Major Design Choices of 4e D&D

[RandomCasualty2]

Actually what better time to introduce new races to games than at an edition switch? Honestly when else would you do it?

New campaign setting. Eberron introduced warforged, shifters and changelings and people were fine with it.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Guys, the reason why people didn't raise a stink about half-orcs/dwarves/elves/half-elves/halflings (they did about gnomes, though) is because these are legacy races with a history about RPGs. You didn't have to spend much time introducing them to players because people were already familiar with them.

Like RC2 said, the best time to introduce paradigm shifts are with a new campaign setting, not edition. If you do it with an edition that means that Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Eberron, etc. have to retroactively introduce whatever new races you feel like with no build-up, no context, no fucking THOUGHT whatsoever.

That's why Warforged worked and Goliaths didn't.

If 4E didn't frig its shit-covered grandma vagina to racialism or at least made the writeups interesting I would be more able to ignore them just copypasting whatever new race they feel like in.

[Psychic Robot]

In the default campaign setting these races have always existed and so there is no logical reason for them not to be accepted.

We still have discrimination based on skin color. How much worse do you think it would be if we had lizard people in the world?

EDIT: Go watch District 9. It might be fictional, but it's pretty damn accurate.

[angelfromanotherpin]

We still have discrimination based on skin color. How much worse do you think it would be if we had lizard people in the world?

I don't know, I mean, if these other peoples have been around since time immemorial, the advantages that integrated societies have might well have caused them to out-compete non-integrated societies; like neolithic tribes with dogs beat out neolithic tribes without dogs. Only in this case the dog is an intelligent lizard-man who breathes lightning, so the advantages are significantly bigger than those granted by dogs.

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

Species that occupy the same niche die. If there were dwarves or elves in addition to humans, there would eventually end up being only one species. This is a fantasy game, so I don't mind.

[Psychic Robot]

Only in this case the dog is an intelligent lizard-man who breathes lightning

I think that would exacerbate the issue.

[Doom]

Especially if the lizardman starts dating 'our' women.

[Username17]

Species that occupy the same niche die. If there were dwarves or elves in addition to humans, there would eventually end up being only one species. This is a fantasy game, so I don't mind.

This is a gross oversimplification of evolutionary processes. Actually the niche of "sapient tool user" is cooperation dependent and gets stronger the more people it has (regardless of genetic lineage) until the numbers get very very large. If you posit and underpopulated world, lightning breathing lizard men would only get killed off by humans in the event of ideological wars. Rather unlikely considering that D&D land has basically one acceptable ideology that is literally given by the gods who will actually show up on a flaming cloud and explain it to you.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

Is that the reason why 'civilized' races fight with orcs and hobgoblins to the death but will gladly form alliances with lizardmen and thri-kreen?

[MGuy]

Because by divine design orcs and goblins are evil and lizard/bug men aren't necessarily evil?

[Username17]

Ever notice how when the forces of "Evil" show up they have goblins and lizardfolk and orcs but also have humans and elves? I've often wondered if D&D wouldn't make more sense if the wickedness of team evil wasn't just propaganda, and Maglubiet was actually the good guy.

I mean honestly, the only good thing Bahamut does is provoke his followers to kill the followers of Tiamat. The only bad thing Tiamat does is provoke her followers to kill the followers of Bahamut. The only real difference seems to be that everyone seems to think that a minotaur would get attacked in a "good" city but no one thinks twice about there being humans walking around in Skullport.

Especially in 4e, where there are literally only two teams of gods instead of nine. The racial tolerance of "Team Evil" is really a shining beacon and a powerful example. Meanwhile, "Team Good" doesn't seem to stand for anything except hunting down orcs in their homes and killing them.

Probably make for a pretty good campaign.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

Probably make for a pretty good campaign.

-Username17

I grow so weary of the current trend of writers deconstructing plot holes to force their dumb old moral of 'see? SEE? You thought you were good, but you're really EVIL! Brrr! Freaking EDGY!'

I mean, it was interesting and thought-provoking the first few times that happened, but Jesus fuck, enough of that shit. I keep getting flashbacks to Chrono Cross. Either be upfront about this WH40K style or edit the setting rules so things actually reflect it the way you want good and evil represented. Don't pull that bait and switch shit.

[Psychic Robot]

Really, it's not such a big deal in 4e, given that even paladins aren't required to stand for anything.

[Username17]

Probably make for a pretty good campaign.

-Username17

I grow so weary of the current trend of writers deconstructing plot holes to force their dumb old moral of 'see? SEE? You thought you were good, but you're really EVIL! Brrr! Freaking EDGY!'

I mean, it was interesting and thought-provoking the first few times that happened, but Jesus fuck, enough of that shit. I keep getting flashbacks to Chrono Cross. Either be upfront about this WH40K style or edit the setting rules so things actually reflect it the way you want good and evil represented. Don't pull that bait and switch shit.

Believe me, I would never consider inflicting a Chrono Cross on anyone. I'm a dick, but that's just pointlessly cruel. If you're going to make Team Black Hat into the good guys, you should do it straight up. The players can be humans or goblins or whatever and they just happen to come from Mount Doom and shit. Having the racially segregated elvish kingdom in the woods be wicked really needs no special explanation.

