Magical Ways to Emulate Modern Techonology

Shady314 · Post by **Shady314** » Sun Mar 08, 2015 11:20 pm

K wrote:By comparison, Forgotten Realms produced 32 products in just 1989 and 1990 combined. On average, maybe ten products a year for over 20 years and over ten video game adaptations.

One of those is a success. The other is not.

If you're not the most successful then you're not a success at all?

K · Post by K » Sun Mar 08, 2015 11:22 pm

Red_Rob wrote:Come on, an RPG line running to 31 books is a success by pretty much any measure.

According to this list of Shadowrun books by edition Shadowrun 1e only had 29 books printed. So that would not be a success by your metric?

Sure, but only because it spawned a second, third, fourth, and fifth edition with seven video games. That's a success.

K · Post by K » Sun Mar 08, 2015 11:26 pm

Shady314 wrote:
K wrote:By comparison, Forgotten Realms produced 32 products in just 1989 and 1990 combined. On average, maybe ten products a year for over 20 years and over ten video game adaptations.

One of those is a success. The other is not.
If you're not the most successful then you're not a success at all?

Nah. I'd probably put Eberron at the minimum level of "success." Eberron spawned more novels than Dark Sun produced in all products total.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Mar 09, 2015 12:36 am

If Dark Sun wasn't a success, why the hell are we talking about it and still seeing products set in it 24 years later?

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Mon Mar 09, 2015 12:43 am

K wrote:
momothefiddler wrote:
K wrote:Western culture defined necromancy
I read every page linked by the first page of that search and the only one that even discussed power related to death as a concept vs "those who have died" was urban dictionary. You have a point with symbols but that's a terrible piece of evidence for it.
There are 139,000 pieces of evidence there. Read past the first page like someone who is actually trying.

I'm sorry, I thought your point was that necromancy is inherently squicky as opposed to inherently related to the dead or whatever (which is wrong), not that Google is a shit search engine (also wrong) or that I have to read a hundred thousand increasingly strange and terrible webpages before I'm allowed to argue with you (not even wrong).

K wrote:The point here is that necromancy is defined in Western culture and well-known by your RPG audience.

Yes, and I submit that it's defined and known by an RPG audience as "dead people magic", not as "ew gross", what with the existence of PC necromancers and antiheroes and shamans and so on.

K wrote:Trying to make a tame version that's not squicky means that people won't like it because it won't fit their expectations.

I feel like we might be talking past each other. I'm looking for anything but a "tame" version, I'm looking for a dangerous and terrible version with a few characters playing with it anyway and skirting the costs through cleverness and sheer badassery. I can't imagine you'd object to the binding of a volcano spirit and be all "yeah but destruction symbolism so your house burns down even though you made it out of stone to avoid that specific thing and that's not in the rules... because reasons." I hope I'm not wrong.

K wrote:It also means that you, as a designer, are crap because you were too afraid to use a different word. You could have named your negative energy manipulation power anything else, but you cheated and chose "necromancy" because you wanted to cool flavor that your audience associated with the word. You wanted the cool factor of liches but you didn't want to actually use them as squicky undead which is the part that makes them cool.

Buddy, if you're objecting to me calling my dead-person magic/death magic necromancy because you're too scared to coin the term squickmancy, that's your problem.

K · Post by K » Mon Mar 09, 2015 12:55 am

Prak wrote:If Dark Sun wasn't a success, why the hell are we talking about it and still seeing products set in it 24 years later?

Because the gaming industry employs the same 30 people over and over?

Seriously, most of the Dark Sun books were made between 1991 and 1996. Then 14 years go by where nothing is made, and in 2010 you get a three sourcebook and three novel blitz because WotC thought they could cash in on nostalgia cash.

Successful things don't go out of print for 14 years, and a three sourcebook revival with a novel push that stalls immediately is a pretty good sign of failure.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Mar 09, 2015 1:17 am

Eight years. Paizo did a Dragon/Dungeon magazine pair that updated Dark Sun to 3.X in 2004.

Also Athas.org was an officially sanctioned fansite which updated Dark Sun material to 3rd edition in 2002, so really six years.

