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The urban fantasy market seems awfully stagnant
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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7626938" data-attributes="member: 996"><p>OK, that's getting pretty constructive.</p><p></p><p> Sure. It's the oldest RPG, and people have been trying to force it to do more since the very beginning - Murlynd, was an old-west wizard, Metamorphosis Alpha was written with D&D-ish rules. d20 was gasoline on that fire. But that's like, 45 years of chaos. The game, itself, if you go pick up 5e off the shelf, really hasn't changed or expanded all that much (to be fair, 5e is a bit of a re-boot).</p><p>I skipping tons, I'll just pipe up when I think of something constructive to contribute.</p><p></p><p> Possibly it's because ghosts are, well, dead, not un-dead in a physically active way like Vampires, but dead, sometimes they're depicted as little more than psychic holograms, just re-living some traumatic moment. If there's a point or character development to the ghost in the ghost story, it's typically laying the ghost to rest, which mean, if it's a PC, you don't get to play it anymore. That's an issue.</p><p></p><p>The other thing about ghosts is that our pop culture concept of them is built on a 19th century fad quasi-religion called Theosophy - spiritualism, mediums, spirit photography, ectoplasm - it's not really rooted in ancient beliefs/organized religion or anything like that. </p><p></p><p> Yep, and it's oddly nothing much to do with the source material. In myth/legend, werewolves were sorcerers who gained an ability to shapechange through some magical means (or 'deal with the devil' once Chrisianized). Vampires were essentially evil spirits that preyed on families, slowly draining one person at a time - a folk explanation of certain diseases, like tuberculosis. </p><p></p><p>For whatever reason, pop culture took the Vampire myth and ran with it, making them into these weird super-beings. When the werewolf hit the silver screen they decided to make it a bite-transmitted curse to be more like the very successful Dracula. That's probably why WWGS went with the race-apart animist werewolves with gnosis-super-powers, to bring them up to suff relative to Vampires that had gotten the Brahm Stoker, Hollywood, and Anne Rice upgrades.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Yep. On one level they were all just superstitious explanations of the dangerous world people lived in but didn't really understand. Disease, in particular.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Ooh. I liked that site back in the day. I think I contributed a few bits of silliness to it. (Blake 1001)</p><p></p><p></p><p>Like, classical conceptions of them? Werewolves were mostly, as I said, sorcerers who shapechanged. Vampires were evil spirits of disease, essentially. And wizards were hardly a thing - sorcerers (power from evil spirits), magi, goetio, philosophers, astronomers, herbalists, anyone with a bit of knowledge outside the norm or a penchant for chicanery could spawn a concept of a magic-using individual. The modern wizard archetype mostly derives from Hermeticism - much effdup by D&D and it's Vancian-memorization use-limited but absurdly-powerful spells.</p><p></p><p>But, thinking about it, there are iconic examples, that may or may not rise to the level of archetypes. Carmilla, the needy, manipulative almost-psychic-vampire. Dracula, the isolated Vampire noble, urbane and creepily sexualized in the Belle Lugosi Hollwood take... ...and, well, it gets weird after that. Reluctant Vampires. Conspiracy Vampires. Emo Vampires. Sparkly Vampires ... OK, the shark has been well and truly jumped.</p><p></p><p>Werewolves: There's the classic evil-sorcerer werewolf. The Cursed werewolf driven to kill. And the Controlled Werewolf whose shapechaning can be a gift more than a curse... </p><p>...and then it gets WoD influenced and weird.</p><p></p><p>Wizards. There are actually so many, and none of them like the now-dominant-in-RPG-circles, D&D wish-grenade. /Many/ of them are really about divination, though. That's what that suffix -mancy actually mean, y'know. Pyromancers, or instance, don't throw fire around, they stare into fires to divine the future - RL practice. Necromancers didn't raise the dead, they talked to dead. &c. </p><p>Some, like Sorcerers, Shamans, witches ("warlocks" arguably not really a thing), Goetio, and others would be classes as practicing "Thaumaturgy" - miracle-working or magic with practical results. Then there were philosophers, healers and alchemists who were arguably messing around with real things, rather than magic, just real things they understood very differently than we do, and that people outside their disciplines considered magic. Like, Archimedes would have been considered a magic-user of sorts in his day.