# Is D&D 4E too "far out" to expand the market easily?



## Ruin Explorer (Jun 30, 2008)

This thread was caused by thinking about this post:



The Green Adam said:


> A) Dungeons & Dragons has become increasing distant from its medieval fantasy origins and these creatures just seem to reinforce that. I feel the starter book should have a more basic array of creatures and said beings should be a bit more classic. After looking through the 4E Player's Handbook, a non-gamer female friend said to me, "Are there any Dragons or Dungeons in this game? This looks like another planet. Its like Star Wars."
> 
> I imagine she is one of the people that WotC/Hasbro is trying to market to...a creative and intelligent young professional who doesn't buy their product but might. She is a history buff and a fan of classic literature but sees nothing of the mass market elements she expects to see that might interest her. It doesn't look like Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. It looks weird and confusing. She's in consulting and marketing herself btw.
> 
> ...




Now, let it be clear that I don't dislike Dragonborn and I like the concept of Tieflings (albeit not the particular "look" they have in 4E), but I do think that Green Adam is on to something here. Now, fantasy is inherently "far out" to some degree, but what I'm wondering is, is 4E's basic setting so far out that it loses touch with reality entirely and becomes hard to relate to? Obviously, I'm actually interested in opinions, because I can see it both ways, myself. Is it still grounded enough but perhaps teetering on the edge of "too unreal", I wonder.

I wonder because most popular non-gaming fantasy, whether it's LotRO, or Harry Potter, or what-have-you, posit human-o-centric universes, and previously D&D very much did this. In 4E, it explicitly doesn't, the assumption being (according to the setting development book, at least), that non-human is always more interesting than human. Why have a human miner when you can have a dwarven miner? etc.

Personally, I can certainly feel that as a factor pushing me away from the default setting, and to a lesser extent away from the game as a whole. It's not the rules, let's be clear, they're fine. It's the setting, and it's explicit ultra-high fantasy-ness. It's hard to put the feeling into words without slipping into false perjoratives or using dodgy examples, so I'll try to avoid that. I look at the art of 4E, though, and I very much do see Star Wars, and a world that's extremely distant from ours, almost incomprehensible on any level other than as part of game. I think the difference between 4E and previous editions of D&D isn't so much that this stuff wasn't there before - it mostly was - but rather that it's deeply integrated in the game and kind of present from the get-go. I guess what I'm saying is that the basic level of fantasy in D&D 4E seems so high that I can't really get a handle on how life would be in such a world, and I suspect that it's likely to actually kind of shock any non-gamer coming to D&D.

I mean, coming from something like WoW, you're going to be fine. D&D's implied setting and level of species diversity is very much "on-par" with WoW. Coming from say, a fantasy lit. reading background, or from watching things like LotRO and Harry Potter, though, I think it's going to be a bit wild and extreme, and coming from outside fantasy entirely, I think the world 4E portrays implicitly is so alien that it would extremely difficult to meaningfully connect with. Maybe that's not a big deal, though, given 4E's focus on just providing a good game.

What are your thoughts? Did 4E hit exactly the right level of fantastic-ness? Too much? Too little, even? Does this really matter to 4E's long-term success? Is 4E even likely to meaningfully expand D&D's market anyway, I guess is perhaps another valid question. I wonder perhaps if there's room for a more human and grounded, but equally playable fantasy RPG out there. I think 4E's general rules design makes it wildly more capable of getting new players in and having fun than other RPGs (including 3.5E, Pathfinder, Runequest etc.), but just as much I wonder if the setting is helping or hurting.


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## Snoweel (Jun 30, 2008)

I'm happy with the level of fantasy in 4e.

But back when 3e came out I was very much into the simulationist humanocentric side of the game - to the point where I only allowed human PCs, and even elves and dwarves were portrayed as alien beings.

I've gone off simulationism now. I just want good rules and the ability to play out good stories - and I've come to the realisation that more fantastic is better.


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## mmadsen (Jun 30, 2008)

"Are there any Dragons or Dungeons in this game? This looks like another planet. It's like Star Wars."​Wow.  I think that says it very well.  There's nothing wrong with _wahoo_, but it's not to everyone's taste, and it's much harder to scale back than to scale up.


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## WayneLigon (Jun 30, 2008)

I don't see the implicit setting -- though I'm not even sure I beleive such a thing exists -- as 'too fantastic' as regards previous editions. Humans didn't mean squat in other editions, either; in fact, 3E and now 4E were the only editions that gave you a reason to play a human at all. (In fact, in 3E+ is the first time since I've played D&D [almost 30 years now] that I've seen mostly-human parties). 

I also don't think it's _too _odd or far-apart from the fantasy literature of our day unless one is specifically and foremost an accept-no-substitutes  Tolkien fanatic. People that might come from Harry Potter and many other books will actually wonder why D&D has _so little_ magic in it. The sheer number of intelligent non-humans might give them pause, though.


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## SweeneyTodd (Jun 30, 2008)

Seems like if everybody at the table goes "Ugh, no Star Trek alien lookin races" and the group wants to dump dragonborn or tieflings, that isn't that hard a change to make, though.


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## jdrakeh (Jun 30, 2008)

Nope. It's not too far out. If non-Tolkien-esque races were a deal breaker for the public, then Runequest with its Ducks, Jack Vance's Dying Earth with its Pelgranes, Buffy with its 'good' demons, Farscape with its amphibious, diminutive, multi-stomached, deposed monarchs and so forth would have utterly failed to capture an audience. As it turns out, it seems that most people want more 'new' and 'different', rather than more of 'the same old thing'


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## AllisterH (Jun 30, 2008)

That's kind of weird isn't it?

I mean, weren't dragonborn brought in BECAUSE people wanted to play Dragon races? I mean, looking at the history of 3.x, I'd argue that dragon-style races were the most popular non core race. We got dragon shamans, half-dragon templates, dragon disciples etc and frankly, they SOLD. How many "dragon" themed sourcebooks did WOTC produce? I could see say one sourcebook on dragons but there were more than three and SOMEONE had to be buying all of it.

I always assumed that it was to appeal to the wider audience that things like half-orcs and gnomes got dropped in favour of dragonborn and tieflings.

Gnomes for example, only appear in things like "David the Gnome" and that Traveller Gnome. Not exactly stuff that screams "I want to be THAT race" whereas the half-orc is pretty much absent from non D&D fiction.


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## beeflv30 (Jun 30, 2008)

Feels and looks like D&D to me. Each edition has had it's own share of "far out" features.


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## jdrakeh (Jun 30, 2008)

AllisterH said:


> I always assumed that it was to appeal to the wider audience that things like half-orcs and gnomes got dropped in favour of dragonborn and tieflings.




I'm pretty certain that you're right. As you mention, demon-like and dragon-like humanoids have always been a popular choice for D&D PCs, especially so in D&D 3x, with numerous sourcebook entries dedicated to them. Of course, the prevalence of 'good monsters' in pop culture -- from the 'demons' of Buffy and Angel to the 'freaks' of the BPRD -- cannot be ignored, either. The public _really_ seems to like the idea of playing 'good monsters' and the designers of 4e seem to be aware of this.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 30, 2008)

My dislike of portions of 4Ed is no secret, but I'm also a realist.

I can't see the game as having anything but very good short term success.  Some of the elements I dislike may even contribute to expanding the game's market far beyond the hobby as it is today.

In a sense, it almost seems designed to appeal to a larger, tangentially related market, even if it means that some of the legacy consumers don't come along for the ride.

I wouldn't be surprised if 4Ed gained 2 new players for each old one lost...at least for the next year or so.


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## Mercurius (Jun 30, 2008)

Ruin Explorer said:


> What are your thoughts? Did 4E hit exactly the right level of fantastic-ness? Too much? Too little, even? Does this really matter to 4E's long-term success? Is 4E even likely to meaningfully expand D&D's market anyway, I guess is perhaps another valid question. I wonder perhaps if there's room for a more human and grounded, but equally playable fantasy RPG out there. I think 4E's general rules design makes it wildly more capable of getting new players in and having fun than other RPGs (including 3.5E, Pathfinder, Runequest etc.), but just as much I wonder if the setting is helping or hurting.




The "right level" in terms of what? Personal tastes? Aesthetically? Market potential?

The answer to all of the above is "I'm not sure yet." Personally I don't really dig Dragonborn and Tieflings, but this is not to say I don't like "out there fantasy"--I love Talislanta, for example. I just find Dragonborn and Tieflings to be more "kewl" than "cool" in that they seem like they were designed more in terms of ass-kicking than as artistic fantasy creations. Contrast this to Talislanta in which every race was designed without "game balance" in mind, so that you have a wide range of power levels in terms of race. Each race was designed because it was interesting, not because it would be kewl to play as a player character. Tieflings and Dragonborn, imo, while not being totally aesthetically offensive, are still one step away from a laser gun in one hand, a sword in the other. This, to me, is where D&D has stepped a bit too far into video game land.

But it sounds like your query is specific to marketability, especially with regards to bringing in new players. Being a semi-grognard it is hard for me to say. I don't play World of Warcraft or any video games, so I am coming at D&D more from a fantasy story angle than a video game one. So I could see it going either way: 4ed could be successful because it appeals to a younger generation, or it could fail (at least compared to the impact of 3ed) because it distances old diehards. What I fear for WotC is that a large portion of "on the fencers" will return to 3ed after the novelty of a new rules set wears off. But this may be unjustified and only time will tell.

Personally speaking I would have preferred if PHB 1 was more traditional, with only slight adjustments on the usual array of races and classes and with a PHB 2 including more "exotic" races and classes, perhaps coming out sooner than later (say, six months after 1) so that WotC could still showcase their "new look". This way you start out with the core D&D we all know and love, and then can add-on and adapt it however you want (which you can do anyways, but I'm speaking in terms of WotC supports).

Overall I think 4ed will succeed in that it will be popular, perhaps even a tad more than 3ed, but it will fail in that it won't increase the game's popularity nearly to the degree that 3ed did. If you are Hasbro you might be a bit disappointed, because the point is always to increase profit, not just float on previous success. I'm not sure 4ed will do more than just continue the  plateau established by 3ed.


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## Mercurius (Jun 30, 2008)

jdrakeh said:


> I'm pretty certain that you're right. As you mention, demon-like and dragon-like humanoids have always been a popular choice for D&D PCs, especially so in D&D 3x, with numerous sourcebook entries dedicated to them. Of course, the prevalence of 'good monsters' in pop culture -- from the 'demons' of Buffy and Angel to the 'freaks' of the BPRD -- cannot be ignored, either. The public _really_ seems to like the idea of playing 'good monsters' and the designers of 4e seem to be aware of this.




That's a good point and one I hadn't really thought much on. Still, I think Dragonborn would be more appealing if they weren't so "monstery." I mean, they aren't sexy at all


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## jdrakeh (Jun 30, 2008)

Mercurius said:


> . . . but it will fail in that it won't increase the game's popularity nearly to the degree that 3ed did.




You may be right about this. D&D 3x had a huge advantage over D&D 4e by coming in on the heels of the least popular edition of D&D to date. Indeed, I'd argue that AD&D 2e was effectively dead as a brand when D&D 3x was introduced (purely based on anecdotal evidence, of course).


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## GnomeWorks (Jun 30, 2008)

Mercurius said:


> ...4ed could be successful because it appeals to a younger generation...




Who keeps saying this? Why? Is there any kind of information that would lead people to believe that this is the case?

I'm 21. I started seriously gaming with 3.5. I've played video games my whole life.

I do not like 4e, and neither does the rest of my nine-person gaming group - and we are all in the same age range (18-22).

So, where is the idea that 4e will appear to younger folk coming from?


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## jdrakeh (Jun 30, 2008)

GnomeWorks said:


> Who keeps saying this? Why? Is there any kind of information that would lead people to believe that this is the case?




If it helps, I don't think that it is necessarily designed to appeal to younger gamers, so much as it designed to appeal to other consumer markets that D&D has traditionally ignored.


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## Mercurius (Jun 30, 2008)

GnomeWorks said:


> Who keeps saying this? Why? Is there any kind of information that would lead people to believe that this is the case?
> 
> I'm 21. I started seriously gaming with 3.5. I've played video games my whole life.
> 
> ...




Well it is just an idea, not a fact. Call it "Wizards of the Coast's 4E Gamble" . But seriously, that is just it: WotC is gambling that it will appeal to a younger generation, because in order to grow they need to appeal to younger folk. I mean, the market of 30+ year olds is already tapped. There are very few players of that age group coming in, and probably more leaving than returning. 4E, in my humble opinion at least, is more geared towards bringing a new generation in than it is in bringing the old generation back. That is why I call it a "gamble." 3E already brought back those that could be brought back, so WotC probably figured it was time for a New and Shiny Toy to appeal to the kids .


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## AllisterH (Jun 30, 2008)

Here's the thing though...What makes a race "far-out"?

I'd argue that both the half-orc and the gnome ARE more far out fantasy than dragonborn or tieflings. Outside of D&D, I'm blanking on any source of media that uses either gnomes or half-orcs. Contrast that with "monstrous" heroes/characters like Hellboy and the demons from Buffy and the concept of say "demon cursed human" is NOT far-out for the average person.

Hell, even IN D&D fiction, Draconians have actually managed to be the stars/leading protoganists of TWO novels. (Both come from the pre-3E era), while the tieflings were the main stars of the much loved planescape setting (and also a prominent feature of the critically acclaimed videogame Planescape:torment - again, a pre 3E creation). Halflings (and kenders/hobbits) of course have shown up in popular D&D fiction (THe Halfling's Gem- the original Drizzt book so you KNOW a lot of players know about halflings)

Half-orcs? Gnomes? Help me out here people. What media (D&D or not) that actually has gnomes NOT as comic relief (and not resembling lawn gnomes either) 

Personally, I was more surprised that they even made it to 3.x. I mean, even the designers at WOTC didn't like gnomes it seemed (both Birthright and Darksun killed off their gnomes, while the others used those annoying tinker gnomes. Not exactly good adventurer material there..)

re: Defence of 2E
2E _IS_ fondly remembered not as a game system (it's basically 1e really) but the edition where roleplaying came to the front and the rise of the much loved campaign settings.


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## Mercurius (Jun 30, 2008)

jdrakeh said:


> You may be right about this. D&D 3x had a huge advantage over D&D 4e by coming in on the heels of the least popular edition of D&D to date. Indeed, I'd argue that AD&D 2e was effectively dead as a brand when D&D 3x was introduced (purely based on anecdotal evidence, of course).




Right, which is why I hear a lot of angst from diehard 3.xers: their edition wasn't dead like 2ed, although it could be argued that it was A) due for an upgrade/update, and B) dry in terms of supplement options. So now we've got 4E, which supposedly upgrades the system and re-sets the clock for supplements and the gives WotC a new burst of cash flow.


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## TheSleepyKing (Jun 30, 2008)

I don't think it's the races or the setting that might limit the number of newcomers to the game. If anything, it's the high price of entry to the game now. WoTC seems to be gambling on the willingness of people to buy minis and dungeon tiles. For hard core gamers like those that frequent ENworld, that's probably not a problem. For groups that have a DM or a single player that's willing to do all the buying and supply all the extra elements the game now needs, it's also not a problem. But for more casual gamers, it's probably going to reduce the appeal of D&D.


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## CountPopeula (Jun 30, 2008)

AllisterH said:


> ... whereas the half-orc is pretty much absent from non D&D fiction.




You know, this is something that always bugged me. Half-Orcs in D&D were weaker, a little smarter, and nicer than Orcs, right?

But Tolkien's half man, half orc creatures, the Uruk-Hai, were far smarter, stronger, and far more ruthless than either orcs or men, and towered over them. Where did half-orcs in D&D even come from?


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## Leontodon (Jun 30, 2008)

For me the problem with the races "Dragonborn" and "Tiefling" is that their symbolical value is alien to heroic fantasy. Both Races have symbolical links to the devil. The dragon being a medieval symbol for pagan beliefs and the devil himself and well the tiefling should be obvious. Deeply ingrained in their horned and red eyed image is the message that they are NOT the good guys. One could always explain the half-orc as the tragical, misunderstood loner, but now it gets very awkward with two races in the game who have the sentence:" Smash me back into hell!" written all over their faces. European culture does simply not support a positive picture for these kind of characters.


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## Doc Eldritch (Jun 30, 2008)

CountPopeula said:


> You know, this is something that always bugged me. Half-Orcs in D&D were weaker, a little smarter, and nicer than Orcs, right?
> 
> But Tolkien's half man, half orc creatures, the Uruk-Hai, were far smarter, stronger, and far more ruthless than either orcs or men, and towered over them. Where did half-orcs in D&D even come from?





I don't think the Uruk-Hai were smarter than men.  Perhaps as smart, but not smarter.  Stronger and more ruthless, definitely, and more hardy than men or orcs or goblins.


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## Plissken (Jun 30, 2008)

I never thought D&D had a medieval background. I always thought it was sword & sorcery, high fantasy with lots of craziness in it. 2nd ed. AD&D was very medieval european but I think the reason is because of the moral panic at the time.


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## Korgoth (Jun 30, 2008)

WayneLigon said:


> in fact, 3E and now 4E were the only editions that gave you a reason to play a human at all.




Oh, and OD&D. And Holmes. And B/X. And BECMI. And 1E. And 2E. But aside from those...


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## Corjay (Jun 30, 2008)

This is one of the few negative points regarding 4e that I can agree with. Yes, the fantasy element of 4e is a tad disconnecting because it's hard to suspend belief. I think that is a trend that began with 3e, but I think it has more to do with the art than the mechanics.


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## rounser (Jun 30, 2008)

Yup, one step too "wahoo" in the core implied setting.  D&D only really ever approximated generic fantasy, but this time they've gone a bridge too far and it can't even do that any more without non-trivial renovations, like ripping out eladrin, dragonborn, warlords and tieflings.


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## AllisterH (Jun 30, 2008)

Eladrin? That's far-out fantasy? Isn't the eladrin/elves split simply the grey elves/forest elves split that has been true since 1e? Similarly, the warlord represents the battle captain archtype. I never would've considered those two as far out fantasies (the shapechanging druid would I suspect surprise more people).

I still wonder though, what makes half-orcs and gnomes NOT "far-out" but Dragonborn and Tieflings are?

Like I said, there's a long history in both D&D AND non D&D media where you can see "monstrous" characters like Dragonborn and Tieflings. These aren't new concepts for people to understand I would argue.

Now, GNOMES and HALF-ORCS. Again, which media influence do those harken to?


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## rounser (Jun 30, 2008)

> Eladrin? That's far-out fantasy?



Yup.  Ask someone on the street what an eladrin is, and be prepared for a "what?" or a blank stare.

WHY OH WHY they didn't go with High Elf and Wood Elf is a mystery.  Oh, wait, no it's not - Eladrin is a trademarkable name, high elf isn't....assuming that's the reason, it's a poor one, and very hard to defend.  Compromise D&D for silly legal reason.  It's not even a good name.  "Eldar" is a good name, and this is a third rate clone of that.


> blah blah gnomes and half-orcs blah blah



Mythology and Tolkienism, respectively.  Everyone knows about them, names not contrived.  Case closed.


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## Corjay (Jun 30, 2008)

rounser said:


> Yup.  Ask someone on the street what an eladrin is, and be prepared for a "what?" or a blank stare.
> 
> WHY OH WHY they didn't go with High Elf and Wood Elf is a mystery.  Oh, wait, no it's not - Eladrin is a trademarkable name, high elf isn't....assuming that's the reason, it's a poor one, and very hard to defend.  Compromise D&D for silly legal reason.  It's not even a good name.  "Eldar" is a good name, and this is a third rate clone of that.
> 
> Mythology and Tolkienism, respectively.  Everyone knows about them, names not contrived.  Case closed.



The question "what's in a name?" now enters the picture. You could quote Shakespear's "woulds't a rose by any other name smell as sweet?" Come on, you call a high elf an Eladrin, and suddenly it's not a high elf? For cryin' out loud, does a Cherokee stop being Indian because you call him a Cherokee? Does a British man stop being British because you call him English?

Dude, that's just flawed. So what that the average person doesn't know what an Eladrin is. All you have to do is explain that an Eladrin is a high elf like Elron from LotR and suddenly they understand. What's the big deal? Do you know what "isospin" is? Does your not knowing somehow change that it exists?

As for whether the name is good or not, I think it's fine. I just nullified your opinion, because that's exactly what it is.


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## rounser (Jun 30, 2008)

> The question "what's in a name?" now enters the picture.



Would we be playing this game if it were called Eladrin & Dragonborn?  No.  Not iconic, not timeless, just contrived and "huh?"-creating.

And poor old Shakespeare gets trotted out every time I bring this up.  Time to get critical on this out-of-context analogy:

Look, the implied setting is not a hot woman.  Hot women could be called Faeces Mud or Genital Herpes, and they'd still be a hot woman, and someone would want to date them and romance them, and that's what the bard was talking about.  The D&D implied setting got wrong is not a hot woman, and has no such licence to stupid names.


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## CountPopeula (Jun 30, 2008)

Doc Eldritch said:


> I don't think the Uruk-Hai were smarter than men.  Perhaps as smart, but not smarter.  Stronger and more ruthless, definitely, and more hardy than men or orcs or goblins.




I worded that wrong because i changed the wording a few times to get it right, but what I meant to say was smarter than orcs, and stronger and more evil than orcs or men.


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## S'mon (Jun 30, 2008)

I share the concern.  For the demographic that is more into fantasy literature than Star Wars, something like Mentzer Red Box D&D was a much better recruiting tool.  Heck, I've played D&D for 23 years and I'm having a lot of trouble getting into 4e.


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## Corjay (Jun 30, 2008)

rounser said:


> Would we be playing this game if it were called Eladrin & Dragonborn?  No.  Not iconic, not timeless, just contrived and "huh?"-creating.
> 
> And poor old Shakespeare gets trotted out every time.  Look, the implied setting is not a hot woman.  Hot women could be called Faeces Mud or Genital Herpes, and they'd still be a hot woman, and someone would want to date them and romance them, and that's what the bard was talking about.  The D&D implied setting got wrong is not a hot woman, and has no such licence to stupid names.



More bad stuff here, man.

Would you call it Sahaugin and Githyanki? Because they're in the game too. Or going on the race thing, how about Humans & Halflings? Really interesting there. But I'd go more for life and space in the vein of the real name, Rooms & Ropers. You see, I can make other D&D things look ridiculous too. It's just not a valid argument to say "I think the name is imperfect, thus the race is completely stupid." I suppose "Rounser" is more creative then "Eladrin", right? Not.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 30, 2008)

rounser said:


> Look, the implied setting is not a hot woman.  Hot women could be called Faeces Mud or Genital Herpes, and they'd still be a hot woman, and someone would want to date them and romance them, and that's what the bard was talking about.  The D&D implied setting got wrong is not a hot woman, and has no such licence to stupid names.



I disagree. Oh well, it's not _really_ a hot woman, but I find it very attractive.


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## rounser (Jun 30, 2008)

> Would you call it Sahaugin and Githyanki? Because they're in the game too.



*But they're not core PC races, assumed to be played by PCs in every single D&D game world out there unless you specifically ban them!*

That's the 10 million dollar distinction, and I'm really mystified that you completely passed it by because it really is 100 stories high and destroying Tokyo, as we speak.  Maybe if it starts breathing fire and plucking biplanes out of the air?

Do you even understand what I'm talking about?


> I suppose "Rounser" is more creative than "Eladrin", right? Not.



Guh?  Is this some attempt to play the man and not the ball that comes across as really, really weak?  Because I'm not seeing this as having any bearing on what we're discussing, whatsoever.


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## Corjay (Jun 30, 2008)

Wow. I guess you missed the WHOLE rest of the post. Moving on.


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## Corjay (Jun 30, 2008)

By the way, the game isn't named after races. It's named after a structure and a creature, not two races. Your argument still holds no water.


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## GnomeWorks (Jun 30, 2008)

rounser said:


> Do you even understand what I'm talking about?




Yes, but it took a moment. That was a _really_ weird analogy, and took me awhile to parse.


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## jdrakeh (Jun 30, 2008)

Leontodon said:


> European culture does simply not support a positive picture for these kind of characters.




Really? I think that games like Drakar och Demoner, Das Schwarze Auge, Gemini, and In Nomine* demonstrate that Europe has a pretty high tolerance for non-Tolkienesque fantasy and, more specifically, very dark fantasy with numerous references to demonology and other supposedly verboten topics. In fact, I'd say they were much more accepting of such things than the US populace, based on the persistent popularity of most of the games mentioned above. 

*Originally published in France by Sirdoz, and much more graphic than the SJG translation.


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## rounser (Jun 30, 2008)

> Your argument still holds no water.



You'd have no problem with core races called Mugglegrumps and Gadwochits?  Talking toasters called Toasterspawn?  Sentient biofrisbees named Frisfolk?

How about a magical bucket with arms and legs as a core PHB PC race, called Bucketborn, would they hold water?


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## Obryn (Jun 30, 2008)

rounser said:


> You'd have no problem with core races called Mugglegrumps and Gadwochits?  Talking toasters called Toasterspawn?  Sentient biofrisbees named Frisfolk?
> 
> How about a magical bucket with arms and legs as a core PHB PC race, called Bucketborn, would they hold water?



You are making absolutely zero sense.

Unless it's "I find Dragonborn and Eladrin to be silly.  I have no sense of perspective, so obviously talking toasters - which I also find silly - are equally silly, and if the former are in there, the latter might as well be, too."

-O


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## Corjay (Jun 30, 2008)

rounser said:


> You'd have no problem with core races called Mugglegrumps and Gadwochits?  Talking toasters called Toasterspawn?  Sentient biofrisbees named Frisfolk?
> 
> How about a magical bucket with arms and legs as a core PHB PC race, called Bucketborn, would they hold water?



ROFL. This just moved into the realm of the ridiculously bizarre. 
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





Sorry, man. I'm losing respect for you by the second.


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## jdrakeh (Jun 30, 2008)

Obryn said:


> You are making absolutely zero sense.




Dude, it's rounser. He hates 4e. That's all you need to know.


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## rounser (Jun 30, 2008)

> Unless it's "I find Dragonborn and Eladrin to be silly. I have no sense of perspective, so obviously talking toasters - which I also find silly - are equally silly, and if the former are in there, the latter might as well be, too."



It was reductio ad absurdum, but there's a very large kernel of truth there that you pro-4E guys are failing to acknowledge and are pretending is a non-issue.


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## Corjay (Jun 30, 2008)

rounser said:


> It was reductio ad absurdum, but there's a very large kernel of truth there that you pro-4E guys are failing to acknowledge and are pretending is a non-issue.



OMG. A name IS a non-issue. I don't even know why I even bothered arguing it with you now. Especially now that I know the logic that was guiding it.


