Wahoo vs. Traditional

[Filcher]

Regarding encounter tables:

Maybe they are for PCs only. Maybe NPC travellers experience a far less monster-infested world. The PCs are like protagonists in adventure fiction. Their lives are full of coincidence, danger and implausible happenings. When they get on board a ship, it's attacked by pirates. And a sea monster. Even though voyages are normaly uneventful.

This would, I think, be a non-simulationist interpretation of the encounter tables.

Agreed 100%. I played in a simulationist game once. Half my PCs died in childbirth, the rest of the plague. Fun game.

 

[AllisterH]

Birthright is an interesting case indeed depending on how you define "Wahoo".

There is no campaign world produced by TSR which encouraged the idea of "you are a special little snowflake" moreso than BR IMO.

Sure, you COULD play a regular guy who decides to leave home and become a hero but that definitely wasn't the focus....

In a way, I always that the Game of Thrones series by George R.R. Martin would EASILY fit into Cerilia (hell there's even a couple of scenes where Martin shows how the big important royals - the focus of the story like in Birthright basically ignore the trappings of the peasant folk)

 

[Mournblade94]

Agreed 100%. I played in a simulationist game once. Half my PCs died in childbirth, the rest of the plague. Fun game.

Interesting character creation method then. What system was it you played?

I am a big proponent of simulation and I have never seen anything this detailed. Sounds incredible.

 

[haakon1]

Huh. So, let's say I'm running a swords-and-sorcery setting with a Conan-esque vibe. The milieu is one of complex and detailed societies, with a heavy grounding in classical Mediterranean cultures - ancient Rome, Egypt, Greece, and so on. The magic level is relatively low and humans are the only race. If a guy who looked like a dragonborn walked into a tavern, everyone would run screaming and the city guard would be called in to hunt down the monster.

At the same time, the PCs are heroes of fearsome prowess who can take on five times their number in ordinary swordsmen. There are savage tribes, decadent ancient cities, evil viziers, scheming wizards, dark gods plotting to escape their centuries-old prisons, mystic ruins, and wild lands where terrible monsters lurk.

Is this "wahoo" or "non-wahoo?" I'm having trouble figuring out exactly what you mean - unless by "wahoo" you simply mean, "not a rip-off of Tolkien."

That's definitely non-wahoo, traditional D&D.

My campaign, BTW, is also non-wahoo traditionalist D&D. I play in my home version of Greyhawk, using 3.5e, with adventures from various sources including 3e WOTC, Paizo, and DCC's. I buy and read Harn books, though I don't use them verbatim. I've used LOTR modules from the 1980s converted to D&D. I read Ellis Peter's Cadfael stories and Osprey military history books for medievalist D&D inspiration. I used "Warfare in the Classical Age" as a reference. My favorite fantasy books are LOTR and Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf. My favorite D&Dish computer game is Medieval II Total War. In my last 4 campaigns, all but 2 PC's (a lizardman and centaur) were of the traditional Tolkienesque races, and all but 1 were PHB (3e) classes.

The wahoo elements in my campaign are pretty rare. There's some modern real world US Marine Corps equipment (using Stargate d20 rules) brought in by the PC who was lost on a Stargate mission and ended up in Greyhawk, but has since returned home. There's the traditional Greyhawk wahoo like the Isle of the Apes and the crashed spacecraft of the Barrier Peaks (neither of which has been visited by a PC yet). That's about it for Wahoo.

And of course, my avatar is from Lord of the Rings . . .

 

[haakon1]

I think integration of fantasy elements into the mundane is a good benchmark for judging wahoo versus traditional.

I agree. In my campaign, there's never magical light bulbs or anything like that. Peasant villages and castles are pretty much their European medieval equivalent, except their might be a few low level spellcasters about.

To define what I mean about non-wahoo settings:

In one village used recently, I have a 1st level cleric and 1st level magic user, plus a rich retired adventurer dwarf with a golem nobody knows about yet. Their defensive force? 4 1st level warrior elven mercenaries.

In another barony, there are several villages and there's a small tower. The tower militia is much tougher -- I think the baron and his captain get up to 4th level, and the captain's levels are real fighter and rogue levels, not warrior stuff. Most of the castle guards are 1st level human warriors. The castle has no magical protections. In the area are a retired, very old mage, a 2nd level cleric who works at the castle, a witch, etc. The most "wahoo" element? A half-fey druid who runs the local mill. Yes, there's a character with gills, but the locals (a) don't know that, (b) think he's a weirdo, and (c) treat him as a social outcast unless they need him or (like the PCs) are a little more open-minded than normal.

 

[haakon1]

During my formative years, I immersed myself in stories about boots that could travel seven leagues in one step, a talking fish that could grant wishes, a doctor who could talk to animals, a shepherd boy who could kill a giant with a sling stone, a Gaulish warrior who grew strong enough to defeat entire armies by drinking a magic potion, a swordsman so skilled that he could decapitate an entire room full of enemies by just throwing his scimitar (and have it return to him, too), a warrior that was invulnerable to injury (except for a single weak spot), an immortal stone monkey who battled demons and protected a travelling monk, and a god of thunder (yes, several of these stories had the gods as protagonists).

For me, wahoo is traditional.

