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Posted by: Wounded Ronin Jul 6 2008, 04:43 PM

So, after dilligently reading each thread that bashed D&D 4th edition for failing at math, I realized that the reason we're even having this discussion in the first place is because it's not the 70s.

Back in the 70s and prior, American fantasy fiction had balls. It was visceral, it was surreal to the point where it could appear to be drug inspired, and there was lots of artistic and literary creativity making some truly roundhouse-to-the-balls stories. Fantasy hadn't lost touch entirely with medieval legend and as a genre it was more fresh and new than today.

For example, Clark Ashton Smith told stories that were very much composites of old Beowulf-style storytelling, and Lovecraftian horror which were rooted in a cultural setting of medieval Europe. And guess what? He directly inspired one of the most kickass D&D modules ever, Castle Amber. That's right, they had permission and actually let the player characters run through a few of his stories: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/27/the-colossus-of-ylourgne , and http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/11/the-beast-of-averoigne among others.

In the D&D 1st edition rulebook Gygax occasionally mentions Conan, who of course was created by Robert E. Howard back in the 30s. Again, Howard's storytelling has an emotional power and a dynamism I really don't feel that I get from contemporary fantasy fiction. I believe that Howard himself was emotionally driven to a tremendous degree, as evidenced by the fact he committed suicide. Likewise Conan is described of being a man "of great mirth and great melancholy", and in the first draft of "The Pheonix On The Sword" Conan actually experiences depression in the privacy of his room for a short while before self-medicating with some wine, so I feel that the character of Conan has got a great deal of very powerful personal emotion of the author invested in him. The Conan stories are by and large about the purity and physicality of rural life versus the decadence and small minded pettiness of urban life. They're about the frontier versus civilization, and how civilization must inevitably collapse due to internal decay. I grew up in New York City, but right now I'm living in Nevada, where in many ways life is indeed much more physical, and I believe that I am beginning to understand the emotions that Howard, a Texan, felt about rural versus urban living. Howard's writing was visceral, and it communicated the emotional intensity of the author better than any other writing I've read.

Even Tolkein, whom just about everyone, and not just hardcore fantasy enthusiasts, has read today was based on older styles of mythic storytelling, and tapped Tolkein's experiences in the first world war. Tolkein describes the fallibility of human nature, the impacts of industrialization and pollution, and modeled the hobbits after the brave but humble English soldiers he had interacted with during the war. It's hard to imagine a more powerful impetus for vivid, powerful storytelling than experiences in world war I.

But nowadays, "fantasy" fiction is a shadow of its former self. In many cases, the setting is not really based on medieval Europe (like Ashton Clark Smith's writing) but is instead based on some weird composite where people run around in medieval clothing with swords but are all holding contemporary American social values. It's like reading about swords and elves cavorting about an Ohio Renfaire. The characters don't have the emotional intensity of Conan. Instead today we're being pelted with all this "character driven" crap, which basically means that most characters are fairly likeable, that they all more or less conform to contemporary American values, and that much of the story is driven by these characters' emotional and personal needs and wants. It's completely different than the old-fashioned storytelling of Beowulf, where Beowulf doesn't really have a personality but rather represents a social ideal of strength or vitality. It's completely different than Howard's Conan, who represents the pure and virile rural man. We're stuck back in the Ohio Renfaire, basically, with likeable Americans prancing around in armor and tights and making very contemporary banter. I remember back when I was in 5th grade I read a few contemporary fantasy novels from the school library. One of them was an Anne McAffery novel, and I forgot who authored the other. Looking back on it I realize that if I had to describe the stories I'd call them "mellow, character driven, and very contemporary", and that they're just night and day different from Ashton Clark Smith, Thomas Mallory, Robert E. Howard, or whomever, basically in that the contemporary writing might as well be happening in a modern day RenFaire.

