over them as you walk down the street, or they are rare and hard to find, and possibly only a myth is a matter of presentation. In one example the use of the mundane highlights and accentuates the dragons existence in a certain way, in the other their very lack of rarity and easy accessibility highlights their existence in another way. This is used to evoke different moods and styles within the campaign world.

I was taking your example to be an illustration of differing levels of fantasticness. My mistake.

Now how exactly does your having experienced a higher level of "fantastic" mundane things in real life have anything to do with

1. Accepting the notion that dragons exist within the gameworld (which is the first issue)

2. Accepting the level and emphasis of the mundane being used by the DM to accentuate dragons in a certain light...

Are you saying it isn't hard for you to suspend your disbelief that dragons do exist...but you have a harder time accepting that they are rare in a mundane-esque campaign world as opposed to buying in that they can be everywhere and as common as cats (along with numerous other fantastic and deadly beasts) in a more fantastical campaign world?

I'm saying that maybe my expectations are so high that there are certain ways of doing things that seem to me like they aren't even trying.

Also yes, it does make more sense to me that in something where some fantastic elements exist that the world have a baseline fantasticness.

If anything this seems like a preference for your part on a certain type of fantasy, and maybe a lack of imagination in being able to accept a fantasy that doesn't subscribe to what you feel are acceptable fantasy tropes.

I feel the exact same way when people denounce an overabundance of fantasticness.

 

[Imaro]

...

I feel the exact same way when people denounce an overabundance of fantasticness.

I just wanted to point out how you replied here with an overabundance of fantasticness. I think this is the key issue with D&D 4e, it really is an overabundance. I don't think most people denouncing the fantasticness would be doing so if the game catered to both ends of the axis equally, or even if their was more support for the wahoo fantasticness and adequate for mundane...but there isn't. It assumes that all want to play in a game with wahoo trappings, and I don't think all previous editions necessarily did that. I also don't see it as an improvement.

 

[RFisher]

Like I said before, having a single fantastic element does help it stand out. And yes, I’ve seen the same group have very different reactions to the same monster in two campaigns for this reason. I don’t think it had that much to do with the skills of the DMs.

BUT, I don’t really think it’s that big a thing. I think it really just comes down to what kind of tone you want for your game. Anywhere on the continuum works.

And I do want to repeat that it’s over systemization of fantastic elements that I think really drains the life out of things. But maybe that’s just me.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It seems like a dude in chainmail and a sword fighting a bear and dying has become blase', and I guess in a world full of wizards lobbying fireballs at ice-breathing white dragons, it would.

I think this is not an entirely correct assumption. It's been pretty true for every edition of D&D to varying degrees, but I don't think it is a necessary result.

However, in my mind, rather than ratcheting up the dude with the sword fighting a bear, I would ratchet down the wizard with the fireball (and mostly leave the dragon alone).

One of my earliest thoughts in picking up D&D, coming from other games, was "Why do the wizards get it so easy?" In 2e, when I started, magic missiles already beat swords (I don't care if it's less damage, I will always do it, and I will do it from far enough away that it won't matter). Fireballs definitely beat +1 swords. An entire class of defenses -- the saving throws -- were only used against magical effects.

3e, to a certain extent, helped this with feats, making saves more universal, and expanding your martial options with things like tripping and sundering. These helped to varying degrees. Feats were perfect. Saves were still mostly magical, but they could be expanded. Tripping and sundering weren't usually good options, and could be pretty wonky when they were used.

4e continued this trend, but went the extra step of turning fighters into "spellcasters" of a sort. It took 3e's markup and kicked it up to 11.

They went the other way too, a bit (they stripped out rituals and focused wizards on attack magic). But imagine if they would've gone the other way around totally. Instead of making "vancian martial classes," what if they took the magical classes and toned them down so that they required attack rolls, against AC, and did damage comparable to weapons. So your fighters have +1 swords and you have +1 spells. So your fighters can (easily) sunder and trip and cause all sorts of havoc, and you can slow and daze and cause different kinds of havoc.

Imagine if lobbing a fireball used the same mechanics as shooting an arrow. Now imagine lobbing a fireball against a bear to be no more or less effective than shooting an arrow at said bear. And that ice-breathing dragon is going to be a bigger threat to BOTH of you, 'cuz this bear is hard enough as it is!

I think 4e decided, to a certain extent, that most people didn't have fun fighting bears, and so went on the other side of the equation, embracing gee-whiz bang-pow fantastic with full unironic gusto, now with more everything. It might be a savvy move to open up the moments of fun in the game, but it certainly alienates those who like a more "mundane" feel, because such a feel is now even harder to achieve than it was before (not that it was ever particularly easy).

