# Reinventing fantasy cliches



## Afrodyte (Apr 7, 2008)

A criticism often levied at the fantasy genre is that a lot of it is derivative and cliche.  Rather than debate this point, I'm more interested in seeing and creating examples that counter that trend.  What are some things you have done or plan to do in your campaign settings to turn cliche fantasy elements into something more interesting?  Better yet, what do you do (or want to do) in your game to distinguish it from published fantasy settings (whether as novels, movies, or RPGs)?


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## DrunkonDuty (Apr 7, 2008)

Nice topic. When I have some more time (tomorrow possibly) I'll cheerfully chime in with one of my standard, very long, meandering waffles.

PS: congrats on 500th post!


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## Rechan (Apr 7, 2008)

I want to add a few notions to the mix before we start this discussion in full!  

*1*. Cliches are cliche because they _work_. There's a reason it's lasted, because it resonates with something. Tossing something out wholesale because it's cliche isn't the best of ideas. As it has been said, there are only seven stories to tell, and everything is a re-telling. 

Anything can work if it is done well. The intelligent use of cliches is no exception.

*2*. The Reverse of a cliche (the good Drow, the feral elf) is itself a cliche. It is often done for shock factor or "Well it's different because it's the opposite!" But keep 1 in mind: the Reverse can be done well.


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## Rechan (Apr 7, 2008)

My fatigue-addled brain can't think of any over-arching cliches I've used/want to use in a campaign. However, one I love to toy with is the nature of certain things like evil, monsters, necromancy, etc.

One I've used in a game was a necromancer. Yes, he was raising an "army" of undead. The twist here is that 1) He was just doing it as a favor to pay some debts, and 2) This gig is just not his style. He'd rather be on a beach somewhere, reading necromantic texts while being fawned on by pretty native girls.

But Necromancy is often the pale guy cackling in his catacombs. Where there are lots of different directions you can take. For instance, Viktor Frankenstein is a necromancer. He studied death, and how to break it. The notion that "Imagine if death could be defeated, a world where Da Vinci had never stopped his work, where you can go to a concert by Mozart, listen to a lecture by Socrates". 

In that light, undead can also be seen as mistakes. They're almost-but-not-quite. Or a bi-product of unchecked necromantic energies.

____________________________________________________________________

A completely different train of thought strikes me. I think that the Earth Wind Water Fire elements pitted against eachother thing has been Done to Death in fantasy. Maybe using Chinese elements, or something else that can stand in for the Big Four, but really, that's a cliche I"m not sure what to Do with.


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## DarkKestral (Apr 7, 2008)

Rechan said:
			
		

> I want to add a few notions to the mix before we start this discussion in full!
> 
> *1*. Cliches are cliche because they _work_. There's a reason it's lasted, because it resonates with something. Tossing something out wholesale because it's cliche isn't the best of ideas. As it has been said, there are only seven stories to tell, and everything is a re-telling.




I personally believe there are only 3 basic stories, but...

As far as the general topic: I think a good operational definition of a cliche is one you can find at TVTropes: A trope is a recurring element of a plot or story. A cliche is a trope used to the point that it normally must be subverted, inverted, or avoided or at least lampshade hung if the audience is to find it interesting. By the point that something becomes a widely recognizable trope, it is almost assuredly on it's way to being a cliche. So, in other words, we're talking things that are basically "mined out," at least in terms of their dramatic potential. So really, what are we talking about, at least in terms of the fantasy milieu of D&D? I don't rightly know. It's hard to say.

 I'd guess Drizzt and the drow come closest, in some respects, as do elves more generally. Usually, when I see drow campaigns that are interesting to me, they're usually involving evil drow as PCs, because every good drow at this point has shades of Drizzt, at least if they angst about it. At the same time, the overall drow are uninteresting to some, as they are often portrayed solely as a matriarchal society with a love on for spiders, Lolth, and some interesting marriage practices, and this hasn't changed in years.

So how would I go about making a game about drow that isn't cliche? Make the good and evil ones work together. One campaign I've been kicking around in my mind has the drow as one of the few bastions of civilization in the Underdark, so they are both a force of good, in that they keep the Underdark semi-civilized and the nastiest beasties away from the surface, but a force of evil because this is through slavery and oppression. So you have a case where good drow and evil drow can co-exist. The good drow are trying to unite the Underdark against the worst evils, and the evil ones trying to wrest control of it from those evils. So both groups have similar goals, and have to work together, but eventually want to gain the upper hand; the good ones work to end the slavery and make a better life in the dark for all, while the evil ones work to bring more power and comfort to themselves, but don't care what happens to anyone or anything besides themselves. One goal would be to see if it can't be doable to make some good drow that aren't Drizzt clones...


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## Slife (Apr 7, 2008)

You should definitely look into the Jhereg series by Steven Brust.  He does a really good job of reinventing cliches.  And the books are well-written.


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## Fenes (Apr 7, 2008)

I think these days, the anti-clichee has often become the clichee, so the clichee itself is fresh and new in many cases.

Orcs that are not misunderstood humans with snouts, but evil pillaging barbarians who enjoy to cause misery. Paladins that are good and pure, and not either on the way down to evil, or too strict to be really good. Evil Drow. etc. etc.


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## Whisper72 (Apr 7, 2008)

There are certainly some cliche's that people haven't touched with the proverbial 10 foot poles for so long, they are probably ready to return...

Think of the adventurers getting together at an inn.

As to the OP question, as has been debated by others, a reversal of an existing cliche is essentially a cliche itself. The trick then, is to add a twist to a cliche in such a way that it is not a real reversal.

To return to the 'adventurers meet at an Inn' scenario. The 'regular' cliche is that the PCs meet up with some 'mysterious figure' who gives them some sort of mission, sometimes dying in the arms of the PC's, or a damsel is attacked (i.e. in distress) and needs to be saved right on the spot. A nice twist could be to have the Inn be attacked by government forces, and the PC's themselves are the target. They have no clue why or what they are accused of, but now they are either captured or on the run from the law. It is still all happening at an inn, but the idea is changed.

As to the element 'problem' posed by Rechan, the 'normal' elements are physical. Maybe a nice twist is to have the seven vices and seven virtues be the driving 'elemental powers' in the world? Or more abstract powers such as 'nature, death, magic'.

Anyhoo, just some thoughts..


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## Dioltach (Apr 7, 2008)

Something about the Darksun concepts of feral, jungle-dwelling halflings and nomadic, desert-dwelling elves has always appealed to me. I put them in a setting I once created, but I never got to play it.

Another cliche is the 'noble heroes working to topple the evil totalitarian dictatorship'. In my d20 Future campaign, the world is run by a totalitarian dictatorship (Parliament, consisting of 5 members). But the characters work for the government, fighting against the rebels. (The twist is that resources are so scarce that only a totalitarian government is strict enough to ensure a more or less equal share for everyone, and the rebels are selfish anarchists who want to improve their situation at the expense of others.)


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## Ydars (Apr 7, 2008)

One interesting way of using cliches is to take one from a genre where it IS completely mined out and put it into a different genre where it is much less familiar.

Take for instance Serenity/Firefly; this is basically the western cliche recast as Sci-Fi. Or the Chronicles of Brother Cadfael, which are murder mysteries set in medieval England, and which have spawned a whole new genre of historical detective fiction that now has more than fifty active writers.

The same can profitably be done with Fantasy. Simply take principals/cliches from Sci-Fi (or other genres) and apply them to sword and sorcery. 

For example, I once ran a campaign where the whole world was immensely dangerous because of monsters and humans had to spend their whole lives shut up in huge cities that were controlled by a magical intelligence; in effect, the city was alive and organic. The twist was that humans created all these beasts and the city during their wars with one another in the past and then had degenerated. This is a classic Sci-Fi cliche but it is not so familiar when re-clothed.

It is almost "Logun's run" or a serious version of "Paranoia". The important thing is that although the background story is stolen, the atmosphere HAS to be completely consistent with Fantasy and so you play down anything technological and play up the mysterious and mystical to make it fit.


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## Woas (Apr 7, 2008)

People hunt vampires because when you drink their blood it grants eternal life. Not because they are a menace to society.

Something like that? Or is that a reverse cliche and thus a cliche itself?


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## Desdichado (Apr 7, 2008)

I'm a big fan of the idea that execution is way more important than innovation.  Well-done cliches are vastly more entertaining than something that's not cliched but which is poorly executed and leaves the players wandering around wondering what to do, or is just flat out not compelling.

In fact, to some extent, the cliches are what fans of the genre expect; if you go too far afield, they don't identify your stuff with the genre and they're either 1) not interested in the first place, or 2) unable to follow what you're trying to get at.

Are we talking about settings here?  I'm not sure in what respect this question was asked.  Novels?  Adventures?  Settings?  Movies?  Something else?

In any case, I think the same basic ground rules apply; rather than make everything alien and different, employ cliches well, and only make a few elements buck the expectations.  A few things that are cliche-breakers, amongst a setting that otherwise feels familiar is much more likely to be successful than something that's completely new and unfamiliar.  Make sure that your audience has some baseline assumptions from which they can depart, or they won't feel connected to your work and probably won't get it or like it.

My "least cliched" fantasy setting, for example, is different in that it borrows well-known conventions and "cliches" from a number of other genres and mashes them together.  It's not truly new, but the specific combination of elements is.  That way, the players of my game knew what to expect from the different elements.  When they were in the city, they knew to expect a gritty, dark, amoral, Charles Dickens-esque landscape with Mafia-like organizations running the show, and thoroughly corrupt officials.  Nothing new there, although maybe not exactly as they expected from fantasy.  When they went out of town, they found a lot of small, insular groups threatened by larger armed groups; kinda a Sergio Leone vision of the frontier.  The world itself was harsh and full of alien life-forms, but it still had a very Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom-like feel to it in that regard.  Overall, there was a strong H. P. Lovecraft-like horror vibe, and my plots read like rejected Robert Ludlum drafts that included occult elements.

I'd like to think that the feel was not cliched, but I'm also honest enough to realize that really all I did was pull cliches from a number of genres that typically don't play in the same sandbox and threw them all together into a kind of RPG gumbo.  Because it used this type of managed cliches, the players weren't ever completely lost and unfamiliar with what to expect, but because they hadn't ever seen these genre conventions combined like this, they thought the experience was fresh and exciting at the same time.


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## Umbran (Apr 7, 2008)

One can argue that "reinventing a cliche" and "derivative" are morally equivalent...

Be that as it may, if you'd like to see a goodly bout of fantasy re-invention, I suggest you look to the _Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn_ series by Tad Williams.  The author outright admits that the series was an attempt to take Tolkien, and reinvent it with the less black-and-white sensibilities of later decades.


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## Afrodyte (Apr 7, 2008)

DarkKestral,

Thank you for staying on topic.


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## Silvercat Moonpaw (Apr 7, 2008)

In regards to clichés there's a very good discussion about fantasy race archtypes going on over at the WotC 4E boards:

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?p=15545175&posted=1#post15545175


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## haakon1 (Apr 7, 2008)

Rechan said:
			
		

> Cliches are cliche because they _work_.




Nod.  My dad's an English professor, and there's an old joke among them, about the student who complained Shakespeare is a hack because he uses so many cliches . . .


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## Starman (Apr 7, 2008)

Umbran said:
			
		

> Be that as it may, if you'd like to see a goodly bout of fantasy re-invention, I suggest you look to the _Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn_ series by Tad Williams.  The author outright admits that the series was an attempt to take Tolkien, and reinvent it with the less black-and-white sensibilities of later decades.




And an excellent series it turned out to be.


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## DarkKestral (Apr 7, 2008)

Ydars said:
			
		

> One interesting way of using cliches is to take one from a genre where it IS completely mined out and put it into a different genre where it is much less familiar.
> 
> Take for instance Serenity/Firefly; this is basically the western cliche recast as Sci-Fi. Or the Chronicles of Brother Cadfael, which are murder mysteries set in medieval England, and which have spawned a whole new genre of historical detective fiction that now has more than fifty active writers.
> 
> The same can profitably be done with Fantasy. Simply take principals/cliches from Sci-Fi (or other genres) and apply them to sword and sorcery.




Actually, that is a common source of sword n' sorcery cliches. Science Fiction and Fantasy are always digging in the other's pockets. They're basically the same genre, in some respects. Plus, the fanbase for one tends to be the fanbase for the other, so if a trope becomes common in one, it will get recognized elsewhere.

So I'd pull some themes from outside F&SF, or the general class of "speculative fiction," which is a class that includes both fantasy and sci-fi, in order to get maximum effect, rather than just transport tropes from one side to the other.

Some of the best detective stories I've seen were science fiction. Likewise some of the best  science fiction stories had a significant component that was a detective story. They succeeded because stuck to the basic questions addressed by science fiction and fantasy and used the interplay of the genres to good effect. But in genres with a lot of interplay, like say fantasy and scifi, that interplay loses some impact, and itself is a cliche. That said, there are some very good novels that focus on that interplay (Heinlein's _Glory Road_ for example) but at this point, it's somewhat expected, though not as much in RPGs as elsewhere, but the recurring popularity of such material in games set in "modern" settings and the long-term survival of Shadowrun and White Wolf's WoD shows that's common enough for players (and many players add such elements into their more classically D&D games... there's even a famous AD&D module with the theme of a crashed spaceship with robots as the "dungeon" to be explored.) that it's not reliable. It can be a great idea though, but you'll need to really play up the "science fiction" nature of the elements and constrast them with the fantastic setting. However, look at all of the story hours here that combine both genres liberally, and it quickly becomes apparent that if it's not made out to look unusual relative to the overall setting, it blends together to where you can't recognize the source for anything.

So there are a few elements of genre fiction other than fantasy fiction that are so totally blended into fantasy RPGs that players don't always notice: detective fiction, horror fiction, pulp fiction, and science fiction. Historical fiction is sometimes a common additional element, but if you look at the bulk of D&D's rules material and the basic necessities of RPG plotting, those four stand out as the basics.

So you need to look to the portions of those that aren't common if you want maximum effect. Film Noir-style plotting and thematic elements are unusual in RPGs, which is one reason I think Eberron does so well; Eberron is full of noir elements and touches on a genre previously left fairly open to new interpretations while sticking solidly to the fantasy milieu of D&D. Savage Worlds does the same for pulp action and fantasy, as does Eberron.

So I'd also say that trying to do the same will probably be a good idea; like Hobo, I figure that the most original settings often rely on a lot of classic elements that have some archetypical staying power, but then twist the archetypes to present a new vision of an old theme. As it was noted in the linked thread, the elves of Aerenal in Eberron are best viewed as a vision and a deconstruction of an elder, static race likely to be sowing the seeds of it's own extinction. A race whose primarily outlook is to the past and who has the power to literally raise the dead from their graves to aid them is likely to utilize necromancy heavily. It's also why I think modern literature is now going through a process of deconstruction so rapid that by the time one deconstruction ends, the next deconstruction of the genre has begun. In some respects, that process has been the case for ages, as the first modern novel is itself a deconstruction of earlier tales, and is a tale of tilting at windmills and the willing delusion of chivalry.


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## Rechan (Apr 7, 2008)

Good discussion thusfar. A specific example that occurs to me as I write this expeditiously on a break:

Elves are nature-loving hippies. Elves are highly magical.

This is the cliche. So how do we _explain_ it in a manner that allows us to keep Elves as Hippies, but make it _feel_ different? Elves are mainly seen as fey (or fey-like, but not Pure fey). What's something else that's connected to nature and magic? 

The elves are _plants_. Green, eat by rooting themselves in the soil, grow weak without proper exposure to the sun, etc. This gives them a specific reason to be tied to nature, because they are _part_ of nature. These plant elves are in tune with druidic magics, because it had a hand in their genesis. 



> Take for instance Serenity/Firefly; this is basically the western cliche recast as Sci-Fi.




At the same time, one must tred carefully lest you take it too far or make it too obvious. For instance, if you go so far as to have The Space Sheriff who goes into The Space Tavern to get himself some Space Whiskey, because he just came from putting Space Justice to some Space Varments rustling up Space Cattle.


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## tzor (Apr 7, 2008)

Afrodyte said:
			
		

> A criticism often levied at the fantasy genre is that a lot of it is derivative and cliche.




I don’t think you want to eliminate clichés but I think you need to consider them as cards in your hand or as moves you make in chess.  It is the context and use of the clichés that keep the game exciting and fresh.  Properly used clichés can allow players to focus on the key elements in the plot which might either not be a cliché or might be a rarely encountered one.

In one sense a DM’s plot is a lot like a chess game (ignoring the fact that a role playing game is a cooperative experience typically the DM will have a number of plots up his or her sleeve and the idea to keep the game fresh is to make it as though it becomes fresh and exciting for the players) and the cliché is one of may possible moves.  The trick is not in the use of the cliché itself but to avoid having the cliché become obvious one after the other as though the whole thing is predictable.

Consider the old cliché of “You meet at an inn.”  Now consider the second old cliché of “You meet someone at an inn.”  So far we have a standard opening gambit of a plot chess move.  The trick is to slip in variety of the plot.  What if the person the party meets wasn’t looking for the party?  What if the person the party meets was supposed to be a trap for some other party?  Duck … Duck … Penguin!  (Were you expecting Goose?)  Without some clichés the plot becomes a session of paranoia, but with them they become comfort zones where the players can relax long enough to be caught with a surprise in the plot.

This is why inverted clichés don’t in and of themselves work.  They in fact become clichés.  The urban elf and the good drow are all literally done to death.  That isn’t to say that the inverted cliché can’t be used, but like the cards in your cliché deck they are just like any other.


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## Ed_Laprade (Apr 7, 2008)

Rechan said:
			
		

> The elves are _plants_. Green, eat by rooting themselves in the soil, grow weak without proper exposure to the sun, etc. This gives them a specific reason to be tied to nature, because they are _part_ of nature. These plant elves are in tune with druidic magics, because it had a hand in their genesis.



Original Runequest. Which just goes to show that there's nothing new under the sun.


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## Kmart Kommando (Apr 8, 2008)

Umbran said:
			
		

> One can argue that "reinventing a cliche" and "derivative" are morally equivalent...
> 
> Be that as it may, if you'd like to see a goodly bout of fantasy re-invention, I suggest you look to the _Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn_ series by Tad Williams.  The author outright admits that the series was an attempt to take Tolkien, and reinvent it with the less black-and-white sensibilities of later decades.



I read Tolkien, and hated it.  I read Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, pure awesome.  Actually, pure Awesome, with the capital A.   
In my Iron Heroes game, the evil Nazi elves (of my reworked-for-IH Eberron) are based on the  evil elves of that trilogy.  My players were practically panicking when the Nazi elf ninjas hit them.


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## GammaPaladin (Apr 8, 2008)

I always loved watching Joss Whedon's shows, because he would deliberately set up a cliche, and then hit a punchline by suddenly deviating from it.

Like the scene in Firefly where the crew comes to rescue Captain Reynolds, and they burst in on him fighting the evil guy's big right hand man, and Zoe tells the others, "This is something the Captain has to do for himself", which of course, has any viewer groaning at the obvious cliche. Until the captain says "No it's not!" in a rather frantic voice and you laugh.

Cliches can be useful things... They're easy targets for lampooning.

Of course, if you're going for a more somber tone, that won't work out so well.



> I read Tolkien, and hated it. I read Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, pure awesome. Actually, pure Awesome, with the capital A.



I loved that series as well. Have you tried Guy Gavriel Kay's "Fionavar Tapestry"? It's the other epic fantasy work I tend to recommend to people. Funny thing is it starts with a horrible cliche, but is a wonderful series anyway. The books are "The Summer Tree", "The Wandering Fire", and "The Darkest Road", I think. Unless I forgot one.


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## InVinoVeritas (Apr 8, 2008)

Rechan said:
			
		

> The elves are _plants_. Green, eat by rooting themselves in the soil, grow weak without proper exposure to the sun, etc. This gives them a specific reason to be tied to nature, because they are _part_ of nature. These plant elves are in tune with druidic magics, because it had a hand in their genesis.




Yup, I did this, and took it a step further:

The drow are _fungus_. They think and operate as long-reaching, long-timeline planners, carefully sticking to the shadows until they crop up everywhere, all at once. Eradicate them, and they are still there, invisible, until they appear again.

The Amborae (elves) had bright colors, and sprouted flowers and vines in their hair. The Entamborae (drow) had dark colors, and grew mushrooms and thorns in their hair.

I redid the races as nine new races, all of them based off well-known races, but with a twist. Humans were the High Men, who wandered among the other races as a regal and capable race all its own. Similarly, the Low Men were a wretched offshoot that were small and hid in the shadows of the other races. Dwarves became Grachen, a race made of stone. Goblins were the Wizened, wise bog-dwellers that were one part Gollum, one part Crone. Orcs were the Strakhan, a violent people who took their power from the stars (their eyes glowed as stars, and were actually accomplished astrologers, as well). Gnomes became Cherboncles, three-eyed Laputans. Then, I introduced the Beastlings, an animalistic race.

Worked well. My players took the cliches in brand new directions, without having to ask tons of questions about what worked and how.


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## jdrakeh (Apr 8, 2008)

The vs Elves setting depicts sdwarfs as they exist in the real world (a physically handicapped human), Elves are members of a insect-like hivemind, Dark Elves are former members of that hivemind who broke willfully broke away from it, and creatures such as Troll, Ogres, Zombies, Doppelgangers, etc are all magically altered Elves bred for specifically war, espionage, assassination, and so forth. 

Elves (as a race) are Good in the eyes of Elves, but Evil in the eyes of Dark Elves and other sentient races. Dark Elves (as a race) are Good in the eyes of Dark Elves and Humans, but Evil in the eyes of Elves. Humans are on the brink of being erased from history on the Elven continent. While these tenets (unlike those mentioned earlier) are just reversals of common cliches, they aren't cliches in and of themselves (in order for something to qualify as a cliche, it must be very commonplace). 

The world itself has printing presses, firearms, and other atypical technology in High Fantasy settings. There are a few cliches in place (e.g., zombies have to be hit in the head to put them down permanantly) but, for the most part, vs Elves is built on ground-up reimaginings of old ideas done in ways that, simply, haven't seen much (if any) play elsewhere.


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## Slapzilla (Apr 8, 2008)

Cliche works well when you need a shortcut.  Avoiding cliche requires creativity (and the time to create, of course).  Re-inventing can be fun.  Dwarves in a modern setting as a biker gang, for instance keeps a cliche, but 'imports' it into your current context.

The Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark needed no explanation as to why they needed to not get their hands on this powerful artifact.  Everybody hates them and they are the bad guys.  No problem, right?  Well, it worked in that context because the whole set up was the '30s serial style story action hero thing.

We assume the Orcs are the bad guys in the same way.  Yes, of course, there are some orcs that are decent but part of what makes fantasy a fantasy is that you never have to fret about the morality of ambushing a troop of sleeping orcs.  The suspension of disbelief must happen here, too for without it, the fantasy cliches will die.

I feel that amping up the cliche to the maximum and getting the characters to partake in it is the best way to get beyond it.  When they have their own way of doing things, the cliche will shift to fit them.  For instance...

I've currently got a Human Fem Bar/Drd, a Goblin Male Ranger/Goblin Paragon, and a Half-elf Fem Bard trying to get a stolen but recovered Dwarven family heirloom to a Dwarven citadel while trying to outrace the orc army about to lay seige to it.  The Barbarian's tribe will harrass the army so as to not allow them to settle in and the dwarves will counter attack.  The Barbarian has to get to her tribe and the heirloom's family will certainly be grateful and during the counter attack, they will hack their way through the orcs and deliver the PCs to the tribe.  Totally macho, tough-as-nails, grim dwarves, savage barbarians and vicious orcs a plenty.  Crank the bad-a$$ery up!