----------



## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 30, 2008)

rounser said:


> It was reductio ad absurdum, but there's a very large kernel of truth there that you pro-4E guys are failing to acknowledge and are pretending is a non-issue.




The point is that Dragonborn and Tieflings work for me. Toasterspawn* would not. Thus, your "reductio ad absurdum" is pointless. 

*) unless the Toasterspawn would look like this





Nice Warforged variant...


----------



## rounser (Jun 30, 2008)

> Dude, it's rounser. He hates 4e. That's all you need to know.



Yeah, whatever flag-waver.  In actual fact I hugely admire quite a lot of it, and am entirely sympathetic as to how the current design became that way, because it appeals to my symmetry-loving semi-aspergers logical geek side.  Some of it's genius, and a lot of it looks like ideas I've championed in the past.  

There's just a lot of bad flavour in the core hitching a ride with that well designed crunch, too much for me to overcome.


----------



## rounser (Jun 30, 2008)

> OMG. A name IS a non-issue.



Then we really don't have any common ground.  To say that suggests that you don't understand language, nor connotation, nor thematic imagery...or at least don't consider these things important.


----------



## Corjay (Jun 30, 2008)

ROFL. Now you're going for a personal attack. You're so smooth. I just can't compete. You're like Dorf on logic. 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




ROFL. I'm dyin'! ROFL.


----------



## Obryn (Jun 30, 2008)

rounser said:


> It was reductio ad absurdum, but there's a very large kernel of truth there that you pro-4E guys are failing to acknowledge and are pretending is a non-issue.



No, on the contrary, I don't care that much for dragonborn (and hated them in 3.5), and I haven't cared at all for tieflings since they were introduced back in Planescape.

As for gnomes, I've thought they were kind of an awkward race ever since 1e.  They're a freaky add-on to a list of basic Tolkienish races, and are only considered "basic" on virtue of them being in the game for 30 years.  If I were to guess, over the life of D&D, there were fewer gnomes played than any other race.  That's certainly been my experience, since the early 80's.

I love half-orcs.  Since I get _full_ orcs in 4e, I'm pretty okay with their absence - but still, I miss 'em.  I wouldn't call them a basic fantasy race, either, but at least they're vaguely Tolkienish with the Orc connection.

On the other hand, my players - who range from pretty casual to very experienced - thought tieflings and dragonborn were pretty cool.  I have one of each in the party.  One of my players even thought the Gnome was cool, and is playing a Gnome ranger.

I don't care for the new races.  I don't think it's an apocalypse.

-O


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## GnomeWorks (Jun 30, 2008)

Corjay said:


> ROFL. Now you're going for a personal attack. You're so smooth. I just can't compete. You're like Dorf on logic.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




I see you're from the tubes.


----------



## rounser (Jun 30, 2008)

> Now you're going for a personal attack.



It's really not meant that way, it's genuine disbelief.  I'm a fan of Professor Oppov*, generally, although I'll argue my corner alright, but I can't empathise with just handwaving away the importance of class and race names.  There's just so much tied up in them, they imply and evoke so much.

[*Oppov = Other Person's Point Of View.]


----------



## Corjay (Jun 30, 2008)

GnomeWorks said:


> I see you're from the tubes.



"The Tubes"?  I'm from the 80's. What are "the tubes"?


----------



## GnomeWorks (Jun 30, 2008)

Corjay said:


> What are "the tubes"?




[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f99PcP0aFNE]You're on the tubes.[/ame]


----------



## Corjay (Jun 30, 2008)

rounser said:


> It's really not meant that way, it's genuine disbelief.  I'm a fan of Professor Oppov*, generally, but I can't empathise with just dispensing with the importance of class and race names.  There's just so much tied up in them, they imply and evoke so much.
> 
> [*Oppov = Other Person's Point Of View.]



LOL. You're surprised that I don't spend my time in the basement poring over books on the psychological effect of names? 

ROFL. I can't stand it! Make him stop! ROFL.


----------



## jdrakeh (Jun 30, 2008)

GnomeWorks said:


> You're on the tubes.




*Fail!*


----------



## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 30, 2008)

rounser said:


> Yeah, whatever flag-waver.  In actual fact I hugely admire quite a lot of it, and am entirely sympathetic as to how the current design became that way, because it appeals to my symmetry-loving semi-aspergers logical geek side.  Some of it's genius, and a lot of it looks like ideas I've championed in the past.
> 
> There's just a lot of bad flavour in the core hitching a ride with that well designed crunch, too much for me to overcome.




Oh really? Then rip out the Dragonborn and Tieflings! What are you waiting for? Don't let fluff stand in the way of a good game!


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## Corjay (Jun 30, 2008)

GnomeWorks said:


> You're on the tubes.



HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH!!!!!!! You found something funnier than Rounser.

This is the night to remember.


----------



## Maggan (Jun 30, 2008)

GnomeWorks said:


> So, where is the idea that 4e will appear to younger folk coming from?




Probably from people who are old enough to be your dad.  To me, a 39 years old gamer, 21 is young. 

It's like my wife's grandma. She's 94. To her my mom, who's 71, is "younger folk". It's all about perspective, I guess. 

/M


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## jdrakeh (Jun 30, 2008)

Maggan said:


> Probably from people who are old enough to be your dad.  To me, a 39 years old gamer, 21 is young.




You miss his point, I think. I believe he meant to illustrate that he _is_ young and that he hates D&D, therefore the idea that D&D 4e appeals to young people is balderdash. Of course, what's _really_ balderdash is the idea that his anecdotal experience is somehow representative of the entire age demographic across the globe.


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## GnomeWorks (Jun 30, 2008)

jdrakeh said:


> *Fail!*




Aw... are you talking about me, or good ol' Stevens? I hope you're talking about Stevens.



			
				Maggan said:
			
		

> Probably from people who are old enough to be your dad.  To me, a 39 years old gamer, 21 is young.




...I know. And I don't like 4e, and no one my age that I know likes 4e.

So I'm confused as to where the whole "it appeals to the younger generation" is coming from. Because, from where I'm standing - from within said younger generation - that just isn't so.


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## GnomeWorks (Jun 30, 2008)

jdrakeh said:


> You miss his point, I think. I believe he meant to illustrate that he _is_ young and that he hates D&D, therefore the idea that D&D 4e appeals to young people is balderdash. Of course, what's _really_ balderdash is the idea that his anecdotal experience is somehow representative of the entire age demographic is balderdash.




I see. So we're going to go at it, then.

Well, put up your dukes.

First off, I did not use the word "hate." Let's try to tone down the emotional content of this thread, yeah?

Is my experience representative of the entire generation? No, probably not. But it doesn't appeal to _anyone_ my age that I know. It's more a question of, why do they think it will appeal more to people my age, when my experience says it doesn't?


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## Corjay (Jun 30, 2008)

GnomeWorks said:


> Aw... are you talking about me, or good ol' Stevens? I hope you're talking about Stevens.




FAIL! (What to do)
FAIL! (Attempt)
_Third link removed as not-grandma friendly - PS_


----------



## GnomeWorks (Jun 30, 2008)

Corjay said:


> FAIL! (What to do)
> FAIL! (Attempt)
> _Third link removed - PS_




May want to point out that third link is not grandma-safe.

Also, yes, I am familiar with the meme. It was more a question of what the intent was, than a question of what it was.


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## jdrakeh (Jun 30, 2008)

That last image is _not_ Grandma-friendly, Corjay! 

[Edit: Gnomeworks, the "Fail!" was in reference to the "in the tubes" meme, not being funny (it's not offensive, mind you, it's just not funny).]

[Re-Edit: Corjay, not Grandma-friendly is a violation of the forum rules, which is what I meant to point out. Merely stating that a link is not Grandma-friendly doesn't get around that, so far as I know.]


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## GnomeWorks (Jun 30, 2008)

jdrakeh said:


> Gnomeworks, the "Fail!" was in reference to the "in the tubes" meme, not being funny (it's not offensive, mind you, it's just not funny).




Well, I find it _hilarious_.

Stevens is awesome.

Sorry we don't have the same sense of humor.


----------



## Corjay (Jun 30, 2008)

GnomeWorks said:


> Well, I find it _hilarious_.
> 
> Stevens is awesome.
> 
> Sorry we don't have the same sense of humor.



Hey, that's okay. It made my day!


----------



## rounser (Jun 30, 2008)

> Don't let fluff stand in the way of a good game!



It's more deeply ingrained than that.  There's the healing surges*, and the fruity powers that leave flavour as an afterthought, the dragonborn staring up at me from the artwork, random stuff like jailers being evil, the arbitrary alignments left over from the older game, the existence of warlords which actively piss me off at how much hubris and no right to exist they have...the whole package is too incohesive, such that I don't want to work for this game.  The illusion isn't good enough.

*Why couldn't they have just called a second wind something like "luck"?  Run out of luck and you die.  Spend some luck to get hit points back.  "Healing surge" suggests exactly what you _shouldn't_ be thinking about when trying to envision how the hit point pool works, that wounds magically seal over due to a burst of energy.  I can buy that the PCs are somehow Heroes of Destiny and therefore have more luck than their opponents, something like that would float, but what they've come up with seems half-baked.


----------



## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 30, 2008)

rounser said:


> It's more deeply ingrained than that.  There's the healing surges*, and the fruity powers that leave flavour as an afterthought, the dragonborn staring up at me from the artwork, random stuff like jailers being evil, the arbitrary alignments left over from the older game, the existence of warlords which actively piss me off at how much hubris and no right to exist they have...the whole package is too incohesive, such that I don't want to work for this game.  The illusion isn't good enough.
> 
> *Why couldn't they have just called a second wind something like "luck"?  Run out of luck and you die.  Spend some luck to get hit points back.  "Healing surge" suggests exactly what you _shouldn't_ be thinking about when trying to envision how the hit point pool works, that wounds magically seal over due to a burst of energy.  I can buy that the PCs are somehow Heroes of Destiny and therefore have more luck than their opponents, something like that would float, but what they've come up with seems half-baked.



I can only reiterate what I said: 
Do _not_ let fluff get in the way of a good game!
If you have to, paint all Dragonborn images over with black. Rename Healing Surges to "Luck". Rip out alignments! 
People are tinkering with games all the time! And tinkering with fluff is a lot less "harmful" to the game balance and playability then anything else!

Off course, if 3E (or any other game system) still works for you, don't let a new edition stand in the way of a good game. 



> random stuff like jailers being evil



Huh? What are you referring to?


----------



## rounser (Jun 30, 2008)

> Rip out alignments!



Actually, I quite like alignments.  A Good-Unaligned-Evil system would suit me fine, so "Rip out LG and CE!" would be more accurate in my case.  What they've done in just cleaving 4/9ths of it away seems rather random.  If they're gonna gut Chaos and Law (and it did indeed have it coming), at least get the job done, don't leave it there bleeding.


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## CountPopeula (Jun 30, 2008)

rounser said:


> The illusion isn't good enough.




I see this in some places in 4E, one of the things I didn't like. Things like "daily, encounter, and at-will" and "healing surge" seem like placeholder names that someone forgot to change.

But as for the races being too far out, the topic at hand... the most popular role-playing video game franchise of all time has main characters to the tune of a sasquatch, a moogle, bunny-girls, and whatever the hell Freya in FF9 was supposed to be... some sort of white dragon-rat.

On top of that, the humans are all pretty weird. No one really cared about all the odd races in Final Fantasy, and in fact, they made it more interesting than "oh, elves and dwarves and hobbits."

With D&D trying to establish itself as a brand, the move is going to be away from the classical and into the off-beat.


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## AtomicPope (Jun 30, 2008)

GnomeWorks;4341989 And I don't like 4e said:
			
		

> Boy you're a fun hate.
> 
> I mean date


----------



## GnomeWorks (Jun 30, 2008)

AtomicPope said:


> Boy you're a fun hate.
> 
> I mean date




Say what?


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 30, 2008)

rounser said:


> There's this god in the DMG for jailers and torturers.  It sort of implies that jailers are worshippers of this god by default, and I don't get why any good king would employ a jailer anymore.  For an occupation like jailer, it's just weird flavour, and a poor design decision at that IMO.  Prison screws are people too.
> 
> I might have bought it in some specific world like Dragonlance, but the implied setting is more all-encompassing than that, so the "doesn't make sense" comes home to roost all the more.



Okay... I really feel like this is blowing things out of proportions, but if that's how you think, what could I do to "help" you? Maybe it helps to remember that jailers in a medieval setting are probably not nice guys, and that their alignment indicates that the default world assumes that trying to redeem a person is better then punishing him.


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## rounser (Jun 30, 2008)

> Maybe it helps to remember that jailers in a medieval setting are probably not nice guys



True, but that's never stopped D&D from employing modern morality virtually everywhere else...apart from the genocide and manslaughter stuff, natch.

I guess I don't look to torturers and jailers as natural villains for a D&D campaign.  For a Disney fairytale, maybe, or as an obstacle to be overcome, definitely...but there was no default stigma against jailers, alignmentwise, that I remember.  Torturers are definitely more shadey by profession, as are assassins.  With enough thought I think you could come up with unaligned examples of both, though.

It just seems to be flavour text with these repercussions that don't really jive with what I'd expect of a D&D world.


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## Lurks-no-More (Jun 30, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> Huh? What are you referring to?




He's talking about Torog, the evil God of the Underdark; it's mentioned in the fluff that he's worshipped by jailers, for example. IMO, he's (again) reaching for something about 4e to dislike, and succeeding admirably. Nobody's easier to please than someone who wants to be displeased...


Edit: Like a lot of other posters in this thread, I don't see 4e being too "far out", by any means. As much as I love Tolkien's works, there's plenty more to fantasy than him (and the innumerable hacks producing tons of EFP influenced by his work).


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## rounser (Jun 30, 2008)

> IMO, he's (again) reaching for something about 4e to dislike, and succeeding admirably.



That's why I edited that part of my reply out - on second thought, I thought it a bit petty.  It didn't help my personal saving throw versus disbelief, though, even though I may seem to be reaching there.


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## AtomicPope (Jun 30, 2008)

The entire idea that they're targetting young people is absurd. The fact is ever since I was a kid I played D&D with people older than me and younger than me. That hasn't changed a bit. D&D doesn't focus on "the youth." They tried that during 2nd Edition and TSR went bankrupt (granted the company was run on a shoestring but still ). D&D markets to fantasy genre lovers. Right now it's competing with so many role-playing games they really need to recarve their niche in the fantasy genre. As is stands there are many RPG's that are drawing away the D&D audience and I put the 3e system at fault.

The "aggregate bonus system" of 3e is just as unrealistic as 4e but forces to players to make choices based on system limitations as opposed to guided/intentional designs. I'm currently DMing a group of hard core 3e gamers in 4e. After two sessions they were hooked. The oldest is 49 while the youngest is 14. Their praises all focused on making effective characters at 1st level. I'm happy to say, "there's a trait which is very un-D&D like."

Ever since I'm approached by the bandwagon haters that are now asking me to run a game for them. After hearing praises from the others they want to give it a try. Fourth edition is just trying to take the work out of gaming. Not market to a new audience.


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## Snoweel (Jun 30, 2008)

rounser said:


> Actually, I quite like alignments.  A Good-Unaligned-Evil system would suit me fine, so "Rip out LG and CE!" would be more accurate in my case.  What they've done in just cleaving 4/9ths of it away seems rather random.  If they're gonna gut Chaos and Law (and it did indeed have it coming), at least get the job done, don't leave it there bleeding.




I ended up treating alignment exactly the way they've done it in 4e:

NG and CG were so similar they were combined
LE and NE were so similar they were combined and 
LN and CN were essentially pointless - they're more personality than alignment so I got rid of them

Hey presto! 5 alignments.

It works mate.


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## SweeneyTodd (Jun 30, 2008)

Lurks-no-More said:


> IMO, he's (again) reaching for something about 4e to dislike, and succeeding admirably. Nobody's easier to please than someone who wants to be displeased...




Yeah, I agree; people have the right to dislike an entire game line because of a couple of throwaway lines of flavor text, but I also have the right to snicker at them for being so picky.


----------



## Doug McCrae (Jun 30, 2008)

Purely in terms of the PC races, yeah, D&D has taken a step away from Tolkien and Harry Potter, and a step towards WoW and Star Wars. Is that a bad thing? WoW and Star Wars are pretty popular. And there are still elves and dwarves and hobbits and wizards for people who like that stuff.

One could argue that 1974 D&D was taking a step away from traditional fantasy, which in those days would be King Arthur, Dunsany, Conan and Leiber towards weirdo modern crap like Lord of the Rings and Moorcock which had non-human protagonists and wizards as heroes, not just mentors or villains.


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## AllisterH (Jun 30, 2008)

Doug McCrae said:


> Purely in terms of the PC races, yeah, D&D has taken a step away from Tolkien and Harry Potter, and a step towards WoW and Star Wars. Is that a bad thing? WoW and Star Wars are pretty popular. And there are still elves and dwarves and hobbits and wizards for people who like that stuff.
> 
> You could argue that 1974 D&D was taking a step away from traditional fantasy, which in those days would be King Arthur, Dunsany, Conan and Leiber towards weirdo modern crap like Lord of the Rings and Moorcock which had non-human protagonists and wizards as heroes, not just mentors or villains.




This may sound silly but other than D&D fiction, do ha;f-orcs and gnomes show up in the "staples" of what is the influences for D&D?

I mean, if you asked anyone what a gnome is, you're getting either the lawn gnome or the harry potter house gnome (both far from their D&D depiction). Similarly, I don't think the Uruk-Hai could be considered half-orcs so where do they come from?

So again, I'll ask. Where exactly do gnomes and half-orcs get any attention from?


----------



## Doug McCrae (Jun 30, 2008)

AllisterH said:


> So again, I'll ask. Where exactly do gnomes and half-orcs get any attention from?



Good point. Gnomes probably come from Hugi in Poul Anderson's Three Hearts & Three Lions. Hugi is called a dwarf but he looks just like a D&D gnome, he's three feet tall and has big ears and a big nose. Half orcs are from Tolkien.

The OP defines traditional fantasy as Tolkien and Harry Potter, so by this definition gnomes aren't traditional. Half-orcs sort of are except no half-orc is a protagonist in Tolkien.

If by traditional fantasy we mean knights, distressed damsels, wizards and dragons - King Arthur stuff - then any non-human protagonist is non-traditional. Merlin is a half-demon, so he's actually closer to 4e, except that he's a mentor, not a protagonist, so not a PC analogue.

But what counts as traditional fantasy changes over time anyway. More and more I'm thinking we need to kill Tolkien dead and move on.


----------



## mmadsen (Jun 30, 2008)

AllisterH said:


> This may sound silly but other than D&D fiction, do half-orcs and gnomes show up in the "staples" of what is the influences for D&D?



Tolkien introduced the idea of a mixed party of wizard, elf, dwarf, etc., so it should be no surprise that we don't see many other "demi-human" races in fantasy fiction (as just-like-human protagonists) from before his explosion in popularity -- and _since_ his explosion in popularity, fantasy fiction has generally followed his lead, with one or two tweaks "to be different".

To reiterate, most of the "staples" that influenced Gygax had no "demihuman" protagonists; that was a trope he lifted from Tolkien to help the popularity of the game.

Anyway, half-orcs and gnomes do seem to be the least popular races.  Half-orcs are dumb, ugly brutes, and gnomes have always overlapped with hobbits (pardon, halflings).  Everyone does know what a gnome is though...


----------



## mmadsen (Jun 30, 2008)

jdrakeh said:


> If non-Tolkien-esque races were a deal breaker for the public, then Runequest with its Ducks, Jack Vance's Dying Earth with its Pelgranes, Buffy with its 'good' demons, Farscape with its amphibious, diminutive, multi-stomached, deposed monarchs and so forth would have utterly failed to capture an audience.



Of those, only _Buffy_ captured a large, more-or-less mainstream audience.  I love Vance's _Dying Earth_, but I wouldn't suggest basing D&D on it.

I think we're seeing the gulf between hardcore sci-fi/fantasy geeks and not-yet-jaded demi-geeks, who haven't become bored with elves, dwarves, gnomes, goblins, unicorns, etc.


----------



## hexgrid (Jun 30, 2008)

GnomeWorks said:


> Is my experience representative of the entire generation? No, probably not. But it doesn't appeal to _anyone_ my age that I know. It's more a question of, why do they think it will appeal more to people my age, when my experience says it doesn't?




Yeah, well I don't personal know _anyone_ your age who plays D&D at all, so you obviously don't exist. 

But seriously, whenever it comes up, there doesn't seem to be any constancy at all regarding age and 4e opinion.


----------



## mmadsen (Jun 30, 2008)

Mercurius said:


> Personally speaking I would have preferred if PHB 1 was more traditional, with only slight adjustments on the usual array of races and classes and with a PHB 2 including more "exotic" races and classes, perhaps coming out sooner than later (say, six months after 1) so that WotC could still showcase their "new look". This way you start out with the core D&D we all know and love, and then can add-on and adapt it however you want (which you can do anyways, but I'm speaking in terms of WotC supports).



That makes perfect sense to me as well.  You can always up the "wahoo" in supplements, but it's harder to ratchet down expectations.


----------



## Mallus (Jun 30, 2008)

D&D 4e isn't too far out for any likely player of a fantasy role-playing game. Conversely, any edition of D&D is too far out for people not likely to play fantasy role-playing games (for instance, my wife ). 

Fortunately, the current pop-cultural indicators (films, games, anime and manga) suggest a fairly significant number of likely role-players out there.    

However, the fans of 'traditional fantasy' are a vocal lot known to conveniently forget that D&D was never traditional fantasy in the first place (hint: Dragonborn are not as strange as gelatinous cubes or Kwai Chang Caine palling around with knights and Conan --who shouldn't be palling around either, come to think of it).


----------



## Turanil (Jun 30, 2008)

deleted


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## Haffrung Helleyes (Jun 30, 2008)

*wahoo*

4E is pretty wahoo, but no more than say, the Arduin Grimoire was in the 70s.

The difference is, the Wahooness is core now.  I would prefer it be optional.

I think Hasbro did this for one reason.  MERCHANDISING.

They're probably hoping that they can develop 4E IP into something mass-marketable.  They are thinking of D&D as a movie franchise, and hoping that in the future they can make it popular enough to spin off action figures, cartoons, and the like.

But for this to work, they need for D&D to have a very distinct look and feel, so that its look will constitute a distinct and protected piece of intellectual property, much like star wars is.

Ken


----------



## mmadsen (Jun 30, 2008)

CountPopeula said:


> But Tolkien's half man, half orc creatures, the Uruk-Hai, were far smarter, stronger, and far more ruthless than either orcs or men, and towered over them. Where did half-orcs in D&D even come from?



Orcs and half-orcs are both odd in D&D, because _goblins_ better reflect Tolkien's orcs and _hobgoblins_ his Uruk-hai.

Tolkien does mention some unfriendly humans who have an orc-like look to them and hints that they're half-orc, but they are in no way Uruk-hai.


----------



## GreatLemur (Jun 30, 2008)

SweeneyTodd said:


> Seems like if everybody at the table goes "Ugh, no Star Trek alien lookin races" and the group wants to dump dragonborn or tieflings, that isn't that hard a change to make, though.



It's elves, dwarves, and halflings that are the _Star Trek_ races: humans with minor prosthetics added.  Tieflings and dragonborn are more _Farscape_.


----------



## SteveC (Jun 30, 2008)

I have to step in for a moment here and defend Rounser here, because I think a lot of you are missing his point. If we're looking at a game designed to bring in new people, how good a job does 4E do at that?

When I look at the cover to the 4E PHB, I shake my head: exactly who is this cover designed to appeal to? The original cover had a Dragonborn and a Tiefling on it front and center, and that was scrapped because several of the markets thought it was too demonic looking. As a result we have a human sorceress, I imagine. What market is this cover going to appeal to that isn't already playing D&D?

The names Dragonborn, Tiefling, and Eladrin are not particularly evocative (although, in the case of the Dragonborn, you're likely to know what kind of a creature it is from the name) and they're likely to be somewhat confusing to someone who doesn't already game.

Now what everyone seems to be saying is "who cares what the names are and what these new races are," and so I'll respond: WotC cares! They spent a lot of time and effort to rebrand 4E as something different from what had come before it, so they must care about it quite a bit.

I question who this new branding is going to appeal to, and I think that's the point of this entire thread: are people who don't currently play RPGs going to see 4E and become interested? Are people going to react better to the art and overall look of this new edition as opposed to the Dungeon Punk of 3E or the high fantasy of 2E?

I honestly don't know, but I do know that I think the cover of the new PHB is one of the ugliest pieces of art I've seen in a long time, and that's from someone who enjoys the interior art quite a bit! In case it's not obvious, that's my opinion on the matter, and YMMV.

So let's let off rounser on this a bit, mkay? To say "a rose by any other name" is an insult to WotC's marketing and branding group: they chose to make some serious changes to the look and image of the game, and that's not something they did trivially. Will it work? Your guess is as good as mine.

--Steve


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## Leontodon (Jun 30, 2008)

jdrakeh said:


> Really? I think that games like Drakar och Demoner, Das Schwarze Auge, Gemini, and In Nomine* demonstrate that Europe has a pretty high tolerance for non-Tolkienesque fantasy and, more specifically, very dark fantasy with numerous references to demonology and other supposedly verboten topics. In fact, I'd say they were much more accepting of such things than the US populace, based on the persistent popularity of most of the games mentioned above.
> 
> *Originally published in France by Sirdoz, and much more graphic than the SJG translation.




Woh I did not mean todays Europe. Fantasy in general is deeply inspired by mostly european myths, folkstory etc.. Examples include: fairy-tales, the Edda, the whole arthur story, the french Roland story, Beowulf, what we germans call the Nibelungenlied, ... .  Even in the pagan stories I just named there are no good dragons (let alone a weird construction of humanoid dragonborn) or good devilspawn creatures. D and D used to be about heroes. Heroes like the ones from legend. I never read about a heroe-like knight-slaying dragon. Core races like that just do not fit into our common hystorical background. Even the good aligned dragons of D and D were only introduced because you could trace them somehow to an asian background. Nevertheless IMO it stretches the core concept of the game.

Don't get me wrong I too played campaigns with a rather dark tone and evil characters and players races. Its just a bad choice to make races, that everybody connects with evil, core races.


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## almagest (Jun 30, 2008)

Huh... well, I'm 25, and I like 4e.  Most of my friends who game are around my age, and they like it too.  I guess 4e *does* appeal to younger players, if we're going to base it on a statistically negligible sample size.

I'm really not sure why people are complaining so hard about 4e's fluff.  How many of you use the gods from 3e core?  How many of you haven't modified the alignment system in some way?  How many of you haven't otherwise houseruled the crap out of it?