So has D&D drifted too far from mundane into fantastical? Is it a bad thing? Can a balance between truly magical and fantastical elements (warlocks, demons, potions of fire-breath) be struck with historical or mundane elements (grizzly bears, fighters, bec-de-corbins?) without one or the other suffering?

To answer the first questions, that depends. It's a taste issue. 4e is certainly MORE FANTASTICAL, but some are going to love it, some are going to loathe it, and WotC is betting more love it/are neutral to it than loathe it (and is probably also betting that new players are more likely to love this than loathe this). For the mundano-fantasists, it's a bigger problem now than it was (and it was always a bit of a problem at least).

To answer the second question, the answer is yes, of course it can be. But you have to set out to make it that way. 4e especially was never at all interested in making it that way.

My belief, personally, is that I enjoy a D&D game where it is mixed more than I enjoy a game that's all one or the other. Part of this is because D&D, to me, has always meant something of a delightful cocktail of fantastic elements, and you need to mix high magic and mundane if you're going to be able to pull of a large spectrum of that cocktail. To cram Conan and LotR and Harry Potter and Eragon and the Grey Mouser and Warhammer all into the same pot is going to require a pretty big and open pot, one that doesn't say that a bec-de-corbin and a chain shirt is pointless, but one that also says that exploding barrels of alchemists' fire, crashing airships, and granting wishes is just fine.

There is a balance that can be struck. I believe this quite fundamentally. But that balance has to be a goal. Specifically, I think a "tiers" kind of system, or even just the very origins of levels, can work for that, but 4e works against that at both ends. The low levels are no longer mundane at all. The high levels are no longer entirely world-altering in the slightest. 4e's desire to "expand the sweet spot" shouldered aside both of these methods, and thus the 1-20 (or so) feeling of growing your character.

The idea should be that you go from stabbing sewer rats with a rusty knife and being spat on by beggars at 1st level to towering over the fallen corpses of an entire pantheon of deities who dared to give you a rude introduction at the tippy top. This is the growth that I am looking for. With your chain mail and polearm, you begin; with your dragon-skinned coat and halo of swords you end. 4e is not as good as earlier editions at delivering this growth. This is a (probably necessary) consequence of delivering on the promise of expanding the sweet spot.

I'll come at this again for extra force:

It is not only possible to meld the mundane and the fantastic into a coherent and internally balanced system, I think it would make the best game of D&D. I think the level system is, perhaps, the most ideal way to integrate this into the game. I don't believe 4e was at all interested in preserving the mundane. I think this has been part of why 4e doesn't do it for me, since, for me, that makes the game worse.

 

[GlaziusF]

I just wrote a message on a slate in my hands and as I wrote it it appeared across the room on a panel in inch-high letters that didn't resemble my handwriting.

Then I tapped the slate with my stylus and the message vanished, but now anyone can see it from anywhere in the world.

This is a real thing that, by the time you read this, I will just have done. But doesn't it sound fantastic?

What prevents you from browsing the Internet and just sort of getting a glazed look in your eyes at the magnificence of it all is that the Internet is predictable. It tends to work in a way that you can understand.

To keep things feeling magical and not technological, they can't be used in your world in the same way that technology is used. They also can't become predictable to your players. But how much they buy it is up to them and up to you.

 

[pemerton]

If you encounter Red Dragons that cast spells and shape reality every game session...after about the 5th one you will not be amazed by it, and it will not be something wondrous (no matter how great the DM portrays or describes them)... in fact it will probably take more to amaze you with the overall world, now that this element has become a common occurrence.

On the other hand, if you've never encountered a red dragon, must scale the Razor Peaks, survive deadly traps and battle it's guardians in order to ask it 3 questions...there will be a sense of wonder there (unless the DM shatters it by inappropriately describing or characterizing it.

You seem to be running together the expectations of the PCs (which are fictional expectations in a fictional world) with the expectations of the players (which are real expectations in the real world). The extent to which my players are amazed by a creature tends to depend upon (i) their knowledge of its stats/game mechanical abilities, and (ii) the extent of those abilities relative to the PCs.

My players can also be amazed by particular plot twists, thematic escalations etc, but in my experience whether one uses a common or rare creature to make such story moves is neither here nor there, as far as the success of the move is concerned.

the first time I and my friends fought one in D&D it was a monumentous occasion. These were (at least in our minds) the Big Bad's of the setting, The DM used their mystique and rarity in his campaign world to help inspire this feeling of wonder, excitement and fear

My players are about to fight Tharizdun in voidal form, as the climax of a long Rolemaster campaign. I think it will be a fairly momentous fight. This has nothing to do with the rareity of voidal beings in the game, which have been pretty common story elements for the past 10 or more levels (which is probably 3 or 4 years of real time). It has everything to do with the campaign coming to a climax.

