Elminster must die

[Crissa]

Except 'gully' is a made-up name for fiction where as those are not.

-Crissa

[Count Arioch the 28th]

True story: I was in the presence of Tracy and Laura Hickman. Laura Hickman tells Gully Dwarf jokes, using a really fake Appalachian accent. She laughs at these jokes in the middle of them and after they are over. It's... embarrassing to the point of drawing physically noticeable winces to be around these people while they are talking about their Gully Dwarf creations.

-Username17

I find that annoying. Yes, I make fun of appalachian people all the damn time, but I've lived here all my adult life and have to put up with them.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

Well, I'd be shocked if the Hickman's could do a non-fake Appalachian accent, since they've apparently lived in Utah and Wisconsin most of their lives. I doubt they've ever been to Appalachia. Heck, even though I've been to Appalachia twice recently, I'd be hard pressed to do a good accent. I blame it on the fact that I spent pretty much all the time at the home of my Grandpa's brother, who grew up in the region but has lived in Ohio and Florida most of his adult life.

[A Man In Black]

She sounds like a horrible comedian. Worse still, she's a racist. Which doesn't truly surprise me, since they're both Mormons, and Mormonism has some really racist ideas, like "only white people can go to heaven".

This reminds me of an old joke.

"We should knock this off, these racist jokes are a crime."

"Yeah, and crime is for [racial slur]!"

[K]

Every setting has self-insertion characters. Dragonlance is only bad because all of the main characters are self-insertion characters (and the cultures are all pretty despicable).

The more novels that get written in a setting, the more self-insertion characters it gets. Heck, game designers change mechanics so their dwarves and druids get power-ups, so it should be no surprise that a few uber-characters pop up in every setting.

I mean, Forgotten Realms has a crap-ton of novels about it. They literally printed out statbooks of all the self-insertion characters.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Being a self-insertion isn't necessarily bad; it's just that self-insertion characters have the unfortunate tendency to hijack a plot already in progress.

Of course even plot hijacking isn't necessarily a bad thing if one of these things are true: A) the new plot is more interesting than the old plot (see: The Dark Knight), B) the plot threads of the new characters and the old ones are intertwined rather than outright replaced (see: One Piece), or C) there wasn't a plot or the plot wasn't moving to begin with until these characters arrived on the scene (see: Dragonlance).

Considering that most tabletop games tend to not even have ANY plot until someone moves it and they're set up in such a way so that 'self-insertion' characters tend to be only distinguishable from 'naturally existing' characters unless they're built like Mary Sues (and if you're playing in Forgotten Realms where everyone is a Speshul Snowflake it takes Elminster-level to even notice) or the designers/players flat-out say.

It's not really a big deal. It's just that jackasses like Elminster, Raistlin, and Mordenkainen give the concept a black eye. I don't mind having uber-powerful wizards in the setting as long as they aren't used as a personal sex fantasy vehicle (Elminster), embody and enforce the more vile aspects of the setting's morality (Mordenkainen), or hijack the metaplot and make it a less interesting one (Raistlin). Ssazz Tam and Bigby and Goldmoon are ALSO uber-powerful (at least in relation to the setting) spellcasters and no-one gives a fuck about them despite their speshul snowflake status because they don't rub their syphilis-infected genitals over everything.

[K]

playing in Forgotten Realms where everyone is a Speshul Snowflake it takes Elminster-level to even notice) or the designers/players flat-out say.

I think a lot of this hate comes from the fact that FR is just the most prolific setting. In every setting there are special snowglakes.

Most gamers today are too young to remember the Grewhawk books where characters get turned into penis extensions, but I remember the Wolf Nomad is who turned into an archmage and boned every woman he met and the thief that became immortal and also boned every woman he met. I mean, in Dragonlance Lord Soth is a toss away character in the original DL books but he gets two more books that are all about him, and DL has been a dead setting for almost ten years.

It's a simple matter of math. The more books about your setting, the more penis extension characters. Also, the more books about a character, the longer than penis extension gets.

People don't complain about Greyhawk or Eberron because they frankly haven't read a lot of books in those settings, so the mass of "special snowflake" characters is small.

So Elminster, the most written about character in DnD literature who appears in countless novels and is the main character in his own trilogy, is the biggest penis extension ever. Drizzt is a main character in three novels, and is the main focus of like seven more, is also pointed at as being another of FR's sins.

But if Greyhawk or Dragonlance were still active settings for the last ten years, we'd see the same with them. Eberron never had a whole lot of fans, so it's understandable that few characters there ever had a chance to whip it out for a goddess.

[Lago PARANOIA]

You know, I've been trying to come up with my own campaign setting recently but I've been having trouble with it.

I really want to port over Dragonlance's 'the world is slowly going to hell and there is little we can do' tone. That's pretty much what saved the comic for me. However, Krynn is a stupid place.

For me, the ideal setting would have around that level of grimdark. Namely:

- The world is sliding into Points of Light, or the overthrow of civilization altogether.
- The good gods/deities are slightly outmatched by the evil/neutral ones, causing the slow slide.
- There are at least two major ongoing wars in the setting.
- The foundations of science, what little there is to be had in such a world, are crumbling due to religious fanaticism and racism.
- Long-dead horrors such as pogroms and slavery are coming back.
- Second mostly importantly not everyone is grimdark. Unlike like, say, Sin City there are actually a lot of White Hats in this world. The people on the whole still want peace and understanding and equality, it's just that the bastards who don't temporarily hold the winning hand. If you do something like negotiate a peace between the orcs and the dwarves, it'll probably stick as long as you don't do something like the Treaty of Versailles.
- Most importantly, the setting makes it really clear that this is still fixable. That is, you and your heroes can personally can stop the backslide of civilization into darkness.


As far as the setup of the world goes, I think something like Culdcept Saga or A:TLA where the world is divided up into elemental regions and nations would be the best. Of course it'll have to be subdivided some more to account for the increase in factions in this campaign setting, but still.


Also, there should be at LEAST one motherfucking major trainline. Because I love trains. And you should, too.

[PhoneLobster]

...has no personal dignity (nude? Me? ...

Now THAT was classy, the way he just took something totally cool like having no nudity taboos and then made it all icky by mistaking a lack of something negative like Shame for a lack of something positive like Dignity.

That's just wrong right there, that's the Freudian slip that transforms the conveyed image of the whole thing from "Noble proud nudist queen of free love" to "Stupid slutty whore demeaning wank fantasy object".

At long-ago GenCons...removed all metal -- weapons and, er, BELT BUCKLES ... and garments vanished... filled with warm rosewater and naked people making love. SOMEwhere in all of that sliding flesh was Alustriel. Their mission: find her.

Ugh. Yeah. Okay. So let's see. Enforced ambush nudity with ambush naked orgy and enforced naked orgy sorting/sifting/wrestling.

Stay classy Ed. Stay classy.

I loved watching players’ faces, right at that moment.

Strange? I mean I for one would find all the looks of fuming anger, resentment and embarrassment as being an indictment against me for performing such SPECTACULARLY bad, and alarmingly sexual, abuses of GMing. In public. With strangers. At a convention.

Super classy. FINISH HIM Mr Greenwood. Classtallity!

[Sashi]

You know, I've been trying to come up with my own campaign setting recently but I've been having trouble with it.

I really want to port over Dragonlance's 'the world is slowly going to hell and there is little we can do' tone. That's pretty much what saved the comic for me. However, Krynn is a stupid place.

For me, the ideal setting would have around that level of grimdark. Namely:

- The world is sliding into Points of Light, or the overthrow of civilization altogether.
- The good gods/deities are slightly outmatched by the evil/neutral ones, causