D&D General "Red Orc" American Indians and "Yellow Orc" Mongolians in D&D

[JiffyPopTart]

I find @Mordhau's thesis - that the structure of D&D, the way setting supports adventure, is drawn heavily from the western genre - very plausible. It's not a claim about tropes, which are typically pseudo-mediaeval. It's about story structure.

What is most striking for me is the role of vigilante violence in D&D. D&D characters don't inflict violence in the name of a cause, or based on some claim to authority or justified retribution, but because they can, and they take themselves to be entitled to impose their own values and desires onto the world. To me that is reminiscent of westerns, and also super-hero comics (another quintessentially American genre?). It also resonates strongly, and unsurprisingly, with REH's Conan.

I think that D&D resembles JRRT/LotR in only the most superficial ways. In Tolkien, social status reflects a character's nature, which is often closely connected to their birth/heritage. In Sam's case, him becoming Mayor isn't a sign of his social mobility, but rather his true nature being externalised in his social situation. It compares interestingly to Pippin and Merry's roles as the "nobility" of the The Shire who maintain connections to the monarchies of Rohan and Gondor.

It's possible to have RPGs that will produce fiction that emulates LotR, or Arthurian stories, but they need to depart pretty thoroughly from D&D's structure.

Aren't there a very high percentage of adventures where the characters are doing their deeds in the name of "saving the town/city/region/world/multiverse"?

I'd argue the slaughter they do in pursuit of that goal "for a cause".

Not that there aren't a lot of westerns about "save the ranch/farm/town/territory", just saying most adventures aren't set up to be straight murderhobos.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I did once hear someone argue that superheroes are fascist for those reasons you list.

That's why my philosophy for superheroes is that they're there to protect people, not property and not to stop 'crime' unless it is incidental to protecting people.

You stop the bank robbery to save the hostages, not to stop someone from taking a bank's money.

You hunt the serial killer to save the next victim, not to avenge the dead.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The point about Arthur has already been made.

The Silmarillion is not a tale of self-made heroes. It's about heritage, nature, providence and tragedy. Those who try to step outside those constraints - in different ways, this is the case for Turin and for Maeglin - end up bringing ruin upon themselves and everyone else!

Right, the VERY first and most important thing you learn about each character in ALL of JRRT's work is their heritage, it is usually ALL you really learn. I mean, to take LotR characters, what do we know about Aragorn? Not a thing, except that he's the inheritor of a lineage leading all the way back to a union (2 actually) between Elves, and Men. We never learn where he was born, who raised, him, how he lived before he appeared in the story, etc. I mean, we do glean a bit incidentally, we know he was present in Rivendell at some point and met his future wife there, and that his sword was preserved there, but we really know nothing much. He's the heir to the throne of Arnor and a Dunedain of the highest lineage, and a claimant to the throne of Gondor. That is all we need to know!

Likewise the characters of the First Age, Finrod Felagund is the son or cousin of a high king of the Noldor, and Feanor is the heir of one. He apparently is a figure of great power and accomplishment BECAUSE of this, there is no instance (Sam perhaps being a bit of an exception) of 'lesser people' achieving greatness, it is baked in! Classic British classist sensibilities!

Its interesting to me that today we witness two parallel cultural phenomena in America. On the one hand we have this throwing off of cultural norms which dictated attitudes which effectively put down, othered, and kept in their place anyone who isn't part of the prestige group. This includes, in a broad sense, a lot of areas, such as treatment of women, minorities, rejection of older narratives about the righteous civilizing influence of said prestige group, etc. We also have another narrative, anti-science, anti-intellectual, anti-society itself even, which seems to take the guise of a reaction to the first movement, but IMHO really is basically the same thing. The fundamental unifying factor being a rejection of authoritative cultural narratives. It extends beyond that to a rejection of social roles surrounding authority generally.

 

[Mordhau]

Aren't there a very high percentage of adventures where the characters are doing their deeds in the name of "saving the town/city/region/world/multiverse"?

I'd argue the slaughter they do in pursuit of that goal "for a cause".

Not that there aren't a lot of westerns about "save the ranch/farm/town/territory", just saying most adventures aren't set up to be straight murderhobos.