How the players handle the cliches and the overboard macho war imagery I'm going to throw at them will be what it is.  But it will give us all a glimpse into what and who their characters are and the kinds of things that will interest them in the future... which is the real goal of continuing a campaign anyway, right?


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## CruelSummerLord (Apr 8, 2008)

Afrodyte said:
			
		

> A criticism often levied at the fantasy genre is that a lot of it is derivative and cliche.  Rather than debate this point, I'm more interested in seeing and creating examples that counter that trend.  What are some things you have done or plan to do in your campaign settings to turn cliche fantasy elements into something more interesting?  Better yet, what do you do (or want to do) in your game to distinguish it from published fantasy settings (whether as novels, movies, or RPGs)?




One way I make cliches seem less, well, cliched is to dig deeper and offer greater details and depth to a given trope.  For instance: 

-Portraying kobolds as wretches who are perpetually whining to themselves about the supposed wrongs inflicted on them by others, while simultaneously planning horrific revenges on their enemies, thus trapping the kobolds in an endless cycle of grudges and defeats that they perpetrate on themselves...

-Taking your standard "good" or "evil" religions and adding greater intellectual depth to them, extrapolating general philosophies on life from a god's portfolio, and what ethical/moral beliefs could logically spring from it...

-Fleshing out otherwise faceless NPCs by giving them little personalize habits, whether it's a passion for wood sculpture, a talent for playing the pipe organ, or a disdain for white wine...

-Finding innovative ways to present otherwise standard material, by showing it in the form of a letter, the journal of an expedition, an organizational charter, or what have you...

-Making up new details that otherwise fit the race's "character", such as detailing how the hobgoblins love epic poetry in the style of _The Illiad_, fitting the hobgoblin race's military character...

Digging deeper and adding in more fluff that might otherwise seem superfluous can add a lot of depth to otherwise cardboard races and NPCs.  I've also found that books of pure fluff, that otherwise minimize the crunch and look less like a rulebook, also do more to heighten the illusion and strengthen the sense of disbelief, and make it seem less like another standard catalogue of game material.  

Of course, I've done some out-and-out subversions too...

-Elves are as magically wise and nature-loving as they've been portrayed to be, but they are not fallen from grace, or declining from a Golden Age; they've been utterly incapable of marshalling their arcane knowledge into great world power, being divided from the very beginning due to the arrogance and stupidity of the elven gods.  However, there are signs appearing that the elven Golden Age is coming [*]NOW[*], and that it's going to change the setting in a big way in the future...

-Dragons are not the powerful be-all and end-all of arcane or divine might.  They formed from the emotions and passions of the supposedly "lesser" races, and vastly overestimate their importance to the world at large and their power in general.  Dragons are, in fact, much [*]weaker[*] than generally supposed.  

-Full-fledged drow armies, led by no less than 13 priestesses of Lolth, get their heads handed to them by a force of goblins who outsmart and outfight them, with a goblin king that slays all thirteen priestesses one after another in a series of single combats.  

Who says drow are invincible?    

In truth, I find it a more challenging creative exercise to find fresh spins for old ideas, rather than reinvent the wheel.  If you like Tekumel, great, but I'll stick to Greyhawk, thank you very much.


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## Afrodyte (Apr 8, 2008)

CruelSummerLord,

Cool!  That's the sort of thing I'm talking about.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Apr 8, 2008)

Things I'm doing, have done, or am considering doing:

1)  Planty Elves?  I'm doing that now, but making them true Fey (ditto the other 2 "elf" races in my current campaign) and adding a touch of Minbari/Trill to it.  If killed, they may be ressurected simply by replanting their core pod, which holds all of their memories...

2)  I've also used elves the way Michael Moorcock recast them as his Melniboneans.  IOW, they are truly in touch with magic like no other race, but their decadent, world-spanning, slavery practicing empire is in decline, with humanity emerging from their shadow.

3)  More fun with elves- I've recast the war between Drow and the Surface elves in terms of the American Civil War, with the Drow playing the role of the South.  The brutality of the Reconstruction Era was transformed into the events that actually drove the Drow underground.

4)  Still more fun with elves: The elves are actually the aliens we know in pop culture as "Greys," especially the taller kind you'd see in Close Encounters.  Their ship crashed, and is currently under an earthen mound- their mastery of multidimensional physics and hyperdrive/stasis technology distorts time & space, leading their guests- and the occasional test subject- to misperceive time's passage...or even emerge from the impossibly vast domain others call "Underhill" many decades later than when they entered it.  Their holographic technology disguises their true nature.

4)  Dwarves as a race of native elementals, sort of like diminuative Stonechildren.  Dwarves are carved from stone and given life via a religious ceremony.  Type of stone dictates the racial traits of the particular dwarf, and as "masterwork items," they can actually be directly enchanted like magic items...

5)  I had an idea to use Warforged as Gnome-tech mecha (the Juggernaught ones, at least), but further refined them to be Inheritors- my FRPG equivalent to Daleks that house the psyches of psionically gifted Dwarves whose race was otherwise exterminated.

6) Inspired by Tarzan stories; by Charles Coleman Finley's series of short stories in Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine (republished as The Prodigal Troll) about Maggot- a human raised by trolls; by Captain Carrot, a human raised by dwarves in Terry Pratchett's Diskworld novels; by Will Farrell's human raised by North Pole Elves comedy Elf- treating certain racial characteristics as _societal_ ones, making "Half-" races a mere term of convenience (and occasionally of insult) for changelings & foundlings who were raised by races other than their own.


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## DrunkonDuty (Apr 8, 2008)

One way to avoid cliches is to treat individuals as individuals rather than merely examples of a Platonic "Race."

- my current campaign the Dwarven PCs are going to be going to war with the Frost Giants soon. They've met many of the Frost Giants now and even like some of them. But the war will happen (DM fiat can be such a bitch   ) and this will make the war that much more sad. My Frost Giants are living the cliche: Loud, boastful, war-like, drunken brawlers who wear hats with horns on them. But I've given enough of them individual characteristics, made them people, that the Frost Giants as a whole take on more depth.

- I have a campaign background I work on now and then (may never see the light of play). The idea is for it to be a Humanoid campaign. Orcs, Gobbos, etc. To put a twist on the Humanoid cliches I've broken the races down by tribes and given the tribes certain individual characteristics. For instance 1 Orc tribe is the classic band of vicious marauders. Another Orc tribe is the epitomy of the Noble Savage. By juxtaposing them I hope make the cliches more interesting.

-Same campaign I've got a tribe of Goblins who are merchants of the entrepid Marco Polo variety. Their mule caravans brave all the corners of the Borderlands* trading goods back and forth. Some are honest merchants (within reason, I mean business is business), some are just con artists. Another tribe who are warg-riding Gobbos but who have much closer bonds with the wolves, including limited shape changing.

*Yes there is a keep. It has a castellan. Gobbos are not welcome there even if they claim to be honest merchants. Actually, this is another good example where I played with a well known DnD cliche. I mixed this old fave with a cliche from the history of colonisation: The castellan is keen to prove himself a successful administrator so as to further his career when he goes back to the capital. He is planning to set up a human colony in the Borderlands. "Pushing back the borders!" And stiff cheddar to the humanoids who already live there. He is not a a bad man but he doesn't think humanoids count as people. 

cheers all,
Glen


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## Dannyalcatraz (Apr 8, 2008)

Things I'm doing, have done, or am considering doing, cont.:

1) "Necromancers" who aren't evil (or neutral for that matter), but actually good.  The one I've yet to play is an OA (+ Dragon#318) Shaman/Necromancer (Focused Specialist) with a Voudoun theme

2) "Diviner" as spy, a la James Bond.

3) "The Family"- a Half-Orc and Half-Elf who are half-siblings (obviously, requires a partner or a campaign with players using multiple PCs simultaneously).  Ideally, the Half-Orc is female, the Half-Elf male.

4) Tribes of Halfling Barbarians/"Totem Warriors."  I've designed one who was from a tribe that venerated burrowing mammals, so their warriors emulate porcupines (by wearing spiked armor), badgers & aardvarks (by using bladed gauntlets or equivalents for weapons), skunks (by using vials of trog stink, etc.) and shrews (by eating voraciously).

Oh yeah...don't call them anything derogatory referencing "short."


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## hong (Apr 8, 2008)

Hmm...

Vampires who aren't crazy, bloodthirsty creatures but instead are fully aware of their plight, and the tragedy that they must kill others to survive

Werewolves similarly who aren't bestial, rampaging monsters but the unheralded guardians of nature

Mages who are concerned with more than just finding secrets Man Was Not Meant To Know, and instead fight to keep the fabric of reality from unravelling




What?


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## Desdichado (Apr 8, 2008)

Dannyalcatraz said:
			
		

> 1) "Necromancers" who aren't evil (or neutral for that matter), but actually good.


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## Evilhalfling (Apr 8, 2008)

My fav was a oneshot that was stuffed full of cliches - 

*A dark and stomy knight. * 

During a rainstorm a carriage breaks down in front of a long abandoned mansion. riding inside:
Father – incompetent and overconfident patriarch. (Figher)
Mother – Scatterbrained, heart of gold. (Cleric)
Son – handsome and virile, slightly clueless, mad at parents.  (Ranger) 
Driver – mysterious figure in black, turns out to be the female friend of Son. (Rogue)
Accountant – effeminate elf (actually female), responsible for the families financial hardship.   (wizard) 

The BBEG actually uses a Transylvanian accent, and sleeps in a coffin. Although when he is stressed, he has a tendency to sweat off his white makeup. 

The fact that he lives with 2 half-fiendish bards, (flotstem and Violet) and a red-haired dancing succubus named Columbia is just icing. 

sitcoms and bad movies, throw enough in an it all gets lost in the shuffle.


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## Set (Apr 8, 2008)

The way that D&D has developed has almost enforced cliches.

Instead of saying that some elves live in grand cities and practice wizardry, while others tattoo themselves and run around the woods half-nekkid, the game has segregated them into subraces, Grey Elves and Wood Elves and Wild Elves and Dark Elves.  In most of these cases, the differences between these subraces of elves, dwarves, gnomes and halflings are no more significant than the difference between a Viking raider and a Sultan's vizier.  They don't really *need* to be different subraces.  A 'dark' elf could just be an elf, that's dark.

If an 'elf' could be a griffon-riding mithral-armored spellcaster from the crystal cities in the mountains, or a tattooed wild-woman running with the wolves, or a cold and sinister human-hating skulker underground, who likes to poison wells and shoot cattle with dung-tainted arrows, then the 'elf' stops being a cliche and becomes a word like 'human,' that can represent a *vast* variety of different people, not just 'magical tree-huggers.'

The upcoming Eladrin/Elf split is just further crystalizing the cliche.  Now they aren't even subraces, the elf-who-lives-in-the-woods and the elf-who-lives-in-town are *completely* different.


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## Ydars (Apr 8, 2008)

You are right Set; building in all these expectations into D&D might make it easier for designers to create adventures, but it also enforces the cliches.


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## Afrodyte (Apr 8, 2008)

There are some pretty good ideas so far.  However, let's broaden and focus things a bit.  I recently came across a blog that talks about some of the aesthetic, narrative, and ideological elements that constantly creep into fantasy settings.  This blogger specifically mentions:


Racial determinism
Chosen One Syndrome
Epic
Authority worship
Eurocentric

What are some other cliches you've noticed?  What would you do to change them?

For my part, many magic-related cliches seem to come from the failure to think about the role magic plays in the world.  I don't mind magic that's mysterious or based on concepts that make quantum physics look like Sesame Street (I honestly prefer this).  But in cases when magic is analogous to technology, it's hard to imagine why people still have medieval standards of living.  A corollary to that is the idea of magic and technology being innately incompatible.  An idea I have is that rather than having magic undermining technology (or vice versa), magic allows technology to flourish to a point where nanotechnology looks primitive in comparison.


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## haakon1 (Apr 8, 2008)

DrunkonDuty said:
			
		

> I've got a tribe of Goblins who are merchants of the entrepid Marco Polo variety. Their mule caravans brave all the corners of the Borderlands* trading goods back and forth.




My goblin merchant trades between the Keep on the Borderlands and the goblins of the Caves of Chaos.  The PC's allied with the "king" of the goblins, who also rules the few remaining hobgoblins and bugbears, to fight against the cultists.  Since the PC's have been supplying one cow a week (at their own expense) to buy the goblins loyalty, the deal has kept for 6 months or so now.

Later on at the Keep, a merchant who had escaped from bandits hired the PC's to rescue his daughter, his stuff, and any remaining employees from the fallen keep of Dzeebagd (queue the Troll Lords module of that name).  One of the hostages they rescued was a goblin merchant, who became a trader in association with the main merchant -- thus being allowed admission to the Keep, just barely.

Hmmm, so what should be traded betwixt Keep and Caves?  That I haven't figured out!


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## Desdichado (Apr 8, 2008)

haakon1 said:
			
		

> Hmmm, so what should be traded betwixt Keep and Caves?  That I haven't figured out!



If hobgoblins and other goblinoids are lawful by nature, and as capabable individually as a human, why are they always on the fringes of society as "savage humanoids?"  The more I've thought about this, the more I'm bothered by the implication, because it's merely a cliched Tolkien rip-off rather than something that makes sense (yes, verisimilitude is one of my favorite words in the English language, why do you ask?)  It's almost my default position now, to assume that goblins and hobgoblins are civilized creatures, and are playable races.  They tend to rule vast, expanionist empires with rigid caste system that includes all non-hobgoblin, non-military personal as lesser citizens if not outright slaves.  Kinda a combination of the Roman Empire in its heyday with Nazi Germany or the Soviets in feel.

Anyway, there's a single, specific "cliche buster" that I'm fond of.

I can probably, honestly, credit Claudio Pozas' old picture "Pax Hobgoblinica" as giving me the initial idea.

http://www.enworld.org/Pozas/Pictures/Wallpapers/pax_wp.jpg


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## Set (Apr 8, 2008)

Afrodyte said:
			
		

> Racial determinism
> Chosen One Syndrome




This one I loathe.  Luke/Buffy/Pug/Shandril/etc. are the 'special' people, by birth or power or having unique stuff dropped in their laps, and everyone else rapidly becomes their support team / cheerleaders / sidekicks.

For a novel, it's okay, since Mary-Sue-ism is a valid writing choice.  But for a game setting, it's just cheap to have some people be 'specialer' than other people.  The setting might be feudal, but *we players are not.*  We've mostly gotten past the notion that kings rule by divine fiat and the rest of us are way further down on the 'great chain of being,' and a game setting for modern people kinda needs to be accessible to people who've grown up with the notions of equality and fairness and self-determination, no matter how 'unrealistic' that makes the setting by medieval standards.



> Epic
> Authority worship
> Eurocentric




Given the relative lack of success of Oriental Adventures / Al-Qadim / Maztica / Nyambe / Hamunaptra settings, it seems that Eurocentric game settings aren't going anywhere soon.

Sadly.



> For my part, many magic-related cliches seem to come from the failure to think about the role magic plays in the world.  I don't mind magic that's mysterious or based on concepts that make quantum physics look like Sesame Street (I honestly prefer this).




Some fantasy books go out of their way to make magic only accessible to a few rare 'special' people (and then, inevitably, make it show up willy-nilly in other races / cultures / whatever, who have inexplicably failed to utterly rule the world with their amazing advantage!), or have the most effective uses of magic be 'lost secrets' (Wheel of Time does this, all magic items were 'made by techniques now lost'), or magic has some awful consequences that prevent it from being used to make any significant change in the setting.

Eberron is one of the few settings I've seen that has integrated D&D style magic into the setting.

4th Edition appears to be going the route of removing spells or magical effects that have non-combat effects (which have been labeled 'boring'), and making Fighters / Rogues / Wizards all have equivalent abilities, so that 'magic' is reduced to 'hacking people to bits without a sword.'



> But in cases when magic is analogous to technology, it's hard to imagine why people still have medieval standards of living.  A corollary to that is the idea of magic and technology being innately incompatible.  An idea I have is that rather than having magic undermining technology (or vice versa), magic allows technology to flourish to a point where nanotechnology looks primitive in comparison.




And that makes perfect sense.  It was men of faith, who often had extremely non-scientific views of the world and it's creation, who discovered genetics and astronomy and refined mathematics, etc.  The ancient alchemists, looking for ways to turn lead into gold (or, themselves into immortals, more commonly), ended up developing chemistry and materials science and, oh yeah, explosives.

In a world where a magician can use divination spells, the advancement of scientific knowledge could proceed at *ridiculous* speeds.

"Darn, my experiment failed again, I better cast Commune or Legend Lore or Contact Other Plane and consult with someone with an Intelligence of 40 or so, who will tell me that my theory is totally wrong and I should be doing X instead!"

When you can cast the right spell and *talk to Thor,* you can skip the whole tying a key to a kite to see if it picks up a charge from the stormy night sky.  Lightning might be a mystery to *you,* but not for long.  There's all sorts of elemental beings and genies and dragons and gods who can set you straight on why the fire comes down with the rain.


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## haakon1 (Apr 9, 2008)

*Alternative humanoids*



			
				Hobo said:
			
		

> If hobgoblins and other goblinoids are lawful by nature, and as capabable individually as a human, why are they always on the fringes of society as "savage humanoids?"  The more I've thought about this, the more I'm bothered by the implication, because it's merely a cliched Tolkien rip-off rather than something that makes sense (yes, verisimilitude is one of my favorite words in the English language, why do you ask?)  It's almost my default position now, to assume that goblins and hobgoblins are civilized creatures, and are playable races.  They tend to rule vast, expanionist empires with rigid caste system that includes all non-hobgoblin, non-military personal as lesser citizens if not outright slaves.  Kinda a combination of the Roman Empire in its heyday with Nazi Germany or the Soviets in feel.
> 
> Anyway, there's a single, specific "cliche buster" that I'm fond of.




Wait, the idea of goblinoids having vast, expansionist empires with the totalitarian goal of enslaving/killing all other races is NOT Tolkienesque (one of my favorite words)?  I'm thinking the differences are you have uniforms, ranks that non-goblinoids can recognize, and a Dark Lord who's a goblinoid himself -- but the goal of world domination by massive armies is the same as in Tolkien.  (I'm not convinced that the goblins/orcs of Tolkien's world were chaotic, but I'm not convinced they were lawful either -- I suspect Urek-hai were LE and generic goblins were CE or NE.)

To me, the D&D default Gygaxian (another good word!) vision of goblinoids is as savage tribes on the fringes of civilization, as you say.

But I don't think either is a "cliche", so much as an inherent feature of the default world (Greyhawk) and I guess its successors (FR and "points of light").

Anyhow, I think of the default Gygaxian "savage tribes on the fringes of civilization" and I think of:
-- Dark Ages barbarian tribes bearing down on Rome
-- Northmen ravaging the coast of early medieval Europe
-- Native American tribes facing settlers from 1620-1880 or so.
What's interesting about all of them is that we remember the fighting, but not the trading and other interactions.  Making them more than just a military threat is different and perhaps a little bit interesting, though of course the game is primarily combat oriented.

In the case of the goblin tribe in the Caves of Chaos, I was thinking like "Boot Hill" (which I used to run, about the US Wild West circa 1870s) that a deal to end a war where the tribesmen keep on losing more people but causing the settlers expensive trouble, where the tribesmen get to keep their own place and be left alone, and where the tribesmen get a little food (a cow a week) to compensate them for giving up some raiding was a pretty familiar idea . . . from tribal treaties in the US.  I don't think I'll take the analogy any further, but it's an interesting start.

I still don't know what the goblins have to trade . . . they'd be interested in food, weapons, and slaves, but they would have little to offer.  I just read an "Economist" article about business on Indian reservations, and there's basically very little of it.  So, maybe this leads to a idea about tension with the goblins . . . they want to buy more food, but what can they trade with?  Orc ears from hunting for bounty and starts a war?  Back to raiding the humans on the sly?  Some new bad thing from caves?  Goblins looking for work at the Keep or as caravan guards or scouts?  Then there's the Wild West stuff about bad Indian Agents ripping off the aid for the tribes and starting trouble . . . 

BTW, "The Sunless Citadel" had an interesting hint at a world where goblins trade, with the mention of them selling the healing apples, but 50 gp (far below market value) being all the local humans could bring themselves to pay a goblin . . .


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## DrunkonDuty (Apr 9, 2008)

So many things to reply to! Will probably do a few posts...



> *Haakon1* wrote:
> My goblin merchant trades between the Keep on the Borderlands and the goblins of the Caves of Chaos.




LOL, just goes to show there's no such thing as a unique idea! And I thought I was being so original.

As to what the Goblins trade: mine have a whole swathe of goods to choose from. I'm slightly Obsessive - Compulsive when I world design and I've included trade goods for all the different tribal areas. The merchants trade (barter, no coin) stuff from area to area, effectively providing a transport service. They are also the most technologically advanced of the races in the races in the Borderlands. They make the best bronze and brass tools and weapons. 

WHich segues nicely into why these Humanoids are on the fringes of civilisation: they don't have iron and that makes a difference when it comes to wars with the Humies who do have iron. Over all the Borderlands are just poorer than the Human Kingdoms it borders. (This also lets me use that old western cliche of trading weapons to the natives.)

Hobo: I like your Hobgoblin Empire. Yes it's shadows of Tolkien, but as has been pointed out there's nothing new under the sun, everything is just variations to make things different (and hopefully interesting to our players.) But familiar enough to understand without a course in the Hobgoblin Empire's pseudo-history.

Providing detail is one way to give a new spin to an old cliche. What I did with my Gobbo traders was to answer the questions that were provoked. There are no right or wrong answers. If the answer provokes a new question (and they usually do) answer it to. Carry on until you have enough detail to satifsy yourself.


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## DrunkonDuty (Apr 9, 2008)

Racial Determinism bugs me. As I implied above, having all members of a fantasy race being simple extensions of some Platonic Ideal is just not my idea of realistic. (I like the word verisimilitude too.) It's also dull.

I frequently harp on about giving the NPCs believeable motivations and then roleplaying them appropriately. It's a good way to freshen up the old cliches. Why are the Orcs on the warpath? Because they are EVIL(bwah-hah-hah-hah) or because some humans have invaded their hunting grounds and killed off all the game and they're now starving? Both are cliches. 

Tangent: The second one is of course taken (roughly) from history and thus (roughly) factual, but when used in literature it becomes a cliche. End Tangent.

But one gives you real role play possibility. One gives you bad melodrama. Don't get me wrong: I like a bit of bad melodrama, it's fun. Just not all the time. 

Drow and Racial Determinism.
Above some one decried how Drow are always protrayed as bondage fiends with a spider fetish. (A beautiful summation may I say.) Others have mentioned Drizzt as the cliched anti-cliche. Oh so true. 

What to do about them? 

I've read arguments on this board that Drow are kept in line by a possessive and interfering demon-goddess and that explains why they are what they are. And it's a perfectly valid in-game reason for why the Drow are what they are. But its just a variation on "because they're Drow" and it lacks something for me. Yes, there should be reasons why a Drow is an evil bugger. And some of these reasons are presumably bigger than that individual Drow. You can dream up personal, cultural, historical and "the biased point of view of others" type explanations. Or you can simplify it with "Lolth keeps 'em in line." Which one has better story telling potential? (Well either really, depends on your preferred story. But in keeping with the thread's theme and my own personal preferences I'm going with the first.)