Also both the 3.0 and 3.5 Psionics books plundered Athas for material, including several races such as half giants and the thri kreen, so really five years, which is only a year after 3rd edition was first released.

K · Post by K » Mon Mar 09, 2015 1:32 am

Prak wrote:Eight years. Paizo did a Dragon/Dungeon magazine pair that updated Dark Sun to 3.X in 2004.

Also Athas.org was an officially sanctioned fansite which updated Dark Sun material to 3rd edition in 2002, so really six years.

Also both the 3.0 and 3.5 Psionics books plundered Athas for material, including several races such as half giants and the thri kreen, so really five years, which is only a year after 3rd edition was first released.

Single issues of magazines don't count (by that metric, Githyanki and Book of Vile Darkness were as successful as Dark Sun). Stealing a monster or two doesn't count.

If your setting can't sell an actual book for 14 years, it's a failure. Failing basic financial viability is a benchmark.

Dark Sun is an interesting setting. I like it, but then I also like the other failure settings like Spelljammer and Ravenloft and Planescape. I like them despite the fact that they all have deeply flawed design because they succeeded at being interesting even though they were shooting for being successful and good.

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Mon Mar 09, 2015 2:12 am

On the subject of necromancy, in my opinion, it works best when it is icky. That's not to say that a hero can't use it. And it certainly isn't to say that it always backfires (that seems to have been a construction of momothefiddler out of thin air.

If being undead is 'not squicky', there's really no reason not to convert the entire population into intelligent undead. They'd effectively be immortal, and without the need to eat, sleep, of handle basic needs, we'd all have a lot more time to deal with whatever things we decide are still worthwhile... At a fundamental level, losing our biological processes is scary. At least for most people...

At another level, using the dead without respect for their wishes is pretty offensive. If I lived my whole life defending my country, but my animated corpse is used to destroy it anyone would agree that if I were alive, I would object. A necromancer is almost certainly disregarding the wishes of the formerly living subject - the dead body has become a tool without regard for the wishes of the former owner. While practical, that's offensive to a lot of people.

While bringing physics into things isn't always a good idea with a magical world, it is bothersome if an animated corpse doesn't have anything providing an energy source. Undead continue to function in an anti-magic field, so they appear to have a source other than the magic that created them. Whether this is drawing sustenance from the living (as OccludedSun suggested) or some other power, it is possible it would generally be seen as unpleasant...

So, what's a good necromancer to do? Well, there's always the spells that don't actually involve creating undead. But even if you create undead you could specifically target 'bad guys' that don't deserve the consideration that 'our honored dead' would typically receive. Criminals and traitors, for instance. Many of the people that would object to 'Uncle Joe' being raised as a skeleton wouldn't object if the slain orc raiders were used that way against their kin. Sure - it still means you're disrespecting the wishes of the former body's owner but to the folks that are watching you're using it 'for a good cause'.

So, that's the line - you have to make sure you're doing things 'for good reasons', but even then, most people are going to have some reservations. Viewed from the other side, you're always going to be 'evil'. It makes for a pretty compelling anti-hero (accepting damnation for a greater goal) but it doesn't work for a Captain American type of 'ultimate good guy'.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Mar 09, 2015 2:35 am

People can think whatever they want about their bodies, but in my view, a corpse is an object. People agreeing that were I alive I'd object to my corpse being used to destroy innocent lives is like thinking that I'd object to someone wearing my pants to do the same after I'd thrown them out. I'm done with it, what do I care about someone scavenging it to do whatever?

Of course, I recognize that I am not representative of many people.

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Mon Mar 09, 2015 2:42 am

My stance is essentially the same as Prak's, and I admit that I honestly do not comprehend the idea that I be allowed to determine what happens to my corpse any more than I do the idea - which has been voiced in all sincerity to me - that I have the right to decide who's allowed to use my name and in what contexts, since it's mine.

I do understand that most people find that squicky, though, yes. But if I take your grandparents' bones and animate them and hitch them to a generator to power my computer so I can play Skyrim on it, can't that just be it? Can't you find that squicky while I don't and that's the end? Do you really have to say that my power isn't "animating corpses" but instead "being squicky" and thus that my copy of Skyrim is suddenly Battlefield, because I don't enjoy it?

