Snakes Are Books

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Jan 07, 2011 7:53 am

Imagine the snake that has the Book of Vile Darkness in it's scales...
yeesh. I suppose it's young would have the many incomplete, fractured, and unofficial copies in their scales.

Aryxbez · Post by **Aryxbez** » Fri Jan 07, 2011 3:54 pm

well if it helps in regards to CatharzGodfoot, the beginning of the article did mention:

Every serpent is a text. Certain people (and non-people) know how to read their scales.

So you could still have certain sages, Druids, and other types with high knowledge in nature, to be only people to read these snakes.

Otherwise, yeah, it is a really cool idea actually, it'd make for an interesting culture, of people who actually carried around a basket of snakes as a Spellbook, or something. Even Dead skin of some kind of scaled creature, to be used as a scroll. I also really like the idea of the Lernean Hydra, who's regenerating Heads, keep a flow of information to the world and such.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Jan 07, 2011 4:32 pm

Cartharz's complaint is completely nonsensical. Texts shouldn't exist in the game if they aren't adventure relevant, because players might delay the game by reading irrelevant books? What the fuck? By that logic no investigations of absolutely anything should be possible in the game. After all, if people count how many rocks there are in a pile, that slows the game down. Fuck, by that logic you shouldn't be able to interact with anything in the game except doors and keys. Fuck that.

Now I would go a step further than the original post. I would never have any snake's body be a book of fiction. Every snake would be about something, whether it be magic, or physics, or history. Then I'd have research libraries where they seriously just transcribed snakes over and over again with monks. Yes, players could go catch snakes and read them - but they could also go read books. The one is no more disruptive than the other.

-Username17

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Fri Jan 07, 2011 4:47 pm

Fair enough about the disruption issue, but I still think it's a dumb idea. It's just so fukking lazy. You don't have people like Charles Darwin writing The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals; instead, Charles runs around in the Beagle killing and stuffing snakes, hoping to find his great works.

Sure, it's kind of neat to have skilled taxidermists counterfeiting snakes (because they're never fictional). You can still have great authors like Homer. But the pursuit of science is now the pursuit of snakes.

And seriously, Frank, monks aren't going to be transcribing snakes; they'll be killing snakes and preserving their skins. Unless they're religiously prevented from doing so...

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Fri Jan 07, 2011 5:11 pm

finally read the article and think it quite dumb.if some snakes, over years, had been bred for being books and their "patterns" able to be trained for special purposes sure...but all the worlds snakes jsut containing everything that could ever be written?

the illiterate get arrested for killing snakes that are killing their livestock cause they could have been a useful book?

eating snakes is prohibited because you could eat the cure of some disease?

why not read the spots on leopards, stripes on zebra, and gut other humans to read their entrails?

yeah not something i would use for a game. snakeskin for parchment maybe..but this idea is just downright dumb.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Fri Jan 07, 2011 8:05 pm

CatharzGodfoot wrote:Fair enough about the disruption issue, but I still think it's a dumb idea. It's just so fukking lazy. You don't have people like Charles Darwin writing The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals; instead, Charles runs around in the Beagle killing and stuffing snakes, hoping to find his great works.

Sure, it's kind of neat to have skilled taxidermists counterfeiting snakes (because they're never fictional). You can still have great authors like Homer. But the pursuit of science is now the pursuit of snakes.

And seriously, Frank, monks aren't going to be transcribing snakes; they'll be killing snakes and preserving their skins. Unless they're religiously prevented from doing so...

Just because snakes are books they are writing themselves, doesn't mean there are no other books. The blog post already explicitly mentioned libraries, and transcribing hydra newsfeeds, there is literally nothing even suggesting that you can't write your own book.

I do like the idea of some snakes being fiction of varying caliber and quality though, or especially of them being poetry.

As to it being game disrupting, how many wizards don't have libraries? The books there aren't disruptive, why would these ones be?

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Jan 07, 2011 10:54 pm

shadzar wrote:finally read the article and think it quite dumb.if some snakes, over years, had been bred for being books and their "patterns" able to be trained for special purposes sure...but all the worlds snakes jsut containing everything that could ever be written?

the illiterate get arrested for killing snakes that are killing their livestock cause they could have been a useful book?

eating snakes is prohibited because you could eat the cure of some disease?

why not read the spots on leopards, stripes on zebra, and gut other humans to read their entrails?

yeah not something i would use for a game. snakeskin for parchment maybe..but this idea is just downright dumb.

Shad, I know it's difficult, but try to actually think before you post.
It's not illegal to destroy books. It's not illegal to go into some rain forest and eat every unknown thing you come across.
And it's not spots on leopards or stripes on zebras because there are only a handful of creatures in D&D that are part leopard or part zebra while it seems something like 2/3s of the monsters are scaly. The idea was someone's idea to both explain the vast array of snake and reptilian monsters in D&D, and come up with a cool idea.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Fri Jan 07, 2011 11:04 pm

Prak_Anima wrote:
shadzar wrote:finally read the article and think it quite dumb.if some snakes, over years, had been bred for being books and their "patterns" able to be trained for special purposes sure...but all the worlds snakes jsut containing everything that could ever be written?

the illiterate get arrested for killing snakes that are killing their livestock cause they could have been a useful book?

eating snakes is prohibited because you could eat the cure of some disease?

why not read the spots on leopards, stripes on zebra, and gut other humans to read their entrails?

yeah not something i would use for a game. snakeskin for parchment maybe..but this idea is just downright dumb.
Shad, I know it's difficult, but try to actually think before you post.
It's not illegal to destroy books. It's not illegal to go into some rain forest and eat every unknown thing you come across.
And it's not spots on leopards or stripes on zebras because there are only a handful of creatures in D&D that are part leopard or part zebra while it seems something like 2/3s of the monsters are scaly. The idea was someone's idea to both explain the vast array of snake and reptilian monsters in D&D, and come up with a cool idea.

you think. if there is known that snakes contain such great or powerful knowledge then someone somewhere will protect them maybe even overly so.

it is easy to see at first glance why so MANY monsters in the game would be reptilian...dungeons and DRAGONS, not dungeons and hairy beasts.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Jan 07, 2011 11:09 pm

It's entirely possibly some as yet unknown flower or bug in the amazon contains the key to the cure for cancer.

And so what if someone's protecting snakes? It's an RPG, that's a plot hook.

The guy was looking for a non-meta explanation (and actually the meta-explanation is more likely that Yuan Ti are a product identity monster, and they've spent a lot of time coming up with monsters to be associated with them, and the trope of Reptiles Are Abhorrent.)