What if you brought 4E back to 1970?

[JRRNeiklot]

You'd get laughed at less if you painted yourself pink and ran across the football field during the superbowl. Naked. In Minnesota.

 

[haakon1]

Of the two dozen players I have played with in my group(s) since 1997, six of them wanted to either be part-dragon, have dragon abilities, or be a large scalely Lizard-esque race. There has always been a demand for a race like the Dragonborn since I have played D&D. So in my opinion, by making the Dragonborn the baseline for players, the dislike you have now for Dragonborn would be as ludicrious as saying that half-orcs are lame now if you sent 4E back to the 70s

Lizardmen, I don't mind at all. And half-orcs make sense to me, and let you play an outcast race (without being a Drizzt clone), which can be appealing sometimes.

But part-dragon makes no sense to me, fluff-wise, and annoys me as being way too gee whiz for a serious game. Totally destroys my suspension of disbelief to imagine people and dragons can have kids together, or that two-legged mini-dragons are running around.

So I'm thinking my first 4e character, which will be in a beer & pretzels campaign, will be played for laughs: Malpo (Meepo + Alpo) the Mighty, a firebreathing low-Int barbarian Dragonborn, played pretty much like Belkar but with a megalomaniac obsession that he is destined to become The Dragon Master (not that Malpo or I know what that means!). And he'll also be obsessed with being racist against any non-standard race PC's or NPC's he encounters -- gnomes bear the mark of the Devil, etc.

 

[Garthanos]

Lizardmen, I don't mind at all. And half-orcs make sense to me, and let you play an outcast race (without being a Drizzt clone), which can be appealing sometimes.

So you just dont pay any attention to the fact that Tolkien Orcs as a race of likely non-reproducing beings... now reproduces with humans? (Legalos and Glimli never had to worry about the moral quandries of killing Orc babies as there weren't any to kill) and there is no real world legends... inspite of Tolkein borrowing a generic name-word meaning monster for his Orcs.
Evil sorcerors and witch kings make orcs as cannon fodder... the things dont reproduce.

But part-dragon makes no sense to me, fluff-wise, and annoys me as being way too gee whiz for a serious game. Totally destroys my suspension of disbelief to imagine people and dragons can have kids together, or that two-legged mini-dragons are running around.

So the fact that Dragons are incredibly magical and many of them like humans and shape change in to humans regularly in myth and legend doesn't imply something to you? It isnt just gamer geeks who like the idea the real world peoples believed they descended from Dragons (Vietnam) or have there royal lineage descended from Dragons. There is better support for dragon people in myth and legend than a generic monster race that makes babies with humans.

I would say that if I wanted the humans bred with dragon origin for them it would be more appropriate if Dragonborn had duo form like the shifters (this would connect them to the heritage of descended from someone who shape changed in order to interact with humans). Even given that it seems plausible that some of them didn't get the ability to shift but were stranded one way or the other... as a dragonlike humanoid or a human seeming person with magical power just like there kindred and no dragonish appearance (mechanically dragonborn maybe maybe just any sorceror with claim to Dragonblood).

In general my game world doesn't look much like mainline D&D and never has... ie no orc or half orc

In general the "racial archetypes" I use as ability templates the fluff is something i control not the game designers. And 4e actually encourages this.

 

[haakon1]

So you just dont pay any attention to the fact that Tolkien Orcs as a race of likely non-reproducing beings... now reproduces with humans?(Legalos and Glimli never had to worry about the moral quandries of killing Orc babies as there weren't any to kill) and there is no real world legends... inspite of Tolkein borrowing a generic name-word meaning monster for his Orcs.
Evil sorcerors and witch kings make orcs as cannon fodder... the things dont reproduce.

IIRC, orcs from vats were an invention of the movie, not the book. And those were not orcs, but uruk-hai, the "improved" version used by Saruman, not the regular orcs/goblins used by Sauron. There's also some debate as to whether orcs were "corrupted" versions of elves, or something else -- IIRC, Tolkien was never entirely clear on the matter, but did say that Morgoth/Sauron can't create life, which implies corruption rather than creation, and PERHAPS breeding to replace their ranks thereafter . . . either that, or the supply of orcs would have been dwindling over the ages.

And in my opinion, though it's been over a decade since I last read it, one of the villains in Bree seemed like a half-orc . . . I don't recall if that term was used or not, and I might be remembering it completely wrong.

As for no orc babies (or females, for that matter) "on screen" meaning that orcs don't reproduce, IIIRC the Lord of the Rings shows you only the orcs in battle and in military camps.

In "Saving Private Ryan", there are no female or baby Germans -- does that mean Germans are also grown in vats?