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Mon Mar 09, 2015 3:02 am

I'm actually with K here, sort of.

Necromancy is (or at least should be) about contacting the spirits of dead people. If you make a dead body move around in away that doesn't involve putting a spirit into it, that honestly shouldn't be necromancy. It should be golemancy or something. Necromancy should be 100% souls and ghosts and shit, with zombies as one possible application of your ghost controlling powers.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Mar 09, 2015 3:06 am

There's an important issue to parse in this sort of attitude towards necromancy that I left out- we assume there is a division of body and "person," and that the body can be raised without affecting the person in anyway. In reality, so far as I know, the jury is still out on what creates ours consciousness and awareness and personality, but in D&D it's pretty clear that whether all of that is a part of the canonical D&D soul or not, it's definitely separate from the corpse. Animate Dead says nothing about trapping the psyche of the people whose bodies you're using.

So, in core D&D, let's say I die. Someone cuts a finger or ear off and goes off to get me resurrected with that bit, and a necromancer comes along and uses the fresh corpse to make a skeleton.

My finger or ear or dick is used to resurrect me, and a new body is created. I later come across the zombie of my original body... I don't know, culling kittens. Whatever. I will find the mass slaughter of kittens reprehensible, and I might be a bit peeved if this zombie isn't corrupted in anyway, so someone might think it's actually me not a zombie, but I don't find the use of my original body to do so problematic or distasteful in any way. Hell, if the necromancer hadn't raised my original body, I'd have considered doing so myself, for various purposes.

Now, if the necromancer turned my original corpse into a ghoul, it's generally assumed that sapient undead retain the psyche of the original person. Create Undead doesn't confer control however, so I flip the necromancer two fingers and walk off to continue on doing whatever. If he casts dominate monster or uses rebuke undead and commands me to cull kittens, I'm of course pissed, but that's because he's using my body while I'm in it.
I have no clue what happens if someone tries to true res me, or res me from a clipping, when I'm a sapient undead, but other than the provision which says you can't res an undead, but can res someone who become undead and then was destroyed, I would think my clipping would create a new me? This gets weird.

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Mon Mar 09, 2015 3:17 am

Grek: I think that's the opposite of what K's arguing. In fact, he's been pushing deeper and deeper into that google page for things that aren't talking to dead people, so....

That said, I'm cool with separating "enslaving people who happen to be separated from their bodies" and "making corpses do shit" - and I'm happy to admit that I have a problem with the former and not the latter, and if only one of those can be "necromancy" then it's the former and I'll accept your flesh golem magic to power my computer. But I do think that "draining the abstract life energy out of nearby things to power a corpse-golem" fits pretty well into necromancy until you get as specific as you are here.

Prak: something something dilution of brand.
But more seriously, yes. I take issue with someone enslaving me, or a copy of me, or anyone else, to move their wagon whenever they want to go somewhere. I don't take issue with someone using my corpse as a focus for their flesh robot to pull their wagon.

Your mention of resurrection does bring up an interesting note on property rights - if I need my body once resurrected, or to be resurrected, I don't want someone else to use it. But that's a lot like not wanting someone to snatch up the life insurance policy that was supposed to pay the cleric, so it's definitely a property rights thing.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Mon Mar 09, 2015 3:31 am

momo: Probably. K seems to want necromancy to actually be Evilmancy. Now, obviously you can't use Evilamancy to do good things. It has Evil right in the name. Many Evilmancy spells require corpses as material components - not because the corpse is vital to the spell, but because of some sort of Conservation of Evil principle where you have to generate enough Evil (through murder) to make the spell work, and if you try to satisfy the letter of the requirements without doing any actual Evil, the spell fails. Likewise, K seems to want Evilmancy to work such that if you try to use the spell to do non-Evil things, the Evil magically grounds itself out by pissing in your cheerios and giving your dog necrotizing fasciitis. And while that's probably a spell set that should exist in some games, I submit that you shouldn't call it Necromancy.

