Who are Howard and Leiber?

[haakon1]

It's all been downhill since Homer.

I tend to agree with the Epicurean from Seamus Heaney's country . . . there are only a few true classics.

To me, the classics to which all D&D players need to be introduced are, in historical order:
- The Odyssey. (In a pinch, hope they've at least seen "Troy", "Jason and the Argonauts", "Empire", or any other sandals and togas type movie.)
- Beowulf, preferably the Seamus Heaney version
- Robin Hood, preferably the 1930s Errol Flynn movie version
- The Knights of the Round-Table, preferably Monty Python's version
- The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings
- Star Wars
- Conan the Barbarian (198x movie)
- The 13th Warrior (Beowulf reinterpreted)
- LOTR movies

That's a complete education, IMHO.

Lots of things are good for extra credit, like H.P. Lovecraft, "Willow", "Braveheart", those little Osprey books, or watching "Battlefield Britain" . . .

 

[haakon1]

rogue vs rouge

What's wrong with a little French? :\

 

[Hussar]

When you boil it right down, one of the biggest changes from fantasy novels of the past to DnD and fantasy novels of the present is the inclusion of wizard protagonists. Whether it's Howard or Tolkein, or even older stories, the wizards have always been at best sidekicks and more often than not, antagonists.

The second you have a wizard protagonist, magic has to be somewhat predictable and dependable. If the protagonist has to spend three weeks chanting in a circle every time he wants to do magic, it's going to make for a pretty boring story. It would certainly make for a very boring game.

So, if you want to have wizard heroes, the magic has to function, more or less, like technology. Perform act A get result B as expected. Otherwise, the wizard hero can't do any magic without constantly worrying about blowing himself up. While this works in some novels, like Thomas Covenant, it tends to get pretty old and stale after a while. We WANT wizards who can casts the spells to makes the bads mens fall down.

Fantasy as a genre has followed this trend. Harry Potter is a perfect example of this. Magic is still dangerous, but, is still pretty much like technology in that if you know the right thing to do, you get the desired effect. Eberron, from what I can see, takes this approach as well. If magic is predictable, then it WILL be included in daily lives. For it to not be makes no logical sense.

DnD magic has always been predictable. The arguements against household magic have been specious at best and never in keeping with the actual mechanics of the game. If magic is so dangerous and difficult, then how come a normal person with an average intelligence score, can cast spells?

 

[S'mon]

If magic is so dangerous and difficult, then how come a normal person with an average intelligence score, can cast spells?

It was only with 3.0 that the rulebooks stated that with training any INT 10+ person could cast Wizard spells. Previously only rare exceptional individuals could become Wizards or _any_ character class - BXCMI D&D stated that 1% of the population could be Classed, which is the figure I use for PC-class in my current 3e campaign.

 

[S'mon]

I agree that spellcasting protagonists is a recent, 20th century phenomenon, though not _terribly_ recent - post Tolkien, but I think A Wizard of Earthsea was published in the '60s & there are probably earlier examples (The Magician's Nephew?)

 

[The Shaman]

When you boil it right down, one of the biggest changes from fantasy novels of the past to DnD and fantasy novels of the present is the inclusion of wizard protagonists. Whether it's Howard or Tolkein, or even older stories, the wizards have always been at best sidekicks and more often than not, antagonists.

The Grey Mouser, one of Fritz Leiber's legendary protagonists, is a wizard - try The Unholy Grail.

 

[S'mon]

The Grey Mouser, one of Fritz Leiber's legendary protagonists, is a wizard - try The Unholy Grail.

Well he casts 2 spells in the entire series - 1 spontaneous blast of magic when he was Mouse, and a failed attempt to read a scroll. Not exactly Merlin!

 

[Turjan]

I agree that spellcasting protagonists is a recent, 20th century phenomenon, though not _terribly_ recent - post Tolkien, but I think A Wizard of Earthsea was published in the '60s & there are probably earlier examples (The Magician's Nephew?)

I can only repeat: 'The Dying Earth', 1950. The protagonists of the first two stories are spellcasters.

 

[S'mon]

Yep, I think you see it from the '50s on. Like I said, 20th century phenomenon.

 

[Hussar]

It was only with 3.0 that the rulebooks stated that with training any INT 10+ person could cast Wizard spells. Previously only rare exceptional individuals could become Wizards or _any_ character class - BXCMI D&D stated that 1% of the population could be Classed, which is the figure I use for PC-class in my current 3e campaign.

Take a look at your 2e PHB. Requirement for playing a wizard= Intelligence of 9. The fact that they went ahead and said that only 1% of the population is classed only proves how they couldn't be bothered to take the mechanics to any sort of logical conclusion. If an average intelligence PC could become a (poor) mage, then why can't anyone do it? The double standard of PC's to everyone else is at the heart of this discussion. Earlier editions didn't match the mechanics to the worlds they developed.

But let's go with this 1% figure for a second. The population of Germany in the 1300's was around 14 million people. That translates to 140 000 classed citizens. Figure a fairly even distribution of classes, which, considering the requirements for any given base class - Fighter, Cleric, Mage, Rogue - are pretty much identical, isn't a bad assumption, that gives us about 14 000 mages and 14 000 clerics. Roughly. Now, if the political power of that area could conscript/hire 10% of those, he's got 1400 mages and clerics to play with at any given time. Granted, most of those would be low level, 5th or less, but, then again, there are many low level spells which would make household magic very useful. Given a few decades, it wouldn't be difficult for a nation to build up a vast store of magical knowledge and whatnot. And this is the logical conclusion of a completely arbitrary 1% figure. Never mind that in earlier editions, only humans were zero level. All the demihumans were at least 1st level somethings.

Dnd has shaped modern fantasy just as much as its been shaped. Forcing common themes like magic to follow logical conclusions is a basic concept of campaign building. Fantasy and DnD is locked into a virtuous circle where concepts from one migrate to the other, get tossed around, changed, warped and made better then tossed back to the first.

Yes, there are examples of wizard protagonists prior to the last twenty years. That's true. However, VERY few people have read Vance, and two examples hardly make for an overwhelming change to the genre. It's been the last twenty years before you saw protagonist wizards in any numbers. While they did exist prior to about 1980, they were pretty few and far between and VASTLY outnumbered. Now, with Eddings, Wiess and Hickman, and Rowlings and Brooks and a host of other authors, wizards are frequently featured as the protagonist. This is a major change from earlier fantasty, say pre-1975.

/edit - taking things to their logical extention