Now that I think about it, this is exactly the difference between the best RPG ever (1st edition D&D, including Oriental Adventures), which was more Ashton Clark Smith style, and all the RPGs that have come out since where they talk about "storytelling" and "character" and all this sort of thing. Even the idea of "character development" is very much a contemporary Western concept. It did not really exist in older styles of storytelling which tended to have static characters, such as Beowulf. The whole idea of "character development" suggests an emphasis on or an importance of individuals who are set apart from society as a whole and who grow and change according to their own beliefs and values, so it is not surprising that people in medieval times might not have thought about stories in that way, or even that in places such as Asia "character development" in stories was not as important as in the west. In your early editions of D&D, each character would be a particular class, that would define the character's abilities and hitpoints and possible alignments over the course of a career. The caracter first and foremost was his job. He was either the ultimate warrior, the ultimate magic user, the ultimate cleric, and so forth. I remember Gygax even wrote in one of the rulebooks that you should think of a character class as a sort of cliche or sterotype (or maybe that was the Rules Cyclopedia). In later editions you see things like multi-classing, where characters are spreading their abilities out and becoming more multifacted individuals. I see this as a slide away from the violence and absolutism of traditional mythic storytelling and into the Ohio Renfaire.

This slide can also be illustrated by RPG attitudes towards character death. In the old stories of the world, lots of illustrious heroes died. The Odyssey is filled with heroes, even supposedly invulnerable ones like Achilles, dying. In Japanese folk tales and samurai legends the hero typically dies at the end of the story while at the same time exhibiting socially ideal behavior; for example, Chobei basically walked into a trap he saw coming and died valiantly so as to exhibit perfect courtesy and courage. King Arthur died, Robin Hood died, Beowulf died, and that's part of their heroic stature. And indeed back in the days of 1st ed D&D it was really easy to die. Fail a saving throw vs. poison, and die. Run into a monster who is a few levels beefier than you, and die. Touch the wrong glowing panel of glass in the dungeon and die. But nowadays RPG rules are going on and on about how to avoid character death. There's rules for going unconscious, discouragement of "zap you're dead" traps, advice that player characters should be captured rather than killed, and they've even decided to go ahead and make Energy Drain easily reversible. Again, that's an emphasis on character development rather than on the mightiness of emotions or ideals. We're not sitting around a campfire in the year 1100, but we're sitting around a campfire in a Renfaire.

I really liked Gygax's "The Slayer's Guide To The Undead". Why? Because Gygax put the malodorous, squishy, and decaying testicles back onto undead monsters. He filled that book with truly terrifying monsters who could do very bad things to your character just by making eye contact. He filled it with Lovecraftian villians where within a certain radius you needed to make a heavily penalized saving throw each combat round or else TURN INTO A GHOUL. In a world of second chances and character development, Gygax put some visceral, hardcore, old fashioned hurt back into the game. Gygax put us back into a night lit only by fire where we huddled afraid of the shadows around us.

So, I essentially blame American fiction from the last 20 years or so for crapping up our RPGs. Do you want to play Golgo 13? You're a munchkin. Do you want to be Conan? How unworthy. Do you want to be a bisexual sensitive vampire with a trenchcoat, fedora, and dual katanas? That's acceptable, and at the same time you can't die because we have to come up with some wonderful collaborative story so that our vampire can re evaluate his tormented past with dark secrets.

I feel like I'm bored with sensitive elves, with simultaneously depressive but empowered dragon-riding women, with jocular American midwesterners in plate mail, and emotionally vulnerable vampires. I don't really want to sit around for several hours listening to them working out their issues while they sit around a campfire and sip hot chocolate with marshmallows. I'd rather play a man from the year of 1100 who ventures into the darkness, away from the protective circle of the town and the fire, with his sword and his lantern, and with his medieval mindset of fear combined with adrenal ferocity. I'd rather that his survival is statistically unlikely, rather than assured, because then when things go bump in the night I know they are truly to be feared, and at the same time should he find a gleaming treasure among the shadows and live to tell the tale, the prize will be sweetened by the statistical unlikelihood of his having escaped. Frankly speaking the character driven stuff is a big cliche now, compared to the older styles of storytelling.

Posted by: Synner667 Jul 6 2008, 05:14 PM

Interesting...
...So roles/archetypes/stereotypes are the way to go ??

I fully agree...
...And something similar would explain RPGs I enjoy the most are the ones that advocate Character Roles/Archetypes.

Interestingly, it's the mainstream RPGs that this mainly affects [in the interests of "character choice" and "no limits"]...
...As many of the Indie RPGs have quite tightly defined Characters.

Maybe the problem is that numbers have taken over from adjectives and nouns...
...Characters don't seem to be described as "Strong", but as "having Strength 8" [out of 10], etc.

Maybe the words needs to make a comeback ??