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 7626938, member: 996"] OK, that's getting pretty constructive. Sure. It's the oldest RPG, and people have been trying to force it to do more since the very beginning - Murlynd, was an old-west wizard, Metamorphosis Alpha was written with D&D-ish rules. d20 was gasoline on that fire. But that's like, 45 years of chaos. The game, itself, if you go pick up 5e off the shelf, really hasn't changed or expanded all that much (to be fair, 5e is a bit of a re-boot). I skipping tons, I'll just pipe up when I think of something constructive to contribute. Possibly it's because ghosts are, well, dead, not un-dead in a physically active way like Vampires, but dead, sometimes they're depicted as little more than psychic holograms, just re-living some traumatic moment. If there's a point or character development to the ghost in the ghost story, it's typically laying the ghost to rest, which mean, if it's a PC, you don't get to play it anymore. That's an issue. The other thing about ghosts is that our pop culture concept of them is built on a 19th century fad quasi-religion called Theosophy - spiritualism, mediums, spirit photography, ectoplasm - it's not really rooted in ancient beliefs/organized religion or anything like that. Yep, and it's oddly nothing much to do with the source material. In myth/legend, werewolves were sorcerers who gained an ability to shapechange through some magical means (or 'deal with the devil' once Chrisianized). Vampires were essentially evil spirits that preyed on families, slowly draining one person at a time - a folk explanation of certain diseases, like tuberculosis. For whatever reason, pop culture took the Vampire myth and ran with it, making them into these weird super-beings. When the werewolf hit the silver screen they decided to make it a bite-transmitted curse to be more like the very successful Dracula. That's probably why WWGS went with the race-apart animist werewolves with gnosis-super-powers, to bring them up to suff relative to Vampires that had gotten the Brahm Stoker, Hollywood, and Anne Rice upgrades. Yep. On one level they were all just superstitious explanations of the dangerous world people lived in but didn't really understand. Disease, in particular. Ooh. I liked that site back in the day. I think I contributed a few bits of silliness to it. (Blake 1001) Like, classical conceptions of them? Werewolves were mostly, as I said, sorcerers who shapechanged. Vampires were evil spirits of disease, essentially. And wizards were hardly a thing - sorcerers (power from evil spirits), magi, goetio, philosophers, astronomers, herbalists, anyone with a bit of knowledge outside the norm or a penchant for chicanery could spawn a concept of a magic-using individual. The modern wizard archetype mostly derives from Hermeticism - much effdup by D&D and it's Vancian-memorization use-limited but absurdly-powerful spells. But, thinking about it, there are iconic examples, that may or may not rise to the level of archetypes. Carmilla, the needy, manipulative almost-psychic-vampire. Dracula, the isolated Vampire noble, urbane and creepily sexualized in the Belle Lugosi Hollwood take... ...and, well, it gets weird after that. Reluctant Vampires. Conspiracy Vampires. Emo Vampires. Sparkly Vampires ... OK, the shark has been well and truly jumped. Werewolves: There's the classic evil-sorcerer werewolf. The Cursed werewolf driven to kill. And the Controlled Werewolf whose shapechaning can be a gift more than a curse... ...and then it gets WoD influenced and weird. Wizards. There are actually so many, and none of them like the now-dominant-in-RPG-circles, D&D wish-grenade. /Many/ of them are really about divination, though. That's what that suffix -mancy actually mean, y'know. Pyromancers, or instance, don't throw fire around, they stare into fires to divine the future - RL practice. Necromancers didn't raise the dead, they talked to dead. &c. Some, like Sorcerers, Shamans, witches ("warlocks" arguably not really a thing), Goetio, and others would be classes as practicing "Thaumaturgy" - miracle-working or magic with practical results. Then there were philosophers, healers and alchemists who were arguably messing around with real things, rather than magic, just real things they understood very differently than we do, and that people outside their disciplines considered magic. Like, Archimedes would have been considered a magic-user of sorts in his day. [/QUOTE]
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