Set, I think you have hit the nail on the head. All these sub-sets of races (and I think I speak truth when I say the Elf is the biggest victim of this) encourage players and designers to think in terms of racial determinism. Making Drow just mean Elves is fine for me. It of course provokes the question "what made them mean?" but that's fine, I can then come up with any number of reasons thereby giving a bit of depth to any Drow NPCs I may have. 

And if you can break away from the stereo type evil Drow I reckon you would be most of the way to breaking away from angsty, outcast, must redeem my people from the thrall of the evil demon-goddess anti-cliche.

Mmm, Eurocentric next I think.


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## Kmart Kommando (Apr 9, 2008)

In my game, besides the Nazi elves, the nation of hobgoblins is the 300 of the setting.   
A demonic-corrupted squad of hobgoblins may one day cross paths with my party.  Oh man, that's going to be a fun battle.    
The drow they're encountering now in the jungles of Xen'drik, pretty much just like a tribe of spear-wielding savages, no need for the 'evil drow bwahahhaa!' persona.  But the players are used to the standard spider-loving drow.


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## DrunkonDuty (Apr 9, 2008)

*Eurocentric Campaign Worlds*

I'll admit to being guilty of mostly using/creating Eurocentric game worlds. Heck, my maps inevitably have cold lands to the north, which is a bit odd when you realise I'm Australian. I tend to borrow heavily from history for my campaign worlds and I'm just better acquainted with European history and non-European history from a European POV. And I frequently use published material either as a base or as a major part of my campaign worlds. That's the why of it.

What to do about it? Well obviously, create a setting that isn't. Which means me reading more history books. (No problem there!) But it's an awful lot of work.

There's just bringing in more non-European elements into an existing setting. I'm not up to date with everything happening in Living Greyhawk but there is a lot more info. nowadays about non-European based cultures. The Touv are (IIRC) Aztec. There's more Baklunish (ie: Middle Eastern) setting info. than there used to be as well. And by treating them as more than just enemies there's so much more potential.

I've recently bought some Al-Qadim adventures (PDFs), they're great. A really nice change from the standard flavour setting. And the Kara-tur stuff was really very good too. It's a shame they don't sell well enough to encourage making more. I guess when most of the market is culturally European then it shouldn't be a surprise if that's what sells.

OK, I made a big assumption there about most role-players being from a European culture. It's just my personal experience and I'd love to be proven wrong.


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## DrunkonDuty (Apr 9, 2008)

*and I just keep on talking....*

The Chosen One. Ooh, mystic.

In games I've never had this problem. They're group experiences and the whole group takes part. The spot light moves around. Once or twice over the years I've had players come to me with an idea to play a Chosen One but I've turned them down. Just don't like the idea of making everyone else at the table second banana to one player. So no CHosen Ones. I also don't like having NPC ones as I do like the PCs to be the heroes. If there is a Chosen One it will be some way off; something that may or may not impact on the game later.

In literature it's different. It's easier for a reader to identify with one character rather than a whole bunch of them. It's also easier for a writer to use one character as the driving force of the narrative. Combined in a fantasy setting, with the addition of an actual and active Fate, you have Chosen Ones. In a western you get the same thing in that there's only one man (and usually it is a man) for the job of driving off the banditos/indians/sod-busters/whatever. It's just that there's no mystic element so no-one is Chosen, he does it by virtue of being a Man and standing up for himself/others/doing what needs to be done/whatever.

One way to avoid Chosen Ones (I love this as a plural) is to avoid bringing up the big anthropomorphications: Fate, the Gods, that lot. The Chosen One may merely be hearing voices. Or of course they may actually be Chosen but the Gods are hidden (because without Faith where's the point?) and everyone thinks the Chosen One is just a nut job. 

Oooh just had a thought. Might just be me but I always tend to think of 'The Chosen One' as referring to a good guy. But isn't the BBEG, sitting in his/her castle of black basalt and trying to bring darkness and misery to the world every bit as Chosen as the Young Woman/Man who, with a fraction of the resources and experience, will inevitably thwart them? An Evil Chosen One could give an interesting spin on the whole "refusing the call" bit too.

burnt out, will have to come back to this later.
cheers all.


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## doghead (Apr 9, 2008)

general - cliches

A really interesting thread. Commonly accepted genre tropes and conventions(or cliches for simplicity) are useful in RPG's. The make it easier for everyone to get on the same page. The more that something differs from the commonly understood, then the more explaining is needed to get everyone up to speed to play. That said, cliches can also make things a bit dull. But this aspect tends, in my experience, to depend on the handling and execution

In many ways, it comes down to the smaller details. Welcome to the Halmea (one of my favourite Story Hours), the elves are pretty much conventional dnd elves. They are an ancient society, they love nature and are good with magic. But a number of small background details have been changed, or developed, that make them seem new and interesting.

Someone mentioned that with all the cliche reversal going on, its making the original cliches seem almost fresh again - a really nasty drow, or a genuinely decent and honourable paladin. I thikn that there is an element of truth in that. Which is, I think, a good example of how dynamic genre's are.

I don't think that I have done anything particularly interesting in the way of cliche busting. I do like to play with conventions. But generally it is only in small ways. Exploring around the edges is another approach - we have all seen the half-orc barbarian, but generally we don't see much in the way of half orc society. So I decided to run a game in which all the PC's were members of a small half orc village.

doghead
aka thotd


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## Set (Apr 9, 2008)

DrunkonDuty said:
			
		

> All these sub-sets of races (and I think I speak truth when I say the Elf is the biggest victim of this) encourage players and designers to think in terms of racial determinism. Making Drow just mean Elves is fine for me.




In Raymond Feists Midkemia books, there's one scene in the middle where some people are visiting the elven forest, which is all Lothlorien-lite and full of beautiful ageless graceful people living in trees, and a dark elf wanders into the forest, steps up to the elven queen and 'returns.'  They welcome him, and bang, he's an elf.  The whole 'dark' thing was just a cultural choice, and he chose to walk away from that and go back to being a plain old elf, and I kinda liked that.

The Briton 'barbarian chief' learns to use iron weapons and hangs around with the Romans for awhile and becomes Romanized.  The kid of the explorers gets orphaned in the jungle and raised by apes and becomes Tarzan.  No racial adjustments necessary.

Some elves are cranky and live underground, other elves are snooty and live in mountains, other elves are a bit standoffish and live in the deeper parts of the forest, and yet other elves have gotten so blase about living near humans that they are responsible for the couple thousand half-elves running around...

Where the sub-races *really* become an issue, is when they assign cultural-specific traits as 'racial' traits.  Elves aren't *born* with a familiarity with bows and swords, and if it's an Aerenal Elf from Eberron, it might be scimitars, and if it's a deep woods elf who isn't big on the metalworking, it might be spears and bows, etc, etc.  Dwarves aren't *born* hating goblinoids, and a city-dwelling dwarf, raised by merchant parents in a human city, might have never *seen* a goblinoid, let alone spent years studying how to best bonk them with a warhammer.

All of these cultural specific things, IMO, should not be racial traits, but *options,* that could be swapped out.  Sort of like a free 'Regional Feat,' a la the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, with a few specific variants.  'Jungle Dwarves' from Chult might not know bupkiss about stonecunning or craft (metalworking), but might have other 'racial' familiarities, such as with Survival or Climb or Knowledge (nature).

It would ultimately be as easy as adding a single sentence to the PHB saying 'asterisked racial traits are not inborn, but may vary with region, culture, etc.' and then asterisking certain 'racial' abilities.  The PHB wouldn't have to list these sorts of optional variants, that's a setting-specific thing, and could be detailed in whatever setting books come out.


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## Desdichado (Apr 9, 2008)

I don't think a highly organized (and successful, and civilized!) hobgoblin empire is represented anywhere in Tolkien or in most D&D settings I've seen either.  Eberron kinda sorta did it with Darguun, but even then it's a squalid, pitiful kinda place that's way behind the "modern" nations of Khorvaire, not a vibrant, powerful culture that's clearly on the rise.  Maybe I'm splitting hairs here, but I'm talking about portraying goblinoid culture in a way that I've never really seen.  Usually, their squalid chumps who occasionally boil up in some kind of revolt and need to be kept back down, or more lately orcs and goblins are kinda given a "noble savage" vibe.  I'm not thinking of doing either; I'm having them be more like a foreign and unusal—yet powerful and arguably at least as civilized as the "good" nations.  I think of it more as Sassanid Persia, or the Ottoman empires in their heyday in terms of their relationship with the rest of the "Eurocentric" world, blended with a bit of Nazi Germany for flavor.

Speaking of Eurocentric; plenty of fantasy is non-Eurocentric, but it doesn't seem to be very successful at capturing the market, with the exception of some Japanese or Chinese flavored stuff here and there that does OK.  That's not surprising, since the majority of the audience comes from a European or European-derived culture, though.  My main concession to that as something to modify is to look more at Western interpretations of the Arabian Nights type stories from the 19th century.  But frankly, a lot of the early Sword & Sorcery authors did exactly that too; most Conan stories could be seen as fantasy Arabian Nights stories.


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## Ydars (Apr 9, 2008)

I know what you are going for Hobo; kind of like what Palladium did with Wolfen (upright bipedal wolf-men) where they basically had a civilisation that was a massive threat to humans because they were just so damn ............organised.


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## roguerouge (Apr 9, 2008)

*Villain-Hero Co-dependency*



			
				Afrodyte said:
			
		

> What are some things you have done or plan to do in your campaign settings to turn cliche fantasy elements into something more interesting?




Well, in one campaign, I took the BBEG with the personal grudge and gave it a twist. The PCs had defeated his plan to infect zoo animals with a plague, loose said animals in the city, then sell the cure. As a BBEG, he got away because the party barbarian couldn't remember the BBEG's name while being grilled by the cops. So not only did his plan fail, and he had to flee his disappointed superiors, he didn't even get the notoriety. A few adventures later, the PCs fall into his trap, and finally get into his HQ, which has his name written in the blood of innocents on every surface. He had used every last scrap of his resources to kill the PCs or, at the very least, make sure that his name would never be forgotten....


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## Evilhalfling (Apr 9, 2008)

DrunkonDuty said:
			
		

> The Chosen One.
> Oooh just had a thought. Might just be me but I always tend to think of 'The Chosen One' as referring to a good guy. But isn't the BBEG, sitting in his/her castle of black basalt and trying to bring darkness and misery to the world every bit as Chosen as the Young Woman/Man who, with a fraction of the resources and experience, will inevitably thwart them?



*cough* anikin.  Bring balance to the force indeed. I wonder if I can do it better... 

I have run one chosen one plotline - for a player who really enjoys a little extra limelight.
He was the messiah of the halflings.  A race famed for gypsy-like wandering and thievery. 
This was not the focus of he campaign, although by midcampaign there was normally a problem with the halflings that he needed to spend a few minutes adressing any time they were in civilization. The one time he was called to a "test of the gods" to prove his status, he declined, woried that he was not ready.  He was killed by the BBEG before the end of the game.  

A hundred years later the halflings have split into two groups, one believes in the PC, and follow his example "Live within the laws of the land" and "treat other races as you would a halfling."   There is a reason that the halflings in my world can fall into the blackest evil. Not believing that others are really "people" is a great justification for atrocity.


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## Desdichado (Apr 9, 2008)

The whole Chosen One routine is common in movies and books, but it seems _particularly_ poorly suited to roleplaying games.  Is that a common theme in y'all's RPGs?  I've actually never seen it in a game.


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## apoptosis (Apr 9, 2008)

Hobo said:
			
		

> The whole Chosen One routine is common in movies and books, but it seems _particularly_ poorly suited to roleplaying games.  Is that a common theme in y'all's RPGs?  I've actually never seen it in a game.




I did once.  They were supposed to kill a demonic crocodile but instead they worshiped it and one of the characters became its prophet while the rest followed him. He became the chosen one of the Crocodile god. From this the campaign really began.


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## Desdichado (Apr 9, 2008)

Ydars said:
			
		

> I know what you are going for Hobo; kind of like what Palladium did with Wolfen (upright bipedal wolf-men) where they basically had a civilisation that was a massive threat to humans because they were just so damn ............organised.



Maybe; I'm not familiar with the Wolfen.  Again; maybe splitting hairs, but I'm not saying that they're successful because they're so organized, merely that they are said to be well-organized and militaristic and yet are always portrayed as squalid, second-class foes, not really a force to be reckoned with, like a human kingdom would be, for example.

I've got my hobgoblins quite militarized (that's the part that borrows most from Nazi Germany) but I'm otherwise not trying to portray them as substantially different than if they were a human nation.


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## The_Warlock (Apr 9, 2008)

Set said:
			
		

> Where the sub-races *really* become an issue, is when they assign cultural-specific traits as 'racial' traits.  Elves aren't *born* with a familiarity with bows and swords, and if it's an Aerenal Elf from Eberron, it might be scimitars, and if it's a deep woods elf who isn't big on the metalworking, it might be spears and bows, etc, etc.  Dwarves aren't *born* hating goblinoids, and a city-dwelling dwarf, raised by merchant parents in a human city, might have never *seen* a goblinoid, let alone spent years studying how to best bonk them with a warhammer.
> 
> All of these cultural specific things, IMO, should not be racial traits, but *options,* that could be swapped out.  Sort of like a free 'Regional Feat,' a la the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, with a few specific variants.  'Jungle Dwarves' from Chult might not know bupkiss about stonecunning or craft (metalworking), but might have other 'racial' familiarities, such as with Survival or Climb or Knowledge (nature).




On that note, especially in RPGs, it is interesting when the base rules or mechanics help break up such racial tropes into racial and cultural splits. As a suggestion, if you haven't looked at it, take a gander at HARP (by Iron Crown). One of the things they do is break up racial mods from cultural mods in character creation. In the end, the list of potential cultural mods is broad, and somewhat stereotypical in design, but it does provide a starting step in actually thinking about how to complete the cultural concepts of a say, Underground Dwelling Humans, or Plains Nomad Dwarves. 

In the end, you as a gamemaster or player have to extend the initial concept to make a living breathing culture without it simply being a bad Reese's Peanut Butter Cup commercial (You got dwarves in my swamp! You got swamp on my dwarves! Mmm, two great tastes that...")

But trying to ID the "genetic" vs "environmental" modifiers on a given race can often make it quite simple to break out of game-based racial molds.


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## Teplin (Apr 9, 2008)

I'm wondering if the problem here is less the overuse of familiar elements and more the vagueness with which they are used.  You need to have some familiar elements for the players to rely on, or the game becomes very difficult to run.  It's useful to be able to assume a tech level, a landscape, a rough geography, standard monarchy government, and so on, unless you want to spend hours and hours on scene setting and describing background.*

The problem with doing this is if these elements end up being critical, you need to be able to get into more depth.  If it suddenly becomes really really important as to why orcs are attacking, you need to be able to say why.  A real, actual reason, that makes sense.  

Elements that start off as a convenience end up as a cliche' when something that should be specific ends up being general.  Orcs attacking because they are generically agressive and evil is a cliche'.  Orcs attacking because they are loyal to an evil ruler who is accepting pay from shadowy conspirators to wage war is a specific.   

The problem comes when you don't know really know how or why something works in your gameworld.  If have plots involving the royal sucesssion you need to already know who inherits if various people die in various orders.  If you want players to interact with elven culture, you need a firm idea of why elven culture is the way it is.  Something more than 'they really really like trees' for no obvious reason.

I'm not sure using cliches are really a problem.  The problem comes when they are used, not as background, but as shorthand for detailing the parts of the gameworld the players are experiencing up close.  It's ok for distant landmarks to be fuzzy, but if they are still fuzzy close up, then people will just assume the details.  And those details will never surprise them, and they'll start to regard them as over-familiar, and cliched.


*There are ways to mitigate this problem.  Use a detailed setting that everyone is familiar with, run a long campaign so that everyone becomes familiar with the specifics of the setting, or get your players to design parts of the setting so that they are already familiar with it before the game starts.


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## Desdichado (Apr 9, 2008)

Teplin said:
			
		

> I'm wondering if the problem here is less the overuse of familiar elements and more the vagueness with which they are used.  You need to have some familiar elements for the players to rely on, or the game becomes very difficult to run.  It's useful to be able to assume a tech level, a landscape, a rough geography, standard monarchy government, and so on, unless you want to spend hours and hours on scene setting and describing background.



Yes.  Exactly my earlier point; too much deviation from the expected norm just leads to 1) confused players who don't grok the setting, or 2) long-winded exposition so the players can grok the setting; but now your game is dull and boring because of all the exposition.

At the same time, if _everything_ is just "fantasy default', exactly as the cliched vision has always been, your setting and game will be pretty dull as well.

It's important to be judicious in reinventing cliches and not get carried away.  I think the best way to do it is find a couple important ones and change those around to make the game interesting, and leave as much as possible of the rest of the assumptions your players will likely have completely alone.  Let them have _some_ common ground from which to approach the game, or they'll probably flounder through your setting before eventually giving up.

Your other point—because I'm a cocky bastard—I'm also going to call reiterating something I said earlier; good execution trumps innovation every day.  Orcs attacking because they're mean and evil is bad execution.  Elves attacking because they're mean and evil is innovative (sorta, I guess) but bad execution.  Either one attacking because of political machination and conspiracy within the group being attacked is better execution.  I'd rather have orcs attacking for a good reason than something more interesting attacking for a poor one, because at the end of the day, why they're attacking and the story behind it is likely to be much more interesting than who's good vs. who's bad in your game.


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## Jürgen Hubert (Apr 9, 2008)

Here is my take on the "Elven Island Paradise on the Western Ocean".

But really, Urbis is full of inverted tropes...


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## Jürgen Hubert (Apr 9, 2008)

BTW, I'm surprised no one has mentioned the TV Tropes Wiki yet.

Warning: Don't visit this site if you have anything else to do today!


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## haakon1 (Apr 9, 2008)

DrunkonDuty said:
			
		

> As to what the Goblins trade: mine have a whole swathe of goods to choose from. I'm slightly Obsessive - Compulsive when I world design and I've included trade goods for all the different tribal areas. The merchants trade (barter, no coin) stuff from area to area, effectively providing a transport service. They are also the most technologically advanced of the races in the races in the Borderlands. They make the best bronze and brass tools and weapons.
> 
> WHich segues nicely into why these Humanoids are on the fringes of civilisation: they don't have iron and that makes a difference when it comes to wars with the Humies who do have iron. Over all the Borderlands are just poorer than the Human Kingdoms it borders. (This also lets me use that old western cliche of trading weapons to the natives.)




My goblins are already using iron and steel weapons, but I usually describe them as half value -- old and very used.  Makes sense if they only know how to make bronze themselves.

But who are the goblins selling bronze objects to?  Other humanoids, or the actual humans?  If humans, why are they buying it?  Rust monster problem so they need arms and armor, or is it art (interesting idea) or the goblins are making non-adventuring items like cutlery and lanterns and so on?


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## haakon1 (Apr 9, 2008)

DrunkonDuty said:
			
		

> There's just bringing in more non-European elements into an existing setting. I'm not up to date with everything happening in Living Greyhawk but there is a lot more info. nowadays about non-European based cultures. The Touv are (IIRC) Aztec. There's more Baklunish (ie: Middle Eastern) setting info. than there used to be as well. And by treating them as more than just enemies there's so much more potential.




I think the Touv are more like Africans.  But part of the fun in Greyhawk is that the races in the game don't fit the races in our world.  (Kinda like James Earl Jones having blue eyes in "Conan the Barbarian".)  So, as a DM you get to interpret and mix however you like.  For me, it's:
Suloise = northern Europeans = English + Norse + Finns, which is a natural combo in looks, but odd in medieval stereotypes, and has some interesting language issues
Oeridian = southern Europeans = Holy Roman Empire = Germany, French, Italian, Spanish, and/or Roman in whatever combination I feel like
Flannae = original inhabitants = American Indians, yes, but also Irish/druidic, and Swiss (because they have the Cantons of Perrenland), and Sumerian (because it's really old)
Baklunish = easterners = not so much Arab (because it's played) as Greek, Hungarian, Turkish, Central Asia, and Mongol

When you start mixing up Swiss/American Indian/Irish and Greek/Turk/Mongols, you get some non-cliched cultures.

BTW, everybody who does Greyhawk does stuff like this.  It has ideas imbedded, but it doesn't beat you over the head with references to the real world.


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## haakon1 (Apr 9, 2008)

DrunkonDuty said:
			
		

> Chosen Ones (I love this as a plural)




This reminds me.  Instead of a sole Chosen One, you can do everyone in the party is a Chosen One.  I played in a campaign like this -- one character from each PHB race, each with a different class, destined and bound together by fate to stop the BBEG.  I was the half-orc assassin.

That's a bit of a cliche ("The Dirty Dozen"), but perhaps not as much as a single Chosen One?  Or perhaps the Long Ranger is more original in D&D?


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## haakon1 (Apr 9, 2008)

Hobo said:
			
		

> Orcs attacking because they're mean and evil is bad execution.  Elves attacking because they're mean and evil is innovative (sorta, I guess) but bad execution.  Either one attacking because of political machination and conspiracy within the group being attacked is better execution.  I'd rather have orcs attacking for a good reason than something more interesting attacking for a poor one, because at the end of the day, why they're attacking and the story behind it is likely to be much more interesting than who's good vs. who's bad in your game.




Right, but the one problem I notice in my DMing is I can get go caught up in complicated plots within plots in the back story that players lose the plot . . . mysterious bad guys are cool, but I think you need to let the PC's figure it out within a few adventures.  Or at least give them stuff to kill mindlessly once in a while.

Also, "everybody works for the BBEG", while giving them baddies motivation, is a fairly uninteresting conclusion to a web of secrets.  It's kind of like if the answer to "Lost" is "They were dead all along."  In that case, who cares?

We could all do worse than to watch from Babylon 5 and Stargate SG-1 for ideas on episodic adventure stories, and what ratio of "main plot" versus "random stuff to kill" to have.


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## InVinoVeritas (Apr 9, 2008)

Here's a Chosen One inversion.

Introduce a capable person to the party. Have the Powers That Be attach the Chosen One to the party, and the party must protect the Chosen One as he goes on his pilgrimage. He's the one that will save the world, the prophecies say. Oh, he only has a fraction of his eventual power now, but in the end, he will rival the gods. Have the Chosen One outshine the party in an early encounter, make the Chosen One seem like a Mary Sue DMPC.

Then, halfway through the adventure session, far from civilization, kill him.

Maybe he's done in by a lucky arrow. Maybe he falls overboard. Maybe he catches a cold. But he dies. Guess he's not the world's savior, after all.

Now what?


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## Desdichado (Apr 9, 2008)

Not everything has to tie to the "greater mythos", I agree.  And I've certainly adopted Raymond Chandler's advice to running games; he said "when in doubt, have someone with a gun knock down the door" or something to that effect.  Throwing throwaway villains at the PCs just to keep the game moving isn't a bad idea.

Although I do like to have at least something more than "because they're mean" behind it.


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## Jürgen Hubert (Apr 10, 2008)

Interesting thread - it touches on a number of issues I have thought about intensely when developing Urbis. In fact, there's a whole thread on this board where I list a huge number of tropes and attempt to add all of them to the setting in various ways...

But on to some more specific comments in this thread, and how they relate to Urbis.



			
				DarkKestral said:
			
		

> So how would I go about making a game about drow that isn't cliche?




Well, here's how I did drow in Urbis. You be the judge if it is or isn't cliche.