Posted by: shadowfire Jul 6 2008, 05:42 PM

you should check out the "Song of ice and fire" rog that Green ronin is putting out. The characters do not have attributes like strength, charisma, and agility. They have abilities that are like skills and the attributes are things like how much can you carry/lift, how fast can you run, etc. I kind of like that idea myself. Fireborn has a interesting way of handling it as well where you have only four attributes: fire, wind, water, earth.

I agree that the typical setting that we are being bombarded with now a days are tainted by modern idealism where women are just as equal as the men and slavery is seen as a bad thing. The games i play in and run both do not suffer under this too much. It depends on the culture, but for the most part we play by the ideas that medieval cultures lived by. For instance, my friend's character recently got married and now owns a house. Since our job is dangerous he wanted to place his wifes name upon the deed to the house as owner instead. He wanted to place is father in law as a second on the deed but we talked him out of it explaining that if his character died the father in law would take the house since men, no matter the order by which any legal document states it, will always come before women. Especially, since his house is much nicer than his father in law's house.

I hate most elves since they are always played the same.whatever happened to the fun loving elves from the hobbit? Or the xenophobic elves of elric?

i also hate the fact the every setting seems to be composed of kingdoms built upon old ruins and labyrinths; where the landscape is dotted with dungeons that were built for unknown reasons.

Posted by: Dumori Jul 6 2008, 06:03 PM

Elves played all the same Ive never really come across that. Most elves are played to take in to account it unlike for them to die of old age in there line of work. But I ve seen gay elves cunning fun loving and you name it elves.

Posted by: Backgammon Jul 6 2008, 06:07 PM

Well, I agree with everything, but I don't see how you can avoid games being representative of the values and ideals of the time they are written in. Shadowrun is in fact an extremely bizarre game - it tries to maintain ties to cyberpunk, which is completely an 80s thing and is totally irrelevant today. I was wathing Die Hard (the first one) on TV yesterday. That movies was so focused on "ZOMG look at the corporate skyscraper it's like another world" - which is a building block of cyberpunk. But watching it today, it has like 0 impact.

But we Shadowrun players, cyberpunk fans, are totally exceptionnal for trying to hold on to a dead idea. Which probably has something to do with you also missing old school fantasy. We try to hold on to a feeling long gone from everyone else. And that's the thing - everyone else moved on. Values modulate, which is normal, and games reflect those values, which is also normal othewise they wouldn't sell.

I can't say it's bad that games are more character driven where you aren't supposed to kill characters. It's a reflection of society. People want to live out alter egos, and today, as we are more emotionnaly developped (for good or bad), that means playing fully-emotionnal characters with life goals. That's just sort of the way it is. I don't think American fiction is to blame - again, fiction is just a reflection of society. It's just the way the wind blows.

Posted by: hyzmarca Jul 6 2008, 07:16 PM

Character development is important and it exists in most classic fantasy stories. The problem is that many people have confused character development with http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Wangst. Character development is the entire point of the classic Campbellian heroic journey.

Take, for example, Lord of the Rings. Frodo starts off as a happy-go-lucky Shire kid going off on a great adventure. He ends up prematurely aged, world-weary, and more than slightly corrupt due to the burden of carrying the ring. Likewise, Aragorn started out as a loner who just wanted to ride around the wilderness avoiding his birthright and ended up using that birthright to lead an army to victory.

The good Star Wars, of course, also has plenty of character development. The young farm boy becomes a Jedi. The mercenary becomes a true believer. The obligatory princess-in-need-of-rescue strangles a giant slug-man to death.

Even John Milius's Conan had character development, eventually gaining an understanding of Nietzsche's philosophy while crucified on the Tree of Woe and using it to kill Tulsa Doom.

Achilles had a great deal of character development in the Iliad, going from someone who has no desire to fight, to a rage-fueled vengeance machine, to someone who is oddly compassionate to his enemy after burning out all of his anger.

Even Beowulf has character development, going from boastful warrior to wise king in the course of the epic.

Even Gilgamesh was about character development through a heroic journey, going from a thoughtless kind who likes to deflower virgin girls and generally does whatever the hell he wants no matter how much it hurts his subjects, to a heroic and compassionate kind through his friendship with Enkidu, then to someone obsessed with avoiding death, to a wise king someone who accepts the inevitable result of mortality.

The big problem is that many writers and storytellers don't know what character development is anymore and confuse it with pointless angst (I'm looking at you, George Lucas).




