The Gaming Den

As we all know, the existence of the Wish Economy makes the entire pseudo-medieval feel of Sword & Sorcery RPGs moot in games in which the D&D rules are used in.
So, if I may ask you folks, with your masterful genre-fitting and number-crunching skills, to recommend what gaming system fits the world of Dragonlance best?

I'd sooner throw myself into traffic than play in that poorly thought out piece of shit. And thats before the procession of incoherent revisions.

But... it was literally designed for 1e. By committee, no less (which is part of the problem). Go with that.

Voss at [unixtime wrote:1196994314[/unixtime]]I'd sooner throw myself into traffic than play in that poorly thought out piece of shit. And thats before the procession of incoherent revisions.

The game setting, the books, or both?
Just asking, but why do you hate Dragonlance?

I always thought it was the fey (or whatever elselings you have) that traded in the wish economy, and either accepting those gifts accepted their limitations or denying the gifts and losing the economy...

-Crissa

You mean the Gods that grant magic, including the Wizards?
There weren't any "Ye Olde Magic Shops," and magic was ostracized in most communities. Currently, as the Gods have let down their worshipers twice, many mortals, understandably, abandoned the Gods and their gifts.
In the original setting, the Gods were absent, and nobody but worshipers of the Gods of Evil could get spells, and arcane spell casters were hunted down, and they had only one safe refuge in all of Ansalon (the continent with the game setting).
The reason I brought this topic up was that I was considering running the original Dragonlance module (Dragons of Despair) and wondered what game system worked best for the mood.

I dislike it because its utterly sloppy, inconsistent and contains some of the most incredibly stupid ideas imaginable. Steel coinage. No, really. The whole fucking continent has been a war torn disaster area for centuries, and for some fucking reason, they take perfectly good steel and make it into coins.


And then there are the draconians. Made from the eggs of good dragons, which maybe number into the, what, hundreds? And somehow they multiply them out into the tens of thousands in a span of a couple decades.

Plus, you know, preachy moralizing sets my teeth on edge. Especially hypocritical preachy moralizing. The evil gods seem like better people then the good gods. They at least don't abandon their followers, kill millions and somehow pretend it was in everybody's best interest.

Voss at [unixtime wrote:1197000787[/unixtime]]1.) I dislike it because its utterly sloppy, inconsistent and contains some of the most incredibly stupid ideas imaginable. Steel coinage. No, really. The whole fucking continent has been a war torn disaster area for centuries, and for some fucking reason, they take perfectly good steel and make it into coins.


2.)And then there are the draconians. Made from the eggs of good dragons, which maybe number into the, what, hundreds? And somehow they multiply them out into the tens of thousands in a span of a couple decades.

3.)Plus, you know, preachy moralizing sets my teeth on edge. Especially hypocritical preachy moralizing. The evil gods seem like better people then the good gods. They at least don't abandon their followers, kill millions and somehow pretend it was in everybody's best interest.

To #1: I know what you mean. The fans explained that not all of the coins are made of steel, and those that are are mostly iron.
To #2: The War of the Lance Sourcebook explained that less powerful Dragon eggs create about 10-20 Draconians per egg. But since when did dragon embryos multiply?
To #3: I think that all of the gods are jerks. Heck, my gaming group unanimously agrees that Dragonlance contains the most hateful Gods of Good.
P.S. Genocidal madmen like the Kingpriest of Istar, who condoned blood sport, slavery, and forced conversion, was labeled as "too much Good." Heck, he even purged the worshipers of other Gods of Good! I was (metaphorically) screaming when the Kingpriest was labeled as Lawful Good in the official Legends of the Twins sourcebook.

P.S. I am sorry for arguing with you in the Pelorian drug cult thread. As I cannot reply in said thread for being locked, I decided to do it here.

Just run it in your regular house-ruled 3e and pretend it all makes sense. As others have said, Dragonlance isn't internally consistent enough to worry yourself over little things like the wish economy.