But certainly one of the big problems I have with the high fantasy genre is that it's all based on Tolkien, and Tolkien confused his metaphors badly. His nostalgic call for pastoralism and personal greatness is exactly Fascist propaganda. His racial hierarchies could have come out of a Nazi playbook. The heroes of World War II are the industrialists that Tolkien feared, not the craftsmen he praised. While Tolkien could clearly identify Hitler as "the bad guy" he could never clearly identify a point that he differed from the NDSAP on, save that in the final tally their villainy is obvious.

Yurtle the Turtle is a clear call to action against the forces of Fascism. But Lord of the Rings really isn't. If you announced that Sauron was Stalin and Gondor was Germany, the metaphor would work just as well, maybe better than its intended reading that Gondor was England and Sauron was Hitler. Seriously, fights against the Orc hordes Really Do Read Like This. Pulling the metaphor around such that the goblin kingdoms are heroic modernists and the elves and dwarves are wicked genocidal fuckers is trivially easy to do. Tolkien bent over backwards to try to not get his stories read that way, and he was honestly not that successful. If you go onto Stormfront, actual NeoNazis use LotR as a screed.

But I agree with you that you probably shouldn't use it as some sort of surprise thing. It could be done well, with the characters put on the front lines of a war where they are the evil country, and have the characters gradually figure that out. But it would be a painful and stomach churning experience for a lot of players. It wouldn't go over well for most people who want to play D&D - people expect a certain amount of hack-n-slash from the genre. It would be a lot easier and cooler in Shadowrun or something where the players are expecting moral ambiguity and potentially switching sides.

If I were running it as a D&D game, I'd be all up front about it from the start.

-Username17

[FatR]

I grow so weary of the current trend of writers deconstructing plot holes to force their dumb old moral of 'see? SEE? You thought you were good, but you're really EVIL! Brrr! Freaking EDGY!'

Never mind that in DnD most evil factions are fucking defined (to everyone who bothers to actually read setting books without mentally editing out parts they don't like) by their genocidal hatred of either everything that is not them or, at least, traditionally good races, so this turnaround is not possible without outright retconning large parts of the settings.* The only general exception are "hive of scum and villainy"-type centers of evil, that are controlled by opportunitsts.

* Edit: this tendency is so strong that from time to time it gets silly. For example, almost every single fucking nation of bad guys in pre-4E FR either imagines itself the Master Race (drow, shades, yuan-ti, too many monsters to mention), or is ruled by a racially segregated elite (Thay), or generally perceives everyone else as prey (orcs, werethings, and, again, too many monsters to mention). Villains to whom neither of these applies, like zhents, still genocide things on racial basis (well, try to), when they see some profit in that.

[FatR]

In the default campaign setting these races have always existed and so there is no logical reason for them not to be accepted.

We still have discrimination based on skin color. How much worse do you think it would be if we had lizard people in the world?

EDIT: Go watch District 9. It might be fictional, but it's pretty damn accurate.

District 9 postulates that the humanity is retarded and cannot work without this assumption.

However, racial discrimination is seriously nothing compared to attitudes prevalent in early societies. Anyone who spoke a different language seriously was little better than animal. This does not mean that one race could exterminate all others in fantasy settings, but they'll certainly try.

[Psychic Robot]

District 9 postulates that the humanity is retarded and cannot work without this assumption.

I believe that this assumption has merit.

[souran]

Yurtle the Turtle is a clear call to action against the forces of Fascism. But Lord of the Rings really isn't. If you announced that Sauron was Stalin and Gondor was Germany, the metaphor would work just as well, maybe better than its intended reading that Gondor was England and Sauron was Hitler. Seriously, fights against the Orc hordes Really Do Read Like This. Pulling the metaphor around such that the goblin kingdoms are heroic modernists and the elves and dwarves are wicked genocidal fuckers is trivially easy to do. Tolkien bent over backwards to try to not get his stories read that way, and he was honestly not that successful. If you go onto Stormfront, actual NeoNazis use LotR as a screed.

-Username17

Frank is very correct about the awkwardness of Tolkiens setiments. Basically JRRT wanted a return to the previous century or earlier with pleasant farm communities and to everybody living in stately manor homes.

Its a lot like when people say that "real Americans" are only the people living in rural areas.

Its also true that a lot of "epic fantasy" stories, espeically those with story structures like Lord of the Rings, have a strange similarities to the heroic national narative that hitler beselled germany with. Infact, this was even explored in "the Iron Dream." (wikipeidia it, its neat).

However, there are other things to remember. Tolkien was not just a writer, he was a collector of tales and he researched mythology. He was well read. Vagner is source material for both LOTR and Mien Kampf. However, that doesn't mean that those two works were emphasising the same things.

When people say that D&D is based on tolkien that can mean several things. It can mean it owes its storytelling heritage to those ideas. It can mean it owes presentation to those ideas etc.