I do agree that the use of contemporary Western values and rationalism is also a very big problem in fantasy literature and roleplaying, especially in settings where good and evil are real tangible things. It seems like no one cares to smite anymore. People equate violence with evil and therefore smiting evil must be evil.

I was banned from RPG.net for some time for my participation in a thread that dealt with just that subject, with some people arguing that killing evil creatures was, if not outright evil, certainly not good because there is always a chance for them to reform and good is kind and compassionate (the Batman/Superman defense).

That's just sad, really.

It gets worse when one throws evil gods and their followers into the mix. Indiscriminate smiting of people with different religious beliefs should always be a good thing, dammit. It's like some people haven't heard of The Crusades.

Posted by: shadowfire Jul 6 2008, 07:20 PM

lol




that does not make sense, why did you get banned?

Posted by: nezumi Jul 6 2008, 07:23 PM

So you're upset because you're a Real Man/Simulationist in a Roleplayer's world? I feel for you (kind of).

So how would you change Shadowrun? I could see just having lots more explosions doing it - or much nastier critters.

Posted by: hyzmarca Jul 6 2008, 07:51 PM

I was taking a literalist interpretation of the rules defining good and evil acts in the relevant 3E books. For example, allowing a Fiend or a Demon to live when one would destroy it, even one who has converted to Good, is always an Evil act because these are creatures made out of evil and accepting creature of the Evil subtype who has converted to Good into the ranks of one's party would be an evil act that a Paladin would have to atone for. On the other hand, killing an Evil being, either of the alignment or the subtype, no matter how helpless, is always a Good thing. There was then a discussion of Ravages and Afflictions, essentially the Good aligned poisons and diseases. Some people claimed that these horribly torturous things, which are explicitly stated to be Good, can't possibly be Good because they horribly tortured Evil beings and "Good doesn't do what Evil does". I countered that the book explicitly states them to be Good, and the great thing about Good, Evil, and Neutrality existing as real tangible forces is that one can explore their boundaries and limitations. Good isn't stupid, after all. And it doesn't have to be nice. If the Good guys can find some horrific wasting disease that fits into the real measurable category called Good then they'll use it and it will be Good because it is Good, goddammit, it is defined as such by the book.
At this point, someone asked in retort if it would be considered good for a Paladin to rape a random bar wench.
I think replied that it depends on the circumstances. If this is the Harlequin romance style James Bondish rape-seduction of someone walking the fine line between Neutral and Evil in which he forcibly gives her physical pleasure in an attempt to bring her away from evil and possibly gain a tactical advantage over his Evil enemies, then yes, it would be Good. If he did it solely to inflict suffering or for his own physical pleasure, then it would not be Good.
It was at this point that I was banned.

I assumed that the pro raping evil position would be more controversial than the pro killing evil position, but I didn't really expect to be banned for it. It seems that modern roleplayers just aren't up for classical Biblical-style Good where the Gods of Light and Justice tell you to kill every man, woman, and child in the city and rape the virgin girls.

Posted by: Lordmalachdrim Jul 6 2008, 07:55 PM

I must admit I have no problem killing characters. I guess that's one of the reasons why I like Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, HackMaster, and such.

Posted by: Cantankerous Jul 6 2008, 09:11 PM

It's not even so much the "real man/simulationist" angle, for me. Hell, love character issue driven games, for some modern games. I ALSO like VtM, but that's the point, it's an also sort of thing. I like Superhero games too, when they are about super heroes.

My problem is that they've taken the heroic fantasy genre and "de-nutted" it. There is no visceral left. The closest that modern authors (in RPGs especially) seem to want to get to gritty is dwelling on the sanitary conditions (or lack thereof) of the medieval/fantasy setting. I do NOT want superheroes running around in my medieval/fantasy RPG. The idea of it bores me to tears and makes me aggressive even when discussing it.

And now here is the flagship company for the medieval/fantasy RPG excluding the possibility of anything but superheroes from their product. It makes me worry that soon there will be nothing but the angsty super heroes left in ANY genre.


Isshia

Posted by: Black Jack Rackham Jul 6 2008, 09:35 PM

I, for one, welcome our new banal overlords. For without their input, revolution would be that much farther away.

Mark

Posted by: Cantankerous Jul 7 2008, 09:56 PM

I'd both, peel away the 4th edition additions to character survivability and set a cap on progressive DR, or get rid of it entirely for corporeal beings. The reason my players loved Shadowrun was exemplified by a scene where the teams tank charged down the gun and instead of, D&D like, striding through it, he got shot down, in the end, by one Sec Guard with an assault rifle. The fragility of life, even for a beast of a character, in Shadowrun, is what they, and I, love. It makes the heroics the characters sometime perform FEEL heroic... not banal, as they do in D&D, especially D&D 4E where you are no longer even human, even if you supposedly are human racially.


