The Tielfling and The Gnome: On the Set of 4th edition

[Fifth Element]

other far-fetched theories and rampant speculation?

DM NPC. He conveniently recovers from even the gruesomest death whenever the DM's metaplot requires it.

 

[Greenfaun]

Funny stuff with the gnome.

But that wasn't a tiefling, that was a red-skinned Draenei, right down to the pseudo-Russian accent.

http://www.wowwiki.com/Image:Draenie_copy.jpg

Yeah, I thought so too. I mean, horns and hooves for the Tieflings make sense, and also there's a limited range of ways you can draw humanoids with hooves and horns and still make them attractive/sympathetic, so I can excuse some visual similarities, but giving the tiefling girl bulky, implausibly baroque armor and a vaguely slavic accent is where even I say they're ripping off WoW. And that's too bad, they don't need to.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Yeah, I thought so too. I mean, horns and hooves for the Tieflings make sense, and also there's a limited range of ways you can draw humanoids with hooves and horns and still make them attractive/sympathetic, so I can excuse some visual similarities, but giving the tiefling girl bulky, implausibly baroque armor and a vaguely slavic accent is where even I say they're ripping off WoW. And that's too bad, they don't need to.

Surely if they wanted it to be draenei, they would have stuck with the cloven hooves, no?

(Or were the cloven hooved, horned draenei stolen from tieflings, eh? Or inspired by satyrs?)

 

[Fifth Element]

...giving the tiefling girl bulky, implausibly baroque armor and a vaguely slavic accent is where even I say they're ripping off WoW. And that's too bad, they don't need to.

...maybe that was part of the joke? This was a joke, not an accurate reflection of the new game. The similarities with WoW could have been intentional. So many people are complaining that they're WoW-ing D&D; this could be them making fun of that.

 

[Klaus]

Surely if they wanted it to be draenei, they would have stuck with the cloven hooves, no?

(Or were the cloven hooved, horned draenei stolen from tieflings, eh? Or inspired by satyrs?)

The draenei look more satyr-esque than the tieflings.

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

I admit my other post was a mistake but I still say the pacing of the flashtoon is so slow it is not funny but just cruel.

 

[Lurks-no-More]

...maybe that was part of the joke? This was a joke, not an accurate reflection of the new game. The similarities with WoW could have been intentional. So many people are complaining that they're WoW-ing D&D; this could be them making fun of that.

Well, that's how I took it, at least. The tiefling is so over-the-top in her "kewl, self-centered bad girl" way, that she has to be a deliberate joke.

As for the worries about tieflings being unable to pass as humans, one idea I had was that they start off almost indistinguishable from normal humans, but as they age and/or grow in power, their inhuman heritage starts to show itself with the horns, tails, claws, weird skin and eye colors, or whatnot.

And the gnome was hilarious, too: "I have a lair!" and the whole minion thing. And damn, if I'm not curious about what they're going to come up with gnomes now.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Not funny.

My standards are pretty high though. The only gaming comedy I've ever found funny has been Fear Of Girls and ab3's stories. I think I laughed at one issue of Order of the Stick, the one that parodied the Monty Python spam sketch with polearms. And that was only funny because the original was.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Surely if they wanted it to be draenei, they would have stuck with the cloven hooves, no?

R&C reveals the reason they didn't is basically so that tieflings could wear boots.

There is some seriously boneheaded logic in some of the 4e ideas, IMHO.

(Or were the cloven hooved, horned draenei stolen from tieflings, eh? Or inspired by satyrs?)

Well, the tieflings were inspired by demons/devils/fiends, and those in turn were inspired by pagan objects of worship, including the satyr.

Draeni, I think, went the same route: the WoW team wanted them to look like demons/devils/fiends, but "good," so they pulled from the pagan objects of worship, most notably the Satyr.

Tieflings had the edge in 2e (and, a bit in 3e) because they were highly variable. Some had tails, some had horns, some had hooves, some had scaly skin, some smelled like brimstone, some had tentacles instead of arms, some had pointy teeth, some oozed slime...

But according to R&C, they stepped away from this for a unified history for tieflings, and a unified origin. Which is a good reason to have them all share traits that tieflings on other worlds may or may not share.

Leading to the massive helmets and giant awkward tails of our current devilsh overlords.

 

[Voss]

Draeni, I think, went the same route: the WoW team wanted them to look like demons/devils/fiends, but "good," so they pulled from the pagan objects of worship, most notably the Satyr.

Actually, for the female model at least, they pretty much just reskinned their existing succubus models. And stuck tentacles on the face of a seriously reworked Tauren model for the male

But, yeah, the artistic conception of the tiefling in R&C is horrible. Not that the art is bad, but the design...
take 1 human body
add horns from some form of water buffalo, but don't size them down.
similarly, add a lizard like tail from some sort of komodo dragon/dinosaur type thing, but keep it the same size. (Or actually, come to think about it, 1 of the size large devils)

The tail and horns are just huge, and don't fit the model. The tails on most of the models have to be at least 4-5' long, and almost a 1' diameter at the base. And just welded to the lower back and upper buttocks. I'm not convinced these things can actually walk upright.

They certainly can't sit in chairs, let alone couches.