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Worlds of Design: Citing Your Sources
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<blockquote data-quote="Aaron L" data-source="post: 7781246" data-attributes="member: 926"><p>I loved reading The Role of Books!</p><p></p><p>"But why read something not closely related to games when you can read something made for games?"</p><p></p><p>I much prefer to rely on original sources for my gaming material than to just take things from gaming specific books, for very harsh reason; Ever here of the band Pop Will Eat Itself? Well, Gaming Is Eating Itself. So much of modern D&D isn't based on any kind of historical, mythological, literary, or pulp sources, but rather on ideas from other games or older versions of itself, or from books based on D&D, and get endlessly recycled and watered down with each use to the point where players don't even understand the origins and implications of the original ideas. </p><p></p><p>As an example, not long ago we had characters end up entering Faerie and my character warned everyone to be careful about accepting any gifts or eating any food offered by the inhabitants because accepting gifts from or eating the food of the faeries might cause them to be trapped there forever. And one of the other players stopped the game and asked me what book that idea came from, so I had to explain that it wasn't from any D&D book and I had no idea if it applied to the game, but it was from the actual real world mythology of faeries so I thought it might have been a legend my character had heard, and I had to go into a discussion about Fairyland and the Sidhe and explain the mythological origins of the D&D concept of fey creatures. I was shocked that no one had ever heard of the concept, hadn't they ever read any fairytales, or Rip Van Winkle, or at least read The Sandman and the Books of Magic? </p><p></p><p>I just feel that the same ideas get mindlessly recycled over and over again in D&D without any understanding or knowledge of their sources, and end up being Disneyfied, by which I mean a tamed, toned down, mass-consumer version of the original ideas, like how Disney takes real myths and legends and sanitizes and whitewashes them into bland, saccharine versions, and then that become the standard because no one ever reads the originals anymore. (As with how the generic default for gnomes in fantasy literature has pretty much now become standardized as Dragonlance Tinker Gnomes, absent-minded professors building crazy inventions that blow up in their faces, instead of being the wise fey Earth spirits with black senses of humor of actual myth. UGH. I cannot stand what Gnomes have become thanks to Dragonlance.) How many people have ever read the actual bloody Brothers Grimm version of Snow White, compared to the sanitized Disney version? Or The Hunchback of Notre Dame? Or Beauty and the Beast? Not to mention the actual real story of Pocahontas compared to the whitewashed Disney travesty.</p><p></p><p>People really need to read the original mythological and historical and pulp sources of D&D concepts so they can understand and appreciate the full meaning of the ideas behind D&D, because they're almost always more nuanced, deep, and meaningful, and there are always more ideas to be mined from the original sources, and so that gaming doesn't lose its heart and roots by regurgitating the same ideas over and over in increasingly bland permutations. Instead of just repeating empty RPG tropes without understanding the actual meanings behind them, we need to appreciate the classics behind the gaming.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Aaron L, post: 7781246, member: 926"] I loved reading The Role of Books! "But why read something not closely related to games when you can read something made for games?" I much prefer to rely on original sources for my gaming material than to just take things from gaming specific books, for very harsh reason; Ever here of the band Pop Will Eat Itself? Well, Gaming Is Eating Itself. So much of modern D&D isn't based on any kind of historical, mythological, literary, or pulp sources, but rather on ideas from other games or older versions of itself, or from books based on D&D, and get endlessly recycled and watered down with each use to the point where players don't even understand the origins and implications of the original ideas. As an example, not long ago we had characters end up entering Faerie and my character warned everyone to be careful about accepting any gifts or eating any food offered by the inhabitants because accepting gifts from or eating the food of the faeries might cause them to be trapped there forever. And one of the other players stopped the game and asked me what book that idea came from, so I had to explain that it wasn't from any D&D book and I had no idea if it applied to the game, but it was from the actual real world mythology of faeries so I thought it might have been a legend my character had heard, and I had to go into a discussion about Fairyland and the Sidhe and explain the mythological origins of the D&D concept of fey creatures. I was shocked that no one had ever heard of the concept, hadn't they ever read any fairytales, or Rip Van Winkle, or at least read The Sandman and the Books of Magic? I just feel that the same ideas get mindlessly recycled over and over again in D&D without any understanding or knowledge of their sources, and end up being Disneyfied, by which I mean a tamed, toned down, mass-consumer version of the original ideas, like how Disney takes real myths and legends and sanitizes and whitewashes them into bland, saccharine versions, and then that become the standard because no one ever reads the originals anymore. (As with how the generic default for gnomes in fantasy literature has pretty much now become standardized as Dragonlance Tinker Gnomes, absent-minded professors building crazy inventions that blow up in their faces, instead of being the wise fey Earth spirits with black senses of humor of actual myth. UGH. I cannot stand what Gnomes have become thanks to Dragonlance.) How many people have ever read the actual bloody Brothers Grimm version of Snow White, compared to the sanitized Disney version? Or The Hunchback of Notre Dame? Or Beauty and the Beast? Not to mention the actual real story of Pocahontas compared to the whitewashed Disney travesty. People really need to read the original mythological and historical and pulp sources of D&D concepts so they can understand and appreciate the full meaning of the ideas behind D&D, because they're almost always more nuanced, deep, and meaningful, and there are always more ideas to be mined from the original sources, and so that gaming doesn't lose its heart and roots by regurgitating the same ideas over and over in increasingly bland permutations. Instead of just repeating empty RPG tropes without understanding the actual meanings behind them, we need to appreciate the classics behind the gaming. [/QUOTE]
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