Emerald · Post by **Emerald** » Mon Mar 09, 2015 4:34 am

deaddmwalking wrote:While bringing physics into things isn't always a good idea with a magical world, it is bothersome if an animated corpse doesn't have anything providing an energy source. Undead continue to function in an anti-magic field, so they appear to have a source other than the magic that created them. Whether this is drawing sustenance from the living (as OccludedSun suggested) or some other power, it is possible it would generally be seen as unpleasant...

In core D&D, undead are powered by negative energy in the same way that living creatures are powered by positive energy, so they do indeed have an energy source and perpetual motion isn't a problem.

How they're powered by that is left unanswered, so perhaps living beings extract positive energy from their food somehow while undead generate negative energy by negating ambient positive energy, thus producing the squicky side effects being debated without changing any existing flavor too much.

erik · Post by **erik** » Mon Mar 09, 2015 5:06 am

K wrote:The example is a Craftworld Eldar. It's not an Elf. Literally. With words.

Words matter. The writer of the Eldar knew that people would think he was shitty if he tried to write "Elf' next to the picture of an Eldar. That's why he took his race with some similarities to elves and made a new name for what he was doing. That's what designers do when they don't want people to laugh at them for bad design.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundering_ ... lves#Eldar
"The Eldar are those who accepted the summons. Their name, literally Star People, was given to them by Oromë in their own language."

Warhammer totally lifted the Eldar from the president and founder of the Elven Fanboy Club. Eldar are literally a group of elves. That is the origin.

Necromancy has a varied history, and the form of argument that you must render judgment on over a hundred thousand links is insane. That is a terrible form of argument. Bad K, bad. If I weren't a mellow guy I'd be infuriated at what a shitty form of argument that is.

People presented respectable citations and examples (wikipedia and media) and those are good forms of argument. You can't rebut them by saying "Yeah, but you didn't spend 10 years reading 167,000 random result pages".

Now, I tried to see what as at the end of that list for amusement's sake since I figured it would be shit that was the least related, like a random I Love Lucy episode or something, but it turns out there were only 234 results on RPG necromancy, and a shitload of duplication. So as it turns out, not over a hundred thousand results, but you didn't know that K because you didn't look at the 100k+ results either. Which is just one more reason why it is such a shitty form of argument.

If you had wanted everyone to reference the Dabbler OCC you should have just said so, rather than pointing at random google results and suggesting that they were informative and definitive evidence of... something? Otherwise you're just suggesting people sift through garbage and figure out how much of the garbage backs your claim versus not. Ugh.

Moving on...

If you can find examples of so-called necromancy in popular media that fit how you want to use it, then you aren't being a lazy fuck for using it in that manner with that name.

I don't think it necromancy has to be "squick" because squick to some people is other people's fetish. That's a losing battle. It is magic + death, and then let the chips fall where they may. For many and probably most people death is squick. So you're fine there.

"Death is rot and poison and pain and terror and awfulness" is one but not the only take on death. As was already noted, those things are aspects of life.

I could see the potential for having a way to make an undead skeleton mage that doesn't require acts of unspeakable evil to become, but without exception DnD hasn't succeeded at making "good liches" that weren't shitty. And in fact I suspect that K would agree that if you did make such a thing, then it's a bad idea to call it a lich. Liches are fairly tightly defined and have "unspeakable evil" as part of their entry requirements. If there were a tear just on using the word "lich" to describe good undead, and citing it as shitty game design, I'd totally be in K's corner for that.

Necromancy, and elves too I suppose, have much more varied representations allowing you to choose a greater selection of what you wish when using those words. They've become diluted and that's fine to use something within or at the edges of their diluted form, you just need to explain it a little more firmly at the onset of when you use them to starch things up.

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Mon Mar 09, 2015 5:07 am

Emerald wrote:In core D&D, undead are powered by negative energy in the same way that living creatures are powered by positive energy, so they do indeed have an energy source and perpetual motion isn't a problem.

I think that once you have beings fueled by energy from an infinite plane made entirely of that energy "perpetual motion" stops being a worrisome thing. It just so happens that animated skeletons turning a crank are easier to get (magic-wise) than a portal to the elemental plane of fire boiling steam to turn a crank.

