Pamphylian
Explorer
Though I'd say Gandalf is at least a 5th level wizard (solos a Balor) and Frodo had to Quest pretty hard for the Light of Eärendil
D&D General Self-Defeating Rules in D&D
- Thread starter Pamphylian
- Start date
Remathilis
Legend
You know, I miss those alchemical items like sunrods and tindertwigs. I should bring them back...
Ruin Explorer
Legend
I'm replying to an opinion with a mixture of facts (like those re: last 20-30 years of fantasy literature and videogames) and opinions. If that's too much for you to handle, maybe I'm not the problem lol? Kind of feels like you don't think I should be allowed to express firm opinions but doesn't seem like you hold your own posts to the same standard lol (which I think is fine but...).
If you disagree with a specific fact, point it out.
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Ruin Explorer
Legend
Yes it's an '80s aesthetic. You're not helping your argument by using two "counter-examples" from the turn of the century - about 25 years ago - The Mummy (1999 - and intentionally harking back to Indiana Jones in terms of visual design!) and LotR (2001). As for GoT (2012 - that's 13 years ago), they don't use torches in a very atmospheric way for the most part, because they can't do lighting that works relying on them. They're very much a Night's Watch thing and occasionally for drama in battles. Torches existing, even being pretty common is different from them being an aesthetic, which is actually something your earlier post seemed to recognise pretty well.
What you're doing is essentially supporting my point - this is an older aesthetic that's completely trailed off in most fantasy and people aren't into.
You don't address the fact (and it is a fact) that most people's main points of exposure to fantasy outside TTRPGs are videogames and fantasy literature, and in both, torches are increasingly rare, especially ones being carried by people (which is very different from when they're fixed light sources, mysteriously pre-lit and mysteriously everburning). Whereas lanterns and magical light sources, which have considerable crossover, are extremely common in these - as the things people carry around in order to be able to see. In part just because torches are just really impractical in the situations D&D adventurers get into.
As for "any mundane light source", that doesn't really make sense because the things you said you liked about torches, that they were easy to put out (trivial almost) and atmospheric/dramatic don't apply to lanterns, and outside of games like Shadowdark (or games set in the iron age or earlier), basically no-one has voluntarily used a torch since the 1980s in fantasy RPGs when any other options are available. And what even is "mundane"? A bioluminscence-powered lantern with like a big glowing bug in it or something is as "mundane" as a torch if you mean non-magical (and again, nothing new about this - in EverQuest in 1999 glowing bug organs were a very common light source because they were brighter and lasted far longer than torches).
Torches are generally not an interesting or fun resource outside of games that put a major focus on them, and D&D is both not that game, nor can it ever be that game and be D&D in any sense that matters. Pick a lane - either you're a game about torches (and there are a bunch of them! Why not play one?) or you're D&D, which is a game where magic is trivially common for adventurers, where possibly multiple party members know the Light cantrip (or something similar) from level 1 (do you want to change that?), and where in huge numbers of D&D settings (including the Forgotten Realms), Continual Light/Flame devices are extremely common, to the point where streets are lined with them in some cities (and again, have been for hundreds of years in Realmsfarian terms, given that there were 2E descriptions of such). You say you weren't born until after the 1980s, but it's funny because you appear to be proposing turning the clock back the early '80s or even before.
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Chaltab
Legend
Gary is that you? Have you returned as Gygax the White?
Jacob Lewis
Ye Olde GM
I don’t think we can really know what the designers’ intent was at the outset. All we can do is look back at the rules as they were written and evaluate them through decades of design evolution and changing philosophies. What might have felt innovative or essential in 1974 hasn’t necessarily withstood the test of time, given how many editions have pared, revised, or outright abandoned older ideas in favor of newer lessons.
The real question isn’t what these mechanics once meant, but why some of these subsystems keep coming back when the modern game doesn’t really need them. If survival elements were truly central, we’d see them supported consistently in adventure design, encounter pacing, and advancement structures. Instead, they linger at the margins—present but optional, often undercooked, and rarely reinforced. That looks a lot less like “scaffolding” and a lot more like vestiges of an earlier mode of play.
The real question isn’t what these mechanics once meant, but why some of these subsystems keep coming back when the modern game doesn’t really need them. If survival elements were truly central, we’d see them supported consistently in adventure design, encounter pacing, and advancement structures. Instead, they linger at the margins—present but optional, often undercooked, and rarely reinforced. That looks a lot less like “scaffolding” and a lot more like vestiges of an earlier mode of play.