The best system would probably be some D20 -based thing you spent 900 hours to create, but who has time for that?

How good of a fit would the Tome series be? I assume that it could work well.

How would I handle inventions of Tinker Gnomes? I have a couple Steampunk fans in my group.

Edit: Shame

Captain_Bleach at [unixtime wrote:1197001243[/unixtime]]

To #1: I know what you mean. The fans explained that not all of the coins are made of steel, and those that are are mostly iron.
To #2: The War of the Lance Sourcebook explained that less powerful Dragon eggs create about 10-20 Draconians per egg. But since when did dragon embryos multiply?
To #3: I think that all of the gods are jerks. Heck, my gaming group unanimously agrees that Dragonlance contains the most hateful Gods of Good.

1- I'm glad the fans didn't realize that iron didn't make it any better. Thats comforting.
2- and the numbers still don't work. Really armies. At least of Baaz.
3- the truly creepy thing about this angle is how much Hickman plays up the connection to Mormon values. Really, flip through the Annotated Chronicles. The number of references to Mormonism are somewhat staggering, especially when Paladine is doing something disturbing.

From what I got on Wikipedia, I don't know much about Mormonism, other than Joseph Smith used to be a con artist, and that polygamy is practiced.

Thats... probably not a good description, even if they come across as a bit nuts, and often overly nice. Basically they are Christians with an extra twist, which gets a little weird. Polygamy has largely been sidelined. But essentially Smith found (or lied about) what could essentially be called an American testament. Apparently Jesus wandered over to north america after death, and hung out with a lost tribe of jews, who ended up getting slaughtered by native americans, and thats why they have red skin (no, really, bloodstains). But a new holy book (gold, plus some magic seeing crystals that allowed Smith to translate it), some divine revelations, angels, etc.

Mostly they're big on creepy, cult-like happiness and family values. And genealogy. The cousin-raping polygamists are apparently the fringe crazies. And you can't get in the Temples unless you're one of the faithful. Which is unfortunate, because they've got some interesting architecture (at least in DC and LA)

After reading the Annotated Chronicles, I rather suspect that the novels were Tracy Hickman's overly subtle attempt to convert gamers.

Steel coins are hard to copy, though, so if you trust the seal on them, they're good. And after a war you presumably have far more steel than people to occupy it. It worked for dark ages europe - steel being used because gold was too scarce.

Maybe you get draconians like you do litters of puppies. Instead of one big dragon, you get a litter of draconians. That's even vaguely plausible.

-Crissa

Voss at [unixtime wrote:1197009223[/unixtime]]Basically they are Christians with an extra twist, which gets a little weird.

They want people to think this, but it's not true at all. I know of what I speak, Grandpa was a Mormon who left. They use a lot of the same words that Christians do, but they're not describing the same things that Christians are. For instance, in Mormonism God is an exalted human with a physical body who lives on another planet, Jesus and Satan are brothers, and men can aspire to godhood themselves.

edit: Frank mentions the extreme patriarchy below, and I wanted to follow up with the clarification that while men can aspire to divinity, women can aspire to having the babies of those gods, on other planets, forever.

Christian sects believe a lot of different things, but Mormonism fails the basic 'do you believe Jesus is a space alien' test of sanity.

For the Dragonlance thing, I'd use low-level Tome D&D.

Basically they are Christians with an extra twist, which gets a little weird.

That's a generous way to put it, but sure. Mormons believe in Jesus, which makes them Christians by definition. Like all cults, Mormons have elaborate rules about what you can say to people outside the community and what you have to do for people who are part of the cult already.

Mormons are required to put as sunny a face as possible on all interactions with the outside world. Actually, women in the church are supposed to pretend to be happy all the time, even (especially) when dealing with their own family.