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Mon Mar 09, 2015 6:15 am

K wrote:The example is a Craftworld Eldar. It's not an Elf. Literally. With words.

Words matter. The writer of the Eldar knew that people would think he was shitty if he tried to write "Elf' next to the picture of an Eldar. That's why he took his race with some similarities to elves and made a new name for what he was doing. That's what designers do when they don't want people to laugh at them for bad design.

Actually, as far as I know they just did that because Space Elves sounded too campy when 3rd Ed kicked in. EDIT: And even if I'm wrong on that Eldar is literally a Tolkien word for Elves as has already been said.

K wrote:Second, I invite to to read this thread again and then realize that I never said that necromancy should be unplayable. The fact that you are strawmanning while accusing others of strawmanning is ironic, but not helpful.

I was extrapolating from how you kept going on and on and on about how nothing done with necromancy should ever be able to have a sustainable good result. It follows naturally from that position to assume that you cannot be an effective necromancer in a heroic party. It seems you had not taken your own stated views to their logical conclusion.

K wrote:Third, I invite you to read more than 3 pages about necromancy. Reading 0.02% of the results is poor scholarship in any context. In fact, read up on RPG necromancy if you need the field narrowed down a bit (only 167,000 entries there).

As gas already been alluded to, Google searches are for all intents and purposes sorted for relevance to popular culture - after all, they are to my knowledge primarily ranked by people linking to a page. If it's not in the top 30 of a Google search, odds are that's because it isn't fucking relevant.

erik wrote:I could see the potential for having a way to make an undead skeleton mage that doesn't require acts of unspeakable evil to become, but without exception DnD hasn't succeeded at making "good liches" that weren't shitty. And in fact I suspect that K would agree that if you did make such a thing, then it's a bad idea to call it a lich. Liches are fairly tightly defined and have "unspeakable evil" as part of their entry requirements. If there were a tear just on using the word "lich" to describe good undead, and citing it as shitty game design, I'd totally be in K's corner for that.

The only "nonevil liches" in D&D I'm aware of are the Baelnorns and those weird positive energy not-undead things from Eberron. What other times has D&D failed to make "nonevil liches"?

I'd also however dispute that specifically being unspeakably evil is an absolutely necessary part of being a lich. 5e liches enforce it by making you offer up innocent souls to Orcus to maintain your lichdom or something, and in the thread about it here that was condemned because it meant lichdom was no longer the triumph of arcane magic over the cycle of life and death. The only part of 3.5 that seems to enforce it is the supposed "unspeakably evil" ritual that isn't described that turns you into a lich, and that's nothing but flavour text, and it doesn't go into what the lich has then continued to do to keep counting as not only horribly evil, but horribly evil in an immediate and should-be-face-stabbed-promptly fashion.

erik · Post by **erik** » Mon Mar 09, 2015 7:17 am

Omegonthesane wrote:The only "nonevil liches" in D&D I'm aware of are the Baelnorns and those weird positive energy not-undead things from Eberron. What other times has D&D failed to make "nonevil liches"?

Those two and archlich are the ones I'm familiar with and they are all shitty. On the upside they did at least modify their names so you don't confuse them with actual liches.

Omegonthesane wrote:The only part of 3.5 that seems to enforce it is the supposed "unspeakably evil" ritual that isn't described that turns you into a lich, and that's nothing but flavour text, and it doesn't go into what the lich has then continued to do to keep counting as not only horribly evil, but horribly evil in an immediate and should-be-face-stabbed-promptly fashion

I don't think there's a statute of limitations on unspeakable acts of evil. Also, liches are game mechanically, always evil. That pretty well corroborates the 'flavor text'. Creating the "good lich" just pisses all over the original liches and doesn't leave a good reason for original liches to exist anymore.

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Mon Mar 09, 2015 8:03 am

erik wrote:
Omegonthesane wrote:The only "nonevil liches" in D&D I'm aware of are the Baelnorns and those weird positive energy not-undead things from Eberron. What other times has D&D failed to make "nonevil liches"?
Those two and archlich are the ones I'm familiar with and they are all shitty. On the upside they did at least modify their names so you don't confuse them with actual liches.

