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Post by karaunios on Jun 9, 2021 10:23:27 GMT -5
Hi y'all,
There's a thing that's been roaming my mind for years already and that is how to bring together S&S and High Fantasy in a D&D game, since for me they're different things.
I see S&S more as an 'adult' thing, where the world is gritty, people (specially women) have less clothes and often morally grey, everything is more violent and with few magics and magic-users, most if not all, of the characters are humans, and monsters are also few and far between.
High Fantasy is, to me, more simple in many regards, if also attractive: goodies vs baddies, there's magic and fantastical creatures and races everywhere, there's violence, but not as detailed as in the other genre, etc. In many regards more fairy-tale like (hence my 'not-so-adult' take on it).
This said, how is it that Gygax was inspired by S&S but made a game in which magic and monsters, including swarms of monsters like kobolds, are all over the place, if you (never?) see these things in any S&S novel/story?
I like both genres, but I have a bad time reconciling both views and, for me, Gygax' appraches sides more with the High Fantasy view than with the S&S take. I like a game like OD&D, with less magic and without classes with magics and spells but having a game as simple as OD&D with only fighters can turn up to be boring, unless you go down the road of skills, which is a dangerous one to get into (you can end up sacrificing simplicity for too much detail). Is a mechanical approach like the one Dave Arneson took more attractive for this kind of game maybe? If you don't know what I'm talking about, in the Blackmoor campaign the character sheets had a list of skills (maybe something around 10 to 15).
What do you think?
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Jun 9, 2021 12:29:45 GMT -5
Hi y'all, There's a thing that's been roaming my mind for years already and that is how to bring together S&S and High Fantasy in a D&D game, since for me they're different things. I see S&S more as an 'adult' thing, where the world is gritty, people (specially women) have less clothes and often morally grey, everything is more violent and with few magics and magic-users, most if not all, of the characters are humans, and monsters are also few and far between. High Fantasy is, to me, more simple in many regards, if also attractive: goodies vs baddies, there's magic and fantastical creatures and races everywhere, there's violence, but not as detailed as in the other genre, etc. In many regards more fairy-tale like (hence my 'not-so-adult' take on it). This said, how is it that Gygax was inspired by S&S but made a game in which magic and monsters, including swarms of monsters like kobolds, are all over the place, if you (never?) see these things in any S&S novel/story? I like both genres, but I have a bad time reconciling both views and, for me, Gygax' appraches sides more with the High Fantasy view than with the S&S take. I like a game like OD&D, with less magic and without classes with magics and spells but having a game as simple as OD&D with only fighters can turn up to be boring, unless you go down the road of skills, which is a dangerous one to get into (you can end up sacrificing simplicity for too much detail). Is a mechanical approach like the one Dave Arneson took more attractive for this kind of game maybe? If you don't know what I'm talking about, in the Blackmoor campaign the character sheets had a list of skills (maybe something around 10 to 15). What do you think? I think the reason that OD&D is a mix of S&S and High Fantasy is that Arneson and Gygax were both fans of both types of books and movies, not to mention fairy tales, folk tales, legends and mythology from all over the world. Blackmoor and OD&D are both stews that have somewhat different mixes and proportions of ingredients. My game IMO has elements of High Fantasy, Sword & Sorcery, Sword & Planet, Sword & Sandal, Post-Apocalyptic and Science Fiction genres. I like a little bit of everything and I am not really into low magic, I like a fair amount of magic and I like the classes, but not too many. My ideal game would be to have all Rangers (Fighters) and Paladins (Clerical Holy Warriors) and Wizards (Played as Lawful Mages). These people then go out into a dark, gritty world that is often morally grey and full of magic and fantastical creatures and races everywhere and violence and they are defeating evil and over time building their own kingdom. They will travel to other worlds, alternate worlds, and the options are infinite. I am not sure how to tell you to do that, but while I have never found a group of players that want to play all Lawful(Good) characters and want to play Paladins and Rangers and Lawful wizards (most want to play neutral); what I have found is that all the disparate elements that I like for the various genres seems to just come together organically through play. My campaigns have all been pretty different, as they have each been a slightly different mix of the components. My pbp which I hope to get back to ASAP is a completely different mix than anything else I have done and has a lot of rule changes regarding monsters from anything else I have done. Partly because I have brought orcs and ogres into human society. |
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Post by karaunios on Jun 10, 2021 3:53:17 GMT -5
True that D&D was a mishmash of a lot of different stuff, but it seems to me that Gary insisted on it being S&S although it clearly isn't that (only partially so), IMO. It's also true that I don't always run the same kind of campaign, I usually like different kinds of settings/tones and I prefer to keep them separated, if some kind influence the others at some point. Were I able to play as much as I wanted (or, rather, were my friends able to play as much as I wanted), I would try lots of different settings, mixing stuff, making others "purely" in a direction or another. My obsession, so to speak, is DMing a "purely" à la Conan S&S game, where the attractive of the game is not that the PCs new monsters out of the books or new magics but that they find intrigue, interesting characters with different motivations, etc. The problem for this is that, of course, it's harder to think of interesting things other than throwing different monsters, traps, puzzles and magics for variety (as if that doesn't hard already). But the MAIN problem for me, is coming with some mechanical stuff that would make the PCs different (given that there won't be any spellcasters), but not going down the road of complexity that many games have.