First of all, I need to explain how eladrins fit into Urbis. Basically, eladrins are "noble elves" - elves from specific family lines who are blessed with the powers of the realm of Faerie through a special ritual shortly after birth. As a result, they get fey powers and extended life spans.

Now some elves got resentful of the fact that the noble houses kept all those blessings to themselves - and so they turned to some of the darker powers of Faerie for help. Those entities taught them another ritual, which turned their children into drow - oh, and this ritual requires the sacrifice of a sapient being.

The children of drow start out as "normal" elves with fair skin, just like the children of eladrins, so the ritual needs to be redone for each new generation. Thanks to that sacrifice requirement, drow culture is generally pretty nasty - but individual drow do not necessarily have to be evil (besides, while human and eladrin sacrifices are preferred, sacrificing a kobold, orc, or similar being will do just as well - and what's the life of a supposedly evil and inferior race against giving one's child special powers and extended life spans? You decide...)

This setup also has some interesting consequences for a certain elven kingdom where the ruling eladrins became (a) infertile with each other and other elves and (b) lost the right to do the eladrin ritual. Let's just say that a lot of people in this nation are giving the drow ritual serious thoughts...



			
				Hobo said:
			
		

> If hobgoblins and other goblinoids are lawful by nature, and as capabable individually as a human, why are they always on the fringes of society as "savage humanoids?"




Not in Urbis. Mind you, hobgoblins aren't really _liked_ by most humans, but few wouldn't call them a "civilized species"...



			
				Afrodyte said:
			
		

> For my part, many magic-related cliches seem to come from the failure to think about the role magic plays in the world.  I don't mind magic that's mysterious or based on concepts that make quantum physics look like Sesame Street (I honestly prefer this).  But in cases when magic is analogous to technology, it's hard to imagine why people still have medieval standards of living.  A corollary to that is the idea of magic and technology being innately incompatible.  An idea I have is that rather than having magic undermining technology (or vice versa), magic allows technology to flourish to a point where nanotechnology looks primitive in comparison.




Well, Urbis is currently going through a magical industrial revolution, and its society has more in common with the Victorian Age than the middle ages...

Other inverted tropes in Urbis (apart from the Meji Restoration Elves I mentioned earlier):

- Dwarfish boat people
- An outer plane that's both Good- and Death-aligned.
- An Evil Empire where killing off the leader might actually make things _worse_.

And a whole lot of other stuff I'm to lazy to list at the moment.


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## DrunkonDuty (Apr 10, 2008)

> Haakon1 wrote:
> But who are the goblins selling bronze objects to? Other humanoids, or the actual humans?




They buy and sell among the various humanoid tribes. There is some trade of other goods (Salt, spices, rarities and oddities, bitumen) with humans but that mostly goes through Bugbear hands. My Bugbear culture borrows from Malay culture of the Indonesian archipelago: many petty kingdoms, a strong sea-going impulse, the beginnings of trade with "civilised" races (ie the European styled humans) as per the early colonisation period.

I should point out my Borderlands are about 1 million sq. miles. Plenty of room for many tribes and cultures, with room for additional stuff I may want to throw in along the way (random encounters!)


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## DrunkonDuty (Apr 10, 2008)

Something that all the contributors to this thread seem to agree on is that by giving more details you can avoid cliches. More background for a tribe/NPC/event makes it a better experience for the players when they get up close to it, although at a greater distance less  detail is necessary. (Thanks Teplin for the focus/depth of field analogy.)

So a question to be asked is: how much detail is right? I'd say it depends on how much detail your players want. 

I think Jurgen has hinted at a good answer to this with his Eladrin/Drow rituals. Knowing where elf babies come from (I paraphrase loosely   ) might be unnecessary detail, unless it leads to plots for the players. ANd a group of here-to-fore benevolent Eladrin desperate for children at any cost has certainly got plot potential.

So the right amount of detail is the amount that gets the plot and/or players going. I'm lucky in that my players really like to get involved in the game world. It provides me with both the challenge of creating something to interest them and then the satisfaction of having done so and getting told "that was great!" (I love my players.)

PS: I must admit to getting overly caught up in the over-arching plot at times. I think I shall use Hobo's/Raymond Chandler's advice in the future.


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## Brimshack (Apr 10, 2008)

I'd say that one variable has to do with focus. The same level of detail that can make a game can also break it, and one deciding factor will be where the players want their attention focused. If your players are trying to plan on a battle to come, taking the time to tell them the color of the carpet on the floor is going to be irritating to them at best. If they are prepped to investigate of a crime, then that same information along with a few dozen other comparable bits - a couple of which prove significant in time - will be just the thing. 

I also find that pacing of clues really helps. If you can plant information in one game that will become important 3-5 games on down the road, and if the players are still busy enough thinking about other things, then you can create that moment when they kick themselves and realize they should have put 2 and 2 together all along. Once the players get used to the idea that seemingly irrelevant things may prove useful in the long run, I think they will be far patient with the trivia.


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## DrunkonDuty (Apr 10, 2008)

> Brimshack wrote:
> If your players are trying to plan on a battle to come, taking the time to tell them the color of the carpet on the floor is going to be irritating to them at best. If they are prepped to investigate of a crime, then that same information along with a few dozen other comparable bits - a couple of which prove significant in time - will be just the thing.




Good point. 



> Brimshack wrote:
> If you can plant information in one game that will become important 3-5 games on down the road, and if the players are still busy enough thinking about other things, then you can create that moment when they kick themselves and realize they should have put 2 and 2 together all along.




A masterful trick to pull of and oh so worth it when it works!!!


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## Afrodyte (Apr 10, 2008)

I remember coming across this interview that discusses the problem with Eurocentric fantasy as well as introduces some authors and works who go against that.  Interestingly enough, they also bring up how fantasy authors usually portray religion, which is very intriguing.

I also found this blog that talks about some common fantasy tropes.  While I don't agree with his assessment about fantasy as a genre, I do think there's a lot here that can help with putting a fresh spin on things.


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## DrunkonDuty (Apr 10, 2008)

Great interview. I guess I have a couple of new authors to go check out.
Ta.


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## Desdichado (Apr 10, 2008)

DrunkonDuty said:
			
		

> So a question to be asked is: how much detail is right? I'd say it depends on how much detail your players want.



You answered your own question there; some players really enjoy that kind of thing and will ask for more, others get bored and ask when they get to the part where they can roll initiative.  You've gotta know your group.


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## Desdichado (Apr 10, 2008)

Afrodyte said:
			
		

> I remember coming across this interview that discusses the problem with Eurocentric fantasy as well as introduces some authors and works who go against that.  Interestingly enough, they also bring up how fantasy authors usually portray religion, which is very intriguing.



I thought this was an interesting comment:


> There are thousands of cultures in Africa, and most Africans would consider a novel about several different African tribes to be very multi-cultural, though they’d all be “black.”



Wouldn't that be just as true if I said, however, "There are thousands of cultures in Europe, and most Europeans would consider a novel about several different European peoples to be very multi-cultural, though they’d all be “white.”

Really interesting discussion about turning a few genre conventions on their head and what that means for publishers and audience, though.


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## Jürgen Hubert (Apr 10, 2008)

haakon1 said:
			
		

> BTW, everybody who does Greyhawk does stuff like this.  It has ideas imbedded, but it doesn't beat you over the head with references to the real world.




With Urbis, I _do_ beat up readers with references to the real world. Hey, it worked for Warhammer Fantasy!   

But seriously, I figure that the overall setting assumptions of Urbis are weird enough for people used to pseudo-medieval settings, so I might as well compensate by blatantly stealing lots of stuff from real world history. Besides, the real world has so much cool stuff to steal from that you sometimes get some really cool synergies - like the "Dragonborn Zionists" I came up with recently, complete with an impending World Congress in the local equivalent of Switzerland...


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## Jürgen Hubert (Apr 10, 2008)

DrunkonDuty said:
			
		

> I think Jurgen has hinted at a good answer to this with his Eladrin/Drow rituals. Knowing where elf babies come from (I paraphrase loosely   ) might be unnecessary detail, unless it leads to plots for the players. ANd a group of here-to-fore benevolent Eladrin desperate for children at any cost has certainly got plot potential.




Other people have problems with "updating" their favorite settings to 4E, but I must say that so far it actually improved on Urbis. I mean, the elven nation of [urlhttp://eruvian.com/locale.asp?localeID=486]Tuvareen[/url] used to have as its sole shtick that they had declining birth rates and kidnapped human children to breed with them when they have become grown up and brainwashed. But that wasn't terribly novel - so when the eladrins were introduced for 4E and I had to think about how they fit into the setting and how they related to elves, it all started to fit together...

And from there, it was a natural next step that the drow are created through a similar ritual. Which has all sorts of interesting political repercussions and the possibility of "drow cults" among normal elves who aren't part of the eladrin noble houses but want their children to be "special" anyway...


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## Afrodyte (Apr 10, 2008)

*pokes thread with a cattle prod*


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## Jürgen Hubert (Apr 11, 2008)

InVinoVeritas said:
			
		

> Here's a Chosen One inversion.
> 
> Introduce a capable person to the party. Have the Powers That Be attach the Chosen One to the party, and the party must protect the Chosen One as he goes on his pilgrimage. He's the one that will save the world, the prophecies say. Oh, he only has a fraction of his eventual power now, but in the end, he will rival the gods. Have the Chosen One outshine the party in an early encounter, make the Chosen One seem like a Mary Sue DMPC.
> 
> ...




I like that. It also helps if the Powers That Be are suddenly _not_ available for further instructions for an unknown but probably ominous reason. In the meantime, the Big Bad Guy is marshaling his forces and all hell breaks loose.

So it's up to the PCs to save the world. But how can they win against a broken prophecy?


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## DrunkonDuty (Apr 11, 2008)

> Hobo wrote:
> You answered your own question there




Yeah, just indulging in some rhetoric. What can I say, I'm a bit of a wanker.    

Agreed, you have to know your group. This takes time of course but is one of the benefits of having a good solid group of friends to play with.

More on the topic: real world stuff is a great way to get detail. I also steal shamelessly from history/cross cultural stuff and then slap it together with other bits and see what I get. 

I have a book of fairy tales compiled from all over the world. Rich in ideas to pilfer. And not just the window dressing but the content and style which can vary a great deal from main stream western ways of telling fairy tales.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Apr 11, 2008)

> > Maybe he's done in by a lucky arrow. Maybe he falls overboard. Maybe he catches a cold. But he dies. Guess he's not the world's savior, after all.
> >
> > Now what?
> 
> ...




There are all kinds of broken prophesy tropes out there...

Perhaps the interpretation was simply wrong.

Perhaps one in the party (or someone of the party's acquaintence) is the true Chosen One- the other was merely deluded/or The Chosen Decoy (and may have _known_ it!).

Perhaps the prophesy is false and was designed to root out would-be saviors by getting them to rise up to get hit like an errant nail by the hammer of the BBEG's forces.

Perhaps the fallen one was truly the Chosen One, but had to pass through the afterlife in order to become refined, quenched & tested in tests beyond the mortal realm, and will return to life some point down the road to lead the party against the BBEG in The Final Battle.

Etc.


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## InVinoVeritas (Apr 11, 2008)

Dannyalcatraz said:
			
		

> There are all kinds of broken prophesy tropes out there...
> 
> Perhaps the interpretation was simply wrong.
> 
> ...




This is what I like about changing a Chosen One story into a Broken Prophesy story--it lets the audience know that the story can change, and so you can't be sure what will happen next. There are also a large number of directions that the story can take from here, like the ones above.

Also, perhaps the Powers That Be ARE reachable. They respond with, "The Chosen One is dead??? You were his guardians, and you FAILED, and we are DOOMED! Die, loathsome heretics!" Or, perhaps the PCs know that will happen, if they ever discover that the Chosen One is dead, but they aren't expected to return for a decade.


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## Jürgen Hubert (Apr 11, 2008)

Afrodyte said:
			
		

> I remember coming across this interview that discusses the problem with Eurocentric fantasy as well as introduces some authors and works who go against that.




The problem with non Eurocentric fantasy is that while authors have a whole novel to explain the concepts behind the setting, players usually have to understand the setting in a far shorter time. After all, not everyone has time to read 100+ pages of setting description.

Eurocentric fantasy works so well for game settings because most gamers are already familiar with its elements. Settings based on other cultures tend to do less well, with the major exception being East Asian-centric settings thanks to the recent influx of anime and wuxia into the Western cultural mainstream. But other settings - based on, say, India or Africa - are rather more likely to become fantasy heartbreakers than commercial successes.


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## InVinoVeritas (Apr 11, 2008)

Jürgen Hubert said:
			
		

> The problem with non Eurocentric fantasy is that while authors have a whole novel to explain the concepts behind the setting, players usually have to understand the setting in a far shorter time. After all, not everyone has time to read 100+ pages of setting description.
> 
> Eurocentric fantasy works so well for game settings because most gamers are already familiar with its elements. Settings based on other cultures tend to do less well, with the major exception being East Asian-centric settings thanks to the recent influx of anime and wuxia into the Western cultural mainstream. But other settings - based on, say, India or Africa - are rather more likely to become fantasy heartbreakers than commercial successes.




Absolutely. In most cases, time spent explaining how things work is time spent boring the audience. Many times, you can get away with just letting them experience it, and then explain it after the fact, once they're curious. So, many times, you're left with sticking to cultural tropes that are well known, and introducing less well-known traditions as flavor.

I mean heck, not even full Eurocentrism survives. You can't really explain manorialism or oddities with fuzzy borders very well. We expect well-delineated borders and freedom of travel in our games. So it's not as much Eurocentrism as much as knights and castles. My wife is from Europe, and I have a hard time understanding her feelings on prestige and classes from my American point of view, from time to time.

But even then, because of the lack of full-on Eurocentric tropes, it becomes much easier to introduce other cultural snippets. Grab a picture of Angkor Wat, and say that the high priest's temple looks like that. Make a bunch of gods with Egyptian-style animal heads. Give the kings giant Ottoman-style turbans. Have the elves use a magical system of ley lines based on increasingly complex earthworks like the Cahokia mounds. Explain that even though a member of the lowest caste might do well, become the best fighter, and become rich, that he is still unworthy of respect--and, perhaps, is forbidden from owning property--because he's a member of the lowest caste, and if he was supposed to be a great king, the gods would have had him born to the appropriate caste. So, now he's a nomadic warlord terrorizing the countryside, but that's the way the gods wanted it (or not, and he's expected to have stuck to dirt farming or whatever). 

Heck, just the fact that the default D&D world expects polytheism is a major difference between it and a Eurocentric society.

So, I say mix it up. Dive deep into multiculturalism. Keep the stuff you like (architecture is easy to stick in a game, is something that needs little explanation, and gets the creative juices flowing) and dump what you don't (a lot of details on the histories of cultural taboos are too complex to be adequately appreciated in an evening of monster-slaying, so should be kept on the sidelines for whenever). Find a cool picture, keep it. Read a cool legend, keep it. Mine the world for ideas, pick a few, and slap them together. The details will work themselves out when everyone gets to a stopping point.


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## haakon1 (Apr 11, 2008)

DrunkonDuty said:
			
		

> They buy and sell among the various humanoid tribes. There is some trade of other goods (Salt, spices, rarities and oddities, bitumen) with humans but that mostly goes through Bugbear hands. My Bugbear culture borrows from Malay culture of the Indonesian archipelago: many petty kingdoms, a strong sea-going impulse, the beginnings of trade with "civilised" races (ie the European styled humans) as per the early colonisation period.




Having a Malay culture in D&D is cool.

But to me, bugbears and gnolls are irredeemably evil, viewing human as mortal enemies who are either killed on sight or kept as slaves until it's time for lunch.  I think it's good to have contrasts between evil but negotiable (kobolds, goblins, and hobgoblins IMC), mostly evil with some exceptions and a racial connection to elves and humans (orcs IMC), not evil but alien (lizardmen), and plain old kill everybody and eat them evil (bugbears and gnolls IMC).



			
				DrunkonDuty said:
			
		

> I should point out my Borderlands are about 1 million sq. miles. Plenty of room for many tribes and cultures, with room for additional stuff I may want to throw in along the way (random encounters!)




My Borderlands are smaller -- the edges of Bissel in the Yatil and Barrier Peak foothills and the wilds of the Bramblewood and Dim Forests.  Which is all Greyhawk, if you're wondering.  

It's the border between civilization and wilderness, and also between "eastern" civilizations (the western-European like Suel and Oeridian cultures) and "western" civilizations (the Eastern on our world Baklunish).  I view it as being a bit like Yugoslavia, a "Clash of Civilizations" area, combined with a frontier.


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## haakon1 (Apr 11, 2008)

InVinoVeritas said:
			
		

> So, I say mix it up. Dive deep into multiculturalism. Keep the stuff you like (architecture is easy to stick in a game, is something that needs little explanation, and gets the creative juices flowing) and dump what you don't (a lot of details on the histories of cultural taboos are too complex to be adequately appreciated in an evening of monster-slaying, so should be kept on the sidelines for whenever). Find a cool picture, keep it. Read a cool legend, keep it. Mine the world for ideas, pick a few, and slap them together. The details will work themselves out when everyone gets to a stopping point.




Nod.  And thus, D&D fits with the postmodern, globalization culture of our times.  I wonder how many countries the readers of this thread come from . . .


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## Jürgen Hubert (Apr 11, 2008)

haakon1 said:
			
		

> Nod.  And thus, D&D fits with the postmodern, globalization culture of our times.  I wonder how many countries the readers of this thread come from . . .




Well, for the record I'm from Germany.

But I have to wonder how deep that "globalization" of settings really goes - are we really taking genuine elements of other cultures and their history, or are we only using a fairly superficial understanding of the same - one that's propagated within our own culture?

Let me give you an example. What do most Americans think of when they hear the word "castle"? The image that will likely spring into the minds of most is the fairy tale castle from Disneyland.

But the Disneyland castle is not a genuine castle, but a knockoff of the German castle of Neuschwanstein that has been used in the marketing of Disney to such an extent that it has become part of the American cultural mainstream.

But even Neuschwanstein itself cannot really be considered a "genuine castle" by German standards - it was build after specifications by a rather nutty Bavarian king who had his own views of what a castle _ought_ to look like. And it was built centuries after traditional castles became obsolete after the invention of the cannon.

So the castle imagery in the minds of most Americans (though probably not most American role-players, who likely have a more in-depth knowledge of this period in history) is several layers removed from real castles - but giving them an understanding of the functioning, layout, and other essential aspects of genuine castles will require a lot of additional explaining. So what to do when you plan to use castle imagery - do you use the superficial image so that everyone gets it at once, or do you use the genuine historical thing and need to provide a large info-dump to clear up any misconceptions?

The same is true for Angkor Wat - do you merely use the image of the complex, and thus are likely to get all sorts of details wrong, or do you do a lot of research to get everything right and risk overwhelming your players with information?

(Or, to provide a flip side to the Neuschwanstein example for German readers: When using a pseudo-Native American culture - which would certainly qualify as "exotic" in Germany - do you try to get the details right, or do you confine yourself to the imagery thought up by Karl May?)


Truly researching the historical and cultural details often _is_ highly rewarding, and I strongly recommend it even if you don't end up using them - they often contain all sorts of cool adventure ideas. But again, all this has to be weighted against overwhelming the players with details.


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## Set (Apr 11, 2008)

Jürgen Hubert said:
			
		

> Truly researching the historical and cultural details often _is_ highly rewarding, and I strongly recommend it even if you don't end up using them - they often contain all sorts of cool adventure ideas. But again, all this has to be weighted against overwhelming the players with details.




And overwhelming the DM as well.  If the DM is a nut, like me, and *likes* reading about old dead moldy cultures and stone-quarrying and all that stuff, then cool, but the *vast* majority of gamers, yes, even gamers, can't keep their eyes focused two pages into one of H.P. Lovecraft's thirty page short stories.

That stuff bores the hell out of most of the people I've gamed with, so when I run a game, I just gloss over all of the background stuff that I've developed, 'cause they don't want to hear it.  If it matters, it comes up, and I have had a player or two gape at me and ask how I 'made up all that stuff on the spot,' and since I didn't feel like boring everyone else at the table, I went ahead and let them think that I was some mad improv genius and not dispel their illusions with the messy detail that I actually *thought about the game* before I sat down to play it.

When I was a teenager, and had to take history classes, they bored the living piss out of me.  Now, at twice that age, I read history books for fun, but none of my friends are likely to get to that point until they are eighty, so I just keep my boring hobbies in the closet and put on my best 'interested' look when they start gabbing about the Red Sox, the team members and habits and past histories of which they know enough creepy intimate details for me to think that they are all stalkers...

If a picture of Angkor Watt is enough to set the mood, then that's all you need.  If someone pipes up and asks what they ate, you can have someone make a roll to figure out that the land around the structure was a massive series of rice-paddies, otherwise, let that little nugget of information sit in the back of your head, 'cause if they didn't ask, they probably would rather be shoving their swords through lizard man giblets than know that.


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## InVinoVeritas (Apr 11, 2008)

Jürgen's discussion of castles in Germany is a great example of what I'm talking about. Yes, for the most part, we ARE using a superficial understanding of a culture, as shaped by our own norms.

But, since Americans have been doing it so completely for European medieval culture for so long, why stop there? 

Certainly, I've watched it go the other way, as well. Spending any time seeing how other cultures view America is eye-opening. 

In the end, we probably don't want to use everything about the originating culture in the game. For example, the high priest's temple may look like Angkor Wat, but perhaps I don't want the high priest to be particularly Buddhist or Hindu. So it's probably for the best that most cultural borrowings remain superficial.

I can share a melded example from my homebrew campaign. In the "new nine races" campaign I described earlier in the thread, someone wanted to make, essentially, a dwarf samurai. There weren't any "dwarves" per se in my campaign, so he ended up making a High Man Fighter who carried a katana, a brusque attitude, a beard, and a mock-Scottish brogue. He said he came from a land called Dikama, which had recently closed itself off from the rest of the world. At a certain point in the campaign, I had to balance some new stuff I wanted to add to the campaign, and the party was just about to find a way to cross Dikama. 

I started with a culture of disciplined samurai and angry Scotsmen. I started seeing hordes of angry mounted swordsmen in formation, and it looked Turko-Mongol to me. So, I created a people with onion-dome castles whose leader was called a Caliph (not a true Caliph by the Islamic meaning of the word, but I stayed superficial here) and wore a turban and long, neat beard. Instead of Islamic geometric art, I replaced it with Celtic knotwork. Armor was based on classic samurai designs with an armored kilt, and rice and fish were major crops. 

What was I looking to add? Raptor mounts. So, now we have fields of rice paddies overseen by raptor-mounted, Scottish-brogued, bearded samurai, protecting onion-domed castles decorated with Celtic knotwork.

Is that anything like what we have today? No. But it didn't confuse or bore the players in any way. The Caliphate of Dikama was different enough to be interesting, but each element was easy enough to understand that it didn't bother the players.


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## Afrodyte (Apr 12, 2008)

I was going to list some of my own ideas, but I should probably do that on another thread.


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## CruelSummerLord (Apr 12, 2008)

Concerning two of the fantasy tropes I'm most interested in that were cited by Afrodyte, Racial Determinism and Eurocentrism, I modify one and subvert the other.  

-Racial Determinism, to me, stems at least in part from the fact that the different races were created by different gods with different agendas.  Different gods have different commitments and interests, and they imbued their races with different traits.  Corellon Larethian imbued the elves with a natural tendency towards magic and the wilderlands, Moradin gave the dwarves incredible skills at craft and an affinity with the earth, Gruumsh gave the orcs a culture and belief system that values war and physical strength, and so forth.  