In any case, the discussion of orcs and half-orcs is orthogonal to the question of whether Dragonborn are lame.

I say they are lame -- for me, it's a gut level revulsion at something that just goes too far, so I can't take it the game seriously if they are in it as PC's.

To me, Dragonborn are to D&D what Kiss is to heavy metal -- so over the top that they can only be a joke. Jokes are fine sometimes, and I've played D&D for laughs myself in the past, but nowadays I prefer to run "serious" games, and I can't take Dragonborn seriously.

You say they are not lame, but fit the story you want and the real mythology you know and like.

OK, I'm sure it does, but I don't see it when I see Dragonborn.

And you don't see the point of orcs and half-orcs. Trust me when I say I've had fun playing half-orcs. Obviously, your mileage does vary.

We're never going to convince each other, other than that we have different opinions and should live and let live, so let's just leave it at that.

Sorry for joking around about Dragonborn. I get it that there are people who like it and take it seriously, so the joking isn't funny for everyone.

Can we both agree that spikey armor is silly?

 

[Celebrim]

In the original 'Back to the Future', Marty goes back to the 50's wearing what was in the 80's fairly ordinary dress. He is made fun of for being a dork, and even people who aren't trying to be mean can only imagine that he's in the coast gaurd.

I think you'd have a similar problem if you took 4e back to the early '70's.

The first problem that you'd run into is that there is no market for your product. No one plays RPGs. Virtually no one games. The Parker Brothers/Avalon Hill board gaming reinaissance of the 1950's is over. No one has the slightest idea what an RPG is. No one has the slightest interest in playing RPG's. The very first reaction you'd get from most people would probably be, "Is that some sort of book about Occultism?" If you're lucky, this might entice some people to play, but 1970 outside of the counterculture is still a pretty conservative era. Compare television and movies in 1970 to TV and movies in 1980 and you'll see that if you aren't on the front lines of the counter culture, the average home is far more insulated from the cultural changes going on in the world than they were in 1980. In quite a few parts of the country, people have never even seen a hippy except on TV - check out a few high school yearbooks from the period.

So most people would react to you as if you were a Satanist dork.

There is however at this time a proto-RPG culture - war gamers. The problem that you would have marketing 4e to 1970's war gamers is that they'd have no idea what they are looking at. The 1970's gamer geeks are steeped in a culture of historical reinactment, Conan, The Dying Earth, The Lord of the Rings, HP Lovecraft, Elric of Melniboné, and Ffard and the Grey Mouser. They are bemoaning the cancellation of the original Star Trek. Star Wars hasn't happened yet. Modern fantasy barely exists yet. You have no real way of communicating to them what was 'cool' about the new game. The historical grognards would turn their noses up at its lack of authenticity and its lack of concern for modelling the world of the 11th century. The Pantheon of dieties is utterly foreign and nothing like the familiar legends of mythology. The fantasy nerds would find the game completely unsuitable for playing Conan or The Lord of the Rings. The Ranger of 2009 is nothing like Aragorn, it's source material, and neither are the halflings or the elves. These are derivitives of derivitives of derivitives which run by game logic laid down over 40 years. They are nothing like you'd create if you were trying to be Conan or Aragorn, and are even in the eyes of modern players which don't find the concepts so alien still utterly unsuited for such a task. You have to recall that for the first 20 or so years of the game, the main thrust of RPG players was trying to achieve greater and greater realism. Realism was practically the Holy Grail of RPG design for the first two decades of its existance. Introducing 4e wouldn't change that, and I think early players would utterly reject 4e's complete rejection of realism (even more so than the most avid haters of 4e today) because they have no real basis for understanding why it would do so precisely because they haven't seen the results of striving for more 'realistic' play.

I think that the majority war gamers would think you were a total dork playing a children's game that wasn't worth their time - which is how they reacted to oD&D even with its clear wargaming roots and culturally familiar references.

A few would see the power of the concept, and be intrigued by it, but its not at all clear to me what they'd make of it. The game that they'd probably make and want to play would probably be nothing like either 4e (with its alien culture and proud lack of realism) or oD&D (because you'd introduced some higher tech tools for solving problems). I think you'd very soon get the same sort of divisions in the RPG world that we have now and probably always will have - rules 'light' vs. 'heavy', simulation vs. game, player ability vs. character ability, imagination vs. tactical depth, and so forth. I think the best that can be said is that the game would evolve faster, because you wouldn't have to invent a gaming system from scratch, but would at least have a template of a mature system that has considered all sorts of areas of gaming.

