Leraika posted:

I vividly remember the white dragon story as the only DL story I've ever read.

Knight ganks the eeeevil white dragon that's basically minding its business, realizes too late WHOOPS it was a silver dragon instead (he uses the breath weapon to determine it), and takes in the baby dragon he just orphaned as penance.

SunAndSpring posted:

Forbidden Lands, Part 6

The Gamemaster's Guide
For some reason they shove the stronghold encounters table here in the advice section but alright, sure. Mostly, they're just King of Dragon Pass style dilemmas such as orcs coming up to your stronghold to demand tribute, runaway slaves asking for refuge, spies looking for people sheltering religious heretics, and so on. No advice on what to do if you roll the same thing twice in a campaign since it's a d66 list, sadly, so I guess you'll just have to wing it.

Gun Jam posted:

Fist & ants -guy.

Libertad! posted:

Since I only have a 30 page adventure to review for Legends of the Twins, I'm strongly considering starting another sourcebook review while I still got the Dragonlance bug. My current two choices are either War of the Lance (a 3.5 setting sourcebook detailing Ansalon during the Chronicles-era beyond the classic adventures) or Towers of High Sorcery (which details a variety of mechanics and fluff for the veritable arcane organization of Ansalon).

Does anyone here have any preferences?

Libertad! posted:

Oh believe me, it not only talks about the Tests, it has a detailed write-up on how to run such a test for PCs and what kinds of challenges to set up for them too. It's part of its own (albeit short) chapter and has a nifty flowchart:

Tylana posted:

I forget if the novels cover Raistlin's test or if it's in the short story anthologies. It's definitely not quite what that gamebook showed.

EimiYoshikawa posted:

Ironically, I read Dragonlance stuff before I was exposed to D&D's Drow, so when he recalled having been wounded in his duel with a 'dark elf', 10 year old me took it as...a metaphor for this elf being a particularly evil dude, like, enough that he got kicked out of the other elvish societies. You know, like 'the dark lord' would tend to make you think of an evil guy, not someone with a lot of melanin.

...did they actually make this unnamed dark elf...an actual drow? Like, skin and hair and all that jazz? Because...like you said, there aren't any drow on Krynn. ...though I suppose they could've wound up there after Spelljamming or something, given that DL explicitly welcomed (if also dicked over) non-native characters from other mortal planes/crystal spheres/settings/whatevers.

It just seems kind of...

...eh...

Night10194 posted:

It's kind of hard to know how to put this, but my sense is that a lot of this comes out of how elves are usually coded as incredibly white. Like, white beyond white. Whether that's a racist view going 'man look at these awesome elves' or something else going 'look at these arrogant, lovely, vain colonialists', it's a major part of how elves tend to be deployed in fantasy.

Which is why I like Spire's take on reclaiming the drow as people of color struggling against an oppressive white colonialist regime. Especially since it also recontextualizes the whole 'cursed people' bullshit as the exact racist nonsense it's descended from.

E: Effectively, Spire works because it takes the racist nonsense that was the origin of the drow and then draws it into a more realistic one, while making the exact racist arguments and things that underlay the original metaphor the propaganda of the lovely villains.

Snorb posted:

Direct quote from the Characters and Combat book here:


To be fair, though, XXVc assumes that said AD&D characters are going to entirely use their weapons, as opposed to having the wizard drop Meteor Swarm on RAM Corporate Headquarters. (XXVc's mum on whether magic will actually work in our solar system if you and the gang decide to take a little trip out of Faerun.)

I'm assuming that my fighter will want to pick up a monosword on this little side trip to this strange realm before we get back to our fantasy campaign!

Gun Jam posted:

I mean, they're not human. Why should they?
Humanoid rights, however...
Okay, two thing aside -one why humanoid? Feel like an elf or a dwarf would throttle you for this.
Second, so dragons have no rights? Fey, magical beasts?.

PurpleXVI posted:

They're generally described as the only ones with any real concept of loyalty or cooperation among the evil dragons, outside of being bullied or commanded to work together.

Though it's worth noting that 1E dragons are a bit different from 2E dragons in that they're treated a bit more like greedy animals. Even the fundamentally "good" metallic dragons are described as motivated heavily by greed and hoarding instincts, and the monstrous manual has firm rules for how you can break them like beasts of burden and sell them at the market. 1E Dragonlance does make them a bit more intelligent and complex than the basic 1E versions, but not much. Their being treated as something genuinely special didn't really start until 2E.

Ronwayne posted:

I still think the worse type is shadowrun, where well meaning white nerds try to challenge racism and end up making something that is somehow more racist than the source material.