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
I express my opinions as opinions regularly. If you have an example where I didn't I will happily apologize.
Paul Farquhar
Legend
This is an interesting point. The protagonist picks up an old stick/bone, wraps some cloth around it and has a light source that lasts until it is narratively (in)convenient for it to go out has been a trope since at least the 1930s (as referenced by Indiana Jones). In more modern settings it’s evolved into torch batteries and phone charge. But management has never featured. The light source is either easily available or taken away as the plot requires (oops it got wet).
And, of course, thanks to Tolkien, the trope is if you have a wizard, you never lack light.
Pamphylian
Explorer
I will readily accept "the long 80's" as an aesthetic era from spanning from circa 1977 to 2001, it's assumptions shattered by the dot com burst and 9/11. I guess I'm still sort of skeptical, maybe the only way to resolve this is extensive historical research and survey, but torches just seem like how the average person imagines that you light your way when its dark and you are in quasi-medieval/premodern land. Lanterns also extant in the imagination, but secondary. Darkvision, quite rare. I don't have an encyclopedic recall of GoT but my impression was they were just what people would whip out anytime it was night or they were in a subterranean location. Here is Varys, in a Dungeon, with a Torch:
Here is Tyrion, in a Dungeon, with a Dragon (!) with a Torch:
I admit that I am not particularly attuned to the fantasy aesthetic zeitgeist of the 2020s. I have a vague impression that things have splintered into various subgenres quite a bit, but that LoTR and GoT still loom pretty large in the popular imagination of fantasy, along with (I think) more timeless pre-80s fairy tale stuff, your standard angry peasants with torches and pitchforks (maybe they aren't standard?). The Souls games (as you mentioned), the Elder Scrolls, (and maybe even Zelda?) would seem pay torch homage, at least for enemies and guards. I don't remember very prominent torches in Dungeon Meshi, but that show (haven't read manga) certainly spotlights the mundane logistics of dungeon crawling in other ways so I won't fault it for failing me here. Maybe torches are not always an "aesthetic" but the lines between aesthetic and a sort of stand in for "ubiquitous practical tool for lighting dark spaces" seem a bit blurry! Genuinely interested what else constitutes the most prominent reference point video games and literature for torchless fantasy these days, as all mine are surely out of date.
Lanterns can be pretty atmospheric (see figure 3, not helping my 80s case, but see also Morrowind, I guess also not helping my 80s case)! And like torches, you probably have to hold them in your hand, require a resource (oil), etc. And they are going out if you fall into a pit of water, and maybe if you just fall a ways. Bug lanterns might be mundane depending on the setting. I think my contrast here is between the hypothetical where darkness is can be a tangible force in the game to be actively countered, possibly at cost, and possibly a threat if things go bad, at least in the earliest tier of play, and, say, first level darkvision, and the light cantrip, which are (at least in effect), pretty close to darkness-off switches - which is fine, but I suppose why bother at that point, just hand wave it all with everburning wall sconces.
Again, I have no problem with not dealing with darkness, there are tables, settings, and locations where it doesn't make sense for it to come up. My intention was not to become a torch fetishist! Though I quite enjoy discussing the roots and evolution of torch representation in media and literature (sincerely), and I do think they look cool in more than just a retro way. One can homebrew, and I do. But torches were merely a useful tool in service of a broader point, that their uselessness is a result of (imo) unusual game design that disrupts the representability of many adventure tropes, and this design representative of a broader pattern in the game, which is interesting (imo) to consider, and might be adjusted to the profit of all, torch-lovers, torch-haters, and the torch ambivalent.
Figure 3
Yes, haha. (I'd make it a first level spell, as God/Gygax intended. Or at least require Concentration).
This is fine, even great. You misunderstand me if you think I'm advocating that everybody, want to or not, must live under the lash of having to carry a torch when at Lvl 1. These are great settings to play in, and concerns about darkness can be handwaved! No need for darkvision, or announcing that you are pressing the cantrip button.
Only on some things!
payn
Glory to Marik
So in GoT they are using torches in dark places they know. It’s not a traveling spelunk into unknown regions with danger around every corner. Nor is there any threat of not having a torch or the torch going out. The logistics of dungeon delving are not the same as folks just using torches occasionally in dark places.
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