Dude, that is traditional, not wahoo. Wahoo has a few defining elements, as I see it:
1) Fantasy elements that have no basis in traditional mythology. Traditional relies on Norse, Celtic, Greek, Indian, Chinese, etc. mythology plus the modern materials added by Tolkien, Gygax, and Arneson to the traditional larder of D&D fare. For example, in my two campaigns the PC's have recently been fighting werewolves, orcs, goblins, and ogres. Wahoo would be enemies like half-bat half-demons ninjas in spacesuits. Wahoo looks to other sci fi sources, or just straight invent their own stuff. Traditional looks to what "fits the feel of the campaign". Wahoo looks to what would be original.
2) Magic or sci fi elements and creatures affect the "home" parts of the setting, not just the adventure. There are magical light bulbs, magical trains, airships, etc. Stuff that would be very strange or alien to a rider of Rohan are perfectly normal workaday for inhabitants of a wahoo world.
3) In the traditional world, fantasy and sci fi elements haven't changed how society works. Castles and peasants are still pretty much what you'd expect those words to mean, and are common. In wahoo world, fantasy and sci fi elements have changed things. Constructs guard towns, and there are 'magical lightbulbs" -- magic is used to provide 21st century norms in the setting.
4) "Traditional" PC's have races and classes that are found in the PHB's of 1st-3rd edition. Human fighters are very common NPC's and occur as PC's fairly often too. "Wahoo" PC's go well beyond that -- in a true wahoo campaign, a human fighter would be seen as a choice sadly lacking in originality/optimization.
5) "Traditional" limits the spices being mixed in a time. If it's a pyramid, it's going to have mummies, artifacts, traps, rats, scorpions. Wahoo is happy to pile multiple conflicting fantasy elements on top of each other. Traditional might have a derelict classic Japanese castle, with a wise talking carp in a well, who tells PC's of the history of the place and advises them on how to defeat the ghosts therein (I've done this). Wahoo might have a talking, flying carp with psionic powers who wears a spacesuit so he can breath on dry land, and either have it be a PC, or somebody they meet in the "normal home" part of the setting, not just deep in "adventure land".

Thinking of it from a movie perspective, these are "traditional": LOTR, 13th Warrior, D&D 2, Conan the Barbarian.

These are "wahoo": Star Wars, D&D 1, Bender's Game.

I'm sure there are plenty more examples of each, but that's just to get you started. Some stuff is in between of course.

That sound about right, Hobo? Asking him, since he started the discussion, but that's what I mean and I think it's what he means.

 

[Doug McCrae]

haakon1, by your definition, Alan Moore's Watchmen would be wahoo, because the superpowers have escaped the adventure and gotten into the setting, whereas most of the output of Marvel and DC would be less wahoo because in large part the world remains the same as our own.

Would you regard Malory's Morte d'Arthur as wahoo? He placed the technology of the 15th century, plate armoured knights, 1000 years earlier in the Dark Ages. Plate armour on King Arthur is the same as dressing a goblin in a spacesuit.

You seem to be saying that the syntheses of incompatible ideas that happened in the 70s - adding druids and bards to a supposedly medieval game (like Malory, 1000 years out of time), the Oriental monk in the Occident, monsters from sci-fi such as the displacer beast and the roper - aren't wahoo, whereas very similar syntheses of ideas occurring today are.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Traditional relies on Norse, Celtic, Greek, Indian, Chinese, etc.

I was reading up on some Celtic myth for my game today and it's crazy, crazy stuff. Flowers turn into women, turn into owls. The voyage of Maeldun features islands of giant ants, killer horses, a sea of glass and cloud kingdoms. Cu Chulainn's a shapechanging superhero who was trained how to do wuxia leaps in another dimension.

Celtic myth alone is wahoo, before you start mixing in the mythologies of other cultures.

 

[Ariosto]

Would Arduin be "wahoo"? As far as I know, it never went whole-hog "magical industrial revolution" (although the Multiversal Trading Co. seems to have commercialized plenty for those with the gold) -- but if memory serves, all sorts of critters and things mixed pretty freely. "Take a troll [or deodanth, phraint, techno, superhero, etc.,] to lunch."

I'm pretty sure the Grimjack comics would count, and my early-'80s D&D campaign was pretty much like that.

Empire of the Petal Throne is probably not wahoo, just unique, eh?

 

[TwinBahamut]

1) Fantasy elements that have no basis in traditional mythology. Traditional relies on Norse, Celtic, Greek, Indian, Chinese, etc. mythology plus the modern materials added by Tolkien, Gygax, and Arneson to the traditional larder of D&D fare.

You threw Celtic, Indian, and Chinese mythology in there... In fact, even Norse and Greek...

Real world mythology is so far on the "wahoo" side of the scale it is ridiculous. You only get the common idea of "traditional" fantasy from mythology if you tone it down and ignore half of it. I mean, among many other things Indian mythology involves characters like heroic monkey-men demigods who can carry a Himalayan mountain down to Sri Lanka in one leap. The Celtic hero Cu Chulainn's threw his spear, Gae Bulg, using his toes, and the spear is said to split into countless barbs upon contact, piercing every joint in its target's body. Norse mythology involves an evil ship of the dead made entirely out of human fingernails and toenails. Various kinds of mythology have stories of creation that would get me in trouble with the moderators if I related them here.

Mythology is weird. If you accept it as the basis for "traditional", then pretty much anything but the most outlandish stuff deliberately meant for ridiculousness and parody will qualify. Certainly the Dragonborn and various other controversial 4E elements would not be considered "wahoo" under such a definition.

This, of course, is a major reason why I dislike the "traditional vs. wahoo" distinction.