Humans are the exception in that they have no centralized pantheon of gods, and may worship dwarven, elven or orcish gods as easily as non-human races worship their gods.  The human race is, in a way, the jack of all trades, in the sense that they'll be good at just about anything they set their minds to, but chances are they won't be as good at it as a nonhuman race.  However, their drive, determination and ambition-and this applies to humans derived from non-European cultures as it does to the European-based humans-allows them to keep up and stay in the thick of things.  

In a sense, then, the various nonhuman races are the way they are because of the fiat of their gods.  Only humans have no centralized pantheon, which has caused them to worship a wide variety of gods.  Orcs and goblins ravage, kill and destroy because, in many ways, that is their nature, but even this can vary.  They possess an inborn hatred for dwarves and elves, but humans who win their respect and have similar mores and values to theirs can earn their respect.  Lawfully-aligned orcs can serve as military allies to those they view as worthy, or otherwise serve those who will pay for their swords.  

-Now, as to Eurocentric fantasy, I think we can all agree that what is considered Eurocentric is not truly based on an accurate representation of medieval European culture, but is at least inspired by it and derived from it.  We see how the dwarves, elves and orcs influence and are influenced by them.  

But what about the rest of the world?  How would dwarves get along with the Iroquois Confederacy?  How would elves get along with medieval Ethiopia, Somalia or Zimbabwe?  How would orcs live in a Viet- or Thai-inspired culture?  Here lies my interest in extending the tropes of D&D to fit the rest of the world.  Cultures inspired and derived from, but not exact copies of, the various cultures of the rest of the world, tailored to fit the D&D mold, are what I'm going for.  

Societies patterned after medieval Africa might have full mastery of metalworking and smithing, due to cultural contact with dwarves or gnomes.  They would use metal swords and shields in battle, but prefer light chain shirts at most when it comes to armor, since heavy plate mail would be too hot to wear in the climates they call home.  Similarly, nomadic or semi-nomadic First Nations cultures might have a trading relation with dwarves or elves similar to those they had with Europeans in the 16th to the 19th centuries, trading furs, meat, vegetables, grains or whatever else in exchange for metal weapons or other finished goods, or even develop these things themselves after intercultural contact.  Gnomes might have a privileged position in a society patterned after China or Persia, given their scientific knowledge and engineering ability.  Halflings might form a particular class within an Aztec or Mayan society for their skills in agriculture, being comfortably interwoven with the humans, who protect them from rampaging orcs and goblins in exchange for their skills with the land.  

What is noteworthy here is that the skills and inclinations given to the nonhuman races by their gods still exist, but they have different functions and relations to human society than they might in a European-based society or continent.  Racial "Determinism", so to speak, affects, but does not dictate, how different races get along with the various human cultures.  

These are just some ideas.  The European-derived cultures are still there, but now we see how the rest of the world interacts with dwarves, elves and orcs, who are all just as spread around the world as are humans.


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## Afrodyte (Apr 12, 2008)

CruelSummerLord,

That's pretty cool!  I thought about using the First Nations as my baseline humans on the main continent.

Speaking of the blog link I posted earlier, I sort of like the idea of elves being not exactly biological.  They are shaped like humans - eerily so, since there's something about them that seems geometric or sculpted - but that's about it.  Instead of internal organs, I can see them being filled with a glowing gelatin-like substance of various hues (usually white or gold).  In other words, they're Not From Around Here, and they have to create bodies to interact with our world.  Usually this means assuming the form of idealized humans native to the environment, but there's always something that's a little . . . off.


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## Jürgen Hubert (Apr 12, 2008)

Afrodyte said:
			
		

> CruelSummerLord,
> 
> That's pretty cool!  I thought about using the First Nations as my baseline humans on the main continent.
> 
> Speaking of the blog link I posted earlier, I sort of like the idea of elves being not exactly biological.  They are shaped like humans - eerily so, since there's something about them that seems geometric or sculpted - but that's about it.




For Urbis, I'm using the deep background assumption that all the nonhuman but humanoid races were created by an ancient magocracy. The dwarves were the miners and smiths, the goblinoids and orcs the warriors, the gnomes were the craftsmen, the halflings the servants and cooks... and the elves were the descendants of the ruling wizard elite.

I mean, good looks, heightened senses, long life spans, less sleep... it's like some transhumanists were going through a checklist and said "Yup, I want all those things." And the end results were elves...


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## Afrodyte (Apr 13, 2008)

Jürgen Hubert said:
			
		

> For Urbis, I'm using the deep background assumption that all the nonhuman but humanoid races were created by an ancient magocracy. The dwarves were the miners and smiths, the goblinoids and orcs the warriors, the gnomes were the craftsmen, the halflings the servants and cooks... and the elves were the descendants of the ruling wizard elite.
> 
> I mean, good looks, heightened senses, long life spans, less sleep... it's like some transhumanists were going through a checklist and said "Yup, I want all those things." And the end results were elves...




Yeah, that make sense too.


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## ekb (Apr 13, 2008)

*Subversion*

There are cliches in fantasy beyond the character ones. And they can be wonderful to subvert...

1 - It was all a dream: had fun with this last night with my main play group. The party is traveling on the road through a haunted forest and find themselves "stuck" by the spirits and make camp. They do the "smart RPGer" things - schedule watches, arrange signals, verify inventory of equipment, set triplines and wards. They all have a shared dream of traveling on a path to a tomb and are woken up  by an owl's cry. So they set out and find themselves on the path they dreamed about and soon encounter the tomb from the dream. Things go rather awry when they do the usual "smart RPGer" things - the weapons and tools they are so used to using start self-destructing or falling to pieces... When it gets too much, they wake up - but with *some* of the "injuries" they received in the dream actually present in the waking world. Gothic as all get out - clanking chains and all - but it works in the end.

2 - Monsters are unnatural things: The first session in this mini-campaign featured an imp chasing people about and finally killing some key people. Obviously, the PCs are intended to investigate and possibly destroy the "monster." Turns out that it's someone's pet that is confused by perfumes that people are wearing... nothing supernatural about it at all, but with good GMing it makes things seem unnatural.

3 - There is good and there is evil as absolutes: while not wanting to get into a deep philosophical debate on moral relativism, the ideas that are the foundation of this RPG trope don't really hold in a modernist culture such as our own.  There may be some things we agree on (theft bad, child safety good), it's easy to sell someone on the idea that this horrible thing I'm doing to "them" is actually good because it benefits "us," we possess divine right to this thing, it was ours to begin with yadda yadda yadda...

4 - Genocide is feasible: okay, who *hasn't* attacked the critters/monsters on sight? If my players are known as peerless killers of orcs, couldn't a strong warband be organized to capture them and put them on trial for crimes against orc-kind? Because, in general, that's what a dungeon crawl often is: regionalized genocide.

5 - The party must work together: hogwash! Who's to say that having opposing agendas is a bad thing? The party wouldn't be in existence if there wasn't a need for it, but who's to say that betrayal after that initial goal has been met is poor game-play?

That's what I can think of off the top of my head...


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## DrunkonDuty (Apr 14, 2008)

```
Afrodyte wrote:
I was going to list some of my own ideas, but I should probably do that on another thread.
```

No, this is the perfect place. Would love to hear what you have in mind.



> haakon1 wrote:
> But to me, bugbears and gnolls are irredeemably evil, viewing human as mortal enemies who are either killed on sight or kept as slaves until it's time for lunch. I think it's good to have contrasts between evil but negotiable (kobolds, goblins, and hobgoblins IMC), mostly evil with some exceptions and a racial connection to elves and humans (orcs IMC), not evil but alien (lizardmen), and plain old kill everybody and eat them evil (bugbears and gnolls IMC).




I get what you mean about some contrast on the good/evil scale, adds more depth. Nothing wrong with just plain old malicious and cruel critters. All for it. And Bugbears and Gnolls do have that terrible, bestial appearance. The Bugbears in my Borderlands are definitely cruel and vicious, but some have enough pragmatism to realise that human traders can provide benefits above and beyond filling the pot. My Gnolls have only rarely seen a human. They live in a desolate area of basalt peaks from where they carry on their endless vendettas among themselves and against the Yildiz Hobgoblins who long ago drove them from their ancient homes on the high prairie.



> haakon1 wrote:
> It's the border between civilization and wilderness, and also between "eastern" civilizations (the western-European like Suel and Oeridian cultures) and "western" civilizations (the Eastern on our world Baklunish). I view it as being a bit like Yugoslavia, a "Clash of Civilizations" area, combined with a frontier.




I am pretty familiar with Greyhawk. Long been a fave of mine!! I vaguely recall someone (either here on Enworld or on Canonfire) talking about using the border area between Ket and Bissel as a great area for adventure. The whole clash of cultures thing that takes place there. Was that you per chance?

Re: using less familiar backgrounds.

The info dump is a hard thing to do well. Even more so when what you're trying to convey is background stuff rather than something of immediate relevance to the plot. Main problem is getting the players to pay attention long enough to get the info. across. Of course if they're not then the GM is probably not presenting it in a manner to interest them. One thing that I've tried is the use of tales within the game. Tales of long ago that illustrate the point you are trying to get across or contain literal details they need. Begin with giving them a few vague hints and then get the players to make skill checks (History, Religion, Bardic Lore, what ever) so as they can remember more details. Once you get players rolling dice they do get all excited and focussed. (I know I do   )

This can backfire.

Once had the platyers dedicate a session and a half to tyeing to track down if a mythological character called Fafnr was real or not. All because there was a curse going around the Dwarven Kingdom, called Fafnr's Curse, that turned honest, hardworking Dwarves into thieves. Now I was just using a nice, poetic name. Unfortunately the guys read so much more into it. I tried discouraging them. In the end had to be blunt and say they were chasing their own tails. And all because they were expecting me to be hinting at stuff when  I wasn't. My own bad reputation caused that.   

cheers all.


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## DarkKestral (Apr 14, 2008)

Hobo said:
			
		

> I don't think a highly organized (and successful, and civilized!) hobgoblin empire is represented anywhere in Tolkien or in most D&D settings I've seen either.




I don't think we really saw hobgoblins represented in Tolkien, but we did see the hyper-lawful evil orcs, which I feel are the closest in representation to the D&D hobgoblin that we get in Tolkien. The Peter Jackson orcs even have the "look" associated with hobgoblins in D&D. And they definitely were on the rise there, until the combined armies of every free nation and race worked together to wipe them out. In fact, it was basically implied that if they hadn't, the rest of the races would have been wiped out. They may be twisted, pathologically evil beings, but they are incredibly organized, and their mastery of machinery appears to be far greater than the rest of the races of Middle-Earth; even the dwarven cities don't seem to have much in the way of machinery, though they are implied to be among the best crafters. On the other hand, the orcs had all sorts of siege technology and immense forges capable of producing armaments for entire armies at a go, and we know this from direct text.

Which makes it ironic that we don't have too many "evil, but organized race on the rise" stories in fantasy, as it is rather Tolkienian.


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## Desdichado (Apr 14, 2008)

The organization and the seige equipment was all Sauron (or Saruman) though; not the orcs themselves.  Left to their own devices, they fell into squabbling fiefdoms run by minor warlords.

The implication being that they weren't anything on their own, and were in fact rather inferior soldiers even; pretty much everyone had a chance to beating back an orc infestation with relatively light losses.  Without some greater, organizing intelligence, the orcs didn't amount to a hill of beans.  The only orcs of any real notoriety on their own behalf were Bolg and Azog.  Maybe Golfimbul could pass muster here too.  

But again; they were rather handily defeated as soon as they stuck their necks out of the Misty Mountains, and in Golfimbul's case it was in an especially undignified manner.

No, my ascendent hobgoblin empires don't really resemble Tolkien IMO.  Only superficially.


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## Desdichado (Apr 14, 2008)

Speaking of non-Eurocentric fantasy, I've just recently gotten my hands on a copy of the reprint of _Imaro_ in trade paperback.  Imaro and the setting of his stories are to Africa what Conan and the Hyborian Age are to Europe and the Near East.  If you can see past the rather obvious social agenda of the writer, and his tendency to re-introduce relatively familiar items through an Afrocentric lens (he has to constantly rename cows, lions, hyenas, spears, swords, etc. using Swahili words—a contrivance I thought was more irritating rather than interesting) he's actually written some really fine, competent and entertaining Sword & Sorcery that shows a great model of a non-Eurocentric setting.

The character of Imaro himself is a little too emo for me at times, though.


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## haakon1 (Apr 14, 2008)

Jürgen Hubert said:
			
		

> Let me give you an example. What do most Americans think of when they hear the word "castle"? The image that will likely spring into the minds of most is the fairy tale castle from Disneyland.




Well, once I was talking online with a Floridian who said they lived "in the shadow of the castle".  I asked if they meant the Spanish castle (I now forget the name) whose ruins really do still exist in Florida.  They didn't know what I was talking about.    



			
				Jürgen Hubert said:
			
		

> So the castle imagery in the minds of most Americans (though probably not most American role-players, who likely have a more in-depth knowledge of this period in history) is several layers removed from real castles - but giving them an understanding of the functioning, layout, and other essential aspects of genuine castles will require a lot of additional explaining. So what to do when you plan to use castle imagery - do you use the superficial image so that everyone gets it at once, or do you use the genuine historical thing and need to provide a large info-dump to clear up any misconceptions?




I'm American.  My very first introduction to D&D was by a DM (Indian-American) who had visited his cousins in Scotland and was quite impressed by Edinburgh Castle.  He described the gate, the portcullis, and the murder holes above and arrow slits to the sides as we were asked our names and our business at the Keep on the Borderlands.  I loved it, so I've always tried to have a similar scene for new players.

Also, as a child I read a picture book on how castles (specifically Edward I's castles in Wales) were built.

And later on I became a history major and lived in England for 3 years, visiting at least a half dozen castles.  My favorites are Edinburgh and Caernarvon (Edward I's largest Welsh castle).

So, when I DM it, I do go into detail, and they are quasi-real medieval.  I've had "castles" towers ranging from a dirt wall and a wooden tower (more of a burh), to a stone tower and stone wall, up to concentric ring castles.  I don't care about the "but that wouldn't work against stuff that can fly" rationale of castle design, because my campaigns are relatively low-level.  The typical threat is a Warrior 1, either human or orcish, so walls and murderholes are fairly effective.    And my absolutely favorite DMing was running an assault on the Keep on the Borderlands by many of the Caves of Chaos' denizens, against the PCs and the Keep troops!

But I suspect your criticism of typical Americans may be right!



			
				Jürgen Hubert said:
			
		

> (Or, to provide a flip side to the Neuschwanstein example for German readers: When using a pseudo-Native American culture - which would certainly qualify as "exotic" in Germany - do you try to get the details right, or do you confine yourself to the imagery thought up by Karl May?)




I actually know what you mean on this one (I've heard of Karl May).  I generally keep it pretty stereotypical Plains Indian, but I like to throw in some elements of East Coast Indians too.  My "Indian" civilization also has Irish elements thrown in, just because I feel like it.



			
				Jürgen Hubert said:
			
		

> Truly researching the historical and cultural details often _is_ highly rewarding, and I strongly recommend it even if you don't end up using them - they often contain all sorts of cool adventure ideas. But again, all this has to be weighted against overwhelming the players with details.




I couldn't agree more.  Real history and mythology are fascinating in their own right, and even more fun when plundered for D&D.


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## Desdichado (Apr 14, 2008)

haakon1 said:
			
		

> But I suspect your criticism of typical Americans may be right!



Neither Americans (nor anyone else) are, _en masse_, naive enough to believe that what is obviouisly a theme park attraction based on a fairy tale has a close resemblance to reality.

After all, we've had period movies from Hollywood for decades that show us more gritty and realistic castles all the time too.


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## haakon1 (Apr 14, 2008)

DrunkonDuty said:
			
		

> I get what you mean about some contrast on the good/evil scale, adds more depth. Nothing wrong with just plain old malicious and cruel critters. All for it. And Bugbears and Gnolls do have that terrible, bestial appearance. The Bugbears in my Borderlands are definitely cruel and vicious, but some have enough pragmatism to realise that human traders can provide benefits above and beyond filling the pot.




The "in general" v. "but these ones are different" stuff can be interesting too.  In general, my bugbears are monstrous people eaters.  But the ones in the Caves of Chaos have been decimated to such an extent that they've thrown in their lot with the Goblin King (oh, the shame) and follow his rules about not killing the humans anymore.  Of course, someday the old Goblin King will die . . . 



			
				DrunkonDuty said:
			
		

> I am pretty familiar with Greyhawk. Long been a fave of mine!! I vaguely recall someone (either here on Enworld or on Canonfire) talking about using the border area between Ket and Bissel as a great area for adventure. The whole clash of cultures thing that takes place there. Was that you per chance?




Quite likely, but I hope others have the same idea!  I don't do Canonfire, but did AOL Greyhawk in days of yore (1996-1999).

About giving background, it's easier in play-by-email, which is one of my two campaigns.  But I usually do it in the "Basil Exposition" style, of having a conversation with a friendly about it, or having a PC research it.  And I've used bard songs too.

And when something I mentioned before comes up, I remind my players that heard about it before, so they can say "oh yeah".  On the other side of the screen, I remember it's hard to follow the details months later!


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## Jürgen Hubert (Apr 14, 2008)

Hobo said:
			
		

> Neither Americans (nor anyone else) are, _en masse_, naive enough to believe that what is obviouisly a theme park attraction based on a fairy tale has a close resemblance to reality.
> 
> After all, we've had period movies from Hollywood for decades that show us more gritty and realistic castles all the time too.




Well, likely many people do realize that the Disney castle is not representative of real castles - although quite likely less than you suspect (which has less to do with the average intelligence of Americans, but the average intelligence of _people_ in general). And even if they do realize it, how many of them know what a real castle looks like? In the RPG community we take such knowledge for granted, but how common is such knowledge of history, and especially European history, in the general American population?

Even if they don't think of the Disney castle, the best image that will pop to their minds are likely Minas Tirith and Minas Morgul from the Lord of the Rings movie. And knowing anything better is not a fault of their character, but simply a matter of having different interests than the average gamer...

(If the American board members were willing to try out the following experiment, I'd be curious about the results: Approach some family members who are _not_ gamers, not history buffs, and who haven't been to Europe, and ask them about the first image that pops to their mind when asked about castles. Don't let them time to look it up in Wikipedia - ask them for an immediate response.)


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## Set (Apr 14, 2008)

Jürgen Hubert said:
			
		

> (If the American board members were willing to try out the following experiment, I'd be curious about the results: Approach some family members who are _not_ gamers, not history buffs, and who haven't been to Europe, and ask them about the first image that pops to their mind when asked about castles. Don't let them time to look it up in Wikipedia - ask them for an immediate response.)




There's a difference between my first image of a castle (which is indeed Neuschwanstein) and my understanding of what real castles looked like.  It's kind of a false posit.

Nor do I see any reason to single out Americans.  People who take what they see on the TV too seriously are not exclusive to any country, and it's just as eye-rollingly embarassing when my French relatives make assumptions about my childhood in the 'wild west.'  I don't think any less of them for not knowing irrelevant details of American history, and I hope they don't think less of me for not knowing the Sun King from Sun City.


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## Desdichado (Apr 14, 2008)

Jürgen Hubert said:
			
		

> Well, likely many people do realize that the Disney castle is not representative of real castles - although quite likely less than you suspect (which has less to do with the average intelligence of Americans, but the average intelligence of _people_ in general). And even if they do realize it, how many of them know what a real castle looks like? In the RPG community we take such knowledge for granted, but how common is such knowledge of history, and especially European history, in the general American population?



What; Americans didn't watch _Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, First Knight_ or _Excalibur_?  What about earlier movies like _Knights of the Round Table, Ivanhoe_ or _The Adventures of Robin Hood_?

I think you vastly underestimate the degree to which castles permeate our cultural fabric.  Have Americans actually _been to_ a real castle and walked around on the rampart, and all that jazz?  No, obviously not nearly as many, but as a whole, we're not terribly ignorant about them either.  I remember seeing plenty of diagrams of castle floorplans and whatnot in my junior high social studies textbooks, that discussed them, their architectural peculiarities and their social importance, and I went through a pretty bog-standard curriculum.


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## billd91 (Apr 14, 2008)

Set said:
			
		

> Nor do I see any reason to single out Americans.  People who take what they see on the TV too seriously are not exclusive to any country, and it's just as eye-rollingly embarassing when my French relatives make assumptions about my childhood in the 'wild west.'  I don't think any less of them for not knowing irrelevant details of American history, and I hope they don't think less of me for not knowing the Sun King from Sun City.




I don't think it's a question of taking TV too seriously. It's a question of exposure in general. TV provides a lot of people with the broadest exposure they're going to get. If the castle they see most on TV is Neuschwanstein or based on it, it's going to color their perceptions and expectations. If they see a more realistic castle, they consider it a disappointment or a poor example of a castle.

Keep in mind also that even movies take shots of castles that are generally impressive or dressed up, better lit, and so on because that's what sells and that's what, in the case of lighting in particular, the medium requires. So even in movies with real, historically functional castles, we get an idealized version.


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## Heckler (Apr 14, 2008)

Jürgen Hubert said:
			
		

> Well, likely many people do realize that the Disney castle is not representative of real castles - although quite likely less than you suspect (which has less to do with the average intelligence of Americans, but the average intelligence of _people_ in general). And even if they do realize it, how many of them know what a real castle looks like? In the RPG community we take such knowledge for granted, but how common is such knowledge of history, and especially European history, in the general American population?
> 
> Even if they don't think of the Disney castle, the best image that will pop to their minds are likely Minas Tirith and Minas Morgul from the Lord of the Rings movie. And knowing anything better is not a fault of their character, but simply a matter of having different interests than the average gamer...



I think this illustrates more your ideas of Americans than Americans ideas of castles.  

Here's a link to a listing of castles in the US (scroll past the webmaster's rant on eminent domain).  I looked at some at random, and while some are "fake" (Ren faire facades or water towers) there were many that are real (or replicas).  Castles have heavily influenced our architecture and design, shown in many homes and businesses.

Disney doesn't even come to mind.  Honestly, I'm not sure I could give you an accurate description of Disneyland's castle.

http://www.dupontcastle.com/castles/index.htm#ky


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## Dannyalcatraz (Apr 15, 2008)

I have to side with Jürgen on the castle thing- most fellow Americans without some gaming/military/travel background that _I've_ taken on trips to castles or shown shows or books on the subject were utterly clueless as to the form & function of castles.  The Disney Palace/Neuschwanstein is the first one they name, the one they emulate in their sketches, etc.

BTW- I've been to Neuschwanstein and its sister castle, Hoenschwangau, as well as many of Ludwig's palaces & castles.  Few of them even remotely resemble the others in Europe built to withstand siege engines...because they weren't.


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## roguerouge (Apr 15, 2008)

I think what's appealing about these Euro-centric settings is that they make the familiar exotic, estranging us from the familiar through fey, folklore, and myth.


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## haakon1 (Apr 15, 2008)

roguerouge said:
			
		

> I think what's appealing about these Euro-centric settings is that they make the familiar exotic, estranging us from the familiar through fey, folklore, and myth.




I also think there's something powerful about using "real" myths -- trolls under bridges, vampires, centaurs, and so forth -- as opposed to WOTC's latest invention.


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## Jürgen Hubert (Apr 15, 2008)

Set said:
			
		

> There's a difference between my first image of a castle (which is indeed Neuschwanstein) and my understanding of what real castles looked like.  It's kind of a false posit.
> 
> Nor do I see any reason to single out Americans.




