Re: Swords and Sorcery: Defining the genre
Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2018 6:29 pm
Where everything is possible.
http://echoesofthemultiverse.com/
Davies wrote: ↑Sat Apr 07, 2018 6:50 am Barbarians of Lemuria
Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea
Beasts and Barbarians, for Savage Worlds
Thanks for the suggestions, I'll have to check those out.Chris Brady wrote: ↑Sat Apr 07, 2018 8:29 am For those who have small groups, I can recommend Scarlet Heroes by Sine Nomine. I like the way it does combat.
Speaking strictly in D&D terms the setting that got it right was Eberron, where the faith of cleric allowed him to cast spells, not special dispensation from the higher-ups.Batgirl III wrote: ↑Thu Apr 19, 2018 4:47 pm Here’s another aspect of gods in these settings, that I think the default D&D role of Clerics has obscured: The gods may or may not be real, but people still believe in them. Completely.
Conan never meets Krom on his mountain top and the Four Winds never let Subotai cast Cure Light Wounds. But both men believe, strongly and deeply, in their faiths.
I've probably gone on this rant before, but I've got a Love/Hate relationship with the Lorraine Williams era of TSR. On the one hand, the woman was an absolute tyrant who despite being an allegedly successful businesswoman, basically killed TSR with her business practices. She refused to let the game designers actually playtest their games ("I'm not paying you to play games on company time"), requiring the guys to do playtesting on their own time. She forced the team to pump out book after book of so many different D&D franchises that fans couldn't hope to buy them all, so they wound up focusing on just one franchise, which ironically caused D&D to be in competition WITH ITSELF, and ate into their profits. And speaking of profits, Williams forced TSR to produce Buck Rogers material because she personally owned the Buck Rogers license, meaning most of the profits went directly into her pocket and not the company. She was literally toxic to the company, and it's no wonder they never recovered.Batgirl III wrote: ↑Thu Apr 19, 2018 10:18 pm This seems to have been something that got added to the game in the Lorraine Williams era of TSR. Williams was reportedly very hostile to "Anti-Christian" and "Overtly Catholic" elements of the hobby -- renaming devils to Baatezu, among other things, bing one of the more infamous parts of this -- and I suspect this is why a lot of the Paladins' and Clerics' direct thematic inspiration, the crusading militaris ordinis and holy wars of the European Middle Ages, were dropped from the game. By the time WotC took over the game, the new designers were writing for a young and more PC audience.
From what I've heard and a few inside rumors there are plans, but not in the classic format. From the D&D Surveys it seem that complete settings score pretty low in many people's list of priorities for an RPG. As a result the development team is focusing on adventures that seem to work much better. Personally I would to see more moduels built like Curse of Strahd, which is both a campaign-long adventure and a setting at the same time.Ares wrote: ↑Fri Apr 20, 2018 4:25 am I've probably gone on this rant before, but I've got a Love/Hate relationship with the Lorraine Williams era of TSR. On the one hand, the woman was an absolute tyrant who despite being an allegedly successful businesswoman, basically killed TSR with her business practices. She refused to let the game designers actually playtest their games ("I'm not paying you to play games on company time"), requiring the guys to do playtesting on their own time. She forced the team to pump out book after book of so many different D&D franchises that fans couldn't hope to buy them all, so they wound up focusing on just one franchise, which ironically caused D&D to be in competition WITH ITSELF, and ate into their profits. And speaking of profits, Williams forced TSR to produce Buck Rogers material because she personally owned the Buck Rogers license, meaning most of the profits went directly into her pocket and not the company. She was literally toxic to the company, and it's no wonder they never recovered.
And yet, during her time we probably had my favorite era of TSR in terms of what the company was putting out. While I think D&D 5th is overall my favorite version of the system, that 4th edition was a fine system (just not for D&D), and I liked a lot of what 3rd edition did in terms of character creation, that era of Advanced D&D was my favorite in terms of setting material. Mystara. Forgotten Realms. Ravenloft. Spelljammer. Dark Sun. Planescape. We got some really fun, really amazing settings that added to the flavor of D&D and showed what you could with the game. Ever since 3rd edition, D&D has focused more on the rules than their worlds, and I'm hoping we'll eventually see the return of those fleshed out campaign settings.
Ares wrote: ↑Fri Apr 20, 2018 4:25 amMy own personal take on Faith in most of my games is that Faith is like a muscle: just having it isn't enough. You've got to strengthen it, and then also know how to use it to really make it effective. At the same time, someone with Faith needs something of a divine origin for that faith to give them actual supernatural abilities. Having Faith in the Sky Being Blue is not going to give you 3rd level Cleric spells. I actually find that Warcraft of all places handled this pretty well with the Holy Light, a positive, benevolent and 100% purely good force who can empower you, but your faith, your purity of intent and spirit, is what determines how powerful you are.
For Paladins I prefer to go on a tangent and handle them in a different way. As you said the defining trait of Paladins is often the conviction, the purity of purpose. Combine it with the fact that some of their powers are more "personal" than those of a Cleric and ... well, I think that an argument can be make that a Paladin doesn't draw power from the god, but rather from their conviction.Ares wrote: ↑Fri Apr 20, 2018 4:25 amGoing this route, I'd also have Paladins be separate from Clerics in that Paladins basically draw their power from the force of Good directly, rather than through the worship of a god.While gods of Good are still good beings, they do have their own agendas, biases and the like, and might prioritize things differently. A Paladin simply serves the forces of Good itself, and while it takes a much stronger faith and purity of purpose to gain those abilities, doing so makes Paladins in true heroes with incredible abilities. Thus Paladins are much rarer than Clerics, and in some ways less versatile, but they're often more powerful, more nobler, and purer.
After reading series like Fullmetal Alchemist and The Dresden Files, I have to admit to preferring to have have all of the rules for how metaphysics work all mapped out beforehand. It creates a nice sense of internal logic that I find most fiction fans appreciate. As one of my friends once put it, "We don't want plausible nearly as much as we want consistent". If you make sure things work the way they're suppose to, not only do you create a bit of verisimilitude, but when those rules get broken, rather than feeling like a "Silver Age-y out the ass power pull", it becomes a plot point that fans can notice and can have some payoff.Batgirl III wrote: ↑Fri Apr 20, 2018 5:52 pmEven better: I don’t have to bother to figure out the metaphysics in the first place!