What have you done with the sacred cow?

[myrdden]

sometimes I've a feeling I'm in a minority for the way I see fairies.

I am curious. Could you explain more please?

Myrdden

 

[Ciaran]

Re: Re: What have you done with the sacred cow?

Here are what I consider the true sacred cows of D&D.

1) Humans are the dominant culture.
1a) That culture is Feudal in nature.
2) Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, and Gnomes are all predominantly good races.
2a) Elves like forests. Dwarves like Mountains.
3) The land and climate resembles Midevil Europe.
4) The existence of gods is blatently obvious, as they take an intrest in mortal affairs.
5) Slaying monsters, Rescuing Princesses, Finding lost Treasures, and surviving elaborate traps makes you more powerful then mere mortals, to the point where it takes several good stabbings with a sword to make you get dead. And very often, it wont take.

I think it's a testament to the sacred-cowness of the PC races that you don't even list their existence as a sacred cow:

2b) The following races exist in all settings: Elves, Dwarves, Halflings and Gnomes.

Why should every D&D game have all of these Tolkien-derivative crypto-humans crawling around? Much original fantasy uses only humans, or has idiosyncratic versions of elves and dwarves that draw their inspiration from older sources, or have other odd sorts of non-human races, such as cat-people and the like.

- Eric

 

[Greybar]

Off the top of my head:

* Humans were 99.9% of local pop. Well, until some campaign specific events anyway. They still are 99.9% of the PC race pop.

* No horses

John

 

[hong]

Re: Re: Re: What have you done with the sacred cow?

I think it's a testament to the sacred-cowness of the PC races that you don't even list their existence as a sacred cow:

2b) The following races exist in all settings: Elves, Dwarves, Halflings and Gnomes.

They don't exist in mine.

Why should every D&D game have all of these Tolkien-derivative crypto-humans crawling around?

This must be some new meaning of "every" which I wasn't previously aware of.

 

[coyote6]

Hmm, no settings where humans don't exist at all. Maybe humans are the Ultimate Sacred Cow.

My submission to the WotC setting search had humans being created from halflings via magical tinkering by dragons, IIRC.

 

[Nifft]

IMC there are no Commoners. Human population is too small to afford such useless people. Magic is as common as the default power level implies, but that has created a society which depends on magic as much as ours depends on technology.

Druids and Clerics, working for the King, use Stone Shape and Wood Shape to create roads and aquaducts. (For bridges over chasms, low-level Wizards Levitate 300 lb blocks of stone, which horses drag into horizontal position, and Druids "cement" in place.)

The kingdom where the PCs start is pretty much a default D&D setting -- Dwarves, Humans, Elves, Gnomes, Halflings, etc. -- but that kingdom is a sheltered part of the world, and the rest of the world is quite different.

-- Nifft