Now a good DM sets up player expectations in the way he structures his campaign setting...by making the fantastical rare he invokes a greater sense of wonder from his players when it is encountered.

The first sentence is true but pretty trite. The second sentence is (as a generalisation) false. What will invoke a "sense of wonder" depends on many things. Some players may be easily awed by the fantastic. Others not. What awes particular players in a particular game depends on factors pretty local to that group and that game. The relative densities of the mundane and the fantastic has no uniform causal role that I can see.

And the greatest amazement and wonder comes from the sharp contrast between the logical and familiar firmament of the realistic and the breaking of these rules by the fantastic.

In D&D the fantastic does not break the rules. So I don't fully grasp the point of this remark.

 

[Imaro]

You seem to be running together the expectations of the PCs (which are fictional expectations in a fictional world) with the expectations of the players (which are real expectations in the real world). The extent to which my players are amazed by a creature tends to depend upon (i) their knowledge of its stats/game mechanical abilities, and (ii) the extent of those abilities relative to the PCs.

Uhm so taking the fact that your players are amazed by unfamiliarity with...
1. Knowledge of it's stats/game mechanical abilities
2. The extent of those abilities relative to the PC's...

If they encounter things more then they will have a greater understanding of it's abilities and the relative power of them compared to themselves. You just supported the whole rarity idea here.

My players can also be amazed by particular plot twists, thematic escalations etc, but in my experience whether one uses a common or rare creature to make such story moves is neither here nor there, as far as the success of the move is concerned.

I'd beg to differ, especially after your statements above. If the final encounter of a grand story is something the players have faced over and over again...how does that grand finale not become lessened when compared to the excitement and trepidation of facing an unknown or unfamiliar adversary?

My players are about to fight Tharizdun in voidal form, as the climax of a long Rolemaster campaign. I think it will be a fairly momentous fight. This has nothing to do with the rareity of voidal beings in the game, which have been pretty common story elements for the past 10 or more levels (which is probably 3 or 4 years of real time). It has everything to do with the campaign coming to a climax.

Yeah, because it being Tharizdun has absolutely nothing to do with it? Well then just replace him with a voidal form goblin and see if it's the same effect when the climactic battle begins, or when they talk about it later.

The first sentence is true but pretty trite. The second sentence is (as a generalisation) false. What will invoke a "sense of wonder" depends on many things. Some players may be easily awed by the fantastic. Others not. What awes particular players in a particular game depends on factors pretty local to that group and that game. The relative densities of the mundane and the fantastic has no uniform causal role that I can see.

I'm sorry but the familiar doesn't invoke awe or wonder...because it is the familiar. The unknown, unexpected does. The DM decides through his design what those parameters are (as far as the level of fantasy that is common or ordinary). You basically support this idea in your above posts, so I mean...what exactly is your argument (logically) here, where you claim the exact opposite?

 

[Hussar]

/snip

At Agincourt, to name just one example, the English were outnumbered 10 to 1. It turned out all right for them.

It's not utterly fantastic and unrealistic for some fighters to be dramatically more effective than others; it's just that D&D chooses fantastic and unrealistic methods for making some fighters more effective than others.

As I said in the latter part of my post, for every example of where they beat the odds, I'm betting you can find a whole lot more examples where they didn't. The truth of the matter is, when you're outnumbered, by and large, you lose. Not always, that's true. Particularly if you have a huge technological superiority. But, we're talking 2nd level characters going into Cave C in the Caves of Chaos. And regularly expecting to defeat these kinds of odds.

Like I said, I've always considered D&D to be pretty wahoo. Hundreds of kills before 5th level were not unheard of back in the day.

But, I've strayed off topic.

On whether you need mundane to make fantastic more interesting, I'm not convinced. Look at authors like China Mieville. His world is incredible fantastic, yet very believable.

 

[Imaro]

...

But, I've strayed off topic.

On whether you need mundane to make fantastic more interesting, I'm not convinced. Look at authors like China Mieville. His world is incredible fantastic, yet very believable.

Well I've only read Perdido Street Station, but my impression from that book (what I can remember anyway) was that China Mieville often used mundane things to contrast with the very weird fantasy of his world. The opening chapter starts with two people just having breakfast (regardless of how alien one of them is) with very mundane concerns and actions. The artist community, the university politics, etc. are a few examples of the mundane that I think make his world much more vibrant in a familiar contratsing sharply with the weird way... that allows it's readers to relate better and highlights the alienness of it all better than if it was just alienness with no anchoring in the mundane. YMMV of course