FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1203370950[/unixtime]]K wrote:Lord of the Rings
Yes, LotR, where Sauron strides across the battlefield and devastates entire nations all by himself. Where the presence or absence of a single Ring Wraith spells the salvation or doom of thousands, and where a couple of minor characters have a bet as to how many cloned super soldiers they can kill and Gimli wins it 42 to 41. More major characters shatter castles and raise themselves from the dead. The entire plot revolves around characters being led around by an archangel while they are questing to kill the god of evil, which they do.
I hate to break it to you, but Sauron has an army. I know the movie is really exiting and Sauron is the most interesting thing on the screen, but he really does have a whole army standing behind him.
He doesn't even show up in the trilogy so he might not even exist...it could be the ring the whole time that is moving around armies and Wraiths.
Some exciting plot points do occur and thats what makes exciting low-level play, but the characters in this setting do the vast majority of their work when Gandalf the Plot Device is off screen and the party really is fighting maybe ten orcs at a time. They toss the plot point ring into the plot point volcano and a castle falls down. Maybe they tell the plot point Ents to smash a castle belonging to the guys they would kill if they only knew about it. At no point do any major characters they use their Dragonsmash Attack! to smash any castle.
FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1203370950[/unixtime]]K wrote:Wheel of Time
Are you fucking kidding me? They kill a god in the first book, and subsequent books involve turning entire cities into craters Dragon Ball style.
They killed a mage in the first book. No one worships him and he doesn't grant anyone power and there are no statues of him anywhere. Basically he fails on all the "god criteria".
And yes, at high levels they level cities using artifacts. I really don't care what happens when people use plot devices to change things in a setting, because at any point a plot device can be removed when you don't need it (if you recall, the Crystal Sword gets stolen and the male super Sa-angreal melts after Rand cleanses the Source). Again, at no point is someone using their Super Blasto Attack to melt the city; they are using a plot device which is removed after its creates a plot point.
FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1203370950[/unixtime]]
And that's not surprising, because that is indeed what D&D was written to be about. It was based on Tolkien's work (and to a lesser extent on the works of Pohl Anderson). And that includes the fact that 10th level characters were able to grind their way through hundreds of orcs or human soldiers. That was written up as the expected encounters in the old modules. When you went on the expedition to the Underdark, you racked up a body count that was four digits long. And when you were done, you killed a fucking goddess!
Yeh, back then Lolth had 86 HPs in a world where the party fighter was doing 1d10+3 damage and the party wizard was doing 10d6 with a Fireball and she had as much raw power as a mid-level demon of today's DnD . You can call something a "god" but we know that back in the day dragons or a pack of wraiths could kill "gods" if they cared.
FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1203370950[/unixtime]]
People should only advance to higher power levels at the completion of quests and even then only when the players want to roll with a higher powered crowd.
Sure, I've always agreed to that. Whats your point?
FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1203370950[/unixtime]]
But saying that it shouldn't be in the game at all is short sighted. Not only has it always been in the game, it's in the very source material you are quoting as being your personal inspiration.
Walking around in a god fantasy is unplayable on first principles. You want characters to be gods and enemies to be gods and everyone is only a god when the PCs get to beat them.
Thats not a game or a story, so I don't know how it can be a playable RPG. Seriously.