I didn't - in my initial post on this subject, I provided a counter-example for Germans: The perception of Native Americans in the "Old West" over here.

German perception of Native Americans is possibly irretrievably shaped by the works of Karl May, a German writer of dime novels who wrote a large number of stories near the end of the 19th centuries. Many of these stories were set in North America, and what he lacked in factual knowledge (he only visited North America long after he wrote these stories) he made up for with a vivid imagination (he was also prone to adding rather blatant author stand-ins into his stories). These stories tended to perpetuate the stereotype of Native Americans as "noble savages" and all things considered were for the most part grossly inaccurate.

Nevertheless, his stories were widely read by German youths throughout the many decades that followed and shaped German perceptions _to this very day_. I'll bet with you that one the first things that springs to the mind of Germans when asked about Native Americans is Winnetou, the protagonist of most of these stories.

So you see that I wasn't trying to make fun of Americans with my comments about castles - cultural misconceptions are an international phenomenon (just ask some East Asians what comes to their mind regarding Europe or the USA, especially if they have never been here). The people on this board all have a good knowledge of what castles are, and the odds are good that their circle of friends also mostly includes lots of people with an active interest in history.

But the Americans _without_ an active interest in history and no prior European travel experience? I still say their ideas of castles is likely to be distorted by Neuschwanstein and the Disney castle.


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## haakon1 (Apr 15, 2008)

Jürgen Hubert said:
			
		

> But the Americans _without_ an active interest in history and no prior European travel experience? I still say their ideas of castles is likely to be distorted by Neuschwanstein and the Disney castle.




You just reminded me of an ad jingle for one of Donald Trump's casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

"You're the king!  You're the king.
You're the king of the castle.
Trump Castle hotel and casino.
And baby, baby do we know
How to treat a king!"

As I remember the ad showed scantily lady young ladies escorting folks into an ornate (read: super cheesy) marble area with fountains and so on.  The reality of senior citizens from Long Island arrived by the busload to play nickle slots with their $10 voucher for making the free bus trip was not shown.  

Then there's also "Medieval Times" the jousting and dinner entertainment chain and the Excalibur casino in Vegas.


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## Desdichado (Apr 15, 2008)

Jürgen Hubert said:
			
		

> But the Americans _without_ an active interest in history and no prior European travel experience? I still say their ideas of castles is likely to be distorted by Neuschwanstein and the Disney castle.



And I still say you are just making that up.

Or, to quote a prevalent meme:

Cite?


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## InVinoVeritas (Apr 16, 2008)

Personally, I'd like to move on from the topic of Americans and castles, but while we're there...

Americans have two sources for castle impressions: Disney/Neuschwanstein and British castles. So, they're heavy into towers, but also crenellations. They look like gray stone. Heck, anyone who's eaten at Round Table Pizza knows what I'm talking about. 

Most German castles, on the other hand, don't look like "castles" from the Disney/British view. Many of them weren't designed for war (especially if they were built by Ludwig or August the Strong). Those that were designed for war tend to be more boxy than the British tower-and-crenellation design. Most Americans, if they see a German castle, think "mansion" from the appearance.

When Americans think "castle", they see this:





​
or this:




​
but not this:




​
and definitely not this:




​
Photos of Neuschwanstein, Windsor Castle, Albrechtsburg, and Moritzburg from Wikipedia.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Apr 16, 2008)

> And I still say you are just making that up.
> 
> Or, to quote a prevalent meme:
> 
> Cite?




I dare say that Jürgen, like me, has that as his opinion based upon personal experience, not any study.  IOW, there is nothing to cite.

Might I suggest you ask some of your non-gamer, non-traveller American acquaintences about their view of castles?


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## DrunkonDuty (Apr 16, 2008)

> roguerouge wrote:
> I think what's appealing about these Euro-centric settings is that they make the familiar exotic, estranging us from the familiar through fey, folklore, and myth.






> haakon1 wrote:
> I also think there's something powerful about using "real" myths -- trolls under bridges, vampires, centaurs, and so forth -- as opposed to WOTC's latest invention.




I think this pretty much sums up why we do use cliches in gaming: they are already familiar and they have a wonderful depth that no Drow (or Shadar-kai) can hope to match.


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## Desdichado (Apr 16, 2008)

Dannyalcatraz said:
			
		

> I dare say that Jürgen, like me, has that as his opinion based upon personal experience, not any study.  IOW, there is nothing to cite.



I know that there's not.  Although I allowed the possibility that there might be.


			
				Dannyalcatraz said:
			
		

> Might I suggest you ask some of your non-gamer, non-traveller American acquaintences about their view of castles?



Might I suggest that you not make assumptions about my information and its source?  Or perhaps even read my earlier posts, where I described the textbook of my 6th grade social studies class (and most subsequent ones as well) that described the architecture, social importance, and function of castles?  And which—gasp—had lots of pictures of them as well?


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## Dlsharrock (Apr 16, 2008)

Castle thread: when I think of castles I don't think of any of the ones pictured. For some reason I always think of the rather dull drizzle-misted one from Monty Python's Holy Grail (I fart in your general direction/help help I'm being oppressed) and tend to include them in my games. They are, however, a cliche. As are all castles. 

Returning to the original thread, a bit: I'd like to see (and may sit down and design after this) a fantasy castle not entirely extrapolated from Eurocentric inspirations (or Disney) but designed for the fantasy milieu within which they intend to be used. Defences against flying beasties. Defences against magic, and not just counter-magic. Defences utilising the surrounding fantasy landscape. A moat of lava might be a good idea, if it wasn't such a bloody cliche.

Chosen One Syndrome: this cliche works in literature (for me) only when the chosen one doesn't want to be the chosen one. By definition this tends to be in a satirical context,  though Frodo was none too eager. Douglas Adams' Arthur Dent is probably the best example I can come up with. Fate and the machinations of the Heart of Gold decided he was the Chosen One- though chosen for what and why is still a bit of a mystery to me. And all he wanted was a decent cup of tea.

Cups of tea and modern Brits brings me to another pertinent point. Though their medieval ancestors form the mud-swilling, tavern brawling backbone of most fantasy, more recent English cultures are rarely used as a basis for Eurocentric fantasy races. When I wrote the Middlemist campaign setting my city elves were an austere Victorian people who carried sword sticks and requested 'mater' cover the legs of the occassional table lest it inflame unnatural urges! Lots of Elven youngsters were abroad as hippyish adventurers, fleeing the strict lifestyles and whipping sticks of their parents and looking for fun in the wilderness. This gave the hippy elf cliche something of a motivation instead of 'he's an elf, so he likes peace and trees' it was 'he's an elf, so he's rebelling'.


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## Clavis (Apr 16, 2008)

Dlsharrock said:
			
		

> Cups of tea and modern Brits brings me to another pertinent point. Though their medieval ancestors form the mud-swilling, tavern brawling backbone of most fantasy, more recent English cultures are rarely used as a basis for Eurocentric fantasy races.




The main locale for my current group of PCs has an English Industrial Revolution-like Capitalist culture, and a governmental system inspired by the Cromwell-era Commonwealth. There once was a feudal nobility, but it is now illegal, and claiming to be king is a capital offense. The right to vote, and the noble title of Lord, is conferred by purchasing it. And I don't go all Tolkein and present that as evidence that the land needs to be saved by the True King; the old nobility really were scum buckets. Not that things are really better now...


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## Woas (Apr 16, 2008)

Speaking of cliche, I have a question. What image do Germans have when asked what the believe a castle is?

And I'm sure most Germans if asked that could just point over their shoulder to the nearest large stone and mason structure that looms over the town.

They would not describe say:






Yes that is correct. Some Native American peoples built castles.

I bet a German wouldn't describe this either:






A Germanic perspective of a castle is just as cliche as an American. The point now is to subvert these cliches to make awesome new fantasy creations.


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## Clavis (Apr 16, 2008)

A great idea to subvert a standard fantasy cliche would be to set the PCs up to stop the return of the "rightful" king to a newly democratic state that is enjoying peace, prosperity, and freedom without him. And the king's not evil; he's actually a Paladin who wants to restore the old feudal order. Of course, if the king is restored he'll do away with wicked, Chaotic things like elections, trail by jury (instead of ordeal), equality for women, etc.

Take that, Tolkien!


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## Dlsharrock (Apr 16, 2008)

Those Japanese castles are incredibly well thought through also. I used to think those strange sweeping roofs were simply aesthetic, but in fact they're designed to carry water, thrown down from the highest windows, from one roof to the next, putting out fires from flaming arrows. A bit like one of those cool champagne pyramids you get at 70s parties


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## Desdichado (Apr 16, 2008)

Dlsharrock said:
			
		

> A bit like one of those cool champagne pyramids you get at 70s parties



That went out in the 70s?!


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## Afrodyte (Apr 16, 2008)

*Thanks*

I just want to thank all the participants and readers of this thread for keeping things on topic and providing thoughtful, intelligent replies to a potentially sensitive topic.  Kudos, ENWorld!


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## Dannyalcatraz (Apr 17, 2008)

> Might I suggest that you not make assumptions about my information and its source?  Or perhaps even read my earlier posts, where I described the textbook of my 6th grade social studies class (and most subsequent ones as well) that described the architecture, social importance, and function of castles?  And which—gasp—had lots of pictures of them as well?




I wasn't making any assumptions about your sources, and I caught your description of your textbook.

I was just suggesting that you take an informal poll of your associates to see what they thought.



> A Germanic perspective of a castle is just as cliche as an American.




But for some minor architectural details, like the materials used or the shape of the rooftops, you can find similar diagrams and floorplans for fortified dwellings all over Europe.

For example, the Native American encampment you showed was similar to images of Ambleside Fort.  The Asian fortress has a layout similar to Gisors, Chateau Gaillard, or (the seemingly larger) Krak des Chevaliers (which added concentric walls, inspired by places like the city walls of Constantinople).

BTW, most of the ones Ludwig built would be considered "palaces" more than anything else- "Schlosses" and not "Burgs."  "Burgs" were built with military reasons in mind, Schlosses were upscale dwellings...mansions, if you will.


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## DrunkonDuty (Apr 17, 2008)

My Stunty, er, Dwarven campaign, is based around and in what is basically one huge fantasy castle: the under-mountain city the Dwarves call home. Big time cliche of course. But pretty good defense against most things, even fantasy critters and magic. Mine is a fairly low magic game so Earthquake spells aren't a big problem. Besides which for every bad guy cleric who can cast one there's Dwarf who can counter it (it's good to have a god of earth and mountains on your side when you live in a cave.)


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## Afrodyte (Apr 17, 2008)

*nudges conversation away from castle architecture - showing it a nice new thread it can have - and back toward inverting/subverting fantasy cliches*


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## DrunkonDuty (Apr 17, 2008)

I like the Rightful King trying to overthrow the popular democracy. One wonders by what right he claims a mandate...    

Related theme: what have folks done with "The Dark Lord on his Dark Throne" trope?

For my Borderlands campaign there is in deed a Dark Lord in the East. He's your basic Dark Lord type but with strong overtones of Rasputin. He came to power by winning the confidence of the old Tsar, performing "miracles" etc. and rising to become one of the great boyars. The old established families resented this upstart but to no avail. Just before the old Tsar died of a, er, sudden illness, he named the upstart as his successor. The Dark Lord then crushed a revolt by the boyars and set himself upon his blood soaked throne. Only one legal claimant to the throne remains alive; a paladin-Anastasia who has retreated to the Borderlands with her followers. Here she is likely to clash with the humanoids who live there.

How could I spice up my Dark Lord? It's a low magic setting, more sword and sorcery then a standard DnD. This is all theoretical as I doubt I shall ever run anything in it.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Apr 17, 2008)

Dark Lords:

1) A Catholic priest once said in a sermon "Satan isn't ugly- Satan is _beautiful!_"  Meaning that if evil wasn't attractive on some level, most people wouldn't be drawn to it.

So- start the party as low level employees of the gov't. in the land of the "Dark Lord"- only he's quite normal looking...handsome, even. Hero of the people, etc.  When the "Benevolent Leader" speaks, its an occasion of almost holiday proportions (which is as it should be in a theocratic feudal society).  As far as they know, he's a real nice guy- as nice as any ruler could be.  (OK, not so nice to traitors and other criminals, but who is, really?)

Over time, as the PCs gain power, they get asked to do more and more dangerous and distasteful things...including attacking villages just across the border that are known to harbor the brigands who are raiding their fair country, or rooting out unbelievers.

(At some point, I hope your players wake up and smell the dictatorship.)

IOW, they're kind of taking the role of raiding party/bandits, going down a road to hell paved with good intentions.  Once the players realize the true state of affairs- OMFG, we're on the wrong side!- they try to help overthrow their government.

2) The "Dark Lord" is known to be a Lich-King of immense power.  However, nobody knows what he looks like, since decrees come from his Vizier, another powerful undead creature.

Eventually, after battling this Vizier, they finally find the Lich-King...

Only to find that the Lich-King hasn't issued an order in almost 400 years, and is currently engrossed with his study of subspecies of hummingbirds across the planes.

Yes, he _initiated_ the raising of the dark army that countless heroes have died fighting, but that was ages ago.  He has no interest in politics whatsoever anymore...

Or does he?


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## Dlsharrock (Apr 17, 2008)

DrunkonDuty said:
			
		

> what have folks done with "The Dark Lord on his Dark Throne" trope?




Embraced the cliche! I'm running a Third Age of the Sun Middle-Earth campaign (no, edit that) I'm trying to get off the ground a Third Age of the Sun Middle-Earth campaign with the original Dark Lord squatting in his tower. He hasn't moved all his stuff into Barad-Dur yet, he's still skulking and sulking in the tower of Dol Guldur on the fringe of Mirkwood. (Six players, one character submission so far and a lot of discussion about starting locations, which race of elf best suits which character class, the annoyance of low level magic etc.)

Egging on those who subscribe to Tolkien-bashing, I really love Sauron as a BBEG because he has the best and basest motive for a bad guy. He's the original Hell's Angel! Where a lot of my own home-spun creations fall down is believable motive, true also of fiction I think where many a lazy author relies on the reader's presumptions about evil dudes to just present a nasty piece of work as a nasty piece of work and thus perpetuates the 'bad' cliche. Evil dudes, by my preference, should not come out of the womb wearing skull caps and black capes. They can be cliches, fine, but they need at least some back-story to make them acceptable cliches. The way-back-mentioned Tad Williams trilogy was guilty of this and I shudder at comparisons between the *four* bricks of the Memory, Sorrow, Thorn *trilogy* and Tolkien. What Tad omitted from his revised idea, Tolkien wrote down in secret (and some) thus Sauron, and all of Middle-Earth, has a very deep back story I can rely on if the integrity of the bad guy ever falls into question. I do like Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, though. Some great cliches in there - particularly the scullion made hero aspects of Arthurian legend, complete with sword(s), cliches I never tire of (as long as they're done well).

Like the poster who researched like billy-o and kept all the details to himself, when it comes to gameplay additional research and backstory always feeds suspension of disbelief without necessitating a full and long winded exposition of the fine details. Even the worst cliches can be made believable if executed with attention to detail, I guess is the controversial point I'm trying to make, though I'm also saying the detail needn't be lifted above the level of foundation.

Edit: Also, regarding the previous mention of Elven sub-races, I definitely blame J R R for starting this trend, though some blame must rest with early editions of D&D for using the idea without embarking on Tolkien's historical reasoning.


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## ekb (Apr 17, 2008)

*Dark Lords, Dark Thrones*

For the current story-game campaign, this is actually the core "hook" - the players are all old-school Red Box dungeon crawlers, but the setting is a semi-realistic 12th century Bavaria as seen through the lens of traditional ghost stories. The fairies aren't nice. The nobles aren't nice. No one is nice - this is survivalist RP. There are conflicting class levels and agendas in the party which means that there are different reactions to the same NPC. When the only absolutes are dogmatic, "dark" becomes universal (or irrelevant).

When I was digging through Blue Rose, I was looking at the setting as being ripe for subversion: the "good guys" in a pagan pro-gay pro-magic culture, the "ignorant guys" in an anti-magical monotheistic theocracy and the "bad guys" under the rule of a lich king and a scattering of outlanders of various stripe. There are personality traits, but no alignments in this system, so that's just another engine to do...
--The lich was a powerful ruler who had equally potent faith. His undead state is actually a divine blessing/commission to maintain the true "Old Ways" in the face of the revisionism of the other kingdoms.
--The system that the "good guys" use to determine rule - selection by a magical beast - isn't what it seems. The animals are actually manifestations of the antithesis of the Supreme Deity, subtly leading this kingdom into a state of perpetual war against the others. The "good gods" are also emanations of this "fallen one," appearing in a way that "makes sense to the wise" but is intrinsically absurdist.
--The "ignorant kingdom" follows their One True God, which is also an emanation of the "fallen one," but has become distorted by the priestly caste to serve their own ambitions. There are elements of the oldest traditions in their practices, but in general it's become degenerate and more pomp than power.
--Magic depletes the land and strengthens the "fallen one" every time it's used. What seems like raids by the "evil orcs" are actually tactical strikes by assault teams to destroy arcanists that are drawing too heavily on the land's mana.

There's more afoot, but since some of my players are on here... 

In general, there's much mileage in the idea that people will do the most horrible things if they believe that it furthers "their people" in the end...


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## Clavis (Apr 17, 2008)

DrunkonDuty said:
			
		

> I like the Rightful King trying to overthrow the popular democracy. One wonders by what right he claims a mandate...




Why, the Divine Right of Kings as instituted by the Gods! Perhaps the old Holy Monarchy fell beacuse of the actions of some Dark Lord, sending the nobility into into exile with a General McArthur-like promise to return. The Dark Lord was subsequently overthrown by a peasant army that instituted a secular republic. Decades later, the Rightful King, who was just a boy when the his family fled, returns to restore the old Holy Monarchy, with the support of the remaining old clergy. Perhaps the Wizards support the new Republic and its emphasis on reason, rather than faith.



			
				DrunkonDuty said:
			
		

> Related theme: what have folks done with "The Dark Lord on his Dark Throne" trope?




The main city the PCs operate out was founded by a brooding, ancient Wizard who is at least 700 years old. Nobody has ever seen his face or body under his red and black robes, because he wears a mask and gloves at all times. He is said to have enslaved demons to build the city, and still inhabits an impossibly tall black tower in its center. He has been responsible for several terrifying displays of magical might against people (and armies) that he felt failed to give him the proper deference. While he has relinquished formal power to an elected Lord Mayor, it is understood that he remains the true power in the city. Also, he never speaks above a whisper, so his will is made known by the his Consort, an 11-13 year old girl that is with him at all times. Nobody knows where the Consorts come from, or what happens to them after they reach 13. The Rumors aren't pretty...

Of course, the little Girl is actually the Wizard, as she's the immortal daughter of a powerful Outsider. The veiled man is just a toy construct. The girl never slips from her game, however, and gives no clue about the actual relationship between her and the veiled figure. As far as she's concerned, she could continue the game for a few thousand years more without getting bored. Mundane humans are so silly...


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## Evilhalfling (Apr 17, 2008)

My DarkLord was the head of a country that was taken over by demons.  It was a mixture of humans, tielfings and actual outsiders, held at bay only by a mountain range, and order of knights and a divine interdiction on teleporting into territory they did not control. 

The empire was mostly city states, each run by a powerful lord, half-fiend or outsider, all competeing against each other, but refraining from outright war.   The Emperor was never seen, and his wishes were carried out by the Lawwrights - or lawyers.  Each one a powerful sorcerer, with the head of a jackel.  

by 17th level the PCs had allied with the spymaster of a defeated city lord, and besiged a second. They still got all twitchy when one of the *Arcanaloth* showed up with a contract.  They even started to hear rumors that there was no emperor and that the Arcanaloths were running the empire, and guessed that there may be only a single archoloth that was masquerading as several. The Emperor had been playing the cities against each other for the last 150 years (since a demon lord's avatar had led the empire in a failed invasion to take over the world)  If they were feeling really paranoid they may have guessed that that too was part of the plot. 

I don't believe I ever decided what was really going on.


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## haakon1 (Apr 17, 2008)

Dannyalcatraz said:
			
		

> Dark Lords:
> 
> 1) Over time, as the PCs gain power, they get asked to do more and more dangerous and distasteful things...including attacking villages just across the border that are known to harbor the brigands who are raiding their fair country, or rooting out unbelievers.  (At some point, I hope your players wake up and smell the dictatorship.)
> 
> ...




I've done both of these.

1) Short-lived Star Wars RPG (pre-D20) where the PC's were explorer scout storm troopers on the ISS (Imperial Star Ship) Hornet.  ISS Hornet was on a 5 year voyage to seek out new life, and new civilization, to boldly go where no human has gone before and conquer the alien scum for the glory of Emperor Palpatine.

These stormtroopers were not clones, but humans (we did this before we saw the prequealogy), recruited in part with tales of the non-human rebels against the Empire, like those darn Calamaris, who threaten human domination of the galaxy and would kill us all if they could break free, whose power was so great they destroyed the Death Star already!

2) The first adventure I wrote, called "Raid on Raiders", had the rule of the raiders as a second level illusionist who had tricked everyone into thinking he was more powerful than he was.  An illusionist of Oz pretending to be a minor dark lord.


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## Derren (Apr 17, 2008)

InVinoVeritas said:
			
		

> Most German castles, on the other hand, don't look like "castles" from the Disney/British view. Many of them weren't designed for war (especially if they were built by Ludwig or August the Strong).




One thing you have to remember that there are two words for "castle" in German. "Burg" and "Schloss".
"Schloss" encompasses the big, luxury homes of nobles like Versailles and Neuschwanstein. The last two pictures you posted also fall under this category.
"Burg" on the other hand means all those castles build for war with walls, murder holes, etc.
Examples include:





Burg Eltz





Burg Maus

Most Germans, even if they have nothing to do with history and roleplaying, are aware of this difference even though many of the war focused "Burgen" were converted into "Schlösser" after they lost their military relevance.
So it always depends how the individual person in Germany translates the word castle.


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## Lord Zardoz (Apr 17, 2008)

Just to list some cliche's that show up in D&D games with regular frequency:

 - Save the world from the demonic army from Hell / The Abyss
 - Save the world from the undead hordes
 - Save the world from the evil wizard
 - Complete the important task that the Lvl 20 wizard who is assigning it to you is too busy to do himself
 - Find the magic item for the local wizard...
 - ... who inevitably betrays you and tries to use the item against you
 - Raid the underground fortress of evil monsters who happen to have treasure that you want
 - Stop the local orc tribe from attacking the village
 - Break up the local thieves guild
 - Rumors abound of a mighty dragon, who probably ought to be killed
 - The local Lawful Good religious order is full of extremist zealots who are dangerous.

If you intend to get way from these cliches it will take some work.  Playing up to the opposite of a cliche while running a game that the players can give a damn about is tricky.  The only reliable method is to find a way to make the players give a damn about some NPC villain so that taking them down becomes personal.

A good starting point would be to take obvious hooks and play them as red herrings.  Such as the intolerant lawful good organization that is actually mostly reasonable.  The nobleman who appears corrupt but is actually a pretty nice guy.

My suggestion:  Asking the players to rescue someone who the orcs intend to sacrifice to their gods.  As the adventure continues, the players discover that the villiage also wants to sacrifice the victim to their own gods.

END COMMUNICATION


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## Derren (Apr 17, 2008)

Add:
- Kobolds (sometimes goblins) have invaded a local mine.