Everyone posted:

Joe Slowboat posted:

Orientalism includes, and even is especially involved in, the treatment of the Middle East and North Africa, and Drow fit pretty closely with Haggard's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/She:_A_History_of_Adventure. More generally, they embody the decadent, ancient-but-crumbling, slave-taking Other that European orientalism imagines. They have all the tropes, and frankly, European racism often blended and tied together different racist ideations. Orientalism generally imagined societies that were older and even more 'advanced' than Europe, but which had crumbled due to a lack of vigor and ethical drive. This emerges especially in the supposed sexual deviance of the Other, which Drow fit to a t. Matriarchy also fits into that model of racism.

Basically, the Drow aren't Eastern, but they are decadent, dark-skinned, matriarchal, demon-worshiping, sexually deviant, enslaving... all these qualities which were bound up in an image of Asia and North Africa which is the body of racism called orientalism. The pulp empires the Drow draw on were often explicitly Eastern.

EimiYoshikawa posted:

Yeah, that double-whammy was, uh, always something I wasn't so thrilled about. They tried to back off from the latter in late 3rd and 4th, I think, claiming it was an 'early age of magic shift' thing, but only wound up leaning even harder into the former at the same time, so...uh.

I mean, I kind of get what they were going for with the aging thing, particularly since Orks also had shorter maximum lifespans and they tried to tie the two together, the tragedy of having a shorter life and all that poo poo, but when a stirring speech (from an Ork character) about how the inequalities of human-centric society meant Orks were being discriminated against by not being able to legally gently caress younger and how unfair it was that they had to attend school until they were eighteen...ecchhh.

I'd just handwave the changing mana ambience and give them, like, at least Troll lifespans, who, while they still die younger on average, it's explicitly due to socioeconomic factors, and it takes them just as long to mature as anybody else.

That kind of poo poo always gets creepy fast, whether it's Kes from Voyager or Orks in SR.

Althalin posted:

This particular subsystem, yes. I'll touch on it in more depth when I go over House Management, but that order in particular is absolutely broken to all hell.

I appreciate the intent in including it, as it fits in thematically with roving armies intent on recreating Sherman's March to the Sea, but reducing resources is incredibly punishing to the recipient.

PurpleXVI posted:

Dragonlance



Dragons of Light

Chapter 8: Foghaven Vale

Alright, so when we last left off, the party, accompanied by a random mercenary, a polar bear, a magic elf dog, a native elf, a burly blacksmith with a magic arm and a saber-tooth kitten had finally made it to Foghaven Vale, the only thing between them and getting to the Solamnic Knights on South Ergoth and relative safety. Now, if I tell you that the Solamnic Knights are to the northwest and show you this map:

Libertad! posted:

When you give people permission to build their own PCs in the Dragonlance Chronicles, you end up with some rather interesting choices.

When I ran the game for 13th Age, we had among our number a punchy sorcerer who was a student at a magic school from another campaign setting, a grim paladin prophet who rarely emoted, a creepy goblin hermit worshiper of Chaos, and a former exiled elf and Dragonarmy officer. And that was just our Winter team!

From my recollection of the time I ran it in high school for 3rd Edition, we had a snooty Silvanesti elf wizard who was a secret pyromaniac and a mountain dwarf fighter with a fondness for riding a horse everywhere to compensate for his stubby dwarf limbs. The other 2 PC identities escape my mind right now, but given how close the traditional Heroes of the Lance adhere to stock fantasy tropes it can be quite fun seeing how original characters can impact the Chronicles in their own offbeat ways.

I will admit that if I ever became a player in a Dragonlance campaign for a change I'd totally love to play a tinker gnome with some crazy-rear end steampunk technology. Ideally if it can be a mech suit or "power glove/gauntlet" to let me punch things real hard despite my small size. Even if it the system we're using doesn't support that concept, I will try reflavoring some magical class if I can.

EimiYoshikawa posted:

I mean, it always seemed like kind of a bunch of bullshit that just killing these jerks meant the world got irrevocably hosed up in completely unrelated ways. It's not like the jerks had done dick all for...HOW many years since the Cataclysm, aside from Takhisis, who was actually ACTIVELY being a jerk and making the world a better place? The fact that Golddus-, I mean, Raistlin, didn't give a crap about the average person on Krynn put him at no worse a place than any of the old jerks, and it wasn't like he was actively blasting apart the world fighting them, it was just 'old gods die, world measurably gets worse, not because they aren't there to do their jobs, but like if when Lincoln was shot Nebraska blew up', and what you have there? A bad setting.

wdarkk posted:

I really want to inflict pegasus archers on someone in D&D. Pretty sure you can outrange almost all spells with a longbow.