I also think there's a pretty big misinterpretation of healing surges in a few posts I've seen in this thread.  It's a second wind.  Something's been beating on you, so you step back and refocus.  The bloodied state pretty obviously represents a hit finally breaking through your defenses and drawing blood.  I'd say 4e is much better at abstracting damage than before.


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## Umbran (Jun 30, 2008)

I don't think the level of fantasy is much of a barrier.

At least, not compared to how opaque the rulebooks make the classes.


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## The Little Raven (Jun 30, 2008)

mmadsen said:


> Everyone does know what a gnome is though...




Yeah, a lawn ornament.


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## The Little Raven (Jun 30, 2008)

GreatLemur said:


> It's elves, dwarves, and halflings that are the _Star Trek_ races: humans with minor prosthetics added.  Tieflings and dragonborn are more _Farscape_.




Indeed.






"Live long and prosper, Mister Underhill."


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## pawsplay (Jun 30, 2008)

Gnomes:
Wish-gnomes and Gnomekin (Talislanta)
That gnome in the The Neverending Story
The gnomes in The Deed of Paksenarrion
The Nome King (Oz)
David the Gnome
World of Warcraft
Gnomes on Harry Potter


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## AllisterH (Jun 30, 2008)

pawsplay said:


> Gnomes:
> Wish-gnomes and Gnomekin (Talislanta)
> That gnome in the The Neverending Story
> The gnomes in The Deed of Paksenarrion
> ...




Isn't the question though, which of these match the D&D gnome? Only two and thats the gnomes from Deeds of Paks and the WoW gnomes. Of course, given that these two sources are directly lifted from D&D kinda discounts them.

Still, it's easy to see why gnomes have not had great press. When David the gnome and the nome King are the most well known representations among the non-D&D players, it affects even how D&D players ee the gnomes.


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## Maggan (Jun 30, 2008)

Mourn said:


> Yeah, a lawn ornament.




Here in Sweden, the gnome is indeed a tiny fairy type portly man with beard and a pointy hat, often red. He is basically the odd job guy at the farm, helping with the cows and stuff like that.

When I got into AD&D I had a hard time seeing why people wanted to play one. 

/M


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## The Little Raven (Jun 30, 2008)

Maggan said:


> When I got into AD&D I had a hard time seeing why people wanted to play one.




I know that when I want to play a hero, I don't think of this guy...


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## Destil (Jun 30, 2008)

GnomeWorks said:


> Well, I find it _hilarious_.
> 
> Stevens is awesome.
> 
> Sorry we don't have the same sense of humor.



Damn younger gamers and their internet memes. 

For the topic at hand, I think 4E is a lot more marketable to non-gamers. But is has less to do with specifics like races and more to do with the fact that the books have a really really good layout now. Seriously, whoever Wizards got to do the graphic design should be commended (though about the full page and a half spreads don't work as well as they did in the proofs, I'm sure, because of the binding). 4E is a lot more 'readable' than 3E, even if the powers blocks are really really tedious, just because the layout is really good and consistent. 

And things like that have a much stronger effect on a new player, IMHO. If you're being brought into the hobby by an existing gamer then it's not as big a deal, but if you pick up and read the books things like this are very important.


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## Tigerbunny (Jun 30, 2008)

For whatever anecdote is worth, I know of two groups of kids (in the 8-14 age range) who've picked up the game recently. Among 8 players total, they have 2 Eladrin, 3 Dragonborn, a Tiefling, a Halfling, and a human. Everybody under 18 I've shown the PHB to has totally grooved on the Dragonborn, and the Tiefling gets love from teenage boys and a certain sort of girl. Eladrin get the "magic elfy" people, and regular elves get "Legolas". As far as I can tell, the core demographic that made D&D briefly mainstream in the 80s LOVES the "far out" stuff.

Again, anecdote only. But if D&D is cool again, I'm happy to see it be a little bit different than it was when *I* was a wonderstruck 12-year-old looking at that blue box with the cheesy red dragon on the cover.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 30, 2008)

Mourn said:


> I know that when I want to play a hero, I don't think of this guy...




But... but... that's a Dwarf! (Well, if I translate between English and German...  )



> Heroes like the ones from legend. I never read about a heroe-like knight-slaying dragon.



There is also a second type of stories, with "unlikely heroes" and "reluctant heroes" or "anti-heroes"...


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## AllisterH (Jun 30, 2008)

Mourn said:


> I know that when I want to play a hero, I don't think of this guy...





You think that's bad?

If you have the 1e/2e PHB and take a look at the gnome. I swear by the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth, what the hell was up with the 2E picture of the gnome?

I kid you not, but it looked like a mini Santa.


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## pawsplay (Jun 30, 2008)

AllisterH said:


> Isn't the question though, which of these match the D&D gnome? Only two and thats the gnomes from Deeds of Paks and the WoW gnomes. Of course, given that these two sources are directly lifted from D&D kinda discounts them.
> 
> Still, it's easy to see why gnomes have not had great press. When David the gnome and the nome King are the most well known representations among the non-D&D players, it affects even how D&D players ee the gnomes.




Why does coming from D&D discount them? a) we were talking about recognizability in the mainstream culture, and b) the person who made this challenge said D&D sources or not. I really wonder whether there are many popular mediums more popular and recongizable than Wow.


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## Psion (Jun 30, 2008)

mmadsen said:


> Wow.  I think that says it very well.  There's nothing wrong with _wahoo_, but it's not to everyone's taste, and it's much harder to scale back than to scale up.




From a practical hands-on-the-rules standpoint it is.

From a managing player expectations standpoint, it's not.


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## Mallus (Jun 30, 2008)

pawsplay said:


> I really wonder whether there are many popular mediums more popular and recongizable than Wow.



There was a South Park episode devoted to WoW...


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## AllisterH (Jun 30, 2008)

pawsplay said:


> Why does coming from D&D discount them? a) we were talking about recognizability in the mainstream culture, and b) the person who made this challenge said D&D sources or not. I really wonder whether there are many popular mediums more popular and recongizable than Wow.




Actually, even there, I don't think D&D fans would be happy with the WoW gnomes. Remember, WoW has bascally embraced the tinker gnome concept.


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## The Little Raven (Jun 30, 2008)

pawsplay said:


> Why does coming from D&D discount them?




You answered that with your next statement.



> a) we were talking about recognizability in the mainstream culture




D&D gnomes aren't recognizable in mainstream culture because they've never hit mainstream culture. You know why? Because they've never had an iconic, consistent portrayal in the game for even D&D nerds to agree on. They're like dwarves, sorta, and like elves, sorta, and short like halflings. They've never really had a strong characterization aside from "I'm not an elf, dwarf, human, or halfling."

The most recognizable gnome to mainstream culture is the garden gnome, upon which David the Gnome was based. Warcraft gnomes would be a distant second (and are based on Dragonlance tinker gnomes), but the others have not come anywhere near to tickling the mainstream into noticing them (Harry Potter gnomes are barely a footnote in the second book).


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## AllisterH (Jun 30, 2008)

I think a large part of the blame for the gnome's lack of traction among players rests firmly at the feet of TSR (and not WOTC of the 3e/4e era).

Seriously, what does it say to the players when even TSR in two campaign settings actually kicks the gnomes to the sides (Birthright and Darksun).

No other "core" race in 2E got treated as badly as the gnomes did.


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## Ruin Explorer (Jun 30, 2008)

jdrakeh said:


> Nope. It's not too far out. If non-Tolkien-esque races were a deal breaker for the public, then Runequest with its Ducks, Jack Vance's Dying Earth with its Pelgranes, Buffy with its 'good' demons, Farscape with its amphibious, diminutive, multi-stomached, deposed monarchs and so forth would have utterly failed to capture an audience. As it turns out, it seems that most people want more 'new' and 'different', rather than more of 'the same old thing'




See J. to me, you're exactly right in a sense. None of these, except Buffy, were particularly successful with "the public". Runequest, whilst allegedly "challenging D&D" in sales at some unknown point in the '80s is pretty much a footnote in RPG history with absolutely zero presence in the "public consciousness" (and hell, not that much presence in the RPG player consciousness!) and, I would suggest, little to know appeal to a casual fantasy reader or viewer. Similarly, the Dying Earth books, whilst classics, are not well-known outside of specialist sci-fi/fantasy circles, and not well-read. Farscape was reasonable successful, I agree, but that's science-fantasy, which I think appeals to a rather different selection of people. Not that they're not worth appealling to, but I do think it's success was more of a "Star Wars" deal than a "LotRO" deal, as it were.

None of the properties you mention remotely compare to the success of more "standard" fantasy (with humans firmly at the center, other races peripheral at best), such as LotRO, Harry Potter, Narnia and Pirates of the Carribean. In TV, Buffy has humans firmly at the center again, with just vampires (who are essentially humans) and the odd demon or semi-demon (most of whom either act or look completely human, and certainly don't have alien cultures or the like). Sci-fi can go both ways, though I suspect human-o-centric stuff like Stargate or BSG is generally more successful than Farscape or Babylon 5 (indeed we know it is). Still, maybe Star Trek can be argued to the contrary (Star Wars is harder to, have only the Droids and Yoda as major non-human characters - the other non-humans are largely scenery).

Don't get me wrong. I'm not telling D&D what to do, but I do personally think that by going the "out there" route, towards sort of '70s fantasy imagery (floating mountains, everything is epic and glowing and so on) and near-Farscape (one of my favourite shows ever btw) levels of non-human-ness, they're directing themselves very much towards a "gamer-ish" audience, and completely ignoring a larger audience who are interested in fantasy, but not into this whole "ROCKIN' FAR-OUT FANTASY DUUUUUDES!" deal that for me, 4E seems to have.

Maybe that's the right decision. Or maybe they have plans for a non-D&D FRPG to reach out to the HP/Narnia/LotRO/human-o-centric literary fantasy audience. Certainly there's a whole generation of kids out there, growing up on fantasy via the above films/books (and Spiderwick etc.), but very much not the kind of fantasy 4E is full of. Perhaps this is what 5E will be about.



AllisterH said:


> No other "core" race in 2E got treated as badly as the gnomes did.




GNOME POWER! <does gnome power salute>

I mean what...?

You're writing like they have some kind of "duty" to a particularly insipid fantasy game race. They don't. If gnomes don't innately "cut it", it's totally righteous to kick them to the curb. It's not treating them badly, it's being rational and reflecting what your customers want.


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## mmadsen (Jun 30, 2008)

Psion said:


> From a practical hands-on-the-rules standpoint it is.  From a managing player expectations standpoint, it's not.



Really?  I feel exactly the opposite.  It's very, very hard to set a non-over-the-top tone once expectations are set for _wahoo_, but you can obviously keep introducing more and more magic, more and more intelligent races, etc.


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## Ruin Explorer (Jun 30, 2008)

Doug McCrae said:


> The OP defines traditional fantasy as Tolkien and Harry Potter, so by this definition gnomes aren't traditional. Half-orcs sort of are except no half-orc is a protagonist in Tolkien.




I don't know if I said "traditional". If I did, I apologise and I misspoke. I'm talking _mainstream_, which may or may not (and is not in this case) be the same thing as traditional at any given time. Harry Potter, LotRO, Narnia, and Pirates of the Carribean are pretty much what I'm talking about. Human-o-centric tales where magic and magical items play a significant part, but which are clearly not '70s-style high fantasy, nor Star Wars style science-fantasy. I think it's a different market.



Doug McCrae said:


> If by traditional fantasy we mean knights, distressed damsels, wizards and dragons - King Arthur stuff - then any non-human protagonist is non-traditional. Merlin is a half-demon, so he's actually closer to 4e, except that he's a mentor, not a protagonist, so not a PC analogue.
> 
> But what counts as traditional fantasy changes over time anyway. More and more I'm thinking we need to kill Tolkien dead and move on.




No disagreement here, except I'm not sure the road forward for most fantasy leads to the realms of floating castles, a multitude of non-human races, and a heavy emphasis on magic items and tools.

I do, however, say that you may be right that it's no bad thing to chase SW and WoW instead of other fantasy. I just think that with either a less extreme-fantasy D&D, or perhaps with a different product, WotC might be able to chase both markets. Perhaps they feel they've attempted to chase the "mainstream fantasy" market and failed, though.

On Merlin, though, I think you're pushing it a bit. He's of allegedly semi-demonic or fey ancestry, sure, but looks and acts human in pretty much all regards. He's not be-tailed and be-horned red-skinned, gold baubles for eyes (with no pupils) monstrosity from a distinct culture with it's own names, history and traditions. He's no more "4E" than he is 2E or 3E.


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## SSquirrel (Jun 30, 2008)

Ruin Explorer said:


> I wonder because most popular non-gaming fantasy, whether it's LotRO, or Harry Potter, or what-have-you, posit human-o-centric universes, and previously D&D very much did this.




Considering TSR/WotC have never released a setting that didn't have humans as the dominant race, I don't see how it has stopped being humancentric.



Ruin Explorer said:


> I look at the art of 4E, though, and I very much do see Star Wars, and a world that's extremely distant from ours, almost incomprehensible on any level other than as part of game.




Yeah I keep geting pissed at our High Elf neighbor and his loud parties, not to mention teh Dwarves down the street always siting around singing songs while they get drunk, then hoping they don't take a mining pick to my car.



Ruin Explorer said:


> I guess what I'm saying is that the basic level of fantasy in D&D 4E seems so high that I can't really get a handle on how life would be in such a world, and I suspect that it's likely to actually kind of shock any non-gamer coming to D&D.




Adventurers aren't normal people and their life doesn't reflect it.  Maybe the actual setting books will show more what their worlds are like to live in, altho there is a sample town in the DMG and between the PHB fluff and Worlds & Monsters, the world is spelled out to a reasonable degree.



Ruin Explorer said:


> What are your thoughts? Did 4E hit exactly the right level of fantastic-ness? Too much? Too little, even? Does this really matter to 4E's long-term success? Is 4E even likely to meaningfully expand D&D's market anyway, I guess is perhaps another valid question. I wonder perhaps if there's room for a more human and grounded, but equally playable fantasy RPG out there. I think 4E's general rules design makes it wildly more capable of getting new players in and having fun than other RPGs (including 3.5E, Pathfinder, Runequest etc.), but just as much I wonder if the setting is helping or hurting.




The shook things up a bit, gave us some new races and classes to play with and I'm glad.  The races and classes they left out compared to 3.5 fell into one of the following categories typically: 

a)broken in an overpowered way (Druid aka CoDzilla)
b)broken in an underpowered way (Bard, Monk)
c)one of the least popular options (Barbarian, Sorceror)
d)no real niche in D&D (Gnome)

The implied setting is just sort of there, I don't think they expect people to be running it much per se, they expect people might run a few things there until they can get their hands on FR or other settings.  I may not be typical tho as I enjoy seeing some things change and feel that it has enough interesting things going on to draw new people in.

Oh and someone made a comment that people coming from Harry Potter might feel there isn't enough magic in D&D, I would agree for any pre-4E D&D.  I ended up playing Wizards often (largely b/c no one else wanted to deal w/them) and got annoyed that I could only cast a few spells and then it was crossbow the rest of the day.  I can toss Magic Missile or other at wills and cantrips all day long now, which definitely feels more magical to me.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 30, 2008)

I dunno what the preview books say but according to the DMG the default world in 4e is human dominated, or at least the last great empire was. DMG, page 150.


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## The Little Raven (Jun 30, 2008)

Ruin Explorer said:


> You're writing like they have some kind of "duty" to a particularly insipid fantasy game race. They don't. If gnomes don't innately "cut it", it's totally righteous to kick them to the curb. It's not treating them badly, it's being rational and reflecting what your customers want.




Ruin Explorer, I must warn you that this continued insistence on having the same point of view on several issues as myself will only lead us to destruction!


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## Storminator (Jun 30, 2008)

I think that people that believe kids today have an understanding of medieval mythology is pretty deluded.

There is none of that common historical pseudo-European background. There never was back in the day, which is why D&D has always been a niche hobby, and there sure isn't now.

PS


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## Ruin Explorer (Jun 30, 2008)

Mourn said:


> Ruin Explorer, I must warn you that this continued insistence on having the same point of view on several issues as myself will only lead us to destruction!




Yeah, seriously, don't cross the streams!

*Ssquirrel* - First off, you need to re-read the second quote you've used and edit your post accordingly. You seem to have taken the opposite of what I actually said.

Secondly, the PoL, does not, to me, seem to be very human-o-centric. All the races live together, and are seen on a daily basis, by default. It's not like Tolkien, were seeing a member of a non-human race is something of an occasion, and as the setting-design book says, the philosophy in 4E has been "Why use a human when a non-human could be used instead?". Time will tell how deep that goes. I have to admit, it seemed like 3.5E was going pretty much the same way, at the end, but that's beside the point. I'm not saying it's bad. I'm saying there's a whole lot of people out there who like fantasy, but not this kind of fantasy (imho).

*Doug* - Absolutely, but that's just one fallen empire among many, albeit the most recent one. Every town and city is full of the player races, in varying numbers. Eladrin, supposedly magical beings who exist partially in another realm have y'know, houses and stuff. I don't not dig it, it's just it doesn't seem like it's got much appeal to what I would guess was perhaps the majority of "fantasy enjoyers" (I mean, WoW seems awesomely popular, but it only has 2.5 million players in the US - The success of fantasy movies and books seem to suggest the total audience is a lot larger than that).

I just need to make it clear, by the way, that this is not about what I like, or what you like, it's about the market, or specifically, a potential market that doesn't ever, to me, seem to have had much attention focused on it.


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## Umbran (Jun 30, 2008)

Mourn said:


> D&D gnomes aren't recognizable in mainstream culture because they've never hit mainstream culture. You know why? Because they've never had an iconic, consistent portrayal in the game for even D&D nerds to agree on.




I think you'll find that the D&D races that are recognized in mainstream culture had some iconic representation in fiction or myth before the game ever existed.   

The mainstream doesn't recognize drow, mind flayers, or beholders either - and they have had iconic, consistent portrayal in the game.


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## SSquirrel (Jun 30, 2008)

pawsplay said:


> Why does coming from D&D discount them? a) we were talking about recognizability in the mainstream culture, and b) the person who made this challenge said D&D sources or not. I really wonder whether there are many popular mediums more popular and recongizable than Wow.




Actually the question that got the gnome thing really going was this:


AllisterH said:


> This may sound silly but other than D&D fiction, do ha;f-orcs and gnomes show up in the "staples" of what is the influences for D&D?




Influences of D&D, not things stealing ideas from D&D.  Personally, the only D&D Gnome I ever liked was the Tinker from DragonLance, but it was stupidly expensive to try and invent anything, so they were really wasted as a PC.  WoW Gnomes amuse me greatly tho, esp when my Warrior tanks ridiculously large bosses and all he can see is a toenail


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## hexgrid (Jun 30, 2008)

Ruin Explorer said:


> Secondly, the PoL, does not, to me, seem to be very human-o-centric. All the races live together, and are seen on a daily basis, by default. It's not like Tolkien, were seeing a member of a non-human race is something of an occasion, and as the setting-design book says, the philosophy in 4E has been "Why use a human when a non-human could be used instead?". Time will tell how deep that goes. I have to admit, it seemed like 3.5E was going pretty much the same way, at the end, but that's beside the point. I'm not saying it's bad. I'm saying there's a whole lot of people out there who like fantasy, but not this kind of fantasy (imho).
> 
> *Doug* - Absolutely, but that's just one fallen empire among many, albeit the most recent one. Every town and city is full of the player races, in varying numbers. Eladrin, supposedly magical beings who exist partially in another realm have y'know, houses and stuff. I don't not dig it, it's just it doesn't seem like it's got much appeal to what I would guess was perhaps the majority of "fantasy enjoyers" (I mean, WoW seems awesomely popular, but it only has 2.5 million players in the US - The success of fantasy movies and books seem to suggest the total audience is a lot larger than that).
> 
> I just need to make it clear, by the way, that this is not about what I like, or what you like, it's about the market, or specifically, a potential market that doesn't ever, to me, seem to have had much attention focused on it.





Honestly, I don't think it's the non-human races (or lack of them) that make WoW, movies, and books more popular than table-top D&D. If your goal is to make D&D appeal to mainstream, non-gamer types, I think you're barking up the wrong tree. 

There are so many other factors, and this one does hold up if you start looking for actual examples. Otherwise, the LoTR RPG would have out-sold D&D, and the LotR MMO would be more poplar than WoW.

And then there's Star Wars. Both the least human-o-centric and (by far) the most successful franchise mentioned in the thread.


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## SSquirrel (Jun 30, 2008)

Ruin Explorer said:


> *Ssquirrel* - First off, you need to re-read the second quote you've used and edit your post accordingly. You seem to have taken the opposite of what I actually said.




"I look at the art of 4E, though, and I very much do see Star Wars, and a world that's extremely distant from ours, almost incomprehensible on any level other than as part of game."

Which had me poke a bit o fun about demi-human neighbors, which I obviously don't have.  The point I was trying to make was that D&D has always been very distant from ours.  The only similarity is that people in our world once wore chain mail and fought w/swords and it was ruled by humans.  Everything else is made up fantasy, so I really don't see how 4E differs on that count than any other edition of the game has.



Ruin Explorer said:


> Secondly, the PoL, does not, to me, seem to be very human-o-centric. All the races live together, and are seen on a daily basis, by default.




The last great empire in the game world was a human empire. The Tiefling empire is long since past.  Yes races live together, but that doesn't mean it isn't still human centric.  I still stand by my statement that there has yet to be an edition of D&D or a campaign setting released by TSR/WotC that was NOT humancentric.[/QUOTE]

Now Ruin hasn't really been using the term, but I just don't get the whole "wahoo" angle.  Heck, isn't wahoo something that gets shouted when you're having fun?  So 4E has too much fun for some people?   That's really how it comes across.


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## Psion (Jun 30, 2008)

mmadsen said:


> Really?  I feel exactly the opposite.  It's very, very hard to set a non-over-the-top tone once expectations are set for _wahoo_




Er, that was my point. Did I invert my statements, or did you read it wrong?


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## Eric Tolle (Jun 30, 2008)

hexgrid said:


> Honestly, I don't think it's the non-human races (or lack of them) that make WoW, movies, and books more popular than table-top D&D. If your goal is to make D&D appeal to mainstream, non-gamer types, I think you're barking up the wrong tree.




The popularity of WoW has a lot to do with the fact that the producers of WoW looked hard and long at previous MMORPGs, and made an effort to correct a lot of the mistakes tha they saw in earlier versions.

In other words, and to see how it might apply to D&D...

Ease of introduction: in WoW, players are given step by step introductions to the character abilities and gameplay, in entertaining, short quests.  

Strong effort-reward cycles.  Both WoW  carefully calculates the rewards so that there's both satisfaction from doing the game, and a hunger for even higher rewards. 

Emphasis on team-supported play: in WoW, characters are designed to strongly interact and reinforce each other on a tactical level.  Likewise, the instances encourage team activities.  And that's leaving aside guilds and raid groups.

Now...how many of those elements can be applied to 4E?  Not that I'm claiming 4E is WOW derived, but I think both games go fora similar philosophy of drawing players in.

Next to this, trivialities such as available character races won't make muchof adifference at all.


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## mmadsen (Jun 30, 2008)

Psion said:


> Er, that was my point. Did I invert my statements, or did you read it wrong?



Let's see; I said: There's nothing wrong with _wahoo_, but it's not to everyone's taste, and it's much harder to scale back than to scale up.​Then you said: From a practical hands-on-the-rules standpoint it is.  From a managing player expectations standpoint, it's not.​(Hey, it happens.)


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## Psion (Jun 30, 2008)

mmadsen said:


> Let's see; I said: There's nothing wrong with _wahoo_, but it's not to everyone's taste, and it's much harder to scale back than to scale up.​Then you said: From a practical hands-on-the-rules standpoint it is.  From a managing player expectations standpoint, it's not.​(Hey, it happens.)




I think I read "easier". Anyway, we agree. High five, party on, etc.


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## Ruin Explorer (Jun 30, 2008)

hexgrid said:


> And then there's Star Wars. Both the least human-o-centric and (by far) the most successful franchise mentioned in the thread.




Not recently. Pirates of the Carribean and LotR both blew the more recent SW movies away at the box-office. I daresay LotR Online has already taken more money than SWG did, too, and LotR console/PC games in general have been pretty successful in a richer gaming market. SW games were successful, but there was less money around.

Narnia and Harry Potter aren't doing exactly badly either. I'd be unsurprised if Potter takes more money than the SW movies, all told (even adjusted for inflation etc.).

I guess what I've come to realize over this thread isn't that WotC is chasing "the wrong" market, or a market that isn't there, but that I think there's a large number of potential FRPG players for whom there is not an attractive, well-advertised FRPG. I think WotC could fix that and pick up some players in the process. I'd think another company should do it, frankly, but the GSL doesn't allow for that, and I'm not sure anyone but WotC could get the books to where they'd need to be to be successful.


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## The Little Raven (Jun 30, 2008)

hexgrid said:


> And then there's Star Wars. Both the least human-o-centric and (by far) the most successful franchise mentioned in the thread.




Hm? The main characters, and the central focus of the series, are human. Yoda and Chewie are cool and all (as is Admiral "IT'S A TRAP!"), but they're just window dressing (though Yoda does get the coolest lines in the series in Episode 5). The main heroes and the main villains are humans, and they drive the entire saga. Star Wars is very humanocentric, even if Lucas has become enamored of goofy CG aliens recently.


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## hexgrid (Jun 30, 2008)

Mourn said:


> Hm? The main characters, and the central focus of the series, are human. Yoda and Chewie are cool and all (as is Admiral "IT'S A TRAP!"), but they're just window dressing (though Yoda does get the coolest lines in the series in Episode 5). The main heroes and the main villains are humans, and they drive the entire saga. Star Wars is very humanocentric, even if Lucas has become enamored of goofy CG aliens recently.




I agree. My point is that of everything mentioned, it most closely resembles what Ruin Explorer was saying might drive a mainstream audience away from 4e. It's an example of "far out" fantasy with quite a bit of mainstream appeal.


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## Ruin Explorer (Jun 30, 2008)

Mourn said:


> Hm? The main characters, and the central focus of the series, are human. Yoda and Chewie are cool and all (as is Admiral "IT'S A TRAP!"), but they're just window dressing (though Yoda does get the coolest lines in the series in Episode 5). The main heroes and the main villains are humans, and they drive the entire saga. Star Wars is very humanocentric, even if Lucas has become enamored of goofy CG aliens recently.




It's also not, actually, the least human-o-centric show mentioned, thinking about it. Farscape, Babylon 5 and Star Trek all devoted a lot more time to the non-human characters than SW, and indeed Farscape had a world where Ben was the only real "human" around 99% of the time, and the Sebeceans, who basically stood in for humans, weren't the most major race nor ever-present.