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## DrunkonDuty (Apr 18, 2008)

> > Originally Posted by DrunkonDuty
> > I like the Rightful King trying to overthrow the popular democracy. One wonders by what right he claims a mandate...
> 
> 
> ...




Cool. But I admit I was hoping someone would say "Strange ladies lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for an electoral system." Which is of course a classic inversion of a classic trope.

Got to say I love the idea of the little (immortal) girl and her homonculus.
And the obssessive compulsive Lich. If you've got forever and are a studious, nerdy sort of wizard to begin with, I can see going this way. Ruling people would have to get boring after a while.

Definitely agree about getting the players to care about the NPCs. Once they do that, you have them hook line and sinker in the world. WHich is what all GMs want really.


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## Lord Zardoz (Apr 18, 2008)

if you do not mind the risk of being run out of the room, you could just implement a non classic internet meme in place of a fantasy trope.

Specifically, underpants gnomes.

There have been a rash of break ins committed by gnomes, though no one seems to be sure what, if anything was stolen.  When the players track down the newly active theives guild, they discover it is populated by gnomes, and they are stealing underpants.

Determine step 2 for your self.

END COMMUNICATION


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## Rechan (Apr 18, 2008)

So, a general question.

I've noticed that to some extent, a game _needs_ some sort of monster or race that is Irredeemably Evil. The kind of creature that you can feel no qualms about putting to the sword. This even includes its young. Because if you add _too many_ shades of gray, the game becomes "We can't attack anyone because we don't _know_ if we're justified!" But in many a game, people like kicking in doors and killing bad guys. To aid that, sometimes you  need to let the players breathe and go "Okay, we DON'T need to ask questions about THOSE guys, we can DESTROY them." Sort've like fighting Nazis. They're _nazis_, so it's okay.

Now, in standard D&D, demons and undead fill this hole. 

But, demons and undead can't always fill the niche you want. So what about a Race of some Humanoid? Some low CR grunt race. Many people seem to put Orc as this; they're not just savage and brutish, but they're _pure black hearted_ with no souls. 

Is this a Cliche, Trope, Element of Fantasy, or what?

What if you have an explanation for it? Like with LotR how Orcs are corrupted elves. That's an Explanation as to WHY this thing here is evil and even if you take it home and nurture it, it'll still eat you. (Like the old fable of the Scorpion and the frog). Does that change what it is?


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## Rechan (Apr 18, 2008)

Lord Zardoz said:
			
		

> - Stop the local orc tribe from attacking the village




I did this one with the cliche of "misunderstood"; human barbarians were raiding farms and burning them down - but they weren't killing anyone. It got to the point that the local lord had to ask some adventurers to make it stop. 

Adventurers investigate. Only to discover that the tribe's leader, a 14 year old half-orc girl, had been corresponding via mail with the local lord's son. But when she sent a sketch of herself, the lord's son stopped sending letters back. She was crushed her pen pal didn't want her anymore, and wanted him to acknowledge her.

The PCs didn't have to fight them; the party's barbarian/bard wrote a ballad for the girl, about how she was all hot and a prince would sweep her away. She ate it up. 

If I wanted to twist it a little further, a third party could have intercepted the correspondence, in order to push the conflict.


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## LoneWolf23 (Apr 18, 2008)

Clavis said:
			
		

> A great idea to subvert a standard fantasy cliche would be to set the PCs up to stop the return of the "rightful" king to a newly democratic state that is enjoying peace, prosperity, and freedom without him. And the king's not evil; he's actually a Paladin who wants to restore the old feudal order. Of course, if the king is restored he'll do away with wicked, Chaotic things like elections, trail by jury (instead of ordeal), equality for women, etc.
> 
> Take that, Tolkien!




Well, if he's a Paladin, he should be a bit more open-minded to the rights of the people.  Perhaps a compromise could be settled upon...  How about a Constitutional Monarchy?


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## DrunkonDuty (Apr 18, 2008)

> Rechan wrote:
> Adventurers investigate. Only to discover that the tribe's leader, a 14 year old half-orc girl, had been corresponding via mail with the local lord's son. But when she sent a sketch of herself, the lord's son stopped sending letters back. She was crushed her pen pal didn't want her anymore, and wanted him to acknowledge her.
> 
> The PCs didn't have to fight them; the party's barbarian/bard wrote a ballad for the girl, about how she was all hot and a prince would sweep her away. She ate it up.




That's cool. I think I'd really enjoy playing in your games, Rechan.



> LoneWolf23 wrote:
> Well, if he's a Paladin, he should be a bit more open-minded to the rights of the people. Perhaps a compromise could be settled upon... How about a Constitutional Monarchy?




That'd be the compromise I'd aim for as a PC. Of course the paladin might not go for it. They may believe, with perfect justification, that a monarch should not be encumbered by such things lest the monarch's ability to do what is right be hampered. Monarch knows best.

A couple of years back we were playing updated versions of D1,2,3. Before going down into the underdark my 8 wisdom bard made sure to get as much earthquake causing magic as he could get his hands on. Suspicious GM asked why. I replied: "Step 1, gather earthquake magic. Step 3rofit!"    He didn't get it.


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## Inez Hull (Apr 18, 2008)

My favourite spin on the _Chosen One _ cliche is R Scott Bakker's Prince of Nothing series. Essentially the chosen one is just faking it and manipulating propechy for his own motives, but by the end is starting to believe his own BS. 


Some spins on the normal fantasy tropes I tried in a homebrew world were:

- The elves were created by the gods to be caretakers of the world (yeah, nothing new there!)

- After a cataclysm the gods were destroyed and the elves made mortal. They decided to follow in the steps of the gods and create a caretaker race who will eventually replace them.

- Their first experiments resulted in the creation of the goblinoid races.

- A race of aliens possessing high intelligence and technology arrive as refugees from another world but crash their ship stranding them. The elves see these beings as the perfect candidate for a replacement caretaker race. However miscommunication leads to conflict and the aliens flee and hide in caverns near their crash site. Exposure to radiation from both the wreckage of their ship and minerals of the planet unfamiliar to their physiology leads to mutation. The aliens carve out a home under the ground and adapt to their mutations and eventually become the dwarves.

- The elves failure to recruit the aliens sees them capture some and use them as a template for the creation of a replacement caretaker race. This results in the creation of humans. The elves share all their knowledge with humanity who then decide that they have not wish to take on the responsibilities the elves have in mind for them. 

- Despite the elves being well intentioned their actions have resulted in hostility from the other races. The Goblinoid races act out like rejected children and seek to destroy their disappointed parents. However due to a sense of guilt the elves continually cede ground rather than fight back. The Dwarves distrust the elves and do not permit them to enter their territory. The Humans view the elves as despots from whom they have liberated themselves. Whilst there is not active aggression a cold war of hostilty exists.

- Due to the lack of gods, arcane magic has taken on religious significance amongst humanity. A church of magic exists and the ability to wield magic inherently (sorcery) is seen as a divine gift. A rebel faction who seek to teach magic to anyone capable of mastering the structures of magic through mental discipline and training (wizardry) are hunted are killed as heretics.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Apr 19, 2008)

> "Strange ladies lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for an electoral system."




I once used a fey who started off the encounter by lobbing a sword near the party on the shore...it landed point first into the lakebed just a yard or so off shore.

There was much rejoicing...

Then she kept throwing weapons.  It seems that her kind hunted fresh meat that way...



> I've noticed that to some extent, a game needs some sort of monster or race that is Irredeemably Evil.




It doesn't need to be a race.  A band of brigands, a barbarian horde under the thrall of a charismatic warlord, an enemy nation, etc., will do the job just as well.

However, its common enough it could be considered a Trope or Cliche.

Consider how many places it shows up- you even see it in HG Wells, for instance.  In his _Time Machine_, for instance, we get the classic Morlocks- degenerate subterranean humans who enslave and feed upon the beautiful Eloi.  (Almost sounds like a point of inspiration for the struggle between Drow and Elves, doesn't it?)


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## Rechan (Apr 19, 2008)

Dannyalcatraz said:
			
		

> It doesn't need to be a race.  A band of brigands, a barbarian horde under the thrall of a charismatic warlord, an enemy nation, etc., will do the job just as well.



No. Brigands and barbarian hordes _can be_ redeemed. That's different than what CANNOT. Irredeemable EVIL is different than just some greedy or savage people.



> Consider how many places it shows up- you even see it in HG Wells, for instance.  In his _Time Machine_, for instance, we get the classic Morlocks- degenerate subterranean humans who enslave and feed upon the beautiful Eloi.  (Almost sounds like a point of inspiration for the struggle between Drow and Elves, doesn't it?)



Honestly, I always thought the murlocks were Grimlocks.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Apr 19, 2008)

> No. Brigands and barbarian hordes can be redeemed.




Not all of them.

If you look at history, most barbarian hordes of note rise up, go on a rampage, then get _either_ civilized _or_ beaten back into the wilderlands from which they emerged and become quieted down...

Only to emerge again a few decades later, under a new unifying warlord.

And few are the brigands who are even given the chance to redeem themselves once brought before the law.  Usually, their options were emprisonment or death, not community service.


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## Rechan (Apr 19, 2008)

Okay, I can see that we're just going to have to agree to disagree.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Apr 19, 2008)

Fair enough and can do!


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## Dannyalcatraz (Apr 19, 2008)

> A great idea to subvert a standard fantasy cliche would be to set the PCs up to stop the return of the "rightful" king to a newly democratic state that is enjoying peace, prosperity, and freedom without him. And the king's not evil; he's actually a Paladin who wants to restore the old feudal order.




I thought I mentioned this one before, but I forgot:

Captain Carrot of the Ankh-Morpork Watch (Terry Pratchett's _Discworld_ books) fits that description to a "T."  He's got the heritage making him the rightful king of Ankh-Morpork & birthmark to prove it.

However, he has no interest in overthrowing the current regime and restoring the monarchy.


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## CruelSummerLord (Apr 19, 2008)

DrunkonDuty said:
			
		

> I like the Rightful King trying to overthrow the popular democracy. One wonders by what right he claims a mandate...
> 
> Related theme: what have folks done with "The Dark Lord on his Dark Throne" trope?
> 
> How could I spice up my Dark Lord? It's a low magic setting, more sword and sorcery then a standard DnD. This is all theoretical as I doubt I shall ever run anything in it.




My version of Iuz found, both as he was growing up, and now as an adult, that people all but expected him to be evil, being the spawn of a demon.  He figures that, if everyone thinks he's going to be evil based on his heritage, he might as well fulfill their expectations.  

Here we have a strange twist on the whole chicken-and-egg question: Has Iuz turned out evil because of his demonic heritage, or because people expected him to be evil because of his heritage?  Could he have chosen to be good, overcoming his dark heritage and fighting against it, instead of openly embracing and accepting it?  Why did he make the choices he did?  

Iuz's childhood was not traumatic or abusive, at least not any more than you would expect for a lad growing up in the Northern Reaches under the auspices of a wealthy nobleman.  He never suffered grief, or trauma, or abuse, or anything else that often makes people into villains.  He openly chose to embrace his demonic heritage, and everything that would logically come from being the son of Grazz't and Iggwilv.  

And yet, would he have been inspired to take up this mantle if the people around him had not muttered about his demonic siring?  He might have become a warlord, founded one of the Bandit Kingdoms, or otherwise remained a local power, if he had not been inspired to attempt to conquer and destroy the Flanaess, submerging it in a river of blood.  But had the tales of his being the son of a demon been mere insults and innuendo, would he have had the drive and ability to conquer an empire in fire and steel, much less ascend to godhood?  

Whether Iuz is a Dark Lord because of his nature, or because of how he was nurtured, is a question that even the Lord of Pain himself may not be able to answer.


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## haakon1 (Apr 19, 2008)

Dannyalcatraz said:
			
		

> If you look at history, most barbarian hordes of note rise up, go on a rampage, then get _either_ civilized _or_ beaten back into the wilderlands from which they emerged and become quieted down...
> 
> Only to emerge again a few decades later, under a new unifying warlord.




That's why I've got my eye on them Norwegians . . . they've been quiet for too long, trying to lull us all into a false sense of security with no raids for a millennium.  Watch out, England!


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## haakon1 (Apr 19, 2008)

About Iuz, I've got an interesting variant on his sister, Drelnza, going on.

IMC, she was her mother's chief general, but she rebelled and lead the Perrenlanders to near-freedom, attacking the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.  But her mom, Iggwilv, had her attacked/seduced by a vampire (probably the same one staked in the Sunless Citadel, IMC) and turned evil, turning on the rebels and earning a huge reputation for evilly tricking them.

The PC's, when they did the Lost Caverns, somehow saved her mortal soul, trying to rescue her from being a vampire.  I forget what they did -- turn her to stone, defrost her, and use a Resurrection scroll, perhaps?  Whatever it was, we were doing AD&D, and I said fine, she's back to human.  They let her go, and she's off being good again, somewhere -- most likely against brother Iuz.

I'm not sure if there's a cliche there, but I suspect there is, since I got some of these ideas from Sorcia in "Willow".


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## Dannyalcatraz (Apr 19, 2008)

> That's why I've got my eye on them Norwegians . . . they've been quiet for too long, trying to lull us all into a false sense of security with no raids for a millennium.  Watch out, England!




You're kidding, right?  They're _HEEEEeeeerre!_

Dudes with ancestries traceable back to all those Viking offshoots have taken over the NHL!


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## Afrodyte (Apr 19, 2008)

To address the topic at hand, I've had some time to think about things.  Since I'm not too tired to formulate a coherent response, I'll attempt to do so now.

I'll address some of the larger cliches mentioned on the blog I linked to earlier.

EUROCENTRISM
This is a big one for me, for obvious reasons.  It's been done to death (and then had _raise dead_ cast on it repeatedly) and doesn't reflect the multicultural reality I live in.  Even Middle-earth, that bastion of worldbuilding, has more diversity.  However, most people who imitate Tolkien don't exactly flatter him with their attempts.

In any case, an idea I've been playing with is having the default cultural context be Native American, particularly Algonquin and Iroquois.  There would be tribes and territories, perhaps even powerful city-states, but no kingdoms.  Think _Pathfinder_ (the movie, without the Mandatory White Protagonist).  However, I won't simply reverse the cliche and make Europeans the "uncouth savages."  I prefer putting non-humans in that role.

Speaking of non-humans, that goes to my next idea.

RACIAL DETERMINISM
I don't mind different races (as in human, elf, dwarf, etc.) having unique traits.  I don't mind them being more capable than humans.  I also don't mind them being exaggerations of various facets of humanity.  What I do mind is when race is the same as personality.  If I have to play a dwarf as a surly, ax-wielding Scotsman to play it "correctly," I get annoyed.  However, playing a dwarf as the embodiment of the pursuit of excellence is cool.  Elves as innately good and wise are dull.  Elves as the incarnation of nobility (of stature, not class or moral worth) is cool.  Orcs similar to Disney's Gargoyles are cool.  Mindless minions get on my nerves.  And so on and so forth.

CHOSEN ONE SYNDROME
Simply put, I wouldn't do prophecies at all.  In fact, I lean toward people "editing" history after the fact to make it seem like fate had a hand in things.

EPIC
See what I said about Eurocentric.  Without empires and kingdoms and such, it's easy to avoid making everything about the Fate of the World.  Although the scale is bigger, in play it's actually quite limiting since it's pretty hard to find something worthwhile to do after the Big Event.  I'm more interested stories about characters seeking to improve their own little corner of the world.  It strikes me as more personal and (dare I say it) realistic.


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## Dlsharrock (Apr 19, 2008)

Afrodyte said:
			
		

> Even Middle-earth, that bastion of worldbuilding, has more diversity. However, most people who imitate Tolkien don't exactly flatter him with their attempts.




All the more ironic since Middle-Earth _is _Europe

Some other parts rarely specifically touched in the fantasy milieu:

- Hawaiin (forget the flower necklaces and Hawaii Five-o music. Hawaii is a rich culture with intriguing history well worth a look if you're after inspiration)
- Northern Eurasia (I wrote a Soviet based setting but haven't had a chance to play it yet. No, not some kind of modern communist hell, and not viking based, but centred around the post Byzantine era of Slavs and feudality. It's medieval in theme but with glorious palacial architecture (note I avoided the 'c' word) juxtaposed by the poverty of the masses. Wars with the Golden Horde (Mongolians) and a variety of monsters based on old Slavic fairy tales. Lots of wolves, shaggy haired white bears and so on.)
- Modern America (in a fantasy setting! Might be a bit close to the knuckle for me to conjecture, being a filthy foreigner,  but I'd like to know how an American world-builder would allocate the various Elf races, orc kingdoms and so on. Suggestion: gnomes at the heart of Wall Street?)
- Aboriginal (surprising for me, this, as the Aborigines have some pretty scary monsters in built into their mythologies).


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## Afrodyte (Apr 20, 2008)

I had another brilliant idea I wanted to add, but I forgot what it was. :-(


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## Clavis (Apr 20, 2008)

Dlsharrock said:
			
		

> ...
> Some other parts rarely specifically touched in the fantasy milieu:...
> - Modern America (in a fantasy setting! Might be a bit close to the knuckle for me to conjecture, being a filthy foreigner,  but I'd like to know how an American world-builder would allocate the various Elf races, orc kingdoms and so on. Suggestion: gnomes at the heart of Wall Street?)....





In my current campaign, Halfling culture (at least in the northern lands) is a parody of American Redneck culture. I figured since Tolkien intended Hobbits as an ode to stereotypical English country dwellers, I'd make my Halflings into a bad stereotype of American country dwellers... So Halfling wear mullets, eat deep-fried everything, make moonshine, steal from outsiders, and inhabit Shires presided over by fat, corrupt sheriffs. Their religion is based around charismatic preachers who hold revival meetings in tents, where Halflings speak in tongues, experience faith healing, and give testimonials about how accepting Jerebus as their Lord and Savior delivered them from a life of sin.

My Gnomes have a vaguely Jewish culture. They are prominent bankers, lawyers and technicians who strongly value learning and good humor, but are the subject of vicious rumors stating that they control everything and are plotting to take over all human nations. Which is funny, because of all the races, only the Gnomes are really trying to make things better for everybody. Hence, everyone else thinks they're conspiring.

My Elves are a a satire on the 60s Haight-Ashbury hippies as they really were: promiscuous creatures who never know who their fathers are, who spend most of their time stoned, and who make their livings playing music, selling drugs, and prostituting themselves. More near-immortal teenagers who never need to grow up than Tolkien's near-angels. And of course, I use contemporary Goth and FemDom BDSM culture as the models for my Drow.


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## hong (Apr 20, 2008)

DrunkonDuty said:
			
		

> Related theme: what have folks done with "The Dark Lord on his Dark Throne" trope?




Give the throne a flush mechanism.


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## Dlsharrock (Apr 20, 2008)

Clavis said:
			
		

> I use contemporary Goth and FemDom BDSM culture as the models for my Drow.




Please tell me the dwarfs are all Hell's Angel bikers, easy riding in their horned helmets and leather studded armour!


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## Cor Azer (Apr 20, 2008)

One little thing I did in my last campaign was change the origin of orcs. Specially, although the world had existed for ages, orcs were a relatively new discovery - the result of an evil wizard corrupting an entire forest of elves over the last few years pre-campaign. The first part of the campaign dealt with the party trying to learn of this new menace, and where they came from.

So I was still able to use the same stats for orcs, and they were still primarily savage brutes (although I did have a "noble" breed that was more lawful, but still evil), but their motivation was different - they wanted to make a place for themselves in the world.

As a DM, I'm a big fan of humanoid monsters in general, and this simple change to their original really reinvigorated their use for me. It also pulled the players into the game more, because they were the ones who discovered the new race, and so they were the source of almost all the information the outside world learned about the orcs (For one, the players named them "bhenbiir" - an elven compound word for "ugly humans").

In fact, it actually took a few sessions of dealing with these mysterious bhenbiir before the players clued in they were basically orcs.


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## Rechan (Apr 20, 2008)

Back in the "Half-Orcs product of Rape?" thread, someone suggested an interesting notion:

Orcs aren't evil rapists. Instead, the species is a very chaotic, live-by-emotions Id-type species. They are also Very viril, which lets them produce in such high numbers. But this is also appealing to other races, who want a fling with a passionate, primal lover with large attributes and excessive energy. This results in half-orcs. 

Heh. This thread is actually devolving from "Reinvent Cliche" to "What'd you do with your Core races?"


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## Dlsharrock (Apr 20, 2008)

Cor Azur said:
			
		

> (For one, the players named them "bhenbiir" - an elven compound word for "ugly humans").




Shouldn't that be 'ugly elves'?

Tolkien's orcs had a similar source. They originated from elves captured by Melkor in the Age of Stars and corrupted in the dungeons of Utumno into the twisted and hideous forms of the orc. I believe the trolls were also corrupted Ents. 



			
				Rechan said:
			
		

> Heh. This thread is actually devolving from "Reinvent Cliche" to "What'd you do with your Core races?"




Better than 'Americans Don't Know Squat About Castles', which IMO was going in a rather dodgy direction.

There are other cliches yet to be noted: weapons, for example. You have your sword, your axe, your club and your bow and arrow. Given the vast array of nasty pointy things used for hurting people over the ages its funny how fantasy favours the same things. Swords, in particular, are very cliched as the big phalic emblem of power.


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## Rechan (Apr 20, 2008)

Dlsharrock said:
			
		

> Better than 'Americans Don't Know Squat About Castles', which IMO was going in a rather dodgy direction.



I don't disagree. But I was thinking a "Reflavor Humanoids and Monsters" thread might be appropriate.

Here's another cliche: The King's (Lord's, whatever) Adviser is Evil and Manipulating him. And/or  the King/Lord "is REALLY a vampire/lich/dragon in disguise".

I'd like to see a non-feudal situation. Parliment, Senate, etc.


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## Afrodyte (Apr 20, 2008)

Dlsharrock said:
			
		

> Please tell me the dwarfs are all Hell's Angel bikers, easy riding in their horned helmets and leather studded armour!




Now that's cool!

Although, Sovereign Stone had horse-riding Mongolian-type dwarves, which I thought interesting.


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## Afrodyte (Apr 20, 2008)

Rechan said:
			
		

> I don't disagree. But I was thinking a "Reflavor Humanoids and Monsters" thread might be appropriate.




We probably should do that.  But I think I can understand why it happens like that.  As far as D&D is concerned, monsters and races are the most immediate source of flavor in the game because it directly affects play.  It's kind of hard to overlook.



> I'd like to see a non-feudal situation. Parliment, Senate, etc.




Interestingly, I always find the feudal default somewhat odd given how many systems of government existed in history, let alone fantasy.


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## Rechan (Apr 20, 2008)

I wonder how you would do bikers in fantasy. Riding horses is eh; you need something else to fit the biker motif of having some sort of cool ride. 

Speaking of Dwarves, I've seen a few ideas.

1) Spartans, wielding spears in the caves. Stealing children of other races to be their slaves.

2) Amish-style religious, humble, solemn. Wear a piece of stone in their hats, so they will always have rock above their heads.

3) Desert dwelling muslim-style: very into mathmatics, science, and magic, but they hold their horse-riding scimitar-wielding warriors in the highest regard.

4) The dwarves were dying out, and thus implanted their souls/memories into the Warforged.


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## Dlsharrock (Apr 20, 2008)

Rechan said:
			
		

> I wonder how you would do bikers in fantasy.