Ultiville posted:

Of course neither of these really seem to reflect the Mongolian composite bows. Per Wikipedia, back in the day of ol' Temujin, there were at least some archers hitting targets at distances somewhere between 500 yards and 500 meters, so like 1000-1500 feet. Since those are results they bragged about, they're presumably impressive even to the Mongols, but not unbelievably outrageous, so if we're going for the theoretical pegasus Khan, you'd presumably have a new exotic weapon representing their better bows that had range increments of 150-200ish, depending on how high level we think those elite keshiks were.

None of that addresses that even mid-level wizards can fly, of course, but if you're talking about the earlier editions of D&D where taking damage ruined concentration, it might be hard for the wizard to get a spell off in the face of the arrows.

Once you get to 3.x where you can make easy concentration checks and Stoneskin it up, of course, there's still not a lot of hope.

PurpleXVI posted:

To be honest, I don't think it's that people didn't want to "take it to task," more that most people hadn't heard of it. I've been a D&D player since 1E AD&D(first game was a Dragonlance game, too, woo! I played an elf.) and I'd never heard those quotes from Gygax until this year, thise thread.

Night10194 posted:

Keeping it to 18th level is keeping it from being 'overpowered'? 18th level is, uh, real powerful.

Night10194 posted:

Modern AGE

Post 3: Talented!

As for Talents, like Focuses, Talents are never really 'necessary' but add edges to what you can already do. You don't need 3 ranks of Handgun Style to be good with a pistol, but it helps. This can be seen as 'nickle and dime' Talent design, but I think that's less of a problem when they're edges on top of a broad base of competence from your core stats. Part of the reason some people (myself included) hate D&D's Feat design so much is that you're so reliant on Feats to give you permission to even try to do things. You get some cool abilities from Talent trees, sure, but most of your special abilities are in the Stunt system and your stats. I can still pull off a cool move where I wrap a bike chain around a guy's wrists and padlock him to a fence as a finisher in a fight without needing an entire Talent tree; that's just a normal (if high SP, and usually requiring a second, opposed test) Stunt. But having Self Defense Style so that you can follow up someone missing you by putting them in a hold is a big help on being a good grappler. A cunning character is probably pretty good at lying to people, but getting a free reroll from having the first rank of the Intrigue Talent when they gently caress up a lie check is a nice bonus.


Next Time: Stunts

Selachian posted:

The thing is, in AD&D days, the DM's response to that would probably be something like, "Okay, roll a Dexterity check, then a Strength check, then another Dexterity check, then roll to hit at, oh, -4, and if you fail any of these rolls you fall on your face." Or an argument over whether or not you could actually do all that in a single round.

If you think I'm exaggerating, there was an article in the Dragon about using attribute rolls to help decide actions, and it suggested breaking down an action into parts and calling for a roll for each one. One of the examples it gave was a fighter trying to climb a rope up a cliff before monsters could get him. It suggested a Dexterity roll to grab the rope and then a Strength roll to climb it. Quite a lot of DMs thought that way, which is why so much problem-solving in the old days revolved around using spells and magic items. Their effects were right there in the book in black and white, so you didn't have to throw yourself on the mercy of the DM's judgment.

JcDent posted:

Here's hoping! I also have a supremely edgy game in the reserve, but I want to finish Degenesis first... even if that's years away.

LatwPIAT posted:

Having liveblogged a reading of it, I think the main issue you'd run into is that it's honestly just frightfully dull except for the spell list - and the spell list isn't even interesting, it's just 30 variations upon human sacrifice and rape.

Mors Rattus posted:

If the main effect of the mythos is "everyone commits a lot more rapes" then it's way more prosaic and boring than its fans like to paint it.

quote:

Stoneskin (Alteration)
Level: 4 Components: V; S, M
Range: Touch Casting Time: 1 segment
Duration: Special Saving Throw: None
Area of Effect: One creature
ExplanationlDescription: When this spell is cast, the affected creature
gains a virtual immunity to any attack by cut, blow, projectile or
the like. Thus, even a sword of sharpness would not affect a creature
protected by stoneskin, nor would a rock hurled by a giant, a snake’s
strike, etc. However, magic attacks from such spells as fireball, magic
missile, lightning bolt, and so forth would have normal effect. Any attack
or attack sequence from a single opponent dispels the dweomer,
although it makes the creature immune to that single attack or attack
sequence. Attacks with relatively soft weapons, such as a monk’s
hands, an ogrillon’s fist, etc, will inflict 1-2 points of damage on the attacker
for each such attack while the attacked creature is protected
by the stoneskin spell, but will not dispel the dweomer. The material
components of the spell are granite and diamond dust sprinkled on
the recipient’s skin.

quote:

The Ineluctable
Name
to bind
Slime God

Eight feet under the muck in the westernmost of the
Bottomless Lochs is a tablet broken in two, engraved with
the eldritch sigils of the extinct Snake-Men. After three
months of continuous study, the Sorcerer will know the
secret and unspeakable name of the Slime God, as well as
the method for binding it. Thirteen non-virgin Brown Men
must be sacrificed with a corroded and diseased dagger
during the six-hour ritual, at the end of which the Slime
God will be bound to the Sorcerer’s will for 24 hours

FoldableHuman posted:

Others have already mentioned control and power, and specifically there's an appeal to SFF of being able to take your present day politics and project them into the future as the ideology that will survive/prosper/save humanity. A lot of it flies under the radar, too, since you'll get ostensibly progressive/utopian worlds free of war or racial strife where there's an unstated point in the fictional history where all the non-white people effectively gave up even trying to have their own culture and just assimilated into the (implicitly white American) "norm".

Transhumanism, by extension, has been a popular duck blind for a vein of conservative nerds who basically argue that we don't need to bother fixing inequality because The Singularity will just happen any day now and "make it all irrelevant" so we should focus effort on that.

Relevant to role playing games, it's a kind of social conflict aversion that prioritizes solutions that just make problems disappear instead of fixing them.

Nessus posted:

He wrote the fanfic.

EimiYoshikawa posted:

Pretty sure the whole 'Gil and Sil team-up' mystery of the eggs adventure was entirely off-screen, and only relayed second-hand once they got back to the Main Cast in the books.

Robindaybird posted:

there are some absolutely massive beetles - some of them can be six and a half inches long, large enough the smaller varieties of mice could conceivably ride on, but they're more tropical critters.

Midjack posted:

SGC, if you put a title at the beginning of your review posts it makes it easier for inklesspen to add them to the archive.

Pretty wild that they namechecked a real organization aside the barely disguised ones.

grassy gnoll posted:

Also, stop using goofy made up terminology for things we otherwise inherently grasp. That part's non-negotiable. Here's a free one - it's called a foot because the unit of measurement was standardized by rabbits.

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

dragon sex is traumatic for everything in a 10-mile radius, including the dragons

Libertad! posted:

Eclipse Phase is nothing if not edgy progressive cyberpunk IN SPAAAAAAAAACE

Libertad! posted:

So who's the bigger Mary Sue? Mina or Raistlin?

Libertad! posted:

Dragons of Krynn: talks about the societies of the major dragon clans of Krynn, along with cousins such as the Amphi and Shadow Dragons, and also Draconians and their new nation of Teyr.

Libertad! posted:

Interestingly I do not recall if Paladine/Fizban ever chewed out the metallics for this. I presume that he knew all along, as could possibly end up helping the heroes get into Sanction. Between that and the gods sitting on their thumbs until Goldmoon finds the Disks, they seem to be operating on the "don't do anything until the chosen one gets involved" logic.


The Krynnish pantheon is clearly modeled after the petty and dictatorial whims of the Greek pantheon, but the writers try using Christian morality as an ethos to excuse said deities' actions and then things start breaking down.

I wasn't kidding when I once made an analogy to Dragonlances' gods being like abusive parents; the "mortals are spoiled children when praying for their suffering to end" more or less makes the subtext actual text.

PurpleXVI posted:

Dragonlance



DL10, Chapter 3: Hollow Glory


But the dragon is, uh, also not a dragon? Which is weird because the dragon is an illusion, but it's covering up another illusion? Like in one case it's an illusion of a dragon that's actually a polymorphed illusion of one of the party members. In the other case it's an illusion that's covering an iron golem(which will absolutely loving paste the party so hard it's not even funny, it can kill over two Raistlins per turn. Alternately the dragon can be dead and it's instead a a Lich that'll one-shot the entire party with a Delayed Blast Fireball on round one. I don't loving get this, does the disguise drop when the dragon attacks? Or do they get attacked by the dragon unless they disbelieve it, and now there's another illusion that'll attack them instead?

Oh and the text actively encourages the GM to "target the players' weaknesses," it might as well be chanting for a TPK since one of the next potential encounters is loving Lord Soth, who's a laughable joke of a character, but a terrifying meatgrinder of an opponent. He can basically one-shot the entire party with a 20d6 damage fireball(120 or 6,66 Ra HP worth of damage at peak output), cast any Power Word spell(one of which is "Kill," it does exactly what you think it does) or just blender the party by being a more dangerous combatant than any member of the party even assuming their Fighters hadn't been downgraded to uselessness.

Libertad! posted:

Takhisis and Ariakas do not tolerate resting on one’s laurels even if one’s heritage is supposedly “fit to rule,” and in theory a mere human commoner or ogre brute can become Highlord one day.