What 4E feels most like to me, is, and I think others have mentioned this, Farscape + 70s fantasy. That's not a bad deal, really, but I don't think a kid who is 13 now, say, and enjoyed LotR, Harry Potter, PotC and Narnia is going to be keen on D&D, necessarily. I think it's going to seem a bit garish and OTT and kind of OLD to him. I think WotC needs to come up with something new. Something not D&D but party-based fantasy nonetheless. 4E's mechanics are fine, I reckon. It's the style that needs adjusting if this market is to be hit.

*Hexgrid *- But that's precisely my point - EVEN Star Wars isn't ANYWHERE NEAR as far out as D&D 4E is by default, at least imho. And SW isn't necessarily big with the demographic I'm thinking about.


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## Eric Tolle (Jun 30, 2008)

Ruin Explorer said:


> Not recently. Pirates of the Carribean and LotR both blew the more recent SW movies away at the box-office. I daresay LotR Online has already taken more money than SWG did, too, and LotR console/PC games in general have been pretty successful in a richer gaming market. SW games were successful, but there was less money around.



And if we were to make a "popular races" conclusion from that, then WoTC should be focusing on undead pirates.  And elves of course- maybe the dream combination should be undead elven pirates?  



> I guess what I've come to realize over this thread isn't that WotC is chasing "the wrong" market, or a market that isn't there, but that I think there's a large number of potential FRPG players for whom there is not an attractive, well-advertised FRPG. I think WotC could fix that and pick up some players in the process. I'd think another company should do it, frankly, but the GSL doesn't allow for that, and I'm not sure anyone but WotC could get the books to where they'd need to be to be successful.



Well it's not like we've had any resolution on the content of such a FRPG.  Based on that lack of closure, one can say that 4E is the way to go; the proof will be in the actual sales data, not the proclaimations of some people on the intartubes.

I will continue to state that far more than specific content examples, what will be important for getting people involved will be ease of learning and escalating involvement.  For that, 4E is doing a pretty good job, better than most games.


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## ryryguy (Jun 30, 2008)

Lurks-no-More said:


> He's talking about Torog, the evil God of the Underdark; it's mentioned in the fluff that he's worshipped by jailers, for example. IMO, he's (again) reaching for something about 4e to dislike, and succeeding admirably. Nobody's easier to please than someone who wants to be displeased...




Just a minor point, but I believe the PHB specifically says that the worshippers of a god do not necessarily share the god's alignment.  Saying that jailers commonly worship Torog doesn't really imply anything nice about jailers, true.  But those civil-service, just-doing-my-job jailers could certainly be Unaligned and merely worshipping Torog because it's how you get ahead in the jailer's union.  

Finally, IMHO it's not hard to imagine that Evil jailers are fairly common.  Not all jailers are Evil, and being a jailer doesn't make you Evil, but Evil types perhaps gravitating towards the jailer profession?  Not much of a stretch in my book.


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## Ranes (Jun 30, 2008)

Corjay said:


> All you have to do is explain that an Eladrin is a high elf like Elron from LotR and suddenly they understand.




You mean misunderstand.

Elrond is from LotR.

Elron was Lord of the Hubbardistas, writer of excrecable fiction and purveyor of wahoo that leaves WotC's own not-inconsiderable wahoo in the dust.

I am not OT either. (Geddit?)

4e is too wahoo for me but whether it is too wahoo for the market WotC is after is debatable. I suspect it is, not that we will ever know. I certainly would have preferred the wahoo to be optional (ie not core). When it comes to wahoo, I always do.

PS The reduction of rounser's argument to him not being able to get past a line or two of colour text is disingenuous at best.


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## Ruin Explorer (Jun 30, 2008)

Eric Tolle said:


> And if we were to make a "popular races" conclusion from that, then WoTC should be focusing on undead pirates.  And elves of course- maybe the dream combination should be undead elven pirates?




No, more like giving humans bonuses based on their cultural backgrounds, actually.

Whilst you make the usual "my argument has failed so I will insult the very discussion I am part of" ploy, I'll ignore that silly-business and focus on what else you're saying. Particularly sales data. I agree, it will be revealing. If 4E sells MORE than 3E did in the first year, then clearly it's heading in the right direction. If it sells like 2x as much as 3E did in the first year, then clearly I'm _outright wrong _because that would imply a distinct market-enlarging.

However, do you have any figures for 3E sales? Are we going to get any for 4E? If not it's kind of a worthless fantasy to suggest that such figures will resolve anything.

I think what you fail to see with your "escalating involvement" etc. is that unless 4E has some kind of "gateway", then that's unlikely to significantly increase the number of players, merely maintain them. That's a whole other thread, though, I guess.

As for complaints of "lack of specific content", well, sorry I think I've been pretty clear. This is more about style and NOT having certain elements, I think. Though, tbh, I am shocked WotC doesn't have some kind of Harry Potter-rip-off RPG on the way out. There's SURELY money in that.


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## haakon1 (Jun 30, 2008)

Ruin Explorer said:


> I mean, coming from something like WoW, you're going to be fine. D&D's implied setting and level of species diversity is very much "on-par" with WoW. Coming from say, a fantasy lit. reading background, or from watching things like LotRO and Harry Potter, though, I think it's going to be a bit wild and extreme, and coming from outside fantasy entirely, I think the world 4E portrays implicitly is so alien that it would extremely difficult to meaningfully connect with. Maybe that's not a big deal, though, given 4E's focus on just providing a good game.




I agree completely.  This is what I mean by "too gamey" or self-reflective. My whole thread about how the relationship of 20 sp to 1 gp in AD&D was based on the actual traditional US coin values and the pricing of items was based on Gary thinking the Yukon Gold Rush economy, whereas in 4e, no reality outside the game itself is important to the design.

The counter criticism is of course that this doesn't matter, because D&D was never a perfect simulator of "X".  

You hit the nail on the head that it's not about simulation, it's about having a fantasy world (based on Gary's encyclopedic knowledge of history + traditional fantasy + traditional mythology) v. having a game (based on the history of the game itself + ideas about making the game more "fun" + ideas from other games).


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## haakon1 (Jun 30, 2008)

AllisterH said:


> Outside of D&D, I'm blanking on any source of media that uses either gnomes or half-orcs.




Gnomes?  Hmmm, it's been almost 24 hours since I saw one.  There was a stone one in the garden section of my local department store, next to the watering cans.

Half-orcs?  There was one in Tolkien.  And at least everyone knows what an orc is.

There are no Hellboys in Tolkien, or any other pre-1980's mythology that I'm aware of.


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## haakon1 (Jun 30, 2008)

CountPopeula said:


> But Tolkien's half man, half orc creatures, the Uruk-Hai, were far smarter, stronger, and far more ruthless than either orcs or men, and towered over them. Where did half-orcs in D&D even come from?




I believe that in Tolkien, the guy in Bree who was mean to Bill the pony was a half-orc.

In D&D terms, an orog (half-orc, half-ogre) is probably closer to an Uruk-hai.


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## The Little Raven (Jun 30, 2008)

haakon1 said:


> There are no Hellboys in Tolkien, or any other pre-1980's mythology that I'm aware of.




Well, I guess you should look into the Malleus Maleficarum, written in 1486, which discussed the cambion, a half-human offspring of a succubus or incubus. Caliban, from the Tempest, is a cambion, for example.

So, I think they kinda pre-date Tolkein by a few centuries.


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## AllisterH (Jun 30, 2008)

haakon1 said:


> Gnomes? Hmmm, it's been almost 24 hours since I saw one. There was a stone one in the garden section of my local department store, next to the watering cans..




Wait? You're arguing that LAWN gnomes are a good source to tell potential players? *LOL*, I can see it now "Hey bobby, you know that Traveller Gnome guy? Want to play one like that".


haakon1 said:


> Half-orcs? There was one in Tolkien. And at least everyone knows what an orc is.
> 
> There are no Hellboys in Tolkien, or any other pre-1980's mythology that I'm aware of.




Again, I'm not sure the Uruk-Hai ARE half-orcs. How do you get a crossbreed that is bigger, stronger and more cunning than the parent races combined?

As for pre-1980 mythology, um, Merlin is a cambion and that's truly old school.

Here's the thing though, I disagree with Ruin Explorer...I think any potential gamer under the age of 30 has grown up with things like Dragonborn and Tieflings. In fact, I'd argue that gnomes and half-orcs are the "wahoo" race. 

Besides, how come Dragonborn are considered wahoo when arguably the most FAMOUS D&D setting to the wider public, Dragonlance, actually had Dragonmen even before 3E. Draconians are  a defining aspect of the setting and THIS setting is the one that the wider public knows most about.

I can point out Dragonmen being presented to the wider public in non-farcical manner unlike the gnomes, going back to at least the birth of Dragonlance. However, the same can't be said for gnomes.

So what makes Dragonborn more wahoo than gnomes?


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## haakon1 (Jun 30, 2008)

Mourn said:


> Well, I guess you should look into the Malleus Maleficarum, written in 1486, which discussed the cambion, a half-human offspring of a succubus or incubus. Caliban, from the Tempest, is a cambion, for example.
> 
> So, I think they kinda pre-date Tolkein by a few centuries.




What's that got to do with whether Dragonborn/Hellboy should be in D&D as player races, and will help appeal to new players?

Devils and demons and rakasha are thousands-year-old concepts, and good stuff for a fantasy game.  Just not "good" PC races, IMHO.  And half doesn't make it any better.


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## The Little Raven (Jun 30, 2008)

haakon1 said:


> What's that got to do with whether Dragonborn/Hellboy should be in D&D as player races, and will help appeal to new players?




That wasn't what you said, which was that you didn't know of any pre-1980 mythology that had "Hellboys." I pointed out a 500 year old source. Whether or not it should be in D&D as a player race is completely irrelevant to the post to which I replied.


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## haakon1 (Jun 30, 2008)

AllisterH said:


> Wait? You're arguing that LAWN gnomes are a good source to tell potential players? *LOL*, I can see it now "Hey bobby, you know that Traveller Gnome guy? Want to play one like that".
> 
> Again, I'm not sure the Uruk-Hai ARE half-orcs. How do you get a crossbreed that is bigger, stronger and more cunning than the parent races combined?
> 
> ...




I'm arguing that everyone knows what a gnome and a half-orc are.  It's accessible and understandable and even CONNECTED to something outside the game and common to our culture -- our folk culture and literary culture.

I'm disinterested in comic books and gaming-related novels.  I'm probably not the only potential audience member with zero interest in Hellboy, Dragonlance, etc.

But I'll shut up now, since obviously, substantial numbers of players DO like this stuff.  Just let it be known that substantial numbers also hate it and don't want it in D&D.  There's a perfect solution to this problem -- you play 4e, and I don't.  Problem solved for both of us.  

Whether or not WOTC is right to have it in or not, we'll never really know.


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## SSquirrel (Jul 1, 2008)

haakon1 said:


> I'm arguing that everyone knows what a gnome and a half-orc are.  It's accessible and understandable and even CONNECTED to something outside the game and common to our culture -- our folk culture and literary culture.




Too bad telling people to think of a lawn gnome or David the Gnome is the complete wrong image of a gnome.  Yes you can say, well one of those guys but instead he's A and B and C" "So nothing like that gnome guy right" "Yeah!"

[/QUOTE]


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## Thunderfoot (Jul 1, 2008)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> My dislike of portions of 4Ed is no secret, but I'm also a realist.
> 
> I can't see the game as having anything but very good short term success.  Some of the elements I dislike may even contribute to expanding the game's market far beyond the hobby as it is today.
> 
> ...




Once again, Danny and I agree (hmmm big surprise) the system is built for speed not comfort.  However, as I get more and more familiar with the system it has occurred to me that this system is easier to hack apart than any other and almost BEGS to be done so to in order to achieve the feel that you want.  Really its not too far fetched to think it was a fail safe built into the system by the designers in order to ensure it was successful.    Love it or hate it, it's going to be successful and its going to bring another facet of audience into the game, increasing the market and building the juggernaut.  This has happened since OD&D, every new edition has strove to bring in more consumers and every edition has done just that.  

If you have been paying attention to the non-gaming blogs, there are several old gamers that have come back into the fold with 4E, why, it's easier to do a pick-up game than with 3.X (too many rules), 2E & 1E (Too few books available readily and no future support.).  But more than anything, 4E is _closer_ to 1E than the previous two incarnations, simply because of the lighter rule load.  I have played and loved (and hated) every edition of D&D, I will no doubt have the same reaction (and have already had) those feeling for this edition.  Life goes on, and so does the game.  Is it the same, no, is better, maybe - the jury is still out, is it D&D, yep, for better or worse - you may kiss your bride.


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## RFisher (Jul 1, 2008)

Ruin Explorer said:


> Now, fantasy is inherently "far out" to some degree, but what I'm wondering is, is 4E's basic setting so far out that it loses touch with reality entirely and becomes hard to relate to?




A common element to much fantasy, sword and sorcery, or even myth and legends is to have the hero(es) begin in a “conventional world” before moving into the fantastic “unconventional world”. This can be as subtle as The Shire vs. the world at large or as obvious as “the contemporary real world” vs. Narnia.

The conventional world is usually meant to be something that the audience can relate to and readily “get”. The contrast between the conventional and the unconventional highlights the fantastic nature of the fantasy elements. The unconventional world can be as gonzo as you like, because the protagonist from the conventional world—who, like the audience, is also unfamiliar with the unconventional world—is there for the audience to relate to.

I don’t know that any edition of D&D (or any RPG) has really done much in the way of emphasizing a “conventional world”. Many DMs manage to do it, but not because the game suggested it.

Would this make a game more accessible to the uninitiated and help grow the hobby? Who knows? But I’m leaning towards, “yes”.


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## Particle_Man (Jul 1, 2008)

Free Associating:  Tieflings -- The Mark of Cain, the Faustian Bargain, the shame that continues for generations, discrimination based on appearance.  There is a lot of room to work with some memes here.  This is where we can park the "I am discriminated against though I still fight for good" that those angst-based White Wolf games got a market share on (Vampire, Werewolf, etc., made money).

Dragonborn -- Martial good guys, strong, old empire, related to ancient sentient beings (Dragons!  As in Dungeons & . . .).  And this time they do not end up either butt ugly or terminally shy.  They are actually natural leaders (in many senses of the word).  Thus you get the "Big Tough Hero" mold that is universally popular.  And you don't have to be a product of rape at some point in your ancestry!  

Heck, people have wanted to play the Dragon since 1st ed., otherwise Gary Gygax would not have had to write against the idea in the 1st ed. DMG itself.

Come to think of it, Torog becomes the God that has a legit portfolio (prisoners being kept in a dungeon) but goes too far...perhaps he wants the whole *world* to be a Dungeon, because no one can be trusted with freedom.  Hmmm...Dungeons.  As in ...& Dragons.

I think the only problem with my old guard friends is that we are so damned jaded that we tend to look at the racial stats first, and flavour second.  Those that want the strength bonus *would* play a Talking Toaster if it was the strongest race, and worry about the flavour later.

On to other races:

Eladrin -- Fairy Tales, this will strike a cord.  And it has been critically underdeveloped in D&D, so I am pleased to see more Fey love in this iteration.

Elf -- Forest archers.  Robin Hood, Legolas from the movie, etc.

Half-Elf -- A harder sell, but the possible "Face" character.  Tanis Half-Elven from Dragonlance, Aragorn has some elven blood and ended up as King, etc.  I actually see Half-Elf as a bit of a weaker theme than most and was mildly surprised to see it in there.  I see it as a bit of a sacred cow.

Halfling -- Well Bilbo Baggins and his nephew are the Big Archtypes here, but there is room for those that like small sneaky characters that outwit larger (and usually dumber) opponents.  

Dwarf -- Miners, Fighters.  And since Fighter is now more the Defender Tank than the Offense dude, Dwarf fits the mold rather well.  I noted the "five o'clock shadow" on the female dwarf picture as a compromise on the "do female dwarves have beards" debate.  The new trope is that they started as a slave race (like the Gith) so that may cause a change in how the race is perceived in 4e.  Mind you, they also have the "wise elders" thing going that makes them good clerics.  Durkon!  Order of the Stick goodness, but that won't attract new people that haven't gamed before.  Hmmm....

Humans -- The versatile race.  And still the standard for people that don't want to play the  races that they don't "get".  Human is never a bad choice for any class.

So of the races, I would say Humans, Halflings, Dragonborn, Tieflings Elves and Eladrin will prove popular among the new players/buyers.  Dwarves and Half-Elves less so.  But I could be totally wrong on this one.  Let's see what happens in the next decade.


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## wedgeski (Jul 1, 2008)

If there is any additional 'risk' associated with making dragonborn et al core, it is a calculated risk. Do you think Wizards put a dragonborn on the cover of the PHB at a whim? Or do you think that their copious market research dollars told them it would be a good move?

As for the medium and long-term effect of adding these more outlandish races to the D&D canon, it seems to me that there is more to be gained than lost by stretching D&D's boundaries a little. I honestly can't imagine today's new gamers being put *off* by playing a dragon-man or demonspawn.

If we're talking anecdotal, I've started one new 4ed group, and out of 4 PC's, we have two dwarves, an eladrin, and a dragonborn. The eladrin player (my wife) loves gnomes with a passion and almost always had a gnome PC in previous editions... but she was only momentarily bummed to find that gnomes currently aren't core. One shrug of the shoulders later and her brand new wizard was protecting the dreadful secret of her family's wealth and blowing kobolds away on the battlemat. Job done, as far as I'm concerned.


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## Maggan (Jul 1, 2008)

RFisher said:


> I don’t know that any edition of D&D (or any RPG) has really done much in the way of emphasizing a “conventional world”. Many DMs manage to do it, but not because the game suggested it.




I think that is because the conventional world, the one our heroes escape from, is our own real world. Layering another conventional world on top of a fantastic one seems somewhat redundant, since we always have our own world to relate to.

I've tried the "Narnia" angle a few times, but the time spent on emphasising the conventional world was seen as somewhat wasted by the players, who more than anything wanted to get to the fantastical world.

Of course, there are other ways of doing it, it might be a case of me just being crap at it. 

/M


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## Leontodon (Jul 1, 2008)

Storminator said:


> I think that people that believe kids today have an understanding of medieval mythology is pretty deluded.
> 
> There is none of that common historical pseudo-European background. There never was back in the day, which is why D&D has always been a niche hobby, and there sure isn't now.
> 
> PS




Its not that kids ever had a deeper understanding of mythology, but there are symbols and archetypes that belong to the words hero, adventure, quest, etc.. Horned half-humans who look evil, demonic and sinister (and every detail of their artwork so far does) and dragonmen do not match the afore mentioned words. Its nice to have the possibility to play them, but core? Come on!


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## The Little Raven (Jul 1, 2008)

haakon1 said:


> Whether or not WOTC is right to have it in or not, we'll never really know.




Well, since they do market research that is unrivaled in the industry, I'd say they probably know their market a little better than we armchair theorists do.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jul 1, 2008)

> If there is any additional 'risk' associated with making dragonborn et al core, it is a calculated risk. Do you think Wizards put a dragonborn on the cover of the PHB at a whim? Or do you think that their copious market research dollars told them it would be a good move?




It was clearly calculated.

There is evidence that the number of people who have played scaly races- even anecdotally- is quite large.  They exist in D&D books, 3rd party products, and homebrews, so its probably safe to assume that scaly fandom lags only slightly behind elf luv.

Putting Dragonborn on the cover was like a sticker shouting "New and Improved!"

Furthermore, it let scaly lovers know they had something in the Core PHB they could latch onto immediately, instead of waiting for a template, a subsequent WotC or 3rd party book, homebrews, or MM player friendly stats.

(like Gnome fans do)


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## The Little Raven (Jul 1, 2008)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Putting Dragonborn on the cover was like a sticker shouting "New and Improved!"




To be clear, the dragonborn on the cover is there only because foreign retailers/distributors were worried about the original Tiefling cover.



> (like Gnome fans do)




Gnomes should have worked on their schmoozing a little more.


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## Ruin Explorer (Jul 1, 2008)

Mourn said:


> Well, since they do market research that is unrivaled in the industry, I'd say they probably know their market a little better than we armchair theorists do.




I'm sure they know it better than we do, but y'know, market research has lead so many companies into so many terrible errors, even when "armchair" theorists have be telling them "No, no, no." that I'm not sure what you're saying has much real meaning.

Blizzard with WoW are an example of this. Blizzard do market research virtually unrivalled in the industry (only Bungie under MS did more). Yet they were totally blown away by WoW's success - their market research had indicated it would be a game of middling success, and whilst bringing in a lot of money, would be more likely "comparable" to other games, or a little higher in population. Not the multi-million player juggernaut they found. Luckily they had the money to slam up servers and churn out discs at a rate of knots and expanded with the market (though their CS lagged a year and a half behind because they couldn't recruit fast enough).

Further, even after release, they've been told "This is what you should do" by the public, at length, and very rationally (I'm not just talking one crazy screaming-filled thread on their messageboards, but the more rational arguments and so on), and have ignored it, often openly poo-poo'd it, and then, shock, a few months after that, apparently realized it was right and implemented it. The lack of real competition has given them the breathing room to do so without losing customers, but in a more competative market, it wouldn't have.

Maybe WotC are in the same place. Even if their market research isn't perfect, their market dominance is so assured that they can "error-correct" later based on post-release research, rather than needing to get it perfect "out of the gate".

Regarding the "scaly" debate, I think WotC were actually smart to put a scaly race in core. Those saying there is considerably desire for such a race are spot-on, and I do think it'll help 4E, even with the "far out"-ness. I think the choice of a draconic race was smart, too. I just think the "fatdragon" look they chose, with no tails, horns, neck or wings was, well, a bit lame, and not likely to strongly appeal to the "scaly" fans. It doesn't appeal to me, and I've played a dozen lizardman-types over the years.


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## Maggan (Jul 1, 2008)

Mourn said:


> To be clear, the dragonborn on the cover is there only because foreign retailers/distributors were worried about the original Tiefling cover..




Looking at that cover now, make me appreciate the current cover more. 

/M


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## knifie_sp00nie (Jul 1, 2008)

Six pages and I don't think anyone has mentioned the dragonborn= klingon connection? Wasn't Worf so popular that they brought him on board DS9 when that show needed a ratings boost?

I don't see how DnD is more out there than any other current fantasy. It's a well established trope that any humanoid alien will be the exaggerated embodiment of a particular human trait or two, but otherwise just like us. It allows a certain level of racism without using real races. Why are all the classic fantasy races white? Maybe it's just the european roots. Could there be something else?

Love it or hate it, the new Star Wars films were very cosmopolitan, with jedi from all over contributing. The Inuyasha anime has a half-demon as the lead protagonist and adventures in a world full of non-humans. Full Metal Alchemist has a warforged as the secondary protagonist. All those superhero movies that have come out over the past several summers have featured freaks from all walks of life.

What part of DnD is so fantastic that a person open to the fantasy genre couldn't comprehend? What's new and different that hasn't been explored in other media before?


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jul 1, 2008)

knifie_sp00nie said:


> Six pages and I don't think anyone has mentioned the dragonborn= klingon connection? Wasn't Worf so popular that they brought him on board DS9 when that show needed a ratings boost?



Hmm. I brought that point (Dragonborn = Klingons, not the Worf/DS9 part) _somewhere_ but it might not have been this thread.


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## Elrohir_of_Kellemar (Jul 1, 2008)

*My preferences*

Yes, fouth edition is too "far out" for my tastes. I prefer a more "mundane" fantasy setting. I also prefer adventures around 3rd to 9th level as opposed to "save the world" adventures. That's just my preferences. Maybe I'm in a very small minority and the flavor of 4E will be exactly what the majority out there wants. We'll have to wait and see. 

For me, and others like me, it is sad to see that a game that we grew up enjoying is transforming away from what drew us in the first place. This looks like a good "Superhero" game. It's just tough to see the flavor of the game change so much. 

Again, the majority may see 4E as great progress. I've been trying to look for the positives (and have found many). You can't please everyone.


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## Corjay (Jul 1, 2008)

I wouldn't say that it has changed so dramatically in such a short time. I believe each consecutive edition of the game has headed further and further out based on what people like to do with their characters.

Chainmail was originally very medieval-centric. Original D&D added more of the LOTR aspect and set it in dungeons. AD&D made it into a bit more LOTR type. 2e bumped up the volume on spells and the effectiveness of spell casting classes. 3e turned things into the uber god characters. 4e has simply forced a balance to that aspect and added a greater emphasis to non-humanoid races. I think the progression has been fairly steady and not sudden at all.

Also note that 4e has actually kept the original cosmology, but progressed it through a timeline, showing how the new cosmology and world view evolved out of the old.


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## The Highway Man (Jul 2, 2008)

> "Are there any Dragons or Dungeons in this game? This looks like another planet. Its like Star Wars."



This is one of the best thought-provoking feedbacks I've seen. This is totally spot on, in my opinion. Hammer meets nail.
___________

About Rounser: What rounser tries to say is that it's called Dungeons & Dragons, which are names that will evoke something into anybody's mind because we all, gamers and non-gamers, have an idea of what a "dragon" is, or a "dungeon". 

This is a trigger for fantasy for anyone willing to respond.

Eladrin and Dragonborn are not understandable concepts outside of D&D's micro-world. These are specific concepts a non-gamer will find to be non-triggers for imagination, but rather triggers for "What kind of weird thing is that, now?!" which leads to "you guys are nerds. This game blows." 

That's what rounser is trying to talk about, and it seems like everyone tries to miss his point systematically. 

Regardless of his credentials, he has a huge point, IMO, here.


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## Particle_Man (Jul 2, 2008)

Leontodon said:


> Its not that kids ever had a deeper understanding of mythology, but there are symbols and archetypes that belong to the words hero, adventure, quest, etc.. Horned half-humans who look evil, demonic and sinister (and every detail of their artwork so far does) and dragonmen do not match the afore mentioned words. Its nice to have the possibility to play them, but core? Come on!




I am thinking of playing a Fey Pact Tiefling Warlock named Pan.  (Maybe I am thinking back to the old Hercules cartoon with Newton's friends, Toot and Tweet).

I am also thinking of playing a Star Pact Tiefling Warlock named Capricorn.

I could play a Tiefling Paladin trying to atone for the sins of his ancestors.

There is a lot of juicy room to explore here.



Dannyalcatraz said:


> It was clearly calculated.
> 
> There is evidence that the number of people who have played scaly races- even anecdotally- is quite large.  They exist in D&D books, 3rd party products, and homebrews, so its probably safe to assume that scaly fandom lags only slightly behind elf luv.




Heck, the Rogue's Gallery (a 1st ed AD&D, or perhaps even OD&D, product) featured a Lizard Man character (with str 18/00, so scaly = stronger even then).  I think he was a reincarnation.

2nd ed AD&D had a Sapient Dinosaur Paladin running around at least one novel.