Not initially. A lot of the more heroic take on D&D came when people believed that it should emulate epic fantasy stories better,

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Not initially. A lot of the more heroic take on D&D came when people believed that it should emulate epic fantasy stories better,

To be perfectly honest, early D&D was VERY gamist and not THAT interested in 'story'. It was about 'beating a dungeon' and the point of the RP part was to actualize an open-ended framework type approach where you could declare any action and the Referee (GM) would decide if it worked or not, and what happened in consequence. Nobody would have ever asked "what are we doing here?" or "Why are we doing this?" Not that it didn't arise as a question fairly soon thereafter, but mostly in specific cases, not as a general thing. Other games explored story, but D&D didn't really get there until OA (1985).

 

[Thomas Shey]

I did once hear someone argue that superheroes are fascist for those reasons you list.

It can look that way on a very shallow analysis, particularly when you're looking at the most vigilante like supers, but it kind of needs to ignore a lot of things to get there (fascism talks a good game about being for the public good, but there's not much sign it ever actually tries to).

 

[Thomas Shey]

To be perfectly honest, early D&D was VERY gamist and not THAT interested in 'story'. It was about 'beating a dungeon' and the point of the RP part was to actualize an open-ended framework type approach where you could declare any action and the Referee (GM) would decide if it worked or not, and what happened in consequence. Nobody would have ever asked "what are we doing here?" or "Why are we doing this?" Not that it didn't arise as a question fairly soon thereafter, but mostly in specific cases, not as a general thing. Other games explored story, but D&D didn't really get there until OA (1985).

While you're not wrong, even early on this started varying locally based on game culture spread. But the game sure gave you no help.

 

[pemerton]

Aren't there a very high percentage of adventures where the characters are doing their deeds in the name of "saving the town/city/region/world/multiverse"?

Maybe.

But just thinking through some of the modules I know:

* B2 Keep on the Borderlands - the default is that the PCs are self-appointed; there is no hint of a requirement that they receive the imprimatur of the Castellan before taking on the Caves;

* B10 Night's Dark Terror - the PCs help homesteaders on the frontier without any sort of endorsement from the local nobles (eg the Grand Duke of Karameikos) and then run their own assault on a slave ring, independently of those authority figures;

* Five Shall Be One - the PCs are wandering down a city street and get drawn into an adventure only because they are ready to use violence of their own volition;

* Speaker in Dreams - I think this is fairly similar to Five Shall Be One in how it starts; there is no suggestion that the PCs need to engage with the town authorities as part of leading the resistance against the take-over of the town;

* H2 Thunderspire Labyrinth - the PCs are assumed willing to ignore, or even take on, the mages who rule the dungeon area;

* P2 Demon Queen's Enclave - the PCs overthrow the Drow authorities in the area they intervene in.​

That's not a random sample; but I think these are representative enough.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

The point about Arthur has already been made.

The Silmarillion is not a tale of self-made heroes. It's about heritage, nature, providence and tragedy. Those who try to step outside those constraints - in different ways, this is the case for Turin and for Maeglin - end up bringing ruin upon themselves and everyone else!

This notion of conformity - and the consequence of non-conformity - is all-pervasive in Tolkien. It applies to Melkor in his rejection of the Music, to Feanor in his disregard of the Valar, to the Numenorean apocalypse spurred by the desire for immortality, to Saruman's failure in his mission and so on. My sense is that they are iterations of the spiritual/metaphysical notion of Falling (from Eru/God's grace, by failing to surrender to His will), but it can sometimes come across as pretty nihilistic.

We are left wondering if - say - the Noldor had not rebelled, whether the Valar would have made war on Morgoth, regained the Silmarils in short order, and rekindled the Two Trees. But the fact that the best stories (and all of the accompanying tragedy) arise when protagonists/antagonists reject the prevailing order and "make their own rules" may be the point of commonality with D&D.

 

[pemerton]

Classic British classist sensibilities!

I don't think it's about class as such, but rather anti-modernist sensibilities as such.

This notion of conformity - and the consequence of non-conformity - is all-pervasive in Tolkien. It applies to Melkor in his rejection of the Music, to Feanor in his disregard of the Valar, to the Numenorean apocalypse spurred by the desire for immortality, to Saruman's failure in his mission and so on. My sense is that they are iterations of the spiritual/metaphysical notion of Falling (from Eru/God's grace, by failing to surrender to His will), but it can sometimes come across as pretty nihilistic.

It's very much about conformity to the will of the divine; and the closely-related workings of providence. So no one's heritage or social situation is a meaningless accident.

I personally don't get any nihilistic vibe; that's something I associate with REH's Conan, which is utterly modernist despite the trappings. (The closest to an exception is The Hour of the Dragon.)