Aha, (and with Afrodyte's grace) huge cogs and chugging black smoke 'bikes' made from forge and mine technology parts, perhaps? You can see 'em coming from a long way 'cos of the black smoke cloud and low roar/rumble of engines and stone wheels. Not into rock n' roll but rock n' rock! The fuel for the bikes is probably mineral based (or drawing from magic gems?). I can think of several leather-clad gamers who'd LOVE to play these bad muthas


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## Teflon Billy (Apr 20, 2008)

Ydars said:
			
		

> ...The same can profitably be done with Fantasy. Simply take principals/cliches from Sci-Fi (or other genres) and apply them to sword and sorcery...




I've had a lot of success doing this by simply extrapolating what the existing power-levels and abilities in 3rd Edition would do to a society. With Magic being an absolutely reliable power set with enough variety to mimic technology in a society, and magic item creation being more akin to Pottery than, well, Anything really _magical_ I set up an urban fantasy society where the two major power blocks were Arcane and Divine Spellcasters.

The Wizards guild were reclusive specialists who mostly worked through operatives outfitted by them with Magic Items and _Geas_'  (*Mystic Eye Games* _Artificer's Handbook_ figured large in the setting as Magic Item Creation was so important).

The Churches were both temporal and spiritual powers who had the "mandate of the people" (it's amazing what having access to healing and curative magic can do for folks positive opinion of your group) but spent quite a bit of time jockeying with one another for souls (this was a polytheism). The "Mandate of the People", however, doesn't mean a lot in a society that is level based and where the power levels jump as quickly as they do. They also worked through hired operatives, though to a lesser degree than the wizards.

In much the same manner that Core Book Paladins seem to hew closer to "good" than "law", the Paladins in my setting tended to pay a bit more attention to "law" than "good". They were more or less an organization separate from either of the big power blocks, but with enough might to maintain their own separate state from the big boys.

Think of them as The Jedi Knights, with Stannis Baratheon as the head of their Order.

Their arrival on scene was always a mixed blessing because, often as not, they would being to "take care" of issues they had not been called in to deal with (Called into a neighborhood to take care of some Assassin/Cultists setting up shop, they also "rescued" several children being "improperly cared for" by their birth parents, hung the head of a local "Thieves Guild"--who was a source of cheap protection for local people--because he "Detected as Evil" and burned a brothel to the ground).

Dwarves were a degenerate race who lived in tunnels beneath the city (had an attack bonus vs. _Vermin _rather than _Giants _, and had barbarian as their favored class) and were only tolerated becasue they provided cheap food for the teeming masses of the city (Farmed mushrooms and Giant Rats)

There were no Core Book Elves, but Core Book Gnomes are what the locals called Elves...always matched my idea of what "elves" were anyways...little magical people.

No halflings.

When all was said and done, it looked a lot like *Cyberpunk *with the numbers filed off.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Apr 20, 2008)

> Speaking of Dwarves,




I did a campaign with some truly nifty Dwarves.  I based them on Termite/Ant societies- mostly African Termites, with their rock-hard, temperature controlled mounds- with a bit of the Fremen of Dune tossed in.


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## Cor Azer (Apr 21, 2008)

Dlsharrock said:
			
		

> Shouldn't that be 'ugly elves'?
> 
> Tolkien's orcs had a similar source. They originated from elves captured by Melkor in the Age of Stars and corrupted in the dungeons of Utumno into the twisted and hideous forms of the orc. I believe the trolls were also corrupted Ents.




Tolkien's basis for orcs was part of my inspiration, I just moved it up to happening in recent history as opposed to the distant past.

And the elves in the party insisted it be ugly humans, as they (in a rare burst of arrogant roleplaying) wouldn't admit to themselves that anything originally an elf could be so ugly.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Apr 21, 2008)

> I wonder how you would do bikers in fantasy. Riding horses is eh; you need something else to fit the biker motif of having some sort of cool ride.




Re: Replacing the "eh" Horses:

Charioteers?

Horses with some kind of template?  Clockwork? Multiheaded?  Aberration?  Living Construct?

Griffin riders?

Riders of enslaved Centaurs?

Re: the rest:

Given the modern biker gang's penchant for gunplay, archery (both standard & mounted) would fit, and they'd probably favor crossbows (esp. repeaters) over standard bows.

Proficiency with small but brutal concealable weapons would be important, as would (non) spiked chains and improvised weapons in general.

Some kind of income stream from illicit acts- drugs, slavery, protection rackets, etc.  Think of them as a mobile Thieves' Guild, with an emphasis on using the UA Thug variant Fighter.

They would probably find some way to gain access to magical/psionic tattoos similar in effect to- but different from- the ones of the Tattooed Monk.


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## mmadsen (Apr 21, 2008)

Rechan said:
			
		

> I wonder how you would do bikers in fantasy.



Bikers are pirates.


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## Rechan (Apr 21, 2008)

mmadsen said:
			
		

> Bikers are pirates.



Wouldn't that just make them vikings?

Hmm. Chariots pulled by some sort of scary-ass animal. Like boar, vicious dogs, etc. That might work.


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## Clavis (Apr 21, 2008)

Dlsharrock said:
			
		

> Please tell me the dwarfs are all Hell's Angel bikers, easy riding in their horned helmets and leather studded armour!




I didn't originally say anything about the Dwarves in my campaign, because I didn't want to be accused of taking the thread in a political direction. My Dwarves are right-wing, sexist, racist, environmentally-destructive capitalists, who believe everything has to be privately owned. Even personal names are owned, and Dwarves who want to give their baby a name have to purchase a naming license from the owner of the name. My Dwarves aren't bikers, but are more an absurd parody of the Rush Limbaugh/Ann Coulter crowd.

Basically, my Elves are the stereotype Republicans have of Democrats, and my Dwarves are the stereotype Democrats have of Republicans.

I like your idea about Dwarven bikers though!


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## Rechan (Apr 21, 2008)

Clavis said:
			
		

> I didn't originally say anything about the Dwarves in my campaign, because I didn't want to be accused of taking the thread in a political direction. My Dwarves are right-wing, sexist, racist, environmentally-destructive capitalists, who believe everything has to be privately owned. Even personal names are owned, and Dwarves who want to give their baby a name have to purchase a naming license from the owner of the name. My Dwarves aren't bikers, but are more an absurd parody of the Rush Limbaugh/Ann Coulter crowd.



Actually, sounds more Ayn Rand.

So, are your campaigns at all serious?


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## Slife (Apr 21, 2008)

To counter the whole "dwarves hate the environment" trope, there's a fairly easy reinterpretation of their actions.  Dwarves don't live underground and mine because they hate plants.  They live underground so they have as little negative influence upon the environment as possible.  Dwarven agriculture relies on cultivating symbiotic fungi on treeroots.

Oh, and elves?  Those chic houses made out of living trees they have?  You know how _painful _ that is for the tree?  Elves are the ones who manipulate and abuse nature, uncaringly bending it to their whim.  

Well... except for the drow.


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## Woas (Apr 21, 2008)

So one cliche, that isn't just fantasy but sort of universal is the "Old dude that sees the future and predicts the end of times". Brainstorming some ideas, I gave this old cliche a turn around and came out with:

Just as how the Old Dude predicted. a huge age-ending monster descends to the earth and starts to do it's job. For hundred of years people the monster will be the result of everyones living in agony as the monster torments and punishes them or so the prophecy goes. But wait! The monster doesn't kill everything on the planet and restart humanity, in fact it hardly does much at all before it is slain! Yes, the Eater of Time is killed by a mass effort from some combined humanoid opposition. But the prophecy is fulfilled none the less, because its not the original monster that does the deed, its this new organization that just destroyed it and fills the power vacuum left behind. So now this organization (maybe a very powerful religious order or military force) with all its might decides something like that should never happen and plunges the "known world" into a hundred years of torment and punishment as it stamps out all heretics, non-believers and naysayers by the sword!


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## Dlsharrock (Apr 21, 2008)

Clavis said:
			
		

> I didn't originally say anything about the Dwarves in my campaign, because I didn't want to be accused of taking the thread in a political direction. My Dwarves are right-wing, sexist, racist, environmentally-destructive capitalists, who believe everything has to be privately owned. Even personal names are owned, and Dwarves who want to give their baby a name have to purchase a naming license from the owner of the name. My Dwarves aren't bikers, but are more an absurd parody of the Rush Limbaugh/Ann Coulter crowd.




Now you're just taking the thread in a political direction.



			
				Dannyalcatraz said:
			
		

> small but brutal concealable weapons




Like flick-axes?


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## Fenes (Apr 21, 2008)

Rechan said:
			
		

> So, a general question.
> 
> I've noticed that to some extent, a game _needs_ some sort of monster or race that is Irredeemably Evil. The kind of creature that you can feel no qualms about putting to the sword. This even includes its young. Because if you add _too many_ shades of gray, the game becomes "We can't attack anyone because we don't _know_ if we're justified!" But in many a game, people like kicking in doors and killing bad guys. To aid that, sometimes you  need to let the players breathe and go "Okay, we DON'T need to ask questions about THOSE guys, we can DESTROY them." Sort've like fighting Nazis. They're _nazis_, so it's okay.




There's another way to avoid the "we can't attack anyone because we don't know if we are justified" problem (as in, game problem). Just work on what constitutes "justified".

My current campaign does have truly evil stuff, but most opponents are not irredeemably evil, many are neutral, and some are good.

But that doesn't really matter much, what matters most for the PCs is: Are you with or against us? If you oppose us, then we're justified to take action, and what action is taken depends on the circumstances.

If some barbarians raid their country's borderlands, they feel no qualm about killing the raiders. If they find out that there's some trouble farther north, and the raids will stop when that problem is solved, fine. But if they can simply kill every raider and the border's safe again, that works too.

If a foreign noble is blocking a trade agreement they want, they might look into what service they can do for the noble, to sway his opinion. Maybe help reconcile him with his brother. Or they might blackmail the noble, or arrange an accident for him. Whatever works best.

It comes down to what's more beneficial over all for them, their gods, friends, and country. That's all the justification (most) of the PCs in my campaign need.


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## Clavis (Apr 21, 2008)

Rechan said:
			
		

> Actually, sounds more Ayn Rand.
> 
> So, are your campaigns at all serious?




Sure. But I try not to take myself or the game _too _seriously. The general tone of my games is heavily informed by movies like Jabberwocky and Army of Darkness. I like to use doses of satire and parody to lighten up the otherwise grim and grimy world. Also, my _human_ cultures are drawn from historical medieval ones (although with tweaks). Therefore I use modern culture as the inspiration for the Demi-Humans, to emphasize how different they are from humans. Since my players are very interested in modern politics, conspiracy theories, occultism, etc., they like seeing many cultures and organizations that echo a twisted version of the real-world.


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## Rechan (Apr 21, 2008)

Fenes said:
			
		

> stuff



That sounds a little less "Good" then some parties I've known are willing to operate under. 

Then again, I've known some parties that don't "care". So, different strokes.


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## haakon1 (Apr 21, 2008)

Afrodyte said:
			
		

> In any case, an idea I've been playing with is having the default cultural context be Native American, particularly Algonquin and Iroquois.  There would be tribes and territories, perhaps even powerful city-states, but no kingdoms.  Think _Pathfinder_ (the movie, without the Mandatory White Protagonist).  However, I won't simply reverse the cliche and make Europeans the "uncouth savages."  I prefer putting non-humans in that role.




How do you deal with equipment for a Stone Age culture?  The game assumes armor and so on.  I guess you could go the root of Spirit Pouches replacing armor and so forth, but I think it would be more interesting if you didn't.  The classes available also might vary.

Also, definitely read up on the Eastern Woodlands Indians.  These are not your typical 1950s Western movie Plains Indians.  The Iroquois, for example, had a complex political organization, with a constitution.

I suspect the PC's would expect the Pilgrims to show up eventually -- or the French Jesuits and fur traders, or Dutch merchants if they are more historically inclined.  If I had contact with Europeans, however, I'd be inclined to have it be Vikings . . .


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## haakon1 (Apr 21, 2008)

Dlsharrock said:
			
		

> Please tell me the dwarfs are all Hell's Angel bikers, easy riding in their horned helmets and leather studded armour!




They ride ponies that go vroom-vroom-vroom instead of neigh-neigh-neigh when they ride into town.

About orcs, mine are Lawful Evil, not Chaotic Evil, and act more like Stormtroopers (Nazi or Star Wars) than anything else -- fanatical warriors, sometimes smart, sometimes not, but usually willing to die to the last . . . um, orc.

I've had archer orcs and sapper orcs too, not just big melee weapon orcs.  My favorite orc weapon is the bardiche -- big pole cleaver thing.


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## Afrodyte (Apr 21, 2008)

haakon1 said:
			
		

> How do you deal with equipment for a Stone Age culture?  The game assumes armor and so on.  I guess you could go the root of Spirit Pouches replacing armor and so forth, but I think it would be more interesting if you didn't.  The classes available also might vary.




I probably wouldn't alter a thing.  Whatever that's available with Stone Age technology is available for PCs.  I won't even levy penalties since Stone Age is the baseline.  However, things from a Bronze Age or Iron Age culture would get bonuses.

As far as classes, I might alter some of what's available by sprucing up generic classes and making some class abilities available as feats.



> Also, definitely read up on the Eastern Woodlands Indians.  These are not your typical 1950s Western movie Plains Indians.  The Iroquois, for example, had a complex political organization, with a constitution.




Please don't insult my intelligence.  I already knew that (hence why I said Algonquin and/or Iroquois instead of "Sioux" - don't get me started on this insult used as a name - or Comanche or Apache), and if I didn't, I already knew several ways I could find the information.  



> I suspect the PC's would expect the Pilgrims to show up eventually -- or the French Jesuits and fur traders, or Dutch merchants if they are more historically inclined.  If I had contact with Europeans, however, I'd be inclined to have it be Vikings . . .




*shrug* Whatever.  Maybe Pilgrims don't exist yet.  That's my honest preference.


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## Imp (Apr 21, 2008)

Rechan said:
			
		

> Hmm. Chariots pulled by some sort of scary-ass animal. Like boar, vicious dogs, etc. That might work.



Hell hounds. \m/

"Hey Kaneda, they stole your dog."
"No way! My dog?"
ROWR *fwoosh*


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## haakon1 (Apr 22, 2008)

Afrodyte said:
			
		

> Please don't insult my intelligence.  I already knew that (hence why I said Algonquin and/or Iroquois instead of "Sioux" - don't get me started on this insult used as a name - or Comanche or Apache), and if I didn't, I already knew several ways I could find the information.




Yowza!

Remember earlier in this thread, when we were talking about how D&D players coming from many different cultures, and it being possible that people have different ideas of what a castle is like?  The same applies for knowledge of the sketchy history of the Woodlands Indian tribes, especially among people who are not from North America.  We even talked about how many Germans have a skewed view of American Indians.

OK then, never mind.


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## Afrodyte (Apr 22, 2008)

haakon1 said:
			
		

> Yowza!
> 
> Remember earlier in this thread, when we were talking about how D&D players coming from many different cultures, and it being possible that people have different ideas of what a castle is like?




I'm sorry.  I overreacted.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Apr 22, 2008)

Back on track...

I'm currently designing a background for a potential PC in an upcoming campaign.  It will be a twisted riff on the Chosen One/Last Heir trope.

(Details on the PC can be found here
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=223891&page=1 )



> It is said that "the First King was a lucky soldier."  Seth Trollslayer was that lucky soldier.  He took advantage of the fog of a war 'twixt Man & Trolls to place himself on the throne of a small kingdom in the northern mountains and take a beautiful shapeshifting sorceress as his queen.
> 
> Now, King Seth has had time to raise a family.  All three of his sons are strong, quick, and charismatic young men- perfect leadership material.  If only the youngest had the wit and wisdom required to be truly great...
> 
> ...


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## haakon1 (Apr 22, 2008)

Afrodyte said:
			
		

> I'm sorry.  I overreacted.




No worries, me too.

And I am interested in hearing more about your campaign, if/when you feel like talking about it.

I grew up in a woodsy/hilly/swampy part of New York, near Connecticut, and when I was a kid we used to go to a huge county park where there was a wigwam and so forth.  The coolest thing was when the naturalist at the park -- our local druid -- talked some members of the tribe that was there hundreds of years ago to visit and teach us kids the folkways that been handed down, about making wigwams, digging groundnuts, eating certain grasses, etc.  That and learning how to make maple syrup candy from sap and snow.


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## Dlsharrock (Apr 22, 2008)

Something I just thought of last night during a game session. Alignment - isn't that a cliche? Or is it that alignment perpetuates cliches. For example: Dexter, breaking the psychopathic preconception cliches. What is he? Chaotic Evil? Lawful Evil? Evil... Good?

Could you have a Dexter character in D&D? 
Beware spoilers folks. Some people still don't know he's an alien and that it's all a dream 

Edit: There's a similar themed thread running here I notice (about Evil/Good alignment issues, this time with direct regard to a whorring paladin).
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=113405


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## Afrodyte (Apr 22, 2008)

Disharrock,

I think alignment is a D&D trope, not one of fantasy in general.  However, the idea of races being innately good or evil is something that keep cropping up.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Apr 22, 2008)

Dexter is definitely lawful- he lives by a strict code.

He does have homicidal impulses, which would lead to thinking he's evil.

But despite his homicidal impulses, his code dictates that he may only kill the guilty.  His actions are at least good.  This gets him at least Neutral or Good in D&D.

One could argue that his impulses mean he has a hidden agenda that marks him as evil...but its not that he's doing good to hide an agenda, he's doing good to combat & control his inner demons.


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## Mallus (Apr 22, 2008)

The following is my take on "reinventing fantasy cliches". I clipped it from the Story Hour based on my current long-running campaign. It's the introduction to a... ahem... scholarly lecture on race being given in the capital city, which captures the flavor of the game fairly well...


"“So many species, subspecies, kin and kind in CITY! Putting a name to all would seem an insurmountable task. Better to put them to the sword. At least that would simplify the next census. But I am not here to discuss social policy. I come to enumerate the races of non-men, not to bury them.

The great novelist Marzel Joost put it thusly; “Counting the races that dwell in CITY is like counting needles in a stack of pins. Prickly, tedious work that’s hard on the eyes and likely to draw blood.” Consider that poor Joost was trying only to recall those nonhumans he met over the course of his brief, alcohol foreshortened life. I hope your seats are comfortable. We may be here a while.

That's not counting the Oddities and the Entities imported through the Slave Gates during the height of the Gate Builder Empire. Beings made more from Ideas and Appetites then flesh and blood. Fortunately many of them were unique, and more importantly benign, such as the Golden Rahl, employed by the Temple of Mr. Spidergod as an icon, who has delighted children for centuries with rides up and along the walls of the temple in Saltbend on his gleaming arachnoid back, his eight perfect eyes full of the kindness that only functional immortality and enormous wealth can bring. A few were more sinister, like the Semi-Lich who guards the Crypt of the Syndics in Ulum Dreii. A creature born in the Land of the Dead, tasked with ensuring the dearly departed, do not, in fact, take it with them. Then there were those who brought perverse, alien ideas to the streets of our great CITY, such as the men of living fire who introduced trade unionism to Narayan, the so-called Hotfellows Local 151. They all but control the Pandoor ovens used in the great temples of Kruetzel located there. How shameful! They call themselves “Azer”. I call them malcontents. And it’s quite true that their race is comprised solely of men. I’ll leave you to consider their unspeakable practices on your own.

So what do we do about this conundrum? Why, we need only look to the wisdom our Founding Fathers in the Gate Builder Empire. They decreed “Power is Knowledge!” Not the other way around, as purported by the scholars from lesser cultures. Those with the power control the discourse. So what if the bestial species imported by the Empire for slave-labor number upwards of 27? What matter if their names were “Uruk”, “Oger”, “Hubgubblyn”, and “Trull”? We’ll call them all Ghul, the old Imperial word for ‘meat’. Or perhaps, the Kaza-Ghul, the ‘Eaters of Meat’, who, in point of vulgar fact, often feasted on each other.

We will gather up races like a child gathers jacks, into categories of our fashioning, and place them neatly out of sight. We do this because it is convenient. We do this in the interest of having a manageable system of knowledge. But let me be unmistakably clear; we do this because we can.

That’s enough theory for now. Let us turn our attention to the important CITY races. First, of course, is Man, but I’ll leave him to the poets and trial lawyers to describe in detail. Next are the four Lesser Races; the Hannumin, Ruhk-Kaza, Shirac, and Garahjah…”

-- Introductory remarks to the Hrazbo-Y lecture series, given by Masshtek Vellolorum, director of the Misanthropic Studies program at the Museum of Defeated Cultures, Eris:CITY, winter 288, Monopolis Standard Year.


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## Rechan (Apr 22, 2008)

Dannyalcatraz said:
			
		

> Dexter is definitely lawful- he lives by a strict code.
> 
> He does have homicidal impulses, which would lead to thinking he's evil.
> 
> But despite his homicidal impulses, his code dictates that he may only kill the guilty.  His actions are at least good.  This gets him at least Neutral or Good in D&D.



He doesn't fight them in an honorable manner. He drugs them, drags them away in the night, and kills them when they are defenseless. That's not what I would quantify as "good".


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## Dannyalcatraz (Apr 23, 2008)

Good doesn't require honor


> *SRD*
> "Good" implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others.





OTOH


> *SRD*
> "Law" implies honor, trustworthiness, obedience to authority, and reliability.


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## Rechan (Apr 23, 2008)

I really don't care what the SRD says about alignment. That's not how it'd do it at my table.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Apr 23, 2008)

> Rechan
> I really don't care what the SRD says about alignment. That's not how it'd do it at my table.




How chaotic of you!  

But seriously- that kind of conflation of "Good" and "Law" could be problematic for you down the line.

After all, I bet you could find threads on this very site that discuss & support ambush as a valid tactic for Paladins, or letting them benefit from a "Sleep" or "Color Spray" spell cast by an ally (or by themselves, if they somehow have that capability).  Dexter's use of a drug to incapacitate a foe is no different.

Ditto their ability or even mandate to act as judge, jury and  _executioner_ under certain conditions, including especially the execution of persons or creatures deemed iredeemably and irrevocably evil.  That being's current state of incapacity rarely matters- Paladins are allowed to coup de grace, and if a Paladin is acting within his authority, execution of a prisoner is no different than Dex's action- in both cases, the victim is likely to be incapacitated.  (It could be, in certain rare circumstances, that the person to be executed is given "a chance" by virtue of some kind of trial by combat- usually typified by something like gladiatorial combats.)


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## Rechan (Apr 23, 2008)

Since this has become a discussion of alignment, I'm backing out.


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## DarkKestral (Apr 23, 2008)

Mallus, I love every bit of your in-character CITY posts. The setting reminds me of Mieville's Bas-Lag, Pratchett's Ankh-Morpork, and the Jewel Cities of the Black Company novels in a good way.


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## Mallus (Apr 23, 2008)

DarkKestral said:
			
		

> Mallus, I love every bit of your in-character CITY posts.



Thanks. They're a lot of fun to write, and I get plenty of encouragement/inspiration from the great group of people I run CITY for. Except, of course, when I overdo the puns. Then I get harsh looks and veiled threats of physical violence.



> The setting reminds me of Mieville's Bas-Lag, Pratchett's Ankh-Morpork, and the Jewel Cities of the Black Company novels in a good way.



There's definitely some New Crobuzon in CITY, but not so much Discworld or Black Company (believe me, if I could figure out how to steal from books I haven't read, I would!). I think a lot CITY come from me living in and around large cities for most of my life. That left with the strong impression that all cities should be vibrant, full of dangers we blithely ignore, and basically absurd.


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