D&D General Reminder: Spellfire can come out of any body part…

[Dannyalcatraz]

Most of the archmages in FR are full on swingers. Like, banging all the time. And that's not just Greenwood. There's a lot of teenage wish fulfillment there, especially in the earlier novels.

To quote Terry Pratchett, “A Wizard’s staff has a knob on the end…”

 

[TheSword]

The more I read about the earliest creators of D&D and their attitudes well into the 2000s towards... literally any minority group...

The more I realize they'd have hated me for existing in their spaces and for all the kindness they might smear over that hatred in favor of the illusion that everyone is equal at their table it just makes me super uncomfortable.

Thank the universe for EN World and other spaces that actively push back against bigotry and do not tolerate it.

I wouldn’t take it too personally. I’m sure had they known more trans/gay/black people then they wouldn’t have the same beliefs. I imagine there are parts of America not to mention the rest of the world where there wasn’t a whole lot of diversity.

The thread was about Ed Greenwood though who always seemed a decent chap to me. I also thought the passage referred to chest rather than boobs, simply because that’s where the heart is. So I think that’s why you’re getting pushback on making it about Gygax.

If we start going for folks for writing/talking about sex then we can say goodbye to Game of Thrones, the Witcher, 70% of fantasy fiction and 60% of movies and TV. I wouldn’t publish it in a game supplement, but the stories people tell in the privacy of their own gaming tables are there’s to tell. It’s not my cup of tea, but I respect other peoples choice to include it.

 

[Eltab]

Imagine being imbued with Spellfire and getting into some poison ivy.
A patch of skin on your arm / leg / neck / hand / wherever starts to weep fluid for no apparent reason and ...
Bzzap!

 

[DarkCrisis]

Almost done with with it:

New "interesting" part.

The main character 16 yr old girl and the man (boy) she agreed to marry after knowing him all of 1 day are taken to Elminsters tower for protection. Elminster offers them his bedchambers and basically says to this pair of 16 year olds "Feel free to bang one out, but keep the screaming down." And I get medieval times and adult adventuring age is different from modern sensibilities etc but even that aside some old dude telling a couple to "Feel free to go to town on each other" is very... wow.

 

[Alzrius]

That's Greenwood's style; characters are all ruled by their id, so when they're in love they're flat-out crazy in love. Also, being a free-love hippie, his characters tend to get it on at the drop of a hat.

 

[Blue Orange]

That's Greenwood's style; characters are all ruled by their id, so when they're in love they're flat-out crazy in love. Also, being a free-love hippie, his characters tend to get it on at the drop of a hat.

Yeah, that would make sense. Elminster's attitude is much more 60s hippie than anything else...and people have argued for years Elminster is Greenwood's wish-fulfillment character.

It's an interesting question what the actual views of a thousand-year-old archmage would be. Could be anything from refusing to date anyone with combined six stats below 108, to fathering (or mothering) hundreds of children over the years (archmages don't go through menopause unless they want to), to long-term plans over hundreds of years trying to raise a brood of the greatest wizards in the Realms... I suspect they'd probably have lived as a different sex for a few decades just out of curiosity.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

When I first read Spellfire, their ages didn't really bother me, because I was younger than them. Sixteen practically seemed an adult to me. Heck, someone in their late twenties would've been old.

Now that I'm (ahem, much) older, it does come across as a bit creepy. But then again, there's stuff like Piers Anthony's Xanth, which kids routinely read, and is very creepy.

The main character 16 yr old girl and the man (boy) she agreed to marry after knowing him all of 1 day are taken to Elminsters tower for protection. Elminster offers them his bedchambers and basically says to this pair of 16 year olds "Feel free to bang one out, but keep the screaming down." And I get medieval times and adult adventuring age is different from modern sensibilities etc but even that aside some old dude telling a couple to "Feel free to go to town on each other" is very... wow.

 

[Umbran]

The thread was about Ed Greenwood though who always seemed a decent chap to me.

We sometimes need to wrestle with the fact that people who are nice in many ways can also be not-so-great in many ways.

 

[DarkCrisis]

When I first read Spellfire, their ages didn't really bother me, because I was younger than them. Sixteen practically seemed an adult to me. Heck, someone in their late twenties would've been old.

Now that I'm (ahem, much) older, it does come across as a bit creepy. But then again, there's stuff like Piers Anthony's Xanth, which kids routinely read, and is very creepy.

Yeah I tried to read the first book a couple years ao and checked out about half way through after it got a bit sexist. Read up on the rest of it and yeah... wow that's a lot of sexism.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I read plenty of the Xanth books when I was a kid, but when I tried to read one more recently, I couldn't do it. I'm neither a prude nor a "will no one think of the children" sort of person, but it honestly turned my stomach that this was something that was marketed to kids.

Yeah I tried to read the first book a couple years ao and checked out about half way through after it got a bit sexist. Read up on the rest of it and yeah... wow that's a lot of sexism.