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SlothfulCobra posted:Pratchett never did get around to Carrot's destiny with his conspicuously non-magical sword. I think half of the Watch books are about how Carrot chooses not to be a king because his genetic heritage shouldn't make him better than anyone else, and also because Vimes said no. Men At Arms - Carrot is presented with the rotting throne covered in gold foil, Feet of Clay the nobles try to engineer a new king and that's when Vimes smashes a table in half, probably something in The Last Hero, I can't remember.
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Apr 26, 2021 19:53
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SlothfulCobra posted:Pratchett never did get around to Carrot's destiny with his conspicuously non-magical sword. I feel like that was pretty well resolved by Feet of Clay if not Men-at-Arms. Carrot is shrouded in destiny because he’s the lost heir to the Throne of Ankh-Morpork, which everyone politely ignores because Carrot doesn’t want to be king and everyone in the know respects his wishes, out of respect or concern. The sword is conspicuously non-magical, because his folks were practical people, and practical people always depend on reliable tools rather than magic. The former is made explicit and the latter is a common Pratchett trope.
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Apr 26, 2021 19:53
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girl dick energy posted:It actually almost makes their wild cultural mechanics make sense. Cut down a tree? Plants create food, you rear end in a top hat! Cannibalizing your own dead family member? That’s just common sense, you can’t let good meat go to waste.
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Apr 26, 2021 19:53
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I’d even take it a step farther and say Carrot and Angua not getting an overly storybook resolution is the entire point. If he’d gone on to greatness and married the woman he’d had this back and forth with for ages it’d be super stereotypical, instead they wind up in a long-term but complicated relationship that’s important to their respective characters, but not the focus of any story. It’s why I love their part of the Fifth Elephant, their status is consistently ambiguous and messy, especially given her past with Gavin, which is what lots of real people live with!
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Apr 26, 2021 20:20
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Yeah, that was my takeaway from Carrot and Vetinari's conversation as well. "Ankh-Morpork doesn't need a king, so I'm not gonna be. If it ever does? I'll be here. Until then, I'm just gonna help people."
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Apr 26, 2021 20:22
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Ugly John posted:Yeah, that was my takeaway from Carrot and Vetinari's conversation as well. "Ankh-Morpork doesn't need a king, so I'm not gonna be. If it ever does? I'll be here. Until then, I'm just gonna help people." They showed this pretty clearly when Vimes was made a Duke. Carrot's standing right behind Vetinari with his utterly dependable, well used, perfect incarnation of a sword that is definitely not the rightful King of Ankh-Morporks sword on full display. When Vimes talks about "What if the rightful king comes back and objects?" Vetinari's answer is, well, we'll deal with that then but I think he'll be cool with it. Carrot is definitely not going to be the king, he doesn't think it's right even if he would be the right guy for the job. He's fine with it, so let him live his life as a Captain in the Watch.
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Apr 26, 2021 20:58
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wizzardstaff posted:V's kids weren't adopted, they were uplifted. How old is this? Because I forget the setting but I literally played a tabletop game where dwarves worked that way like a decade or two ago. Each clan also had their own take on the dwarf "recipe" that used different rocks and additional materials, resulting in some significant physical differences between each clan. Edit: You know what, it was probably one of my friend's homebrews from years and years back and it's just one of those ideas people have had more than once. The goblin idea is actually really cool though. I've seen similar ideas used for other races (escaped constructs/wizard creations making more of themselves), but something about the details of this one strike me as just... right. GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Apr 26, 2021 |
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Apr 26, 2021 21:05
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GlyphGryph posted:How old is this? Because I forget the setting but I literally played a tabletop game where dwarves worked that way like a decade or two ago. It's a tumblr post from August, 2019. I doubt it's a repost of anything older since this guy posts weird tabletop RPG ideas on his blog like every other day. He's even turned a few of them into actual weird RPGs with rulesheets. Since I guess that's his job or something. Clarste fucked around with this message at 21:28 on Apr 26, 2021 |
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Apr 26, 2021 21:19
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Dwarfs just kind of popping out of the clay and rocks on their own is from the original Norse mythology, and also referenced in Tolkien's works. Formalizing that into a method of reproduction where new dwarfs are carved out on purpose seems like a logical step; I'm sure a fair amount of people have independently arrived at that idea.
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Apr 26, 2021 21:33
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Gynovore posted:Seriously, what was the point of the Girdle of Feminity/Masculinity anyway? Gender in D&D has no effect on gameplay at all. -4 strength meme came from dnd in those days having that.
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Apr 26, 2021 22:28
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The whole thing about Carrot's destiny is that the destined perfect king looked at the world and, because he really is good and kind and just and everything that a king should be, he decided that mankind does not need kings. This is faced in every book he's in, for the most part. It starts in Guards! Guards! where he literally, if accidentally, kills the usurper with the Laws and Ordinances of Ankh-Morpork and then he and Vimes reinstate Vetinari, and it ends in The Fifth Elephant where he very pointedly makes it clear that an oath to the king is an oath to the Watch. Even when he's offered the captaincy of the Watch in Men At Arms, he gets Vimes ranked above him because he believes that his ability to truly command the Watch means that he shouldn't be allowed to do it. I think a Carrot-specific book about this kind of thing would almost defeat the point that Carrot's basically a main character who has decided that the world doesn't need anymore main characters.
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Apr 26, 2021 22:31
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John Wick of Dogs posted:Then how the gently caress are half elves Dorukan and uh... Lirian? were apparently in a relationship, so probably just the usual way. Some plants need to be pollinated and such. Durokan is clearly a bee person, not human as assumed. Acerbatus fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Apr 26, 2021 |
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Apr 26, 2021 22:34
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GlyphGryph posted:How old is this? Because I forget the setting but I literally played a tabletop game where dwarves worked that way like a decade or two ago. Each clan also had their own take on the dwarf "recipe" that used different rocks and additional materials, resulting in some significant physical differences between each clan. That's Glorantha. There's gold dwarves, iron dwarves, clay dwarves, etc. (they call themselves Mostali, the people of the Stasis god.)
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Apr 26, 2021 22:56
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Acerbatus posted:-4 strength meme came from dnd in those days having that. -4 STR doesn't come from anything except traditional games trolls starting fights over misogyny. 1st ed. AD&D does have caps for female strength for different races, as posted earlier, but -4 never appears as a modifier anywhere in D&D. Gynovore posted:Given that I have way too much time on my hands lately (wfh is very much a mixed blessing) I pulled up a pdf of the 1.0 Player's Handbook and searched for 'female', and... And D&D doesn't actually deduct from your score if you're female; it just places a (baseless, arbitrary) limit on your maximum Strength score -- and for a female human, that's 18/50 (i.e. above the limit for all non-fighter characters anyway and 'exceptional strength' is of questionable usefulness to boot). So while D&D certainly used to unwisely try and encode misogyny into its mechanics, it never actually had negative Strength modifiers for women. That was largely a 4chan invention.
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Apr 26, 2021 23:09
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Khizan posted:The whole thing about Carrot's destiny is that the destined perfect king looked at the world and, because he really is good and kind and just and everything that a king should be, he decided that mankind does not need kings.
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Apr 26, 2021 23:26
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I do wonder about the inevitable succession crisis when Vetinari dies or otherwise becomes unable to hold office. Ankh-Morpork has had many terrible Patricians. Would Carrot let the city rot under a bad Patrician? That might never happen though. Vetinari had a vampire lady friend. He went out of his way to make various undead types accepted citizens of the city and even members of the Watch. He's also noted to not be a big eater or be self-indulgent in any way, and to have no personal vices anyone could find. Take all that together and he could have been training himself to become a black-ribbon vampire so he would never need to be replaced.  This guy being a vampire would be the least surprising twist ever.
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Apr 26, 2021 23:36
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Facebook Aunt posted:I do wonder about the inevitable succession crisis when Vetinari dies or otherwise becomes unable to hold office. Ankh-Morpork has had many terrible Patricians. Would Carrot let the city rot under a bad Patrician? I think there was a theory that Vetinari was prepping Moist Von Lipvig to be his successor.
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Apr 26, 2021 23:38
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Knowing Vetinari, those were both his plan, with Moist being his successor, but Vetinari himself being immortal, and ready to step back in if things went off the rails.
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Apr 26, 2021 23:44
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The_Other posted:I think there was a theory that Vetinari was prepping Moist Von Lipvig to be his successor. Later books hint/imply he was setting up Vimes Moist and William de Worde (in the one scene where they're all in the same room) basically as the three big heads of the city but he also positions them against each other at least superficially since that's generally better for everyone. Which is probably the most Vetinari way to handle it.
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Apr 27, 2021 00:05
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My impression was that Moist's jobs were part of an ongoing plan to set up a kind of apolitical indispensable civil service that would continue to run along and keep the city going regardless of who was in charge.
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Apr 27, 2021 00:20
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MikeJF posted:My impression was that Moist's jobs were part of an ongoing plan to set up a kind of apolitical indispensable civil service that would continue to run along and keep the city going regardless of who was in charge. Same. In Feet of Clay, there's a plot to poison the Patrician. The Patrician lets himself get poisoned repeatedly, explicitly to remind the city that some day he will die and they should be ready for that. For most of the Guards series, the Patrician's story arc is preparing for his own death.
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Apr 27, 2021 00:40
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wiegieman posted:That's Glorantha. There's gold dwarves, iron dwarves, clay dwarves, etc. (they call themselves Mostali, the people of the Stasis god.) Gosh I love Glorantha, what a good setting. its surprising how many things I enjoy I end up discovering to be from a part of that setting and I just didnt realize it. Reading up on the mostali it seems pretty familiar - if it wasn't this, it was probably something based on it, so thanks! GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 01:30 on Apr 27, 2021 |
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Apr 27, 2021 01:22
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girl dick energy posted:Doesn't he also look up to Vimes (and to his inherent distrust of power and authority)? This might be me conflating him with someone else, but I feel like I remember there being a theme of Carrot being too good at commanding, and if he was in charge, he'd basically remove the ability for people who'd be shamelessly critical of him and his decisions (like Vimes) to exist. And the world doesn't need more kings and commanders, it needs more people like Vimes. Vimes put words in his head.  Also, the closest I can remember to that is at the end of Men At Arms, when Carrot is offered the captaincy and he says that he'll accept the post but that he will not command the Watch, because he wants people to obey the laws because it is the right thing to do and not just because "Captain Carrot is good at being obeyed". That's when he suggests Vimes for a Knighthood and Commander of the Watch. Weirdly, that's also one of three times where he sort of indirectly wields the powers of the king. Kings get to knight people, and Vetinari does it then at Carrot's suggestion. When Vimes is made Duke, it's again at Carrot's suggestion and it's even explicitly pointed out by somebody that only the king can raise somebody to that rank. The third time I can think of is at the end of Fifth Elephant, when he lays the royal sword across his desk and tells Fred and Nobby that all the watchmen had sworn oaths to the king, and that none of them had been released from that oath.
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Apr 27, 2021 01:24
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girl dick energy posted:Knowing Vetinari, those were both his plan, with Moist being his successor, but Vetinari himself being immortal, and ready to step back in if things went off the rails. So in conclusion, Vladimir Putin is a vampire?
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Apr 27, 2021 02:27
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There's a lot of fun stories you can have with that sort of mostly-benevolent ultra-competent dictator who is just good enough to keep control over his trainwreck of a dominion. Although I guess Ankh-Morpork is a particularly high-functioning trainwreck that has really mastered the art of failing-forward that builds a particularly good synthesis with Vetinari's manipulative competence. I think it was their national anthem that describes the city being able to economically absorb invading armies. The webcomic Girl Genius has a similar feel with Baron Wulfenbach and The Master of Paris, where you see how chaotic their subjects are and how they manage to rise above it all to keep control and build a big, threatening persona to do most of the work of tamping down on threats to their rule. They even both have to deal with succession, and nearly lose everything they built in the process. I think Girl Genius goes harder on the unsavory aspect of dictators as well, since The Master destroys people who learn too much about his machines, and Baron Wulfenbach kills a whole lot of people for the sake of keeping order. The only mostly confirmed kill I remember for Vetinari is one of the former dictators of the city.
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Apr 27, 2021 02:37
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:I feel like that was pretty well resolved by Feet of Clay if not Men-at-Arms. Agreed; to expand on the sword's destiny specifically: in Men at Arms, someone (Nobby, iirc) remarks that pulling a sword out of a stone isn't very impressive - the nobles probably hired a dwarf with a pair of tongs to wait in there for the right guy to come along and let him pull it out. What'd be really kingly is the guy who can put the sword in the stone in the first place. Then, at the climax, Carrot stabs Doctor Cruces while he's standing against a stone pillar, and someone (maybe Nobby again? or Colon) remarks that it's been rammed into his stomach all the way to the hilt, implying that about three feet of sword are inside the stone pillar. As far as I'm concerned, that's all the payoff that Carrot's suspiciously non-magical sword needs - it's fulfilled its destiny of proving Carrot's kingliness. But that is a secret only the core members of the Watch really know about, and the papers that d'Eath collected proving his lineage suspiciously disappear as well, having last been seen in Carrot's hands, and Carrot deliberately takes a position subordinate to Vimes as Captain under Vimes' commandership. So Carrot's rejection of the kingship is perfectly clear then, and I'd say that's the conclusion of Carrot's kingship character arc. Re: female dwarves and allegory: I always thought (and I swear I've read a quote from Pratchett himself saying this) that Cheery's storyline about "coming out" as a female dwarf was meant as an allegory for gay rights specifically. Obviously the trans rights reading is pretty literal, but it also works very well, since the fight for trans rights now feels like it's in a pretty similar place to where gay rights were in the late 90s Feet of Clay and The Fifth Elephant were published. The conservatives seem to have dusted off all their old arguments from back then and reused them for trans people (think of the children; why do they have to shove it in our faces; it's unnatural; it's against the bible/tradition; etc.) and several of them, I'm pretty sure, are used by the conservative dwarves in response to Cheery and the others who follow in her footsteps.
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Apr 27, 2021 02:48
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DontMockMySmock posted:The conservatives seem to have dusted off all their old arguments from back then and reused them for trans people (think of the children; why do they have to shove it in our faces; it's unnatural; it's against the bible/tradition; etc.) and several of them, I'm pretty sure, are used by the conservative dwarves in response to Cheery and the others who follow in her footsteps. "I don't have anything against women. I'm pretty sure my mother was one. But why does she have to shove it in our faces?"
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Apr 27, 2021 03:02
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Cup Runneth Over posted:
I'm not really sure what the difference is since anyone who would use strength much would want it maxed out anyways.
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Apr 27, 2021 04:09
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SlothfulCobra posted:There's a lot of fun stories you can have with that sort of mostly-benevolent ultra-competent dictator who is just good enough to keep control over his trainwreck of a dominion. Although I guess Ankh-Morpork is a particularly high-functioning trainwreck that has really mastered the art of failing-forward that builds a particularly good synthesis with Vetinari's manipulative competence. I think it was their national anthem that describes the city being able to economically absorb invading armies. Vetinari is an Assassin's Guild alumni iirc Acerbatus posted:I'm not really sure what the difference is since anyone who would use strength much would want it maxed out anyways. Negative modifier applies regardless of whether you'd want to use it much or not
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Apr 27, 2021 08:02
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The negative modifier doesn't exist though, I think is the point 1e was before point buy, so you'd roll your scores by whatever method then assign them, the benefits of high strength were fairly nugatory until you got up to the 18/51 territory
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Apr 27, 2021 08:09
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I loved the whole Vimes, Patrician and Carrot triangle. It worked so well.
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Apr 27, 2021 09:10
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Cup Runneth Over posted:Vetinari is an Assassin's Guild alumni iirc Provost of Assassins: Havelock, Lord Vetinari, DMAP, DM, DGS, MA, MPE, MASc, MIDD, BScI, DiPE. His Assassin degrees are Doctor of Medicine and Applied Pathology Doctor of Music Doctor of Gods' Studies Master Assassin Master of Political Expediency Master of Alchemical Science Member of the Institute of Dance and Deportment Pachelor of Political Expediency Diploma of Physical Education Lord Downy, President of the Guild, only holds an MA degree.
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Apr 27, 2021 09:17
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My favorite part of his education is that his specialization was disguise and camouflage, but he was never certified due to his abysmal attendance scores.
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Apr 27, 2021 10:15
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e: nvm I'm stupid
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Apr 27, 2021 11:31
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Toplowtech posted:According to the Discworld's Assassins' Guild Diary, he is listed as: Yeah, so if anything, he is clearly just better about hiding his kills so they're never confirmed :V Moist von Lipwig seems pretty certain Vetinari would kill him without a second thought. Zulily Zoetrope posted:My favorite part of his education is that his specialization was disguise and camouflage, but he was never certified due to his abysmal attendance scores. A very Arrested Development joke.
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Apr 27, 2021 11:55
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Cup Runneth Over posted:Moist von Lipwig seems pretty certain Vetinari would kill him without a second thought. Well yes, but he was sentenced to death, all very legal.
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Apr 27, 2021 15:05
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Cup Runneth Over posted:Yeah, so if anything, he is clearly just better about hiding his kills so they're never confirmed :V Moist von Lipwig is an extremely observant man.
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Apr 27, 2021 15:05
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Moist was an excellent character, I very much enjoyed the books where he played a starring role.
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Apr 27, 2021 19:36
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Shame there were only two of them
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Apr 27, 2021 19:45
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https://twitter.com/RichBurlew/status/1387135952896892929
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