Every religion on some level or another believes in kooky things. Whether it's Hinduism's claim about baby Krishna dancing on the head of a giant snake or Catholicism's rant about King Harod having all the male children of Jerusalem put to death to try to stop the Baby Jesus from being born. The Mormons believe things which are no less stupid, but they get extra shit for it because it was really obviously written by a specific guy in the 19th century with a criminal record for fraud. They believe in various ancient battles in New York between steel using armies using horse-drawn chariots in the BCE days. Armies belonging to tribes which never even existed.

But every religion also has associated vices. We know that they are vices rather than quirks or kinks because they are illegal. In Mormonism, it's mostly child molestation and polygamy. It happens because of the patriarchal structure, the extreme secretism, and of course the fact that the founder of the religion specifically said that those were completely acceptable and holy activities that the heads of the church should engage in.

---

Mormon morality is really scary and weird and having them explain it to you is frightening and nauseating.

-Username17

In my fathers massive collection of books he has a copy of the Book of Mormon, he probably got it used at a library "selling old books" sale or something.

In any case, much like many of the books that we have at home, he probably hasn't read it.

I took a look at it a couple years ago and it just read to me as if it was.... and I'm not joking here, it read as if it was a fan-fiction version of the Bible with an entire cast of self-inserted characters.

I didn't bother reading it in any sort of detail and thought it was ridiculous. It's back on the shelves somewhere, and no one in my house will probably read it. Not a big loss in my opinion.

[TGFBS]

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Edit: Shame

Then I don't want it.

Judging__Eagle at [unixtime wrote:1197044609[/unixtime]]In my fathers massive collection of books he has a copy of the Book of Mormon, he probably got it used at a library "selling old books" sale or something.

In any case, much like many of the books that we have at home, he probably hasn't read it.

I took a look at it a couple years ago and it just read to me as if it was.... and I'm not joking here, it read as if it was a fan-fiction version of the Bible with an entire cast of self-inserted characters.

I didn't bother reading it in any sort of detail and thought it was ridiculous. It's back on the shelves somewhere, and no one in my house will probably read it. Not a big loss in my opinion.

Honestly all Western Religions sadly look that way to me. They're all designed to convert people, and that's about it. That's why you've got all these ridiculous promises of 600 virgins or whatever when you die, or the religion that allows you have multiple wives and all that stuff. It's purely perks to attract people into converting.

They're not really about true faith, they're just about forming cults. Christianity is really just a really big cult that got acceptance, but in the end it's the same conversion basis. You don't get closer to god, you just increase your numbers and form effectively a political group. Christianity ended up just being a way to exploit and victimize people. The whole idea was to teach peasants to just shut up and do their job because they'll get into heaven if they follow orders and let the nobles take all the money from their work. And of course, modern day Christianity is to blame for shit like Bush getting elected.

So I don't really scrutinize less popular religions like Mormonism anymore than I do the mainstream religions like Christianity or Islam. They're all the same.

Religions are just about giving you excuses to do what you want. Whether you're looking to victimize the poor and extort their money, get an army of zealots to send on stupid crusades or victimize women or children for your sexual fantasy, there's a religion for you.

RandomCasualty wrote:Christianity ended up just being a way to exploit and victimize people. The whole idea was to teach peasants to just shut up and do their job because they'll get into heaven if they follow orders and let the nobles take all the money from their work.

Oddly enough, that's also the basis of Hinduism. It's not just Western religions. It's meme theory. Any idea which effectively propagates itself will be large and popular, those which don't... won't. Proselytizing religions propagate their ideas more effectively than those that don't, as do religions which posit rewards; both for obvious reasons. That's why there's only four Shakers in the world, and the native American maltheist faiths are extinct.

[The Great Fence Builder Speaks]

The offers to scan in and e-mail copyrighted material will cease now.

[/TGFBS]

Yes, oh He Who Speaks and Builds Fences.

angelfromanotherpin at [unixtime wrote:1197059910[/unixtime]]That's why there's only four Shakers in the world...

I thought that was because Shakers didn't have children.