Isshia

Posted by: Zhan Shi Jul 8 2008, 02:17 AM

An aside about fiction...Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar series, and the later Serpentwar saga, were very good. Also, Clark Ashton Smith's Cthulhu-esque stories will be published in the upcoming Klarkash-Ton Cycle, by Chaosium (check it out at www.chaosium.com). If you can find it, most of Richard L. Tierney's Simon Magus stories are collected in The Scroll of Thoth, also by Chaosium. A gritty, visceral portrayal of life in the early part of the first century AD Rome, told from the perspective of Christianity's earliest heretic.

Posted by: Rad Jul 8 2008, 11:55 AM

Huh.

I see what you're saying, Wounded Ronin, but I disagree about the new editions being responsible.

What changed between the old days of roleplaying and now is that it became a business, rather than something like minded individuals did for fun. The intensity and primacy of those games didn't come from the system--it came from the players. Back then, people played D&D because they had been *looking* for a visceral escape into a world of fantasy and idealized concepts, and a gaming group was the next step up from burying yourself in a good book. Later on, when RPG's started to become an entertainment industry, people played D&D because it was this cool new kind of game, and it looked like fun.

It's the players that changed the game, and the game companies attempts to court a wider audience. But really, nothing's changed--except that there are so many gamers now that each one you meet is no longer guaranteed to be your type of gamer. There didn't used to be casual roleplayers, or video game RPGs, or MMORPGs or any of these things that have broadened the scope of who games and why.

For more causal gamers, or kids who grew up on save points and level grinding, it's not fun to have a game where you can die just as easily as real life and don't get to come back. So more options were provided for keeping players alive. For people who were interested in exploring their character's psychologies, instead of being the faceless personification of some primal concept, they added a greater depth of customization, and the ability to express oneself as more than just a stereotype.

Look at it this way: They didn't take the lethality out of the game, they just added do-overs and protective gear for those who didn't want to play as hard. Likewise, they didn't abolish archetypes or epic, surreal, gut-level fantasy worlds (a la Homer or Heavy Metal), they simply added some guidelines for those who didn't know how to craft such an experience, or weren't comfortable with something that hardcore.

In short, they let opened up a featherweight division. And there's really nothing wrong with being that kind of player--it just isn't our sport.

For myself, gaming is about getting into the character's head, and exploring their world from their perspective. Sometimes that's a classic archetype in a world out of legend and song, but after trekking across the land for a thousand years as 999 separate incarnations of the warrior ideal, I want to try something new. My characters may change and grow more complex over the years, but there's still and underlying theme that I build them around and I still invest a great deal of emotion into the role. If anything, it would be harder for me to play the classic knight or bold warrior now because I've already done it to death, and no longer feel the emotional connection I once did.

After letting a concept rest for a while, however, I often find my interest renewed and return to the old roles and the old worlds, to find them enriched by my experiences elsewhere.

Posted by: shadowfire Jul 8 2008, 02:38 PM

the real reason games like 4e came out is because of the fact that the industry is losing against the video game. Ever since people could just go online and play (very much non-roleplaying) MMos there has been a growing disinterest in playing table top games. 4e was designed to grab these peoples attention since itself is pretty much a MMo by design. People who have never played a table top game think that what they typically do in a MMO is what one would do in a typical Table top game.. However not all rpgs are D&D where it consist of hack and slashing your way through a duugeon; and the extent of role playing is you finding out where your next quest is located at. hell the extent of MMO role playing tends to be team tactics (or the lack of) and selling stuff to each other.

The only way you can fix this problem is to go out into your community and get more younger people interested in playing table top games. I have notice that a lot of gamers treat their groups like special clubs that come with all kinds of restriction as to who can join them. Often times the older, more experienced players wont allow "kids" to play with them for any number of reason. I think this is wrong though. The best people to interduce these games to kids are the older gamers.

Posted by: Wesley Street Jul 8 2008, 04:57 PM

Oh, baloney. I've heard the same thing for years but switch out RPGs with "books", "television", "comics" or "films". It hasn't come true yet. I've yet to see any factual data backing up the assertion that video games are taking over the entertainment industry. And I like my XBox 360.