 

[Garthanos]

There's also some debate as to whether orcs were "corrupted" versions of elves, or something else -- IIRC, Tolkien was never entirely clear on the matter, but did say that Morgoth/Sauron can't create life, which implies corruption rather than creation, and PERHAPS breeding to replace their ranks thereafter . . . either that, or the supply of orcs would have been dwindling over the ages.

Elves didnt age... so the dwindling might be overcome by ongoing corruption (capture and tortuous transformation = forced form of corruption) ... If orcs were corrupted elves the best evidence we have... (Elves/Humans did not make a separate race but rather one or the other - theoretically neither would orcs).. it is kind of an iffy thing but the cannot create "real" life could also mean what it influences and consumes loses its "grace" why would it be able create life and reproduce either?

Probably for me the only context orcs have dignity is in there original one, ie if my setting was middle earth...

I was asserting there is no evidence that time traveled back anyone not influenced by a previous game version would find half orcs more plausible or less for that matter than the offspring of shape shifted dragons (something with actual myth backing it).

Which was the gist of it....

 

[Celebrim]

Your gut response seems at most to be unreasoned nostalgia... I see no more evidence from the prevalence in real legend of peoples mixing with shape shifting dragon and humans... that time travelled back anyone not influenced by a previous game version would find half orcs more plausible or less for that matter.

Well, probably no one before the Lord of the Rings, that's for sure. But, it's strongly implied by the text that Bill Ferny's hidden guest is a half-orc, which is where the game notion comes from I imagine. The phrase appears in several places in the text of LotR, as does the phrase 'half-elf'. That the half-elves of LotR are nothing like the half-elves of D&D probably reflects more an intuitive (genetic) notion of what 'half-blooded' means than the more spiritual concept actually present in the LotR (humans and elves are for all practical purposes genetically identical in LotR, the only difference between them being the spiritual gifts they posess). However, there is little doubt that half-elves appear in D&D because of 'Elrond Half-Elven'.

The same is true of half-orcs.

 

[Garthanos]

I The very first reaction you'd get from most people would probably be, "Is that some sort of book about Occultism?" If you're lucky, this might entice some people to play, but 1970 outside of the counterculture is still a pretty conservative era.

My life in the 70's may have been conservative (I was a teen in late 70s') to most appearances but there was a strong sense that there were things both positive and negative in the counterculture of the 60's and that it could be learned from there was a sense that bigotry was very bad, women were powerful and some very light hearted star trek like attitudes that the world can be made to be a better place... (the original star trek ... wasn't that popular when it came out it blossomed later).
I don't think rooting of conservativism was as heavily seated as you imply... there was influence going on, much of the 60's counter culture was growing up and settling down a little ie it was becoming a part of main culture instead of being counter.

Wierdly the game I would be interested in taking back would be... Fate (Spirit of the Century or the version just prior).

The game would be less targeting wargamers than D&D 4e. It wouldnt have the targetted wow is that ocultism pull ;-) though

 

[Thunderfoot]

Believe it or not I think one thing that would kill the popularity of 4e is the bastardized use of the English language. (yeah, I realize that sounds stupid but just follow me for a second.)

One reason that D&D caught on was due to the underground movement of the college set, highly educated and very intent on detail.... WTF is all this "she" crap in the text explaining the understood neuter gender values of a person? It would be one offed as the ravings of a lunatic, your young teachers who were once the young students in college wouldn't introduce it to their "gifted" students a few years later and the entire thing sinks like the Titanic.

There are a lot of little mundane things that are taken for granted by the OP, like new is better, it's not. Finely tuned system, I have yet to see any finely tuned game systems. That the "wow" factor will take it over the top. Remember, Star Wars was just some cult flick when it was released and didn't attain legitimacy until MANY years latter. The assumptions that "knowing what we know now" would necessarily blow away the "what we knew then" theory is sketchy at best and just wrong in the opposite direction.

I honestly can't say what would happen, my cousin who introduced me to the game played with Gary back in the day, so maybe I don't play. A lot of the "charm" and widespread appeal of the early game was due to the tenacity of the "founding fathers" of the hobby, without, it probably fails, but who can really say? There are a lot of little failures with second guessing history in any form.

 

[Garthanos]

IIRC, orcs from vats were an invention of the movie, not the book.

Saruman was again implied responsible in the book for the vague little mention of someone that might have looked like a goblin-like human... "ugly human" with treacherous attitude. I think that was the source of both the movie element and a reinforcement for the idea that they don't reproduce. They didn't do this mingling of blood on their own. It seems unlikely to me orcs would reproduce naturally... even if elves can create offspring with humans normally (offspring which are either human or elf at some point), and I am sticking to that analysis... for the darkness doesn't create it merely warps and corrupts something already created that was a core theme. Its not about not seeing orc babies in war camps... its about them being contra to Tolkein philosophy.