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## ProfessorCirno (Jul 2, 2008)

Interesting as WoW has been mentioned, because I think here - and please don't come at me with rope - I think Wizards should've followed WoW more.

When WoW came out, it _didn't_ advertise anything new conceptually.  You had the same races all the fans were used to, and the same places all the fans knew.  Instead, they took the stuff they _already had_ and used _that_ to market to the outside crowd.  Blizzard, in essence, used two different types of marketing to the two groups.

To the fans, Blizzard essentially said "Everything you love is here, and it's _exactly_ how you've been loving it all this time."  People ate it up in droves, and just about ever message board in existance was hit with "Oh man, I get to play an dwarf just like from the games!" or "Holy crap, I hope they go further in depth with tauren, I loved those guys from Warcraft 3!"  Blizzard sold the old players the lore.

Then, to the new comers to Warcraft, they pimped - sorry for using the word, it hurts me to say it - out their gameplay.  They talked aboutcasual gaming, and how their PVP system would cater to people who want to do it and don't want to do it.  The new gamers weren't even close to being as interested in the lore as the old ones - the draw for new players is "This is fun to play."

That's where I think Wizards messed up.  They did it backwards.  They emphasized new mechanics for the old players who had, by now, simply houeruled whatever they wanted, and tried to make the new fluff WOWEE and XHARDXCOREX TO THE MAX for the new players.  But the problem is, while I'm sure lots of new players like the fluff, that's not going to be what gets them into the game, and when you try to go out of your way to stand out and say LOOK AT ME I'M SKYDIVING WHILE CHUGGING GAME FUEL MASTER CHIEF EDITION, most of the new players will ignore you for the cover that has generic caucasian knight facing a dragon.  Because new players aren't going to think "Gee, I want to find something new and exciting to dive into!"  They're going to want something that's generic enough for them to be able to defend later when they're called a geek.  And the more your game stands out, the geekier you are.


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## PaulofCthulhu (Jul 2, 2008)

To the original poster (quoting another post). Thank you for that. It's just cleared up something for me in my mind.

I wondered why I actually missed seeing rows of halberd variations in later editions of the game. 1st Ed. AD&D, to me, does have a more 'Medieval' feel to it than later editions, and perhaps it was the 'Quasi-Medieval' feel of the core rules I liked.

I've just started playing _Keep on the Shadowfell_, and hopefully (slowly) getting to grips with it. (Like the new presentation format, but DM's book could do with a card cover, methinks.)

'Medieval' is not a term I would associate with _D&D_ now. I do remember people describing _D&D_ in various 70s & 80s articles as 'Quasi-Medieval', but I don't think that's a term you could use for the current edition. Very much a personal preference, I used to enjoy medieval wargames using the _WRG_ rules back in the 80s, maybe that's it?

To me, _D&D_ 4th edition feels like its own thing.


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## hexgrid (Jul 2, 2008)

ProfessorCirno said:


> That's where I think Wizards messed up.  They did it backwards.  They emphasized new mechanics for the old players who had, by now, simply houeruled whatever they wanted, and tried to make the new fluff WOWEE and XHARDXCOREX TO THE MAX for the new players.  But the problem is, while I'm sure lots of new players like the fluff, that's not going to be what gets them into the game, and when you try to go out of your way to stand out and say LOOK AT ME I'M SKYDIVING WHILE CHUGGING GAME FUEL MASTER CHIEF EDITION, most of the new players will ignore you for the cover that has generic caucasian knight facing a dragon.  Because new players aren't going to think "Gee, I want to find something new and exciting to dive into!"  They're going to want something that's generic enough for them to be able to defend later when they're called a geek.  And the more your game stands out, the geekier you are.




D&D is not a game for non-geeks, and it never will be. It's funny to think that pretending to be one type of race is somehow less geeky than pretending to be another. For a non-gamer, it's all the same. Only those already steeped in gamer culture will see the difference.


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## Wombat (Jul 2, 2008)

Okay, let me talk about sales of 4e at Borders Books (where I currently work part time).

The books were placed on our "Hot New Books" table.

All of the people who have purchased them were established players.

Many people who look at them _still _have the same reaction as for previous editions -- "That's a lot of rules!  I could never know them all."  Very few people understand the (unstated) notion that no one has to know all the rules.

On top of this, many non-(tabletop)gamers are confused over what the game is _supposed _to be -- they understand that it is about beating things up, but they don't see a computer game, movie, tv show, or other media tie-in.  Equally it doesn't seem to match any standard mythologies (King Arthur, Greece, Lord of the Rings, etc.).  

So as far as I can see, D&D is selling to people who play D&D ... and confuses or intimidates non-gamers.

Of course there are always a _few _exceptions, but they are few and far between.  And most of these "exceptions" are people directly introduced to gaming by already active gamers.


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## Umbran (Jul 2, 2008)

Wombat said:


> Of course there are always a _few _exceptions, but they are few and far between.  And most of these "exceptions" are people directly introduced to gaming by already active gamers.




Well, that's hardly surprising.  Anecdotal evidence from across the history of these boards is that being taught the game by another person who already plays is the primary entry point to the game.

Given the nature of the beast, and how different it is from most other hobby activities and games people play, this is what I'd expect.  And, to be honest, I am not convinced that WotC should try to fight that trend.  Current players probably do a better job of selling the game and making it fun for new people than any WotC marketing could.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jul 2, 2008)

hexgrid said:


> D&D is not a game for non-geeks, and it never will be. It's funny to think that pretending to be one type of race is somehow less geeky than pretending to be another. For a non-gamer, it's all the same. Only those already steeped in gamer culture will see the difference.




Anecdotical "evidence":
I started my roleplaying "career" with Shadowrun. 

When I switched to D&D, I was surprised by stuff like "Vancian Magic" (though I didn't know the name then, just the bizarre rule mechanic I found) and hit points.
But there were also different races - no Orcs, only Half-Orcs? What's with these Elves, they are smaller then normal humans? Halfings, what's that? Why can't I play Troll (Urk - these are Trolls in D&D?). If I had been coming from The Dark Eye, the Gnomes and Halflings would look strange to me, too.

Experienced role-players over-estimate the knowledge players have about "typical" fantasy games, and mis-judge the expectations of players.

If you go into a fantasy game, you don't know much about what to expect from it, and you have to be willing to accept its premises and jump into it.


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## knifie_sp00nie (Jul 2, 2008)

The Highway Man said:


> Eladrin and Dragonborn are not understandable concepts outside of D&D's micro-world. These are specific concepts a non-gamer will find to be non-triggers for imagination, but rather triggers for "What kind of weird thing is that, now?!" which leads to "you guys are nerds. This game blows."




I can counter that argument with a single children's cartoon: Disney's Gargoyles.
All the main protagonists were monsterous humanoids with wings and claws. The series also had adventures in the feywild and dealings with fey that we would call Eladrin. A great deal of the Gargoyle's story borrowed heavilly from the works of Shakespeare, like "A Midsummer's Night Dream", which people of the 1600s were able to comprehend.

So where does this "freaking out the squares" elitism come from? What is so alien about these concepts? What themes in DnD are so different from any other modern fiction? I have non-gamer coworkers discussing things like Heroes and Battlestar Galactica. Ask anyone on the street what a Wookie is and you'll get an answer instead of a blank stare. Parents sit their children down in front of Shrek the freaking Ogre!

If there's any aspect of DnD that turns off non-gamers, it's the idea of doing simple math for fun.


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## The Little Raven (Jul 2, 2008)

knifie_sp00nie said:


> So where does this "freaking out the squares" elitism come from?




For a group of people that pretend to be pretty elven princesses, gamers are a surprisingly snobby bunch.


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## Ruin Explorer (Jul 2, 2008)

Umbran said:


> And, to be honest, I am not convinced that WotC should try to fight that trend.  Current players probably do a better job of selling the game and making it fun for new people than any WotC marketing could.




The problem with this attitude is that it seems to be intentionally ignoring the fact that, at some point, people were picking up D&D and getting into it without being taught by others. Largely in the 1980s, it seems. It seems like with was down to boxed-set-type D&D, too.

It's good for WotC to support their players in reaching new players (hey, even I do it), but unless they genuinely try to reach some people who've not played before, well, I don't think that the rate of new player induction will outstrip player loss, put it like that.


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## The Highway Man (Jul 2, 2008)

knifie_sp00nie said:


> I can counter that argument with a single children's cartoon: Disney's Gargoyles.
> All the main protagonists were monsterous humanoids with wings and claws. The series also had adventures in the feywild and dealings with fey that we would call Eladrin. A great deal of the Gargoyle's story borrowed heavilly from the works of Shakespear




I don't think you get what I was trying to say. "Dragonborn", the meme, the word-idea, is not rooted in collective memory, if you will. "Dragon" and "Dungeon" are. When you say "dragon" to anybody, anyone will be able to see their "own" version of what a dragon is. When you say "dragonborn", it's not as clear an idea - most people will ask "what the heck is that?" That's what's more and more wrong with the D&D setting, IMO.

Nevermind the conceptual origins, inspirations and so on. These cannot be known without reading the actual book and getting into the implied "Star Wars" D&D setting referred to earlier.


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## Corjay (Jul 2, 2008)

mourn said:


> for a group of people that pretend to be pretty elven princesses, gamers are a surprisingly snobby bunch.



rofl. QFT. 



The Highway Man said:


> I don't think you get what I was trying to say. "Dragonborn", the meme, the word-idea, is not rooted in collective memory, if you will. "Dragon" and "Dungeon" are. When you say "dragon" to anybody, anyone will be able to see their "own" version of what a dragon is. When you say "dragonborn", it's not as clear an idea - most people will ask "what the heck is that?" That's what's more and more wrong with the D&D setting, IMO.



I don't know whether to laugh my head off at this pseudo-intellectual "meme" talk, or to hang my head in disappointment at the human race.


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## The Highway Man (Jul 2, 2008)

Corjay said:


> I don't know whether to laugh my head off at this pseudo-intellectual "meme" talk, or to hang my head in disappointment at the human race.




Well, if you want to start snipping and belittling people instead of formulating arguments to have an actual conversation, that's your problem. Have fun on top of your ivory tower.


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## Umbran (Jul 2, 2008)

Ruin Explorer said:


> The problem with this attitude is that it seems to be intentionally ignoring the fact that, at some point, people were picking up D&D and getting into it without being taught by others. Largely in the 1980s, it seems. It seems like with was down to boxed-set-type D&D, too.




We should not equate "there was a massive increase in sales" to "there was a massive increase in people learning it from the books by themselves".  All the increase shows was an increase in the player base.  It does not speak directly to how they were learning.

One DM, setting up a new group, can teach a whole bunch of folks.  Do that twice (once in high school, once in college, say), and you have a massive increase in the player base.

You don't need the internet for viral marketing to be effective.


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## Mallus (Jul 2, 2008)

Corjay said:


> I don't know whether to laugh my head off at this pseudo-intellectual "meme" talk...



Please remember to use the word 'meme' responsibly this 4th of July holiday...

Anyhow... this just occurred to me. Is 4e too 'out there'? How popular is the Metal Gear franchise again? Revolver Ocelot? Otacon? Solid/Liquid/Semi-solid/Plasma Snake? 

If that baffling array of (preachy politicized, even) nerdery can enjoy 20 years worth mass market success, there is nothing inherently too 'out there' about D&4 4e.


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## Corjay (Jul 2, 2008)

The Highway Man said:


> Well, if you want to start snipping and belittling people instead of formulating arguments to have an actual conversation, that's your problem. Have fun on top of your ivory tower.



Yeah, I'm definitely going to pass on "formulating arguments" on meme-talk, thanks.


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## Umbran (Jul 2, 2008)

Corjay said:


> I don't know whether to laugh my head off at this pseudo-intellectual "meme" talk, or to hang my head in disappointment at the human race.





Given The Rules of these boards, you want to do neither.  You want to be civil and respectful to your fellow posters.  

You're new, Corjay, so I suggest you go and review those rules.


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## Corjay (Jul 2, 2008)

Thank you. I forget myself sometimes.


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## hexgrid (Jul 2, 2008)

The Highway Man said:


> I don't think you get what I was trying to say. "Dragonborn", the meme, the word-idea, is not rooted in collective memory, if you will. "Dragon" and "Dungeon" are. When you say "dragon" to anybody, anyone will be able to see their "own" version of what a dragon is. When you say "dragonborn", it's not as clear an idea - most people will ask "what the heck is that?" That's what's more and more wrong with the D&D setting, IMO.
> 
> Nevermind the conceptual origins, inspirations and so on. These cannot be known without reading the actual book and getting into the implied "Star Wars" D&D setting referred to earlier.




Why is any of this a problem?


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## Ruin Explorer (Jul 2, 2008)

Umbran said:


> We should not equate "there was a massive increase in sales" to "there was a massive increase in people learning it from the books by themselves".  All the increase shows was an increase in the player base.  It does not speak directly to how they were learning.
> 
> One DM, setting up a new group, can teach a whole bunch of folks.  Do that twice (once in high school, once in college, say), and you have a massive increase in the player base.
> 
> You don't need the internet for viral marketing to be effective.




So you're basically denying that the old D&D boxed sets ever got any significant number of people "into" D&D, and that the people who cite that as how they got into gaming are a meaningless minority, and that similar future efforts are worthless?


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## knifie_sp00nie (Jul 2, 2008)

The Highway Man said:


> When you say "dragonborn", it's not as clear an idea - most people will ask "what the heck is that?" .




I had that exact thing happen to me with a new potential player. 

My response: They're dragon guys- Tough and scaly with a fire-breathing ability. They make good fighters.
Their response: Cool. I want to play one of them!

If we're talking collective memory, I might be inclined to believe that elves lived in trees and made cookies.

A European and a Chinese person would probably have very different takes on the nature of a dragon. 

My argument is that while the particulars of the DnD world may not be universally known, the tropes and conventions used in the game are universal and no more than a sentence away from understanding to any lay person that hasn't been living under a rock for most of their life. I keep offering examples from media to show that the fantastical elements in DnD are not new and are more accepted than ever before. 

We've had gods, monsters, other worlds, and supermen ever since we started telling stories. The trick in introducing new story elements is to bridge the unknown to the known. 

"Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra."


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## Corjay (Jul 2, 2008)

knifie_sp00nie said:


> "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra."



OMG. Great quote. Great episode. Great way to bring the point home. "You may not know THIS race or THIS story, but it relates to this other stuff in just the same way." Isn't that what a meme is all about? (Rhetorical)


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## The Highway Man (Jul 2, 2008)

hexgrid said:


> Why is any of this a problem?




It's not a problem for a noob introduced to role-playing at a game table if the DM's description is clear and appealing. It is a problem when one of the goals of 4E in and by itself is to appeal to non-gamers as an entry product to the hobby. 

Basically, this doesn't make the product any more appealing to non-geeks. It hunts on the grounds of other geek-related hobbies, like MMOs, fans of Farscape, what-have-you. Which previous editions already did. 

So in that regard, I'm on Pramas' side when he says 4E as an entry product is a failure. That's just one of the reasons, not the only one, and I think that, in this particular instance, this is becoming worse with every edition of the game. It is becoming more and more "Star Wars". Not in a good way, because you don't have high-budget movies to be the entry product in this case, but hundreds of pages of rules to digest. Quite a gap in terms of potential appeal, if you ask me. 

Medusas, Giants, Dragons are becoming something very specific to the D&D-verse for instance, farther and farther apart from the real-life myths and legends that inspired them. A Wizard is something very specific, clearly apart from what a Warlock is, while these terms are far from clear cut in real life. My point is, D&D is becoming more and more its own thing that non-gamers will look at and say "WTF?"


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## Corjay (Jul 2, 2008)

The Highway Man said:


> It's not a problem for a noob introduced to role-playing at a game table if the DM's description is clear and appealing. It is a problem when one of the goals of 4E in and by itself is to appeal to non-gamers as an entry product to the hobby.
> 
> Basically, this doesn't make the product any more appealing to non-geeks. It hunts on the grounds of other geek-related hobbies, like MMOs, fans of Farscape, what-have-you. Which previous editions already did.
> 
> ...



I beg to differ. MMORPG's are HUGE. People who know MMORPG's will be able to relate to 4e VERY easily. There's nothing new in D&D to them. Additionally, just the name "Dungeons & Dragons" and the concept do and always have related to everyone. The name is comprehendable and iconic. The main races are seen in every video game there is. And movies have presented such things for years. Besides, how many people are going to hear the term "dragonborn" or better yet "tiefling" before they ever see their pictures? Very few, and no one that plays is going to just assume that such people know what a "tiefling" is. It's the imagery that's going to pull the people in. Not the names. Once again, names are meaningless. They only have value so long as a picture is applied (a name itself is a meme for recalling an image to mind). Since there are plenty of pictures around, the name is unimportant. It's not like D&D posters have the words "we now include Dragonborn and Tieflings!" without showing their images.


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## The Highway Man (Jul 2, 2008)

So you're actually agreeing with my point that 4E appeals to people who are already customers of MMOs, Star Trek, Farscape et cetera.

This for me is a lost battle. Between playing on a console/PC (or watching a show on TV) with little to no hard rules to comprehend before playing, and digesting hundreds of pages of abstract ideas, these gamers will just keep on playing instantly rewarding games.

This just makes D&D more geekish, more entrenched as an has-been's hobby (not unlike wargames were to RPGs when they rose). Not less. It's like an old lady that dies her hair platinum and wears slut clothing to appeal to younger men. That doesn't make her any more attractive, but instead underlines her issues with her own age.


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## PaulofCthulhu (Jul 2, 2008)

Ruin Explorer said:


> So you're basically denying that the old D&D boxed sets ever got any significant number of people "into" D&D, and that the people who cite that as how they got into gaming are a meaningless minority, and that similar future efforts are worthless?




An old _D&D_ boxed set got me into roleplaying. A friend introduced me to the game, but I kept playing after that first game because of the boxed set.

Once I 'mastered' that boxed set and its concepts along with playing and running several Basic adventures, I eventually moved onto _AD&D_. If I'd have been introduced directly to _AD&D_ at the age of 11, I think I would have run away screaming, or more likely just gone "errr, no thanks".

A graduated introduction worked best for me, alas there does not seem to be one these days. Would Wizards have the heart & will to do such a thing, or just rely as they seem to be doing on existing players?

A related question raised by a friend (Mike Mason), should we expect companies to recruit new players or are players best at doing that. If the latter, what have we done ourselves to make more roleplayers (besides the obvious, parents).


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## Maggan (Jul 2, 2008)

PaulofCthulhu said:


> Would Wizards have the heart & will to do such a thing, or just rely as they seem to be doing on existing players?




Yepp, they will do a Basic D&D game, as they did for 3e.

I don't think that the Basic D&D format works as well as it did when I was introduced to D&D, and that the high hopes many have for a tiered introduction to D&D via a boxed D&D set will not be fruitful.

The best chances of introduction to D&D will be the new D&D Minitures game.

/M


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## PaulofCthulhu (Jul 2, 2008)

Maggan said:


> Yepp, they will do a Basic D&D game, as they did for 3e.
> 
> I don't think that the Basic D&D format works as well as it did when I was introduced to D&D, and that the high hopes many have for a tiered introduction to D&D via a boxed D&D set will not be fruitful.
> 
> ...



I still have that 3rd edition _Basic Set_. It's not the same as the old _D&D_ Basic set in a one important way. The 3rd edition set is a one-off ("Play this once, now go buy our full edition rulebooks."), whereas the old _Basic_ sets had an entire series of scenarios for them (indeed the whole _BECMI_ rules path as well).

Would using the _D&D_ Minis game as an introduction to what full _Dungeons & Dragons_ is, simply encourage new people to treat _D&D_ more as a wargame than a roleplaying game when they get into it? Just not sure on that one.


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## Corjay (Jul 2, 2008)

The Highway Man said:


> So you're actually agreeing with my point that 4E appeals to people who are already customers of MMOs, Star Trek, Farscape et cetera.
> 
> This for me is a lost battle. Between playing on a console/PC (or watching a show on TV) with little to no hard rules to comprehend before playing, and digesting hundreds of pages of abstract ideas, these gamers will just keep on playing instantly rewarding games.
> 
> This just makes D&D more geekish, more entrenched as an has-been's hobby (not unlike wargames were to RPGs when they rose). Not less. It's like an old lady that dies her hair platinum and wears slut clothing to appeal to younger men. That doesn't make her any more attractive, but instead underlines her issues with her age.



No, because you're saying that people won't connect with D&D because they DON'T recognize it in the social memory. I'M saying that the social memory IS established regardless of name, that name doesn't matter to the social memory. Names matter only to quick recollection.

You also said the Dragonborn and Tieflings are not a part of the social memory, but I am saying they ARE a part of the social memory, but go by so many different names in other media that it doesn't matter.


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## Mallus (Jul 2, 2008)

The Highway Man said:


> So you're actually agreeing with my point that 4E appeals to people who are already customers of MMOs, Star Trek, Farscape et cetera.



I believe that collective market could be described as the low-hanging fruit, and they are _exactly_ the customers WotC should focus on. 



> This for me is a lost battle. Between playing on a console/PC (or watching a show on TV) with little to no hard rules to comprehend before playing, and digesting hundreds of pages of abstract ideas, these gamers will just keep on playing instantly rewarding games.



Unless, of course, they want a different experience.


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## Maggan (Jul 2, 2008)

PaulofCthulhu said:


> I still have that 3rd edition _Basic Set_.




The first one (Black dragon on cover) or the second one (blue dragon on cover)? There were differences in strategy between the sets, but you have a point that there weren't anywhere to go but to the books when you were done. Well, unless you count the Player's Kit, with the softback PH in it.

It's gonna be interesting to see the strategy this time.

/M


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## hexgrid (Jul 2, 2008)

The Highway Man said:


> It's not a problem for a noob introduced to role-playing at a game table if the DM's description is clear and appealing. It is a problem when one of the goals of 4E in and by itself is to appeal to non-gamers as an entry product to the hobby.
> 
> Basically, this doesn't make the product any more appealing to non-geeks. It hunts on the grounds of other geek-related hobbies, like MMOs, fans of Farscape, what-have-you. Which previous editions already did.




This is all I think D&D _should_ do, because reaching any farther is an automatic failure.  You've got to have a certain level of geekiness to be a potential gamer.


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## Umbran (Jul 2, 2008)

Ruin Explorer said:


> So you're basically denying that the old D&D boxed sets ever got any significant number of people "into" D&D, and that the people who cite that as how they got into gaming are a meaningless minority, and that similar future efforts are worthless?




Wow.  Way to overstate a position, RE.  And way to laden said overstatement with emotionally-loaded terms. 

I am going to suggest you turn the rhetorical antagonism _waaaayyy_ down.  This is a friendly discussion.  And I'm not seeing you as too terribly friendly right now.


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## Jhaelen (Jul 2, 2008)

PaulofCthulhu said:


> To the original poster (quoting another post). Thank you for that. It's just cleared up something for me in my mind.
> 
> I wondered why I actually missed seeing rows of halberd variations in later editions of the game. 1st Ed. AD&D, to me, does have a more 'Medieval' feel to it than later editions, and perhaps it was the 'Quasi-Medieval' feel of the core rules I liked.
> 
> ...



I agree with your assessment to a certain point. Still, I've always considered D&D to be more 'high fantasy' than 'quasi medieval'. There have always been anachronistic and even sci-fi elements in the game and I don't know many other rpg systems that include spells as powerful and 'epic' as the ones in D&D.

Since I also enjoy a more realistic portrayal of medieval times, I looked to other rpg systems to get my fix: Pendragon and especially Ars Magica took my fancy. It makes for a welcome change of pace and a completely different roleplaying experience to play one of these from time to time.

But I wouldn't want to give up on D&D for either of these. For me the strength of D&D has always been the very tactical nature of its combat system. I like that 4E seems to emphasize this aspect even further.


----------



## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jul 2, 2008)

PaulofCthulhu said:


> I still have that 3rd edition _Basic Set_. It's not the same as the old _D&D_ Basic set in a one important way. The 3rd edition set is a one-off ("Play this once, now go buy our full edition rulebooks."), whereas the old _Basic_ sets had an entire series of scenarios for them (indeed the whole _BECMI_ rules path as well).
> 
> Would using the _D&D_ Minis game as an introduction to what full _Dungeons & Dragons_ is, simply encourage new people to treat _D&D_ more as a wargame than a roleplaying game when they get into it? Just not sure on that one.




If I heard correctly, they don't want to include miniatures in the 4E basic set, since this just inflates the cost. I hope this will give the potential players more material to work on.

The D&D min-game _might_ serve as an introduction to D&D, but are they a good introduction to role-playing? Would new players look out for more board games or want to expand the D&D role-playing side of things? I don't know.


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## SKyOdin (Jul 2, 2008)

The Highway Man said:


> So you're actually agreeing with my point that 4E appeals to people who are already customers of MMOs, Star Trek, Farscape et cetera.
> 
> This for me is a lost battle. Between playing on a console/PC (or watching a show on TV) with little to no hard rules to comprehend before playing, and digesting hundreds of pages of abstract ideas, these gamers will just keep on playing instantly rewarding games.
> 
> This just makes D&D more geekish, more entrenched as an has-been's hobby (not unlike wargames were to RPGs when they rose). Not less. It's like an old lady that dies her hair platinum and wears slut clothing to appeal to younger men. That doesn't make her any more attractive, but instead underlines her issues with her age.



Hey now, I got into D&D primarily from my interest in console RPGs such as Final Fantasy. Saying that people who play videogames are unwilling/unable to learn how to play tabletop RPGs is rather misguided. Fantasy videogames at the very least introduce people to fantasy in general and to complex rulesets (and if you think videogame players don't get involved in digesting complex rule mechanics, you have overlooked a large element of the fanbase).

In any case, I wouldn't call fans of MMOs and console RPGs necessarily "geekish". Every year, videogaming comes closer and closer to being mainstream. If 4E successfully attracts a lot of current MMO and console game players, it might be able to tag along on the ride towards mainstream acceptance.


----------



## Ruin Explorer (Jul 2, 2008)

Umbran said:


> Wow.  Way to overstate a position, RE.  And way to laden said overstatement with emotionally-loaded terms.
> 
> I am going to suggest you turn the rhetorical antagonism _waaaayyy_ down.  This is a friendly discussion.  And I'm not seeing you as too terribly friendly right now.




I don't think what I'm said is as extreme as you're claiming. Perhaps you could clarify though. Do you need me to repeat the question toned-down? I guess I should:

"Are you say that the old D&D boxed sets didn't get any significant number of people "into" D&D? Are you saying that future similar efforts are largely pointless/a waste of time and effort?"

How about that? I'd really like you to answer this question, because it seems like an entirely valid one given your apparent position.