Considering that my home town is completely packed with my fellow nerds during the week and weekend of GenCon I have to seriously contest that statement.



So... recruit? Doesn't work. Role-playing, LARPing, strategy games and the like have always been a fringe activity. People will come to you if they have an interest. You can't bring it to them. And do you know why? Because WE'RE NERDS! We're always on the fringe and our minds are on dragons, spaceships, artificial intelligences and elves! D&D will never be a mainstream activity. It's like trying to talk Star Wars trivia with a die-hard sports fanatic. You might as well be speaking in tongues for all the sense you'll make. I know when I'm with a group of guys who start talking football my eyes glaze over.



There's nothing a nerd likes more than a feeling of power so I'm not surprised. But until the culture of gamers changes or the older generation dies from one McNugget too many we're stuck. I've discovered you have to take the reigns, push those guys out of the way, and blaze ahead with something new. And if you want kids to play with you, you have to offer them something they can't get anywhere else... which is camaraderie, face-to-face communication, world-building, dice-rolling and real friendship.

Posted by: shadowfire Jul 8 2008, 06:32 PM

I speak from experience... Nerds are not like the goth and punk movements of the 80's. Nerds are widely excepted through out our culture and everyone who plays video games more than casually is one. The fringe is a territory reserved for outcast, not people who hide in their mother's basement all day.
You can bring a horse to water, i.e. you can bring people to the game table who have never played or shown any interest in playing. I was one such person. I spent most of my high school life at punk shows and did not game until a friend of mine had me join them for a game once. I decide to do so cause he would tell me everyday the same damn story about a tavern fight his dwarf got into. Ever since i have be hooked. I was not the only non nerd who was brought to the table to play and stayed. My first group consisted of the true outsiders: skaters, punks, and skins. Most of us brought to the table and converted. I will point out that we would never have stayed at that table if it was not for two reasons: The gamemaster and the fact that we were not introduced to game with D&D.. which is a horrible system, but we grow to love Role playing because of great systems like Palladium fantasy and shadowrun.
You can tell me that you can't talk star wars with a sports fan- everyone loves The original star wars, ever foot ball fan.

Posted by: imperialus Jul 14 2008, 09:05 PM

In some ways, to me at least Fantasy is undergoing another revolution in storytelling.

I feel that the increase in character complexity is beginning to 'come of age' and allow for the telling of much more complex stories. Characters aren't caricatures anymore at least in the hands of some of Fantasy's leading authors.

It's been a slow process, I personally would tag Glen Cook's "Black Company" series as being the first to try and marry complex characters and a gritty dangerous world back in the mid 80's, but then he was the exception not the rule.

Now however we're seeing this trend begin to dominate. I'll use George RR Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire" as an example of the best use of this technique. The series is entirely driven by this technique. Characters are complex, and highly multifaceted, and its their interaction with each other that, is the plot. Every single character in the series is flawed, sometimes seriously, sometimes in a more minor fashion. In confronting these flaws the characters grow, oftentimes in highly unexpected ways. That's what draws the reader in. There aren't 'good guys', there aren't 'bad guys' just like in Howards world but rather just people. Trying to survive. They certainly don't share any but our most inherent, basic, values.

Other contemporaries like Terry Goodkind, and Robert Jordan have also dabbled in this to varying degrees. Rand Al'Thor is a very complicated character. That's part of the reason that the series took so bloody long (illness and ghostwriters aside). It's been a while since I've read WoT but I seem to remember Rand don't some pretty messed up crap. Goodkind, not so much. Richard always had a fairly fixed moral compass and it was obviously supposed to point straight north. Even he though does some pretty questionable stuff (to me at least) from time to time.

Still though, you're seeing it with other authors, some who marry complex characters with novella's and short stories. Andrezej Sapkowski is pretty new to the scene, At least in English. Geralt holds very true to a pulp 'style' while managing to remain quite deep, though remarkably horny.

Posted by: imperialus Jul 14 2008, 09:23 PM

With regard to games I think it's a bit more complex... just because it's a much larger pool of people trying to create their 'story'.

A lot of people want to develop complex characters but frankly it's tough to do. Otherwise we'd all be writing a Song of Ice and Fire. Add in the added difficulty of making your 'story' mesh with four or five other peoples 'stories' means that you end up with a confused hodgepodge.