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Jun 10, 2021 11:04:12 GMT -5
True that D&D was a mishmash of a lot of different stuff, but it seems to me that Gary insisted on it being S&S although it clearly isn't that (only partially so), IMO. It's also true that I don't always run the same kind of campaign, I usually like different kinds of settings/tones and I prefer to keep them separated, if some kind influence the others at some point. Were I able to play as much as I wanted (or, rather, were my friends able to play as much as I wanted), I would try lots of different settings, mixing stuff, making others "purely" in a direction or another. My obsession, so to speak, is DMing a "purely" à la Conan S&S game, where the attractive of the game is not that the PCs new monsters out of the books or new magics but that they find intrigue, interesting characters with different motivations, etc. The problem for this is that, of course, it's harder to think of interesting things other than throwing different monsters, traps, puzzles and magics for variety (as if that doesn't hard already). But the MAIN problem for me, is coming with some mechanical stuff that would make the PCs different (given that there won't be any spellcasters), but not going down the road of complexity that many games have. Gary was ticked off about the cease and desist from the Saul Zaentz company who very unfortunately have a lot of the Tolkien IP locked up. So he went on this kick of claiming no influence from LotR. I completely discount a lot of the stuff that Gygax said that just wasn't true. As for interesting things, when you are face to face I can create new things outdoor or dungeon in an endless stream, comes from a lifetime of reading everything I can get my hands on. The unique monsters, traps, and magics from spells to items, is just icing, but the world they are exploring is the cake. As for making the PCs different, IMO I don't need mechanics for that, that is the players responsibility. The first four years I played in college we went through hundreds of characters as a group (average 18-20 per game, I don't know how many total people played at least now and then). None of the PCs were ever the same. You have 18-20 PCs every game all unique, again IMO making the characters unique, that is what the players do, I don't think that is the refs job or the job of the rules. Really, you only need one class, the Adventurer class and let the players be creative. |
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Post by karaunios on Jun 10, 2021 11:55:58 GMT -5
As for interesting things, when you are face to face I can create new things outdoor or dungeon in an endless stream, comes from a lifetime of reading everything I can get my hands on. The unique monsters, traps, and magics from spells to items, is just icing, but the world they are exploring is the cake. As for making the PCs different, IMO I don't need mechanics for that, that is the players responsibility. The first four years I played in college we went through hundreds of characters as a group (average 18-20 per game, I don't know how many total people played at least now and then). None of the PCs were ever the same. You have 18-20 PCs every game all unique, again IMO making the characters unique, that is what the players do, I don't think that is the refs job or the job of the rules. Really, you only need one class, the Adventurer class and let the players be creative. The first paragraph of those two I like. When I got into D&D (in my late 20s) it was with 2e and the two first books in BE(CMI) and I tried to do things like they will tell you to do on the manuals. But about one or two years ago I was reading through your blog and you mentioned exactly that. I said 'What the heck. As a kid and teenager I used to GM for my friends [other RPGs] and I did everything on the fly and it worked. Recently we started a campaign and I did everything on the fly, and my friends thought I had everything planned... Why shouldn't I just go with that and dump all the jotting down every detail?' So that's the approach I plan on taking. If ever my I get to DM again with my friends. As for the second paragraph, it reminded me of something Rob Kuntz says in an interview with Martin from the now disappeared Grognard Games channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PJ0V2IU2xc) where he said that all the PCs where individualised for their players back then. You put that again into my mind. That paragraph was gold, by the way. Thanks, sir. |
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Jun 10, 2021 11:58:58 GMT -5
I am glad you found that helpful, I only do it on the fly and reading a wide variety of fantasy and fiction, folk and fairy tales, legends and myth are your friend. I have seen more ideas than I could ever use or remember and, for me, they seem to come back to me when I need them. Some may find it helpful to take brief notes and review them before a game for a few minutes.
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Post by El Borak on Jun 14, 2021 12:43:18 GMT -5
Sometimes you just have to take Gygax with a grain(sometimes many grains) of salt. Look at his Up On The Soapbox rants from Dragon, preaching One True Way to play and that being BtB. He did the hobby a lot of harm with those misguided rants. I will not play in any game run by someone that is a BtB fanatic, err zealot, err bigot, err DM.
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Post by hengest on Jun 15, 2021 11:32:54 GMT -5
Bookmarking this. The OP is a good formulation of something I have wondered about but was never able to put into words. Whether I would ever attempt to go deep into figuring out the distinction and then how to fuse them, I don't know, but there's something potentially very fruitful here. Maybe a thread where people suggest HF and S&S "equivalents," like as a brainstorm exercise. Are you interested in that, OP karaunios, or should I do it? |
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Post by dicecapades on Jun 16, 2021 15:11:59 GMT -5
Yeah, never believe everything any "authority" says. Regardless of the source, question it, prove it and then accept it.
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Post by karaunios on Jun 19, 2021 2:54:46 GMT -5
Bookmarking this. The OP is a good formulation of something I have wondered about but was never able to put into words. Whether I would ever attempt to go deep into figuring out the distinction and then how to fuse them, I don't know, but there's something potentially very fruitful here. Maybe a thread where people suggest HF and S&S "equivalents," like as a brainstorm exercise. Are you interested in that, OP karaunios, or should I do it? Since I wouldn't know where to start, I'll let you do the honours. But I'll sure chime in for the same reason you pointed out. |
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