BTW, totally off-topic, is there any way I can put your avatar on ignore whilst viewing your posts? (which often have some merit) I have to admit, whenever I see that prat together with an opinion I disagree with, I want to see Angel kick him across a room in a bad wire-fu style. He's got to be the least likeable "Oh but he's not really a villain" in TV history. Angel did a great job of making me loathe him utterly. If I'm overwrought, it's his fault


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## Set (Jul 3, 2008)

They don't have Phraints and Deodanths as core races yet, so I'm not terribly worried about D&D getting too far away from Tolkein.

Even some of the 'out-there' races of Eberron come from mythic stock (changeling children, golems, beast-men) that's every bit as valid to explore as dwarves and elves (and many times more 'traditional' than nasty hobbitses).


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## Ruin Explorer (Jul 3, 2008)

Set said:


> Even some of the 'out-there' races of Eberron come from mythic stock (changeling children, golems, beast-men) that's every bit as valid to explore as dwarves and elves (and many times more 'traditional' than nasty hobbitses).




I think you've missed the point of my thread, Set. That's exactly what I was saying. Something like changelings (or whatever they're called) or shifters or even maybe Warforged, especially if they were a little more golem-like, is I think, going to fit better with the perceptions of say, the average fantasy reader than Dragonborn.

It's not really down to "just the races", though, that's a side-show. The main deal is the focus on ultra-fantasy adventure, and the art style, which, as the woman quoted says, looks more like Star Wars than perhaps what someone imagines when the phrase "Dungeons and Dragons" is uttered. Still, over the thread I've come to realize that's there's a market for that. I just think that WotC might want to consider whether there's a market for something else, too.


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## Obryn (Jul 3, 2008)

Ruin Explorer said:


> BTW, totally off-topic, is there any way I can put your avatar on ignore whilst viewing your posts?



Adblock is perfect for this, if you're using Firefox.  I have it, but I keep the actual site ads active, since I like giving Morrus money without paying anything.   I've blocked avatars before for browsing at work.

I believe IE 7 has something which lets you block images, too, but since I generally don't use it, I can't say for certain.  If you're using this, right-click his avatar and see.

-O


----------



## The Highway Man (Jul 3, 2008)

Corjay said:


> No, because you're saying that people won't connect with D&D because they DON'T recognize it in the social memory. I'M saying that the social memory IS established regardless of name, that name doesn't matter to the social memory. Names matter only to quick recollection.




Collective memory _is_ subconscious recollection. In other words, I'm afraid we disagree on this one. 



> You also said the Dragonborn and Tieflings are not a part of the social memory, but I am saying they ARE a part of the social memory, but go by so many different names in other media that it doesn't matter.



Strawman argument. I agree that dragonborn and tieflings are rooted in some form or shape in fantasy literature, legends etc. That's not what I'm talking about here.

I'm saying that those *words* do not trigger recollections from collective memory. To know what a "Dragonborn" and a "Tiefling" are, you have to be at a D&D table and have a DM explain to you OR read the book. That means you have *already* been "picked up" by D&D as a player, one way or another. 

You say words don't matter (and hinted at the fact that things like memes, collective memory etc are things for intellectuals who like to listen to themselves talking, basically). I disagree. That's the real bottom line I see here.


----------



## Corjay (Jul 3, 2008)

Now you're just taking it in circles. You say names matter. I say they don't.

Wow. Isn't that...simple...?


----------



## The Highway Man (Jul 3, 2008)

SKyOdin said:


> If 4E successfully attracts a lot of current MMO and console game players, it might be able to tag along on the ride towards mainstream acceptance.




I've got nothing against people playing on consoles. I do myself. I just think that a wide majority of videogamers are just going to stick to what feels natural and easy to pick up, like a video game, rather than bother with an RPG that is the exact duplicate of this or that video game, less the graphics, plus the hassle of assembling people and prepping for the game, no matter how long/"easy" this is supposed to be. 

I'm glad you came to D&D from videogames. I'm sure you're far from being the only one. But in the end, to me, tabletop RPGs are going to lose this battle the same way wargames lost to tabletop role-playing a few decades ago. They'll still exist. As an "uber-geekish hobby for old guys".



Corjay said:


> Now you're just taking it in circles. You say names matter. I say they don't.
> 
> Wow. Isn't that...simple...?




Indeed. That's simple. Why do you feel the need to rewrite my arguments to suit your argumentative needs to respawn the cycle, then? We can just agree to disagree, and move on (forgetting that I just countered your claim about collective memory not being about words and quick recollections, and that tieflings and dragonborn appeal to people who are already giving the game a chance, one way or another... but I digress). Yes?


----------



## Corjay (Jul 3, 2008)

Oooookayyy. Wow.


----------



## Scribble (Jul 3, 2008)

D&D needs a TV show dedicated to new D&D stuff, and class builds and stuff.

And more ads and stuff with hot chicks playing D&D. Nothing sells stuff more then hot chicks.


----------



## Hussar (Jul 3, 2008)

Leontodon said:


> For me the problem with the races "Dragonborn" and "Tiefling" is that their symbolical value is alien to heroic fantasy. Both Races have symbolical links to the devil. The dragon being a medieval symbol for pagan beliefs and the devil himself and well the tiefling should be obvious. Deeply ingrained in their horned and red eyed image is the message that they are NOT the good guys. One could always explain the half-orc as the tragical, misunderstood loner, but now it gets very awkward with two races in the game who have the sentence:" Smash me back into hell!" written all over their faces. European culture does simply not support a positive picture for these kind of characters.






Leontodon said:


> Its not that kids ever had a deeper understanding of mythology, but there are symbols and archetypes that belong to the words hero, adventure, quest, etc.. Horned half-humans who look evil, demonic and sinister (and every detail of their artwork so far does) and dragonmen do not match the afore mentioned words. Its nice to have the possibility to play them, but core? Come on!




Umm, what?  There have been tons of "demonic" style good guys for years.  Heck, the faun from Narnia looks pretty much like a tiefling.  The anti-hero is a pretty popular tradition too.  Your entire argument requires that we ignore the past several decades of fantasy in order to only look at themes that occur prior to about 1900.



Ruin Explorer said:


> So you're basically denying that the old D&D boxed sets ever got any significant number of people "into" D&D, and that the people who cite that as how they got into gaming are a meaningless minority, and that similar future efforts are worthless?




I would say that the boxed set got lots of people into the game true.  But, it was usually one person buying the boxed set and then teaching it to others.

Kinda like now.  Except now you have millions of people who have already played TRPG's, who can teach new people how to play the game, unlike in 1980, when no one had ever heard of a TRPG and thus had no one to teach them.

In other words, how many boxed sets would each group typically have?  Unless each person bought their own and learned the rules independently, it's still valid to say that viral marketing drove Basic D&D, same as always.


----------



## SSquirrel (Jul 3, 2008)

ProfessorCirno said:


> They emphasized new mechanics for the old players who had, by now, simply houeruled whatever they wanted, and tried to make the new fluff WOWEE and XHARDXCOREX TO THE MAX for the new players.  But the problem is, while I'm sure lots of new players like the fluff, that's not going to be what gets them into the game, and when you try to go out of your way to stand out and say LOOK AT ME I'M SKYDIVING WHILE CHUGGING GAME FUEL MASTER CHIEF EDITION, most of the new players will ignore you for the cover that has generic caucasian knight facing a dragon.




You know, this argument could have been made w/o the extreme hyperbole.  People talk about the 4E mafia jumping on threads.  Frequently I see people trying to defuse ridiculous hyperbole with facts.

That said, I enjoy getting new stuff in a new edition.  Go figure.  If it's not a large change, why upgrade?  I ignored 3.5 b/c except for 2 or 3 major class changes (print a few SRD pages and go), most of the other changes were minutia and fiddly bits I didn't feel was worth relearning.  Art is in the eye of the viewer, so no cover will ever appeal to everyone.
They chose a more modern art style, which feels fitting to me. *shrug*


----------



## Obryn (Jul 3, 2008)

The Highway Man said:


> I've got nothing against people playing on consoles. I do myself. I just think that a wide majority of videogamers are just going to stick to what feels natural and easy to pick up, like a video game, rather than bother with an RPG that is the exact duplicate of this or that video game, less the graphics, plus the hassle of assembling people and prepping for the game, no matter how long/"easy" this is supposed to be.



That's if you take as given that there's no benefits to playing a game in a group, led by a DM, with a much wider array of _stuff_ than any MMO could ever have.  Or that people trying out RPGs for the first time won't be attracted to these aspects.

Which is plainly false.

Neverwinter Nights didn't kill 3e.  Neither did NWN2.  Both incorporated the mechanics of the RPG into a networked, accessible, critically acclaimed computer game.  They did a much better job of this for 3e than WoW does for either 3e or 4e.

-O


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## Lurks-no-More (Jul 3, 2008)

Mourn said:


> For a group of people that pretend to be pretty elven princesses, gamers are a surprisingly snobby bunch.




Gaming is a _very_ conservative (not politically) hobby, I've noticed; all the stuff about gamers being more imaginative and open to new things than the average person is starting to seem like a lot of bunk to me.

Anyway... if someone is comparing the Dragonborn to Star Wars (not that the idea of a big, burly, fire-breathing dragon-man or -woman takes more than thirty seconds to explain to anyone with even the most basic idea of fantasy and SF; ie. to anyone who would consider trying D&D in the first place), _how is that too far out_? Star Wars is _only_ the most popular SF movie series and franchise during the last twenty years, and it's definitely a tightly embedded part of the Western culture by now.


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## hong (Jul 3, 2008)

The Highway Man said:


> So you're actually agreeing with my point that 4E appeals to people who are already customers of MMOs, Star Trek, Farscape et cetera.
> 
> This for me is a lost battle. Between playing on a console/PC (or watching a show on TV) with little to no hard rules to comprehend before playing, and digesting hundreds of pages of abstract ideas, these gamers will just keep on playing instantly rewarding games.
> 
> This just makes D&D more geekish, more entrenched as an has-been's hobby (not unlike wargames were to RPGs when they rose). Not less. It's like an old lady that dies her hair platinum and wears slut clothing to appeal to younger men. That doesn't make her any more attractive, but instead underlines her issues with her own age.



Millennarian thinking is so 1999.


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## knifie_sp00nie (Jul 3, 2008)

It's worth noting that many people consider Star Wars to be closer to fantasy than science fiction. There is almost no actual science in SW. Instead there are wizards (jedi), sword fights, princesses, and dashing rogues. There are elements that we recognize as technology, but the technology is never the focus. You could completely re-skin the entirety of Star Wars to take place on a single fantasy planet with DnD level technology and have all the story elements remain intact.

A lot of the arguments here can be reduced down to a chicken-egg problem. Does anyone discover DnD in a vacuum and have to be introduced to fantasy elements, or do people already minimally versed in fantasy go on to discover DnD?

One thing I've noticed on forums when people talk about getting their first boxed set is that initially they were overwhelmed and couldn't make heads or tails of the thing until someone more experienced helped them sort it out.

I think the best way to introduce the lay person to the game would be a high production quality video of a game session, followed up by more in-depth instruction. The video WotC put out was an ok experiment for video novices, but they really need pros to pull it off well.


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## MichaelSomething (Jul 3, 2008)

Scribble said:


> D&D needs a TV show dedicated to new D&D stuff, and class builds and stuff.
> 
> And more ads and stuff with hot chicks playing D&D. Nothing sells stuff more then hot chicks.




If agreeing with this post is wrong, I don't want to be right!


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## Ruin Explorer (Jul 3, 2008)

knifie_sp00nie said:


> It's worth noting that many people consider Star Wars to be closer to fantasy than science fiction. There is almost no actual science in SW. Instead there are wizards (jedi), sword fights, princesses, and dashing rogues. There are elements that we recognize as technology, but the technology is never the focus. You could completely re-skin the entirety of Star Wars to take place on a single fantasy planet with DnD level technology and have all the story elements remain intact.




I really don't think that you could. Technology is never the focus, I agree, but it's more embedded in SW than you think, and frequent long-distant high-speed travel is a feature of the SW universe, and not really a feature of typical fantasy universes.

I agree that SW is "science fantasy" or even arguably pure fantasy with technological elements, but you can't do what you're claiming you could and keep the story intact, certainly not if we're talking movies 1 through 6.


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## Corjay (Jul 3, 2008)

Ruin Explorer said:


> I really don't think that you could. Technology is never the focus, I agree, but it's more embedded in SW than you think, and frequent long-distant high-speed travel is a feature of the SW universe, and not really a feature of typical fantasy universes.
> 
> I agree that SW is "science fantasy" or even arguably pure fantasy with technological elements, but you can't do what you're claiming you could and keep the story intact, certainly not if we're talking movies 1 through 6.



One of the features that science fiction elitists require of science fiction (I know, because I've had several such conversations with them) is that the plot must be resolved through the science. Despite my disagreement on that point, this point in their argument remains valid: without science being used to resolve the plot, the story can be transferred to ANY setting. Not one point in Star Wars is the plot ever resolved with the science. You could replace AT-AT's with elephants, X-wings with dragons or other flying mounts, blasters with crossbows and bows & arrows, the Death Star and Death Star II with any enemy base, and turbo laser with any magical device that threatens the world. "Frequent long-distance high-speed travel" has absolutely no bearing on the story; a fantasy character could just as easily walk through a magic portal or lose their opponent on a horse or any other kind of mount.


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## Leontodon (Jul 3, 2008)

Hussar said:


> Umm, what?  There have been tons of "demonic" style good guys for years.  Heck, the faun from Narnia looks pretty much like a tiefling.  The anti-hero is a pretty popular tradition too.  Your entire argument requires that we ignore the past several decades of fantasy in order to only look at themes that occur prior to about 1900.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Well the Faun from Narnia is a Faun not something which has the word EEEVIIIL written all over his face. And playing an anti-hero is fine with me it just should not be core. And yes the greatest and most important part of our cultural memory dates back prior to 1900. The Faun from Narnia will stay the Faun from Narnia for a very long time and Hellboy will be recognizable as THE Hellboy for a very long time. Both are extremely specialised while the noble knight, the ambigous elf, the heroic swashbuckler (without horns, scales or other weird stuff), the gold-hearted thief and the dwarven warrior are not.


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## Desdichado (Jul 3, 2008)

The entire question of the OP presupposes that "traditional" fantasy is automatically more popular and more likely to attract new players.

I don't find that a very compelling or believable argument.  The person you mentioned thought it looked like Star Wars?  Heck yeah!  It's like fantasy Star Wars!  Star Wars has more fans than D&D could ever hope to have.  What's wrong with that?

Plus: video games.  Final Fantasy.  Fable.  All the rest.  No, I'd argue that there's more evidence that "out there" is exactly what the game needs to be to attract more players.

"Semi-realistic" medievalism is becoming the province of older and more hide-bound and insular fantasy fans every day.  Fantasy literature, movies and games today are not very medieval.  "Out there" sells.

Granted, that's not the only factor, but I think there's an indirect correllation.


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## Leontodon (Jul 3, 2008)

Ruin Explorer said:


> I really don't think that you could. Technology is never the focus, I agree, but it's more embedded in SW than you think, and frequent long-distant high-speed travel is a feature of the SW universe, and not really a feature of typical fantasy universes.
> 
> I agree that SW is "science fantasy" or even arguably pure fantasy with technological elements, but you can't do what you're claiming you could and keep the story intact, certainly not if we're talking movies 1 through 6.




Are the movies 1 to 3 actually Star Wars? I think you could do what the poster you answered to stated. Deathstar= Castle, Fast Travel= Horseback, X-Wing= jousting/ maybe some swashbuckling, Darth Vader= err Black Knight?, Alderaan= Rivendale. I mean most of the story can be easily traced back to the new testament, the oddissey, etc.. A messiah figure hailing from a fringe desert territory occupied by a vast empire? Even the temptation by the devil is in part six. (love it!)


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## The Highway Man (Jul 3, 2008)

hong said:


> Millennarian thinking is so 1999.




I would understand if I was presenting a doomsday scenario here, but I'm not. No Armageddon coming our way, as far as I'm aware. Just slow decline.


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## Ruin Explorer (Jul 3, 2008)

Leontodon said:


> Are the movies 1 to 3 actually Star Wars? I think you could do what the poster you answered to stated. Deathstar= Castle, Fast Travel= Horseback, X-Wing= jousting/ maybe some swashbuckling, Darth Vader= err Black Knight?, Alderaan= Rivendale. I mean most of the story can be easily traced back to the new testament, the oddissey, etc.. A messiah figure hailing from a fringe desert territory occupied by a vast empire? Even the temptation by the devil is in part six. (love it!)




See, that doesn't work even for 4, 5, 6, because the Death Star moves and is capable of destroying entire planets (which could translate to cities). Sure, SW 4 could be compared to "A Hidden Fortress", but SW 5 and 6 aren't.

The Deathstar could be magical floating fortress with incredibly powerful magical weapon built into it, or containing a cabal of wizards capable of casting a horrible powerful ritual of destruction, of course, but it MUST be able to move, and it MUST be able to destroy cities to retain the plot.

The fast travel is clearly NOT equivalent to horseback riding, as it's safe and covers much more vast distances with no stopping. Airship travel, maybe. Luke isn't really a messiah figure, either, that's stretching things. Don't confuse Dune and Star Wars.

Otherwise you're just picking and choosing plot elements. If we do that, there's not a film in the world, not even hacking movies like _Sneakers_ which couldn't be rendered in such a form, which renders the whole debate meaningless.

Really, what you're looking at for a literalist SW analog is probably something set in an archipelago-world, with the Deathstar as a huge evil ship or moving island, the Imperial fleet as an actual Imperial sea fleet, and the Millenium Falcon as some brave little ship with a clever captain. X-Wings and Tie Fighters could become small dragons or the like, perhaps with Luke riding his into the bowels of the ship-island (pretty sure there's a good D&D campaign in there somewhere).

Still, there's a reason technology is used, and whilst SW is fantasy, claiming that the tech is immaterial to the story isn't quite right.


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## erisred (Jul 3, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> Oh really? Then rip out the Dragonborn and Tieflings! What are you waiting for? Don't let fluff stand in the way of a good game!



Yeah, make Dragonborn and Tiefilings NPC only, or just leave them totally out of your games. That's probably what I'm going to do when I start running 4e. 

As for Eladrin being High Elves...heck, that's exactly how I'm explaining them! There are 3 sub-races of elf, Eladrin, Elf and Drow who have some large racial and very large cultural differences, but all three still primarily elven.


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## Maggan (Jul 3, 2008)

Ruin Explorer said:


> See, that doesn't work even for 4, 5, 6, because the Death Star moves and is capable of destroying entire planets (which could translate to cities).




Haven't moving castles been an ingredient of fantasy for a long time? There's the thing in Thorbardin in Dragonlance, and although not a castle, The Hut of Baba Yaga moves around. I seem to remember a teleporting castle in some book or tale as well. Can't remember which. Still, I believe that it would be emminently possible to recreate D&D 1 to 6 in fantasy garbs. 

Replace the tech with magic, and hey presto. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" as Clarke put it. 

/M


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## Corjay (Jul 3, 2008)

Howle's Moving Castle. Besides its walking ability, it has a door that opens to far away locations with the twist of a wheel.


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## ProfessorCirno (Jul 4, 2008)

You know, the whole Star Wars/fantasy thing just reminds me how far into nonesense people will go to try and prove a point.

I suppose you could technically claim Star Wars is fantasy if you replace _everything in it_ with random sword and sorcery crap.  You could also do that to _anything in existence_.


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## Corjay (Jul 4, 2008)

Okay, so you don't agree. Cool.

You'll need a different approach guys.


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## Doug McCrae (Jul 4, 2008)

knifie_sp00nie said:


> You could completely re-skin the entirety of Star Wars to take place on a single fantasy planet with DnD level technology and have all the story elements remain intact.



Lucas already did that. It's called Willow.


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## Doug McCrae (Jul 4, 2008)

Scribble said:


> D&D needs a TV show dedicated to new D&D stuff, and class builds and stuff.
> 
> And more ads and stuff with hot chicks playing D&D. Nothing sells stuff more then hot chicks.



Everything you guys want already exists.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwL-9xcMs_Y"]Dungeon Majesty.[/ame]


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## Corjay (Jul 4, 2008)

That show would be cool if the host were less of the pasty type and lose the cape.


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## Fifth Element (Jul 4, 2008)

Corjay said:


> That show would be cool if the host were less of the pasty type and lose the cape.



Yeah. That's the start of the problems, anyway.


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## Corjay (Jul 4, 2008)

Fifth Element said:


> Yeah. That's the start of the problems, anyway.



What? You don't like the porno-bad backdrop LARPing?  I think it's kind of creative for a no-budget show.


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## The Highway Man (Jul 4, 2008)

ProfessorCirno said:


> I suppose you could technically claim Star Wars is fantasy if you replace _everything in it_ with random sword and sorcery crap.  You could also do that to _anything in existence_.




This has actually nothing to do with conversation at hand, whatsoever, but are you seriously claiming that Star Wars actually isn't Fantasy? If not, what is it, then?


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## Set (Jul 4, 2008)

Scribble said:


> D&D needs a TV show dedicated to new D&D stuff, and class builds and stuff.
> 
> And more ads and stuff with hot chicks playing D&D. Nothing sells stuff more then hot chicks.




Man, I remember when the D&D cartoon came out and half the party was bizarre 'newfangled' Unearthed Arcana classes like Cavalier, Barbarian and Acrobat... A new cartoon with an Eladrin Warlock (fey pact, so as not to upset the crazies), Dragonborn Paladin and / or Tiefling all-alone-bemoaning-his-outcast-state Wizard could be just the ticket!

(And there's even precedent for putting a half-demon in a kiddie show, thanks to the Teen Titans cartoon using the character of Raven, a gothy, emo, half-demon with dark naughty powers!)

Oh yeah, infinite quatloo to the person who quoted Darmok and Jilaad at Tenegra.  Fly that geek flag with pride!


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## TwinBahamut (Jul 4, 2008)

The Highway Man said:


> This has actually nothing to do with conversation at hand, whatsoever, but are you seriously claiming that Star Wars actually isn't Fantasy? If not, what is it, then?



I know I am not the person you addressed this to, but let me answer anyways.

Star Wars is a classic fairy-tale set in a Sci-Fi setting.

Honestly, I think a very large number of people out there, probably the vast majoirty, consider Sci-Fi to be a type of _setting_ rather than a type of _story_, and under that definition Star Wars is unquestionably Science Fiction. Star Wars is defined as a Science fiction re-imagining of a classic Arthurian fairy-tale, and falls completely outside the realm of Fantasy as a _type of setting_.

Overall, I have never agreed with any kind of definition of "science fiction" that would _exclude_ Star Wars. At the same time, I wouldn't ever claim that Science Fiction and Fantasy have ever been anything but two different "flavors" for the exact same genre, two settings which tend to have a _lot_ of overlap. Trying to make any kind of distinction between the two, other than a generic "Science Fiction has spaceship and robots, while fantasy has armored knights, castles, and wizards" can be a very messy process, particularly when you run into a setting built around artificially created cyborgs who use magic and fight alongside knights in order to defeat computer viruses, robots, and dragons (I'm not making this up, it actually exists, and it includes Dragonborn-like dragon people, too). I guess, the only important thing is "what is the setting trying to present itself as", rather than anything else. Star Wars presents itself as Science Fiction, not Fantasy or an explicit blend of the two, so it is Science Fiction.


To get back to the original subject of the thread, I don't think anything in 4E is "far out" at all. Honestly, 4E's basic setting is incredibly tame and perhaps overly traditional compared to most of the stuff I run into in videogames and anime. In fact, I would say that there is nothing "far out" about Tielfings and Dragonborn at all, at least not when compared to even half of the "classic" D&D monsters. Compared to a Dragonborn, which is essentially just an anthropomorphized dragon (neither half of that is uncommon in the least, and even the specific combination is common enough in of itself), bizarre creatures like Beholders and Githyanki are the ones that are out of place.

As a comparison... How would a talking animal as a default player race rank on the "far out" spectrum? If 4E included talking animals as a default PHB character option, there would probably be a number of people accusing it as "weird", "untraditional", and "anime", and lament the loss of a "traditional" race they might have replaced (lets use Half-Elves). However, talking animals (and anthropomorphized animals) are probably the single most common form of non-human creature in the entire history of human storytelling, vastly outranking elves by several orders of magnitude, and half-elves by several more. Someone claiming that talking animals are "untraditional" or "far out" would be making a severe mistake; primarily mistaking a single, extremely limited fantasy tradition (previous editions of D&D), for the entirety of the fantasy tradition and fantasy fandom. I think complaints about how "far out" 4E is are based in similar poor logic.


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## Particle_Man (Jul 4, 2008)

Dragonborn to noobs: "You know that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?  Well these are like Strong Lizard-Men, with a big code of honor, and they can breathe fire!  Dude!"

Tieflings: "Their ancestors made a pact with devils, so now they are stuck with horns and stuff and lots of people distrust them.  But they can still choose to be heroes."

Compare the following:

Gnomes: Uh, not the garden gnomes.  They are kinda like dwarves, but more magical with illusions and stuff.  No, not elves, they are short like dwarves.

Half-Orcs: A child of a human and a horrible monster.  Oh, you don't like rape in your games?  

I think I will back 4e's play, here.


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## Hussar (Jul 4, 2008)

Defining Science Fiction is not all that difficult.  It's a genre, not a setting.  SF deals with certain themes - namely the effect of science on what it means to be human.  A story set 100 000 years ago featuring mammoth hunters could easily fit into the SF genre (and does) so long as it discusses what it means to be human in the face of scientific progress.

By that definition, by the accepted definition of the genre of Science Fiction, Star Wars is most certainly not SF.  It's fantasy.  Setting does not define genre whatsoever.  The fact that Star Wars has robots and blasters doesn't matter.  It's not SF because it does not, in any way, relate the plot to the development of technology.  

You can reskin Star Wars as fantasy pretty easily.  Same as you can reskin original Star Trek as Western.  Later Star Trek started becoming more solidly SF, but the early stuff barely qualified.

The problem comes when people try to define genre through setting.  That's not how you define genre, generally.  It makes a fairly good starting place, but, it's plot and theme that defines genre, not location and props.


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## Corjay (Jul 4, 2008)

Set said:


> Oh yeah, infinite quatloo to the person who quoted Darmok and Jilaad at Tenegra.  Fly that geek flag with pride!



ROFL! The fact that you came out with "Quatloo" is infinitely more in the geek pride parade than the Tenagra quote, to the point that you're the baton-master. 
	

	
	
		
		

		
			



http://i159.photobucket.com/albums/t131/Corjay/smiley-laughing.gif


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## Corjay (Jul 4, 2008)

Particle_Man said:


> Dragonborn to noobs: "You know that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?  Well these are like Strong Lizard-Men, with a big code of honor, and they can breathe fire!  Dude!"
> 
> Tieflings: "Their ancestors made a pact with devils, so now they are stuck with horns and stuff and lots of people distrust them.  But they can still choose to be heroes."
> 
> ...



Great way to state it.


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## The Highway Man (Jul 4, 2008)

Hussar said:


> Defining Science Fiction is not all that difficult.  It's a genre, not a setting.  SF deals with certain themes - namely the effect of science on what it means to be human.  A story set 100 000 years ago featuring mammoth hunters could easily fit into the SF genre (and does) so long as it discusses what it means to be human in the face of scientific progress.
> 
> By that definition, by the accepted definition of the genre of Science Fiction, Star Wars is most certainly not SF.  It's fantasy.  Setting does not define genre whatsoever.  The fact that Star Wars has robots and blasters doesn't matter.  It's not SF because it does not, in any way, relate the plot to the development of technology.
> 
> ...




Thank you. You put it probably more clearly than I would have.


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## The Highway Man (Jul 4, 2008)

Particle_Man said:


> Dragonborn to noobs: "You know that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?  Well these are like Strong Lizard-Men, with a big code of honor, and they can breathe fire!  Dude!"
> 
> Tieflings: "Their ancestors made a pact with devils, so now they are stuck with horns and stuff and lots of people distrust them.  But they can still choose to be heroes."
> 
> ...




1/ To actually explain that to a noob, the noob has to be interested in what you're saying, aka he's already giving a chance to D&D. You, potential DM/fellow player, become the entry to D&D. The books therefore are not. They fail as an entry product (whether 3rd ed was any better in this regard is beyond the point). 

2/ I was actually talking about how someone totally inexperienced in any form of fantasy/RPG/geekery will react to the memes of D&D. "Gnome" is far more understandable right off the bat for a noob just flipping through the book, and might actually conjure a compelling image of fairy tales/fantasy the potential buyer might want to explore by actually reading the product, rather than seeing "dragonborns", "tieflings" and "eladrins".


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## Fenes (Jul 4, 2008)

The setting is what I consider "out there" in 4E. Scaly lizardfolk living in the same society and countries as humans and demi-humans just sounds way more star wars or star trek to me than D&D.


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## AllisterH (Jul 4, 2008)

The Highway Man said:


> 2/ I was actually talking about how someone totally inexperienced in any form of fantasy/RPG/geekery will react to the memes of D&D. "Gnome" is far more understandable right off the bat for a noob just flipping through the book, and might actually conjure a compelling image of fairy tales/fantasy the potential buyer might want to explore by actually reading the product, rather than seeing "dragonborns", "tieflings" and "eladrins".




Er, WHAT fantasy heritage?

Ask the average non-gamer, "what's a gnome" and I'll almost 100% positive they're going to say "Oh you mean that traveller/lawn gnome thing"

Then they're going to ask, "Why the hell am I going to want to play that?"
Similarly, the half-orc is going to get responses such as "wait, you mean those come from human and those things from the peter hackson LOTR movie? Eeww...why am I going to play a child of rape?"

I personally still think Dragonborn are the easiest "race" for any non-gamer to grok.

re: Star Wars
I'm with TwinBahamut. SW setting is totally SF, but the actual storylines? Totalty independent (why do you think there was such a backlash to the Phantom Menace with the revelation of midocholorians?)


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## TwinBahamut (Jul 4, 2008)

Hussar said:


> Defining Science Fiction is not all that difficult.  It's a genre, not a setting.  SF deals with certain themes - namely the effect of science on what it means to be human.  A story set 100 000 years ago featuring mammoth hunters could easily fit into the SF genre (and does) so long as it discusses what it means to be human in the face of scientific progress.
> 
> By that definition, by the accepted definition of the genre of Science Fiction, Star Wars is most certainly not SF.  It's fantasy.  Setting does not define genre whatsoever.  The fact that Star Wars has robots and blasters doesn't matter.  It's not SF because it does not, in any way, relate the plot to the development of technology.
> 
> ...



I don't buy it.

The problem with defining it as "the story is resolved through technology" or "the effect of technology on what it means to be human" is that the terms and ideas being used there are just too vague. For example, how do you define "technology" in this sense? In many fantasy settings that feature magic, magic is treated like a form of "technology", and stories deal with how the existence of magic mold culture and change history (the _Wheel of Time_ and _Heralds of Valdemar_ series might be good examples of this). In fact, the basic premise of "how does X affect mankind" is probably far broader than the entire scope of Science Fiction. Science fictions stories that deal with the impact of technology upon mankind are just that kind of story, given a Science Fiction setting.

Besides, if you use that logic to say Star Wars is not Science Fiction, then several other major works of science fiction would also be disqualified. For example, the _Dune_ series really is not focused on technology at all. The technology is just setting, while the main story is built around political maneuvering and the growth and development of a messiah figure. Similarly, _2001: A Space Odyssey_ also does not use technology as its central story. It is mainly preoccupied with human contact with an unknown force. The entire interaction between Dave and HAL could just as easily been an interaction between two people; the fact that one was a computer is mostly just window-dressing. I have not read the book myself (I have only seen the movie), but the entire premise behind _Contact_ is the idea of human contact with a an alien life-form. Again, the technology is irrelevent (and in the case of Contact, it is just a magical plot device that is not even understood by the people involved). The real story is about curiosity and faith, not science and technology.

Anyways, you claim that your definiton is the "accepted definition", but I have to ask "by whom"? Certainly not bookstores, I know that. They don't even treat Science Fiction and Fantasy as different at all... Certainly it doesn't seem to be the definition I see used in common discourse. When someone says "Science Fiction", they usually mean "robots and spaceships", not "cavemen learning how to use bows".

Also, if Science Fiction has such a clear definition, then what is the equivalent definition for Fantasy? These are two terms that always go together, serving as two sides of the same coin. If you want to seperate them at all by genre boundaries, rather than setting boundaries (where the line is fairly distinct), you need to give a good definition. If you can make a claim that Star Wars is Fantasy, but not Science Fiction, what definition are you using other than "it is kinda like Science fiction, but it doesn't meet _my_ definition, so it is Fantasy"?


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## Lurks-no-More (Jul 4, 2008)

The Highway Man said:


> 2/ I was actually talking about how someone totally inexperienced in any form of fantasy/RPG/geekery will react to the memes of D&D. "Gnome" is far more understandable right off the bat for a noob just flipping through the book, and might actually conjure a compelling image of fairy tales/fantasy the potential buyer might want to explore by actually reading the product, rather than seeing "dragonborns", "tieflings" and "eladrins".



It's been said, but I repeat it: the "compelling image" of a gnome that the average person is going to have is the garden gnome. (Or, if they've played WoW, a tiny, somewhat annoying tinkerer.)

Furthermore... someone "totally inexperienced in any form of fantasy/RPG/geekery"? Who would that be, having never seen Star Wars, LotR trilogy, Buffy, or whatever; and why on Earth would they be interested in trying out D&D without an existing geeky friend/parent/sibling/whatever to introduce them to it?


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## DandD (Jul 4, 2008)

Seeing as how Star Wars is fantasy fairy tale set in space, and having played The Dark Eye, or Wizardry, Final Fantasy, having read fantasy novels, manga, watched cartoons like He-Man, Thundercats, the Dynoriders, or anime, where scaly people are normal and not persecuted, I think D&D having firebreathing mini-bipedal-dragons living side by side with centaurs, human-demon-bastards, beardy miners, pointy-eared emos, catpeople, dragon-troll-hybrids, elementals, sentient golems and other stuff that is prevalent will do fine, as did all the other editions.


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## rounser (Jul 4, 2008)

> I think D&D having firebreathing mini-bipedal-dragons living side by side with centaurs, human-demon-bastards, beardy miners, pointy-eared emos, catpeople, dragon-troll-hybrids, elementals, sentient golems and other stuff that is prevalent will do fine, as did all the other editions.



Sure, but it's a matter of screentime.  If you have cyberdemon haberdashers in the core PHB, they'll be over-represented, because they'll be PCs (who are "on screen" all the time, basically, which has a huge effect on the tone of the game) in close to all the campaigns and worlds you come across.  

And you'll be left wondering why cyberdemon haberdashers in particular - why aren't werewhale rocketskaters represented?  And because there's no mythology behind them to back them up, like with elves and dwarves, you'll be right in saving to disbelieve because it's completely arbitrary (except in a marketing, trademark, product identity sense, perhaps, but none of them are on the side of suspension of disbelief or worldbuilding).

A one-time cameo from an NPC werewhale rocketskater in the odd campaign is a lot different to having most campaigns having one played as a PC, and a lot different to trying to find a place for werewhales and their rocketskates in every D&D world (which needs to happen because they're a core PC race) which doesn't go to the trouble of banning them outright for being stupid.


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## ProfessorCirno (Jul 4, 2008)

1) I'd be willing to bet that the vast, _vast_ majority of people who would be getting into tabletop would identify gnomes more with the Warcraft version then the garden one.

2) Why are half orcs messy and half elves aren't?  I never understood this one.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jul 4, 2008)

ProfessorCirno said:


> 1) I'd be willing to bet that the vast, _vast_ majority of people who would be getting into tabletop would identify gnomes more with the Warcraft version then the garden one.



And wouldn't they be disappointed with the D&D Gnome, who is very different?



> 2) Why are half orcs messy and half elves aren't?  I never understood this one.




Orcs are savage brutes that plunder and pillage villages that enjoy violence and chaos.
Elves and Humans are civilized beings that form social communities, build cities and enjoy beautiful art and passionate music.

Give these assumptions: 
_What is more likely to be off-spring of a caring pair of lovers_?
1) Half-Elf
2) Half-Orc
_What is more likely to be the result of a brutal rape_?
1) Half-Elf
2) Half-Orc


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## Leontodon (Jul 4, 2008)

Lurks-no-More said:


> It's been said, but I repeat it: the "compelling image" of a gnome that the average person is going to have is the garden gnome. (Or, if they've played WoW, a tiny, somewhat annoying tinkerer.)
> 
> Furthermore... someone "totally inexperienced in any form of fantasy/RPG/geekery"? Who would that be, having never seen Star Wars, LotR trilogy, Buffy, or whatever; and why on Earth would they be interested in trying out D&D without an existing geeky friend/parent/sibling/whatever to introduce them to it?




What you say about gnomes is valid for the english language, but in german for instance the garden gnome is known as zwerg= dwarf, and the gnome (german: gnom) has some air of mystery around him.


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## knifie_sp00nie (Jul 4, 2008)

The main argument seems to be a chicken-egg dilemma. Which comes first? Can DnD be a person's first exposure to fantasy, or did the seed of geekery lead them to DnD? I still say that you'd have to have been living under a rock to not be exposed to the themes of fantasy before. 

Think about wandering around a bookstore. It's a self-selected environment. If you have no interest in romance novels, you won't pay any attention to that section. Who are these people that randomly encounter the PHB and pick it up? Taking a step back, we're in a BOOK store? Casual reading has been in decline for a while now. Once again we're dealing with a narrow slice of population with a larger than average cultural vocabulary.

What about those people under a rock? The closest we could probably get and be in the realm of plausibility would be the Amish. Literate, but the only book they've ever read was the bible (just for the experiment). We'll also assume that our Amish person doesn't outright reject the book based on its themes. Are there parallels to the bible? I'm not even a bible scholar and can think of a lot:

Gods, angels, devils and otherworldly planes.
Giants and those that slay them.
A man swallowed by a great beast.
Super-human strength.
Staffs turning to snakes, miracle healing, and other magic.
Kings, castles, and great cites.

I also don't get why some posters think elves and dwarves have a strong cultural memory either. In the US early exposure might be from the Disney animated movies. But then the dwarves in that aren't very DnD (strangely, more gnominsh). I don't know where I might have seen an elf, maybe from other classic fairy tales, but they seem light on friendly, human like races and heavy on bridge trolls. If it wasn't for the movies Tolkien would still be just a geek thing along with all the other fantasy novels on the shelf.

It's impossible to grow up human and not be exposed to the myths and stories of your culture. Most of those myths involve otherworldly beings and people. DnD is notable because it's borrowed from almost all of them and combined it into its own mythology. The themes are universal. A particular depiction of a theme, like dragonborn, is just window dressing.


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## WayneLigon (Jul 4, 2008)

knifie_sp00nie said:


> If it wasn't for the movies Tolkien would still be just a geek thing along with all the other fantasy novels on the shelf.




Um, no. Tolkien has been at large in the general mainstream for many years before the movies came about. College-level courses and critiques are taught about his works, and they appear on the required reading lists at many schools.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jul 4, 2008)

Leontodon said:


> What you say about gnomes is valid for the english language, but in german for instance the garden gnome is known as zwerg= dwarf, and the gnome (german: gnom) has some air of mystery around him.




And for reference, this is a German Kobold (the iconic Kobold, so to speak:


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## Hussar (Jul 4, 2008)

The Highway Man said:


> 1/ To actually explain that to a noob, the noob has to be interested in what you're saying, aka he's already giving a chance to D&D. You, potential DM/fellow player, become the entry to D&D. The books therefore are not. They fail as an entry product (whether 3rd ed was any better in this regard is beyond the point).
> 
> 2/ I was actually talking about how someone totally inexperienced in any form of fantasy/RPG/geekery will react to the memes of D&D. "Gnome" is far more understandable right off the bat for a noob just flipping through the book, and might actually conjure a compelling image of fairy tales/fantasy the potential buyer might want to explore by actually reading the product, rather than seeing "dragonborns", "tieflings" and "eladrins".




I think you are drastically underestimating the pervasiveness of fantasy in mainstream.  The idea that someone would not be able, within about 30 seconds, to figure out what a dragonborn, tiefling or eladrin are is pretty far fetched IMO.  Gnome?  Sure, people know what a gnome is.  But, that's not necessarily a good thing. 



Fenes said:


> The setting is what I consider "out there" in 4E. Scaly lizardfolk living in the same society and countries as humans and demi-humans just sounds way more star wars or star trek to me than D&D.




It's funny.  You have no problems with humans living side by side with beings that are effectively immortal (elves), but, having scales tips the balance?



			
				TwinBahumut[/quote said:
			
		

> Besides, if you use that logic to say Star Wars is not Science Fiction, then several other major works of science fiction would also be disqualified. For example, the Dune series really is not focused on technology at all. The technology is just setting, while the main story is built around political maneuvering and the growth and development of a messiah figure.




Are you kidding?  The whole spice thing?  The fact that it's the effect of being able to determine the future is the whole point of the series?  Dune is quintessential SF and completely falls under my definition.



> Similarly, 2001: A Space Odyssey also does not use technology as its central story. It is mainly preoccupied with human contact with an unknown force. The entire interaction between Dave and HAL could just as easily been an interaction between two people; the fact that one was a computer is mostly just window-dressing. I have not read the book myself (I have only seen the movie), but the entire premise behind Contact is the idea of human contact with a an alien life-form. Again, the technology is irrelevent (and in the case of Contact, it is just a magical plot device that is not even understood by the people involved). The real story is about curiosity and faith, not science and technology.




Curiosity, yep.  Faith?  Not so much.  Read the book.  

Contact revolves around the idea that there is a super race somewhere out there that is contacting us.  The fact that it's a scientist protagonist makes all the difference in the world.  In a fantasy story, the protagonist would be a child - making it a much more Alice in Wonderland sort of story.



> Anyways, you claim that your definiton is the "accepted definition", but I have to ask "by whom"? Certainly not bookstores, I know that. They don't even treat Science Fiction and Fantasy as different at all... Certainly it doesn't seem to be the definition I see used in common discourse. When someone says "Science Fiction", they usually mean "robots and spaceships", not "cavemen learning how to use bows".
> 
> Also, if Science Fiction has such a clear definition, then what is the equivalent definition for Fantasy? These are two terms that always go together, serving as two sides of the same coin. If you want to seperate them at all by genre boundaries, rather than setting boundaries (where the line is fairly distinct), you need to give a good definition. If you can make a claim that Star Wars is Fantasy, but not Science Fiction, what definition are you using other than "it is kinda like Science fiction, but it doesn't meet my definition, so it is Fantasy"?




I highly recommend reading some Gardner Dozois if you are truly interested in the subject.  There are loads of critical books and essays that will much better explain this than I ever can.

You are looking for the term speculative fiction when you wrap fantasy with SF.  That covers both genres.  And, yup, there's overlap.  Of course there is.  Genre is an art, not a science.  But, the division most certainly is not simply setting.


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## WayneLigon (Jul 4, 2008)

TwinBahamut said:


> Besides, if you use that logic to say Star Wars is not Science Fiction, then several other major works of science fiction would also be disqualified.




They would indeed. There's not nearly as much hard science fiction on the market, but rather science fantasy and space opera. Each of these have a fairly good definition as well. 

Hard science fiction - a particular emphasis on scientific detail and/or accuracy 
Soft science fiction - focus on human characters and their relations and feelings, while de-emphasizing the details of technological hardware and physical laws 
Social science fiction - concerned less with technology and space opera and more with sociological speculation about human society 

It's very hard to find 'hard' sf but very easy to find the other types. Herbert uses SF more as a parable in his work, so it's also important to be able to distinquish between what is a set dressing and what is actually SF. Star wars tells a tale with SF as it's set dressing and not as a central theme, so it's soft SF at best. Star Trek goes along the entire gamut from hard to non-existant science. 

However it's simply easier to say 'science fiction'. Don't confuse general shortcuts in coloquial language as being some sort of license to leave the barn door wide open. 



TwinBahamut said:


> Anyways, you claim that your definiton is the "accepted definition", but I have to ask "by whom"? Certainly not bookstores, I know that.




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy
Fantasy uses magic and the supernatural rather than technology in it's themes. 


Bookstores shelve things according to publisher desires, not according to any standard that has been set so don't go by what they do. (Also don't forget that most people who work there are just there to keep you from stealing, or to run the equipment; they have no interest or desire to correctly shelve books). Publishers set things into genres according to how they think they will sell. Burroughs gets shelves in 'literature' not 'SF' because it's old. Margaret Atwood gets shelved in 'General Fiction' even through she's written science fiction (even she seems confused about what she writes; it generally depends on who she's giving an interview to, ie, who she wants to suck up to to get sales). King gets put in general fiction because he sells well enough there and most stores don't have a 'horror' section.


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## Ruin Explorer (Jul 4, 2008)

Maggan said:


> Replace the tech with magic, and hey presto. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" as Clarke put it.
> 
> /M




Yep, that was kind of the point I was trying to get them to understand.

They were claiming you could simply "re-skin" it as "typical" fantasy and it'd all be fine. That's not the case. You can re-skin it, but it needs to be a kind of ultra-high fantasy (LIKE D&D 4E!!!!!!!! Ahem!), where magic is really an analogue for technology not just a force some people can manipulate etc.


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## ProfessorCirno (Jul 4, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> Orcs are savage brutes that plunder and pillage villages that enjoy violence and chaos.
> Elves and Humans are civilized beings that form social communities, build cities and enjoy beautiful art and passionate music.




Name a setting in which it's not horribly taboo for humans and elves to be together?  I'm pretty sure in 99% of the settings out there, elves are too haughty and arrogant to be seen with the lesser humans, and that the vast majority of half elves come from human men who aren't so interested in a happy monogamous relationship.


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## OneWinged4ngel (Jul 4, 2008)

The problem isn't so much that they have Dragonborn or Tieflings, it's more that they have half the art in the PHB prominently devoted to them (and the prevailing themes of that art besides the racial choices).  Basically, it's a presentation issue.  They seem to be trying to overemphasize an "xtreme" flavor.  Compare to the presentation of even the alpha Pathfinder pdf.


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## Barastrondo (Jul 5, 2008)

ProfessorCirno said:


> Name a setting in which it's not horribly taboo for humans and elves to be together?




Middle-Earth.

The audience might have heard of that one.


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## The Highway Man (Jul 5, 2008)

Barastrondo said:


> Middle-Earth.
> 
> The audience might have heard of that one.




You're actually mistaken. In all three instances (Beren and Luthien, Tuor and Idril, Aragorn and Arwen. Earendil and Elwing being both half-elven, it doesn't really count), there has been strong opinions not to let human and elf get together, and there were dire (if glorious) consequences.


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## Particle_Man (Jul 5, 2008)

ProfessorCirno said:


> Name a setting in which it's not horribly taboo for humans and elves to be together?




Just about every Santa Claus movie ever, where a human visits the North Pole or an Elf visits the human world.  

Also, in the LOTR movies the elves are somewhat isolationist and haughty (like Vulcans) but will work together with humans and occasionally fall in love with them (like Vulcans).  So half-elves end up rare, but not children of rape.  And this gets backed up in the "Tolkeinesque" settings, including D&D settings such as Dragonlance (with Tanis Half-Elven, the Face character).

The orcs in the LOTR movies are monsters, pure and simple.  If they reproduced with a human it would be almost certain to involve the rape of that human.


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## SKyOdin (Jul 5, 2008)

Hussar said:


> Are you kidding?  The whole spice thing?  The fact that it's the effect of being able to determine the future is the whole point of the series?  Dune is quintessential SF and completely falls under my definition.




Sorry to jump in here, but how is the spice technology? It is a naturally occurring substance with semi-mystical properties. Its main users are people with various degrees of psychic power. It has more in common with religious incense than anything else. It wouldn't be out of place in most fantasy settings.

The reading the future thing is also thematically similar to oracles and prophesy stuff from old folk-tales. For example, Isaac Asimov once wrote a story about a computer that was capable of predicting the future. He admitted that he borrowed much of the plot from an old folk tale. 

How can Dune be Sci-Fi but not Star Wars if they both involve organizations of people with supernatural power, nobles ruling over planets as part of a far-flung space empire, desert planets populated by giant monsters, lots of hand-to-hand combat, and so on? The only difference is that Star Wars has aliens in it, but Dune doesn't (though the bizarre Space Guild members practically qualify). Heck, Mentats and Droids are functionally identical within the context of the setting and story (and Mentats are less Hard Sci-Fi).


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## Corjay (Jul 5, 2008)

Yeah, Dune is definitely another fantasy story. I mean, come on, the lead character resolves everything with his powers. Could you get more fantasy than that?


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## TwinBahamut (Jul 5, 2008)

My brother commented well enough on the Dune thing, so I won't repeat hat he said, but I guess I have a few things to mention myself.



Hussar said:


> Curiosity, yep.  Faith?  Not so much.  Read the book.



I'll pass. I have been slowly drifting away from books over the past several years, and hard science fiction and the like has never interested me very much. Red Mars put me to sleep halfway through when I tried sitting down and reading it a few years ago...  



> Contact revolves around the idea that there is a super race somewhere out there that is contacting us.  The fact that it's a scientist protagonist makes all the difference in the world.  In a fantasy story, the protagonist would be a child - making it a much more Alice in Wonderland sort of story.



You are not making much sense at all. By your own definition, the super-race element is irrelevant. The nature of the protagonist is irrelevant to your definition as well. If you want to convince me on this one, you really need to explain yourself a _lot_ better. because I am not seeing it.



> I highly recommend reading some Gardner Dozois if you are truly interested in the subject.  There are loads of critical books and essays that will much better explain this than I ever can.



All my years of college have tended to make me a bit jaded when confronted with "critical essays" and the like... Maybe it is the fact that I got into being an English major only after studying the physical sciences, math, and philosophy for a few years, but I could never accept the "someone wrote it down, so it must be true" mentality that pervades the entire realm of literary study, where what matters is what a few "canonical" academics claim, rather than what is empirically true. I prefer direct logical analysis based on my own observations, myself.



> You are looking for the term speculative fiction when you wrap fantasy with SF.  That covers both genres.  And, yup, there's overlap.  Of course there is.  Genre is an art, not a science.  But, the division most certainly is not simply setting.



I never liked the term "speculative fiction", myself. Maybe it is just the name, but I don't like the fact that it just tries to lump so many different things together under a presumption of authorial intent... In many respects, many Science Fiction and particularly many Fantasy works are not about some kind "speculation" (meaning that they are not trying to tell some kind of "what if", but instead simply use the tropes of the genre to tell a very different kind of tale). For example, I would claim that Star Wars is Science Fiction, but not Speculative Fiction (using my own definitions). Also, the problem with using an all-encompassing label for both is that it ignores the fact that there are many stories told under both genres that would work just as well under a very realistic or historical setting.

The big problem is that the very ideas of "Science Fiction" and "Fantasy" are too all-encompassing to be defined as genres of any kind. You can't claim "Star Wars is not Science Fiction" because the term Science Fiction is too broad and inclusive. You can easily say something like "Star Wars is not Hard Science Fiction", since Hard Science Fiction has very specified restrictions (and thus is reasonably defined genre, sometimes), but it is much harder to argue that it is not Science Fiction.

In many ways, I even wonder if the narrow definition of Science Fiction that you are using is just a misapplication of a widely used word with many broad connotations for a very specific and small genre... Perhaps it is the original historical use of the word, but words change in meaning, and it in this case the term Science Fiction has become far more broad as it has grown in use.



			
				WayneLigon said:
			
		

> Bookstores shelve things according to publisher desires, not according to any standard that has been set so don't go by what they do. (Also don't forget that most people who work there are just there to keep you from stealing, or to run the equipment; they have no interest or desire to correctly shelve books). Publishers set things into genres according to how they think they will sell. Burroughs gets shelves in 'literature' not 'SF' because it's old. Margaret Atwood gets shelved in 'General Fiction' even through she's written science fiction (even she seems confused about what she writes; it generally depends on who she's giving an interview to, ie, who she wants to suck up to to get sales). King gets put in general fiction because he sells well enough there and most stores don't have a 'horror' section.



Why is the bookstore definition any less valid than any other definition? If they don't use some "standard", doesn't that just mean that the standard is irrelevant? As you say, bookstores shelve their books according to _what readers care about and are looking for_. It hardly matters whether an author thinks his work is "Science Fiction" or not, and what an academic thinks matters even less, but what genre a _reader_ identifies a work as does matter, and bookstores and publishers cater to that and that alone (and do so quite well).

Anyways, this is enough of a divergence from the topic of the thread for me. I won't comment on this any further.


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## Corjay (Jul 5, 2008)

You know, I'm thinking that this Science Fiction vs. Fantasy debate has really totally strayed from the OP's intent for this thread. Perhaps any further discussion should be forked to a new thread.


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## FallenTabris (Jul 5, 2008)

After reading all of this thread I wonder why there is a problem.  D&D has now become its own thing with a unique mythology in relation to dwarves, trolls, and even dragons.  I highly doubt the general public would think of a dragon breathing anything but fire.  It is far removed from many fantasy novel tropes or memes while still retaining quite a few traditional elements.  It also draws on video games, movies, anime and comics for inspiration.  I think it is a great mixed bag of fantasy.  