A few games are making strides in encouraging more complex characters though, and making them workable. Green Ronin's Song of Ice and Fire RPG has already been mentioned but the Burning Wheel system developed by Luke Perry )who I think worked on Shadowrun's development at one point) is doing a pretty good job of it right now. It's not 'rules lite' by any means so it bucks at least one big trend in RPG's right now but it is designed from the ground up to be vary character driven. Properly played the whole game is basically Schroders cat. The players can affect the adventure, the plot, and even the campaign world itself just on a die roll. The games tagline is "Fight for what you Believe in" and it's a fairly appropriate description.

Posted by: shadowfire Jul 16 2008, 12:51 AM

realistic, Raymond E feist wrote his first books 2 years before Cook. One cannopt say that his books do not have complex character development.



Fire and Ice looks great, have as of yet to play, but they tried very hard to make the system work for the setting and not the other way around. Too often you get companies taking settings from some great book series and squeezing them into D20 ro D&D rules. which is a travesty to those book's names and fans.

Posted by: imperialus Jul 16 2008, 05:17 PM

True on the Feist point. I'd forgotten just because he isn't one of my favorite authors. Everyone's list of 'influential' books is going to be different.

I'm sure you'll be happy to know then that Green Ronin's system is D6 based. They've built it, pretty much from the ground up for Song.

Posted by: shadowfire Jul 16 2008, 05:32 PM

ya, i saw that. It looks great. i have the Quick start for it.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Jul 17 2008, 06:48 PM

Incidentally, I just read "Arrow's Fall" (1988) by Mercedes Lackey. Besides for the fact that I could almost hear the Flash Gordon music ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNf9rEPoc8Q ) kicking up in the background when I read about the Heralds and their white rockstar leathers, yeah, laughably sensitive "character development". Here's the amazon link, with a few comments.... ( http://www.amazon.com/Arrows-Fall-Heralds-Valdemar-Book/dp/0886774004 )

Although the part of me which has been corrupted by exposure to Cthulu on Ponapae makes me want see if I can go about ordering the Mercedes Lackey musical pieces which appear at the end of that book!!!!!

Posted by: shadowfire Jul 17 2008, 07:27 PM

i have the whole series and read every single one about 3 times each. i love her books

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Jul 17 2008, 07:51 PM

Well, I figure that lots of people must like her books because she's so prolific and successful. But in order to better illustrate styles of fantasy writing I like or do not like, I figure I'd throw that particular book in as an example of a fantasy writing style which does not appeal to me. I actually read that particular book when I found it in a public library and decided that I ought to read it so as to better learn about the fantasy genre as a whole. I finished the whole book in one sitting on an airplane in a few hours, forcing myself to read the whole thing, for the sake of my personal education.

Incidentally, did you ever order the music that appears at the end of the book? Apparently you can order it from Firebird music or something like that. I'm not sure I dare to seek more knowledge about this lest my sanity be permanently torn away...

Posted by: shadowfire Jul 18 2008, 01:18 AM

i have read it but never thought to buy it though i did see that it was on CD. I figure though that it would be good background music for a game.

The first book of that series i read was "Two take a thief", which i received free with a membership to a book club along with the 3rd harry potter book.

Another good author is L.E. Modesitt Jr. and his magic of recluse series.

Posted by: sunnyside Jul 18 2008, 01:32 AM

I also think much of the trend in tabletop gaming has to do with video games.

The reason being that previously if you wanted to play Conan or whatever your only option was to bust out the dice.

However nowdays if you want to just play Conan and whacks some things with your sword you can just go to
http://www.conanthevideogame.com/

or maybe just play God of War or WoW or heck play never winter nights or whatever that DND game was.

The point is to compete a tabletop game has to bring something it does better. I see two things:

1. You can do anything. In a video game you have to find the secret door you can't just take a sledgehammer to the side of the building. So on and so forth.

2. You can get into the character. This is where a lot of the character development comes in. Which, yes, can all too often be confused for wangst.

Though honestly a bunch of the vampire guys are all about the wangst so I can't blame writers for obliging.

But either way games have their niche in those two things, and so they increasingly work it.

Also there is increasingly a feeling of been there done that in writing and gaming. When you're reading your first novel as a tween the main character can be the biggest lump of Mary Sueness ever written and you'll gobble it up. And when you're first busting out the dice at that age a plain vanilla dungeon crawl is great.

But now I just can't stand that tripe.