I took a look at the archlich description on the Forgottenrealms wiki. To be quite honest, what brought it down for me was actually the fact it was being treated like a different species of creature altogether when its only defining difference was "not being Evil". They failed to give a reason why an Evil mage couldn't follow the Archlich ritual instead of the Lich ritual to become an immortal badass undead mage.

Omegonthesane wrote:The only part of 3.5 that seems to enforce it is the supposed "unspeakably evil" ritual that isn't described that turns you into a lich, and that's nothing but flavour text, and it doesn't go into what the lich has then continued to do to keep counting as not only horribly evil, but horribly evil in an immediate and should-be-face-stabbed-promptly fashion

erik wrote:I don't think there's a statute of limitations on unspeakable acts of evil. Also, liches are game mechanically, always evil. That pretty well corroborates the 'flavor text'. Creating the "good lich" just pisses all over the original liches and doesn't leave a good reason for original liches to exist anymore.

The impression I always got was that, quintessentially, a lich is the pinnacle of arcane necromancy, nothing more and nothing less. The creation of an undead being that needs no sustenance, has no special weaknesses, will not stay dead even if killed, and retains all its original knowledge and goals. Necromancy is pretty nasty shit, so most people who get that far will be Evil, but that isn't something physics should need to enforce.

I was rather under the impression that the typical mission of "Good" adventurers was to put out immediately threatening fires and to set up a world where there won't be any more fires, not to avenge long-ago wrongs. Also, this is D&D - "always" doesn't actually mean "always" in an alignment description. There really isn't anything mechanically stopping a wizard PC from doing the dirty, turning into a Lich, and then doing a bunch of good acts that render them indispensible to their pet kingdom such that permakilling them is actually Evil.

What happens to a nonevil Dread Necromancer 20? As I recall, they get a class feature that turns them into a lich - none of this "baelnorn" or "archlich" bullshit - while skipping the undescribed but it's totally unspeakably evil honest ritual of unspeakable evil.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Mar 09, 2015 9:50 am

From the standpoint of kitchen sink fantasy, there is a need for magic that is capital-E Evil that you can stab a fool right in the face for no better reason than that they use it. However, Necromancy is a pretty big and important type of magic to be used in this way. If you find yourself saying "I talk to ghosts and raise the dead, but I'm not a necromancer" then your game's definitions are shit. And you definitely do want ghost and vampire heroes.

Better candidates for the all evil all the time magic are Demonology, Blood Magic, and simple Black Magic. Those don't spend nearly as much time camping on stuff you want heroes to do. It's a lot easier to say that there's no good reason to summon a demon or commit human sacrifice than it is to say there's no good reason to talk to dead people. Some of my best friends are dead.

Of course, it's agoven that being undead should be in some important way "worse" than being alive. On account of people mostly wanting to live rather than die. Being undead could be painful or less fulfilling than being alive. The process could be dangerous and becoming undead could leave you a soulless monster. Or a near infinity of other options, because being undead is being "cursed with awesome" at best. It might just be being plain old cursed.

-Username17

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Mon Mar 09, 2015 10:51 am

On the topic of undead transformation, does "a magic user that is undead" (Lich) really need a different template than "a warrior that is undead" (death knight, sword wraith, etc.)?

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Mon Mar 09, 2015 11:15 am

Frank - Do you have a more detailed explanation of why having an "always evil to the point of being KoS" power set is a net benefit to a kitchen sink setting? I'm not seeing the benefit of "They use Goudamancy, which requires the committing of atrocities!" as opposed to "They us Goudamancy, and they also commit atrocities with it!"

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Mon Mar 09, 2015 11:51 am

erik wrote:I don't think there's a statute of limitations on unspeakable acts of evil. Also, liches are game mechanically, always evil. That pretty well corroborates the 'flavor text'. Creating the "good lich" just pisses all over the original liches and doesn't leave a good reason for original liches to exist anymore.

Actually, originally in OD&D you had both good and evil liches.
Note that on the chart you have two entries for liches, one evil and one good and that good liches are higher on the good axis than unicorns.