Dungeons and Dragons obviously still has the dragons and dungeons in it.  It is snarky to suggest otherwise or perhaps just ill informed.  Yes there are bunches of bizarre imaginary things that could be called 'wahoo'.  I believe the point of playing D&D is to have adventures and dramatics in a wahoo universe.


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## garyh (Jul 5, 2008)

Particle_Man said:


> So half-elves end up rare, but not children of rape.  And this gets backed up in the "Tolkeinesque" settings, including D&D settings such as Dragonlance (with Tanis Half-Elven, the Face character).




Actually, Tanis _was _a product of rape.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanis_Half-Elven

There's a bit in the wiki article about some book down the line taking a different view, but I've read about two dozen DL novels and had never heard of that.  Nor would anyone who stopped at just the original trilogy.


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## ProfessorCirno (Jul 5, 2008)

Particle_Man said:


> Also, in the LOTR movies the elves are somewhat isolationist and haughty (like Vulcans) but will work together with humans and occasionally fall in love with them (like Vulcans).  So half-elves end up rare, but not children of rape.  And this gets backed up in the "Tolkeinesque" settings, including D&D settings such as Dragonlance (with Tanis Half-Elven, the Face character).




Except, as someone else brought up, elf-human relations were *very* strongly taboo in Middle-Earth.

Also, Tanis is a _perfect example_ of helf-elves coming from rape.

Furthermore, not only is there the taboo, but in many, many, MANY setting, stories, myths, and what have you, half-elves themselves are mistrusted, discriminated against, or flat out seen as abominations by both elves and humans.

I get the sense at times that half-elves were given a "happier" backround because "elves are pretty"


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## Maggan (Jul 5, 2008)

ProfessorCirno said:


> Also, Tanis is a _perfect example_ of helf-elves coming from rape.




Tanis is also, as far as I know, the only example of this origin.

/M


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## haakon1 (Jul 6, 2008)

Hussar said:


> The anti-hero is a pretty popular tradition too.




The anti-hero is so PLAYED.  That's one of the problems with 4th E -- it's stuck in the mid-1990s geekiness mindset of its creators.  I so don't need more 1990s.

Gary's bizarre mindset, mixing his knowledge of medieval warfare and fantasy literature was far more interesting, IMHO.

Re: Star Wars, AD&D is equivalent to what was later renamed "A New Hope".  2nd Edition and 3rd Edition are a bit like "Empire" and "Jedi" -- true to the the original, and pretty good -- some would say even better than the original.

4th is addition is like "Phantom Menace" -- supposedly better, snazzier, streamlined, and returning to its roots, but actually the introduction of Jar-Jar and mediclorines.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jul 6, 2008)

haakon1 said:


> The anti-hero is so PLAYED.  That's one of the problems with 4th E -- it's stuck in the mid-1990s geekiness mindset of its creators.  I so don't need more 1990s.




On Anti-Heroes:  They go back a lot further than the 1990s.  Elric, one of the first anti-heroes in fantasy, first appeared in 1961.  Fafhrd and Grey Mouser- characters with anti-heroic elements (without being true anti-heroes)- first appeared in 1939.

And there is no question that EGG and crew were familiar with those works.


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## Corjay (Jul 6, 2008)

Yeah, as brilliant as the man was, he was not original in his concept of mixing medieval and fantasy literature. And talking about played out.

First, I'm not sure what the "anti-hero" is played out thing has to do with 4e beyond the Tiefling. Even so, the anti-hero is only just gaining momentum as evidenced with the rise of such comic stories as Hellboy, X-men's Wolverine, the Goblin from SM3, the Silver Surfer from F4, Daredevil, and Batman. Then there's the fact that Elric is only just under production as a movie. It sounds to me like anti-heroes are gaining momentum, not losing ground, and while the anti-hero may have gained a little ground in RPG's in the 90's, and experienced a mild renaissance with the Crow, they certainly never approached anything near a hay day. After the Elric movie comes out, I guarantee that the hay day will begin, and both Tieflings and Drow will be the faves as new blood comes into the game.


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## ProfessorCirno (Jul 6, 2008)

Anti-heroes being played out depends on where you nerd.  I don't think anyone who reads comics is even remotely interested in anti-heroes at this point, and I think it is apt to say the 90's DID give a larger swing in anti-heroism in part because of the rush on western comics.  Thus why a lot of people are really burned out on it.

Also, it's really, _really_ easy to make a really bad anti-hero.  I'd say it's far easier to do that then to make a bad paladin-esque character.


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## Corjay (Jul 6, 2008)

The fact is, the anti-hero syndrome now has a reason to exist. What made the OT Star Wars so popular was its focus on rebellion, a common theme in the late 70's and early 80's. PT was popular (despite its sad writing and directing) as national pride was the norm, and EpIII came along just as Bush was beginning to lose his constituency. There is prime ground in identifying with one's time, and if there were ever a need for an anti-hero, it's now. People are sour about their current situation, not just in the united states, but around the world. They want figures to identify with, because they feel downtrodden. If you think the anti-hero is played out now, then you're going to be absolutely sick and tired of them a decade from now. Perhaps at that time it will swing around full circle to the need for puritanical heroes. But these dark times are most certainly not it.


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## Hussar (Jul 7, 2008)

On Dune being SF.

Repeating myself here, but, it's not setting but THEME that makes Dune SF.  The question of what it means to be human in the face of omnicience.  If Dune were fantasy, that question would never be explored.  It would be taken as given and move forward from there.  However, Dune IS SF.  It examines in great detail what it means to be human when faced with ultimate knowledge.  Are the Atredies (sp) even human anymore?  What is free will if the knowledge is perfectly known?  All of these are classic SF themes.

That's why I use thematic distinctions between genre.  Setting wise, sure, you could draw some serious parallels between Dune and Fantasy.  I don't deny that.  But, thematically, it's not fantasy.

Fantasy, as a genre, deals with with wish fufillment.  That's why I place Star Wars square into fantasy.  It's pure wish fufillment - the "ordinary farm boy" leaves the farm and saves the galaxy, while becoming incredibly, personally powerful.  About the only more wish fufilling you could get would be if Leia wasn't his sister.

Contact is not about wish fufilment - it examines (rather slowly and excruciatingly) how our world would react to the existence of aliens.  "Meeting the other" is pretty much a stock SF theme.  

That's why I don't really go into hard vs soft SF.  The differences are there, for sure, and SF is certainly divisible into smaller sub-genre.  But, thematically, they usually share a great deal.  Take an element, a development (omniscience, computer controls, transcendence, whatever) and examine how that element or development relates to how we conceive of humanity.

Fantasy, OTOH, takes some element and simply uses it as a tool to resolve the plot.  The existence of magic in LOTR is not examined at all.  It's simply taken as a given and then the societies look an awful lot like real world ones.  It's classic Campbell hero's journey.

As an aside, for me, this is why I like fantasy RPG's and not SF ones.  Examination of humanity is interesting to read about, but, not so much fun to play.  Most SF games devolve into D&D with space ships.  If I wanted that, I'd play D&D.  Which I do and it makes me happier.


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## Hussar (Jul 7, 2008)

On the anti-hero.

Guys, if you're going to use a term, learn what it actually means.

Being a tiefling is NOT an anti-hero.  Anti-heroes are evil.  Not just a dirty or angsty sort of hero.  Anti-heroes are flat out evil.  Elric is a prime example.  

Having a bad childhood does not make for an anti-hero.  Tieflings are outcasts, not anti-heroes.


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## Fenes (Jul 7, 2008)

Wiki disagrees with your opinion that anti-heros are evil.


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## Maggan (Jul 7, 2008)

Hussar said:


> Guys, if you're going to use a term, learn what it actually means.




The definition I've heard includes Thomas Covenant, Han Solo and Indiana Jones, among others. So the "anti-heroes are evil" is new to me.

/M


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## Corjay (Jul 7, 2008)

Edit.


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## Fenes (Jul 7, 2008)

Also consider that the Fantasy market is very, very big. We have a lot of sub-genres, and a lot of media (novels, computer games, tv series, movies, anime). I would dare to guess that the average "Fantasy fan" does not consider the same things "far out" than the fantasy fan that started with Tolkien 20, 30 years ago.


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## hong (Jul 7, 2008)

haakon1 said:


> The anti-hero is so PLAYED.  That's one of the problems with 4th E -- it's stuck in the mid-1990s geekiness mindset of its creators.  I so don't need more 1990s.




Huh? WoW came out in 2004.


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## Corjay (Jul 7, 2008)

I made a new thread for the Sci-Fi/Fantasy discussion. Please continue that discussion there.


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## Particle_Man (Jul 7, 2008)

garyh said:


> Actually, Tanis _was _a product of rape.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanis_Half-Elven
> 
> There's a bit in the wiki article about some book down the line taking a different view, but I've read about two dozen DL novels and had never heard of that.  Nor would anyone who stopped at just the original trilogy.




Yikes!   I only read the original trilogy and the Twins trilogy so I guess I missed that one.  If it was in the original trilogy I *really* missed it, but it was a long time ago.

However, the fact that it shocked me indicates to me at least that I wasn't expecting a half-elf child to be a product of rape.  It can happen, as humans rape other humans and a child can result, and I guess the authors were going for that to add pathos to the character (those awful humans!).  But I wouldn't expect it to be the norm of human-elf pairings.  Most of the elf stories I read either have the elves be so different that breeding with humans simply isn't possible, or has it be a result of desire on both sides (although sometimes adultery is involved, a variation on the "changeling" theme).

The only "loving parents" version of a human and orc producing a half-orc I have encountered was the parody in Order of the Stick, which was funny precisely because it was not the expected norm.  Even Grunts, the 2nd most sympathetic account of Orcs I have read, has them portrayed as rapists.  Only Orkworld, the most sympathetic account I have read, goes for the "doomed noble savage" archtype instead.  And that was John Wick deliberately trying to redefine the orc.

So while I am shocked at Tanis's being a child of rape, I would still maintain that the expectation of a human-orc pairing would be rape (The orc as rapist, and the human as rape victim), and that half-orcs thus have an unsavory past that might put people off, in a way that they wouldn't be put off playing a Dragonborn (the "good guy strong guys").

A half-elf does not have to carry (and I think would not be presumed by most players, new or old, to carry) the connotations of child of rape, any more than a human child has to be a product of rape.  Thus one can play a half-elf without worrying about rape in the near (or even distant) past if one doesn't want to.

The one common theme about half-elves is that they tend to be rare (why else would Tanis be called Tanis Half-elven, unless that was a rare thing to be?).  Since the Unearthed Arcana for 1st ed AD&D (whereupon half-elves no longer monopolized the cleric-magic-user (or cleric-fighter-magic-user) multi-class niche), the makers of the 4 editions of D&D have thoughtfully accomodated the rarity of half-elves by making half-elves mechanically inferior to all other core racial options.


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## Fenes (Jul 7, 2008)

The webcomic "Dungeon INC." has the half-orc be the product of a noble getting really, really drunk, and stumbling into an orc ambush on the way back from the tavern. While his comrades get killed, he mistakes the orc woman that goes for him for a beautiful human woman, and hits on her. She is flattered, and things proceed to the bedroom.


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## haakon1 (Jul 7, 2008)

Corjay said:


> The fact is, the anti-hero syndrome now has a reason to exist. What made the OT Star Wars so popular was its focus on rebellion, a common theme in the late 70's and early 80's. PT was popular (despite its sad writing and directing) as national pride was the norm, and EpIII came along just as Bush was beginning to lose his constituency. There is prime ground in identifying with one's time, and if there were ever a need for an anti-hero, it's now. People are sour about their current situation, not just in the united states, but around the world. They want figures to identify with, because they feel downtrodden. If you think the anti-hero is played out now, then you're going to be absolutely sick and tired of them a decade from now. Perhaps at that time it will swing around full circle to the need for puritanical heroes. But these dark times are most certainly not it.




I don't know what PT is.

I believe what made Star Wars ("A New Hope" and the universe it spawned) so popular is that it was counter-counter-culture.  This was the era when America had just lost in Vietnam, we were in between two gas crises, and the global economy was in a tailspin -- a lot like now, actually.

The popular culture was full of darkness and ennui.  "Good movies" were supposed to be about how the Man is keeping us down and meaningless of it all.  Even action genres were about the decline of civlization and the Man With No Name or Charles Bronson gunning down masses of mooks.

Into this darkness stepped rosy-finger Lucas.  Lucas studied classical mythology (Joseph Campbell's hero with a thousand faces academic work) and wrote a classic heroic myth.  Lucas also studied Golden Age movies of the 1930s-1950s and borrowed liberally from them -- Westerns like "The Searchers", samurai flicks like "The Hidden Fortress", etc.  He totally changed what Hollywood and popular culture focused on with the movie that created the blockbuster genre.

As for whether classical heroic storytelling or gritty anti-hero stories are more likely to draw in the masses now, let's compare the revenue for "Kung Fu Panda" -- as classic hero/martial arts story in cartoon form -- with the revenue for "Hellboy: The Golden Army" -- a classic evil-looking dude who doesn't take any crap and kicks Drow butt in bodacious ways story.  I'm guessing the hero wins.

Other pop culture playoffs: Spider-Man 3 (ooh, in black!) versus 1 & 2.  Or "Hancock" at the beginning of his movie versus Hancock at the end.  For me, the heroic versions are more interesting.

As for what "anti-hero" means, Wikipedia and TVtropes give complicated, conflicting answers.  What I mean is main characters who are characterized by their kewlness and in-your-face-itude, whose greatness comes from pwning other characters and hopping on their corpses, in contrast to the classical hero who struggles to triumph over evil within and without, for a cause greater than himself, and is neither vindictive nor cruel.  Think the Predator versus Samwise Gamgee.

Back to the point here . . . umm, something about D&D?  Whatever, I guess.


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## Ruin Explorer (Jul 7, 2008)

haakon1 said:


> As for whether classical heroic storytelling or gritty anti-hero stories are more likely to draw in the masses now, let's compare the revenue for "Kung Fu Panda" -- as classic hero/martial arts story in cartoon form -- with the revenue for "Hellboy: The Golden Army" -- a classic evil-looking dude who doesn't take any crap and kicks Drow butt in bodacious ways story.  I'm guessing the hero wins.
> 
> Other pop culture playoffs: Spider-Man 3 (ooh, in black!) versus 1 & 2.  Or "Hancock" at the beginning of his movie versus Hancock at the end.  For me, the heroic versions are more interesting.




These are terrible comparisons, dude. Really _terrible_. Like, are you trying to make bad comparisons intentionally?

I mean, comparing an animated kid's movie with a heavy-supernatural action movie? What? Comparing a BAD movie to a GOOD movie? Huh? Why? Hancock is well known for the fact that the first half is better. Just check out reviews.

What's different nowdays is that virtually all heroes incorporate a carefully-measured dose of rebellion and anti-heroism, so drawing the distinction between hero and anti-hero has become very tricky. Hence the "confused"-seeming articles you reference. Even in Star Wars, Han Solo is I think regarded by most sane people as an "anti-hero", in that his manner, demeanour and stated desires conflict with those traditionally associated with heroes. He also shot first, lest we forget. Ultimately his actions are heroic, but the same is true of virtually every anti-hero.

I mean let's all forget that Pirates of the Carribean series of movies took close to a billion dollars three times in a row with a cast of characters the majority of whom could be described as anti-heroes.


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## Hussar (Jul 8, 2008)

> I mean let's all forget that Pirates of the Carribean series of movies took close to a billion dollars three times in a row with a cast of characters the majority of whom could be described as anti-heroes.




Why would you describe Captain Jack Sparrow as an anti-hero?  Which other characters would you describe as anti-heroes?


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## Corjay (Jul 8, 2008)

Because Sparrow is by definition a bad guy who is only after his own ends, but ends up doing the right thing when it's most important. There's no better definition of an anti-hero. He's not exactly the prince of goody-two-shoes heroes.


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## haakon1 (Jul 8, 2008)

Hussar said:


> Why would you describe Captain Jack Sparrow as an anti-hero?




Yes, in the sense that he's not "good".

But no, in the sense that he doesn't fit the "1990s anti-hero" archetype of an angstful jerk with an anger management problem who leaves a trail of bodies behind him and dresses like he belongs in the alt.rock video.

His reliance on cleverness and his good nature actually hint as a more classical hero, a bit more like an Erroll Flynn character than an 1990's angry at his mom character.


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## haakon1 (Jul 8, 2008)

Ruin Explorer said:


> These are terrible comparisons, dude. Really _terrible_. Like, are you trying to make bad comparisons intentionally?




It's not intentional.


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## Hussar (Jul 8, 2008)

Corjay said:


> Because Sparrow is by definition a bad guy who is only after his own ends, but ends up doing the right thing when it's most important. There's no better definition of an anti-hero. He's not exactly the prince of goody-two-shoes heroes.






haakon1 said:


> Yes, in the sense that he's not "good".
> 
> But no, in the sense that he doesn't fit the "1990s anti-hero" archetype of an angstful jerk with an anger management problem who leaves a trail of bodies behind him and dresses like he belongs in the alt.rock video.
> 
> His reliance on cleverness and his good nature actually hint as a more classical hero, a bit more like an Erroll Flynn character than an 1990's angry at his mom character.




Wow, how far will you guys go to not call someone evil?

This guy sold his soul to the devil so he could be a captain.  He betrays everyone around him.  Good nature?  What good nature?  Even cleverness?  When is he actually clever?  

That's not, "not good", that's evil.  

See, angsty jerk is NOT an anti-hero.  It's just an angsty jerk.


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## Scribble (Jul 8, 2008)

I think the part of those movies that makes them sell so many tickets is the johhny depp part, and not so much the hero or anti-hero bit.

Also, what's her face is hot.


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## Ruin Explorer (Jul 8, 2008)

Scribble said:


> I think the part of those movies that makes them sell so many tickets is the johhny depp part, and not so much the hero or anti-hero bit.
> 
> Also, what's her face is hot.




Johnny sells a lot of tickets to any movie, but Jack Sparrow sells more than Johnny normally does, and this is because it's such a wonderfully insane, over-the-top, larger-than-life character who is not just a "good guy".

If he was purely heroic, he would be far less interesting and far less broadly appealling. I mean, imagine Johnny Depp playing Orlando Bloom's role. You think as many tickets would have been sold? I'm telling you, they wouldn't. Equally, without a good guy to balance things out and act as a "straight man", I don't think Johnny's role would have worked so well. So both worked in this case.

The key to understanding the broad appeal and international success of PotC (which cannot be attributed "Pirates are cool!" alone, as every other pirate movie in the last thirty years has been fairly unsuccessful) is that whilst virtually every character, from Elizabeth Swann to Lord Cutler Beckett is "morally compromised" on some greater or lesser level (possibly excepting Will Turner), they almost all have some kind of redeeming feature or likeable trait. This potentially increases the audiences emotional investment in what are, otherwise kind of lengthy, semi-nonsensical films, as they identify with both heroes and villains, and indeed the last Pirates films makes great play of a sort of shell game with who is "good" and who is "bad" and what exactly is going to ensue, who is going to backstab who, etc.

*Hussar* - Well, exactly. If someone doesn't think Jack Sparrow counts as an anti-hero, they probably should avoid using the term or trying to understand why others use it. Jack Sparrow is likeable, not particularly smart or good. He's basically a human cat, in that he doesn't love anyone much, but is good at faking it for benefits, tends to fall on his feet, and makes his mistakes look like intentional decisions. He's certainly also got a strong degree of "low cunning", but not really much in the way of genuine cleverness. If you hate cats, you probably hate Jack Sparrow.

The days of angsty '90s emo "anti-heroes" are long gone, but that doesn't mean that are no more anti-heroes. Quite the contrary. Indeed, if anything, the general boundary between hero and anti-hero has become rather more blurred.


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## Corjay (Jul 8, 2008)

Hussar said:


> Wow, how far will you guys go to not call someone evil?
> 
> This guy sold his soul to the devil so he could be a captain.  He betrays everyone around him.  Good nature?  What good nature?  Even cleverness?  When is he actually clever?
> 
> ...



At what point do my statements contradict what you're saying here? And by what definition is an anti-hero not evil? Did I not say that he was a "*bad guy* who is after his own ends" or that "he's *not* exactly the prince of goody-two-shoes heroes"? How does this not describe someone evil? Just because "he does good when it's most important" does not make him not evil. Dude, you have got to learn who's arguing for or against what. And you should learn the definition of an anti-hero. A bad guy that fights in a way that benefits a cause is an anti-hero. It was Jack Sparrow that brought down Davy Jones and the wicked power-hungry administrator of the Indian Trade Company. What he did to help Will Turner throughout the series, and even after betraying him and helping Elizabeth Swan save Will, while making the occasional self-sacrifice, all point to him as an anti-hero.


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## Scribble (Jul 8, 2008)

Ruin Explorer said:


> Johnny sells a lot of tickets to any movie, but Jack Sparrow sells more than Johnny normally does, and this is because it's such a wonderfully insane, over-the-top, larger-than-life character who is not just a "good guy".
> 
> If he was purely heroic, he would be far less interesting and far less broadly appealling. I mean, imagine Johnny Depp playing Orlando Bloom's role. You think as many tickets would have been sold? I'm telling you, they wouldn't.




Probably not... Depp specifically made the role Hunter S Thompson meets Keith Richards because he said he had no idea how to play a pirate, and figured they would have been the "rock stars" of their time.

But equally do you think the movie would have sold as well if you had a no name actor playing the role?

All I'm saying is for the average viewer, Johhny Depp + Orlando Bloom + whats her face + over the top Disney Action means lots of tickets sold. 

In any case, I don't think the success of PoTC indicates that Anti-Heros are better selling points then heros. The movie called for an anti-hero, so yeah if you put a do-good all the time super man style hero in there, it wouldn't make any sense.


It's the story that sells a movie, not whether it's a story about an anti-hero or a hero. A compelling story is a compelling story.


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## Ruin Explorer (Jul 8, 2008)

Scribble said:


> In any case, I don't think the success of PoTC indicates that Anti-Heros are better selling points then heros.




Did anyone say that? Please quote where they did, or realize that your are accidentally straw-man'ing. I know I didn't. I said that anti-heroes sure as hell didn't hurt a movie and that most really huge franchises have some anti-hero-types among their leads.



Scribble said:


> It's the story that sells a movie, not whether it's a story about an anti-hero or a hero. A compelling story is a compelling story.




Agreed. Generally stories that make people seem real and easy to relate to are more compelling, and it's _easier_ to do that with a character who has some, or even extensive, flaws. Note necessarily an actual "anti-hero", but it's not uncommon. As I said, though, "flawed hero" is ever more common, to the point where it's hard to tell exactly when enough flaws and anti-heroic behaviour have built up to call them an "anti-hero".

PS - I don't think Orlando Bloom and Kiera Knightley innately sell that many tickets, tbh. I agree that without The Depp, PotC wouldn't have been a huge hit, because I know that his presence was the specific reason many people gave a "pirate"-themed movie a chance rather than just ignoring it.


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## ThirdWizard (Jul 8, 2008)

I always thought "anti-heroes," while being partly defined by their lack of altruism, were also defined by their subversion of capability that most heroes have. In other words, they aren't as strong, charismatic, or sympathetic/empathetic as traditional heroes.

See: Deckard (Blade Runner)


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## Corjay (Jul 8, 2008)

Scribble said:


> But equally do you think the movie would have sold as well if you had a no name actor playing the role?



Yes. Absolutely. If the actor is as handsome and charismatic. Cary Elwes was a virtual unknown when he turned Princess Bride into a lasting international cultural phenomenon. All you need is the right person in the role. Pirates of the Caribbean became a phenomenon because the right story was melded with the right leading actor, and there is always more than one right leading actor. Pirates of the Caribbean was great because it was a great story. No matter how great Johnny made the role, there's no way he could turn a bad or even just good movie into a great movie. All a great actor can do is make a great movie its best.


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## Corjay (Jul 8, 2008)

ThirdWizard said:


> I always thought "anti-heroes," while being partly defined by their lack of altruism, were also defined by their subversion of capability that most heroes have. In other words, they aren't as strong, charismatic, or sympathetic/empathetic as traditional heroes.
> 
> See: Deckard (Blade Runner)



I'm afraid you're confusing an anti-hero for an underdog.


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## ThirdWizard (Jul 8, 2008)

Corjay said:


> I'm afraid you're confusing an anti-hero for an underdog.




I'm talking about the subversion of the hero archetype, not necessarily a weakening of it, sorry.


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## The Little Raven (Jul 8, 2008)

Scribble said:


> But equally do you think the movie would have sold as well if you had a no name actor playing the role?




Never forget the lesson of Star Wars.


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## haakon1 (Jul 9, 2008)

Hussar said:


> Wow, how far will you guys go to not call someone evil?
> 
> This guy sold his soul to the devil so he could be a captain.  He betrays everyone around him.  Good nature?  What good nature?  Even cleverness?  When is he actually clever?
> 
> That's not, "not good", that's evil.




I've only seen the first movie.  He is clever twice:
1) When he steals the ship to have the Interceptor chase him, so he can steal it.
2) At the end, when he does a trick where he steals the coin, gets the blood on it in some tricky way, and uses confusion over whether the curse is on or off to beat the baddies.  I forget exactly what he does, but it made me smile as his clever chicanery.

I'd say he's Chaotic for sure, but if he's CE, it's somehow "not in a bad way", as he never harms Will Turner or the governor's daughter.



Hussar said:


> See, angsty jerk is NOT an anti-hero.  It's just an angsty jerk.




You are using the term correctly, as a term of literary criticism.

But somehow, in popular culture, anti-hero has taken on a second meaning of "angsty jerk", Spider-Man only in black, etc.  TVtropes actually has a thing on "90s anti-hero" that basically describes the angsty jerk uber badass characters.  They think it comes from comics, but I don't know for sure -- I do know it's a 1990s thing.


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## haakon1 (Jul 9, 2008)

Ruin Explorer said:


> The days of angsty '90s emo "anti-heroes" are long gone




I certainly hope they are, but it's my fear that Dragonborn and Tieflings are precisely to play into this "current" (hopeless dated and never interesting) 1990s fad -- "lets play the evil races, and whine about how we're misunderstood/kick butt on the wheeny elfy guys".


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## haakon1 (Jul 9, 2008)

Double post


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## hong (Jul 9, 2008)

Someone here can't leave the 90s behind, and it's not WotC.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Sep 5, 2008)

Reported



























....


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## Starbuck_II (Sep 5, 2008)

haakon1 said:


> I certainly hope they are, but it's my fear that Dragonborn and Tieflings are precisely to play into this "current" (hopeless dated and never interesting) 1990s fad -- "lets play the evil races, and whine about how we're misunderstood/kick butt on the wheeny elfy guys".



 But Dragonborm aren't even evil!

They area noble racve (says so in the PHb).

You could argue for Tieflings, but Dragonborn?! That meakes less sense than handing someone poop and calling it ice cream.


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