Really, based on what I have seen, and read, and been told by the first gen role players the big thing that rpgs took from tolkien was the same thing that wargames took from tolkien. Orcs and goblins presented a certain way trolls and elves etc. The big change was that not EVERYTHING was hostile to people. Northern european myths involving elves are usually quite bad for everybod who interacts with them.

However, fritz liebler and Robert howard had as much to do with what we think of as a D&D adventure as tolkien.

[Maxus]

True enough.

But, as David Eddings said, the success of the fantasy genre today can be traced back to Tolkien. If he hadn't come out with the Lord of the Rings, fantasy would be even less mainstream than it is today.

So, I suppose we owe him that much.

Personally, I would have liked to have met him and shaken his hand. If the time travel machine would permit this, maybe a DVD player and the LotR DVDs, to see what he thought of them.

[tzor]

When people say that D&D is based on tolkien that can mean several things. It can mean it owes its storytelling heritage to those ideas. It can mean it owes presentation to those ideas etc.

Frankly, when people say that “D&D is based on Tolkien” they are really saying that they don’t really know classic fantasy literature and Tolkien is the only name they are the most familiar with. The “core” behind the fantasy that is the cornerstone of D&D comes more from Howard’s Conan and Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. The later is exceptionally important because like Leiber, Gygax’s “vision” of fantasy was never “pure.” The character Karl Treuherz clearly brought in a sci-fi angle to Leiber’s work. Likewise Gygax never hesitated to throw in sci-fi items in the middle of this fantasy modules and had conversion tables to both his sci-fi role playing game and his western role playing game in the AD&D DMG.

Remember that in the original D&D, elves were a “class;” that is a single option for the development of the player. You could be a fighter, a wizard, a cleric or an elf. Gygax did attempt to steal a lot of the flavor of Tolkien when he made the advanced edition and had the pants sued off of him by the Tolkien estate; an event which has had repercussions that still plague the lawyer happy state of the game to this day.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I know that this thread has pretty much come and run its course, but I thought that I should add a few more. Because I hate Andy Collins.

• Players at high levels travel around and explore the world at high levels exactly the same way they did at low levels.
  
  Named NPCs' feats and abilities should not be limited to their stat block or inventory; Szass Tam can still mind control the Waterdeep council despite having no abilities leaning in that direction.
  
  Errata should be frequent, only consist of alterations to existing material rather than outright deletions/additions, and only make existing options worse never better.
  
  Players should stick to their basic array of equipment as much as possible. A paladin that uses platemail, a shield, and a bastard sword should be mechanically disincentivized from using anything else from both combat to combat and from low level to high level.
  
  Magical items should be permanent in duration unless as part of a legacy effect, like potions.
  
  Purchasable magical items should only have one or two major functions. A sword should not allow you to shoot fireballs, set things on fire with a swing, and provide resistance to heat.

[K]

When people say that D&D is based on tolkien that can mean several things. It can mean it owes its storytelling heritage to those ideas. It can mean it owes presentation to those ideas etc.

Frankly, when people say that “D&D is based on Tolkien” they are really saying that they don’t really know classic fantasy literature and Tolkien is the only name they are the most familiar with. The “core” behind the fantasy that is the cornerstone of D&D comes more from Howard’s Conan and Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. The later is exceptionally important because like Leiber, Gygax’s “vision” of fantasy was never “pure.” The character Karl Treuherz clearly brought in a sci-fi angle to Leiber’s work. Likewise Gygax never hesitated to throw in sci-fi items in the middle of this fantasy modules and had conversion tables to both his sci-fi role playing game and his western role playing game in the AD&D DMG.

Remember that in the original D&D, elves were a “class;” that is a single option for the development of the player. You could be a fighter, a wizard, a cleric or an elf. Gygax did attempt to steal a lot of the flavor of Tolkien when he made the advanced edition and had the pants sued off of him by the Tolkien estate; an event which has had repercussions that still plague the lawyer happy state of the game to this day.

I don't agree with Tzor..... like ever.... but +1 on this.

I mean, he stole Vancian casting from ... wait for it... Jack Vance. DnD is pretty clearly a collection of many stolen fantasy properties, but Tolkien was the best developed so he stole the bulk from there.

[Maxus]

I don't agree with Tzor..... like ever.... but +1 on this.

I mean, he stole Vancian casting from ... wait for it... Jack Vance. DnD is pretty clearly a collection of many stolen fantasy properties, but Tolkien was the best developed so he stole the bulk from there.

What puzzles me is people holding LotR games as a goal to be achieved.

I know someone who keeps Aragorn as a mental reference point for his games. And Beowulf as another.

The only 'D&D Inspiration' character I'd actually want to play in my own games is Conan.

Except, funny enough, you and Frank did a good job modelling him with the RoW Barbarian. Add in hide/move silently, and you'd have a class acceptable at doing Conan-ish things, like wading into a crowd of mooks and killing most of them in one hit, and taking abuse which would kill other people and recovering quickly after a fight.

[Psychic Robot]

What puzzles me is people holding LotR games as a goal to be achieved.

It's more the idea of LotR games that people want. Long, epic story? Hobbits and dwarves and elves, oh, my? Wizards? Adventures, monsters, and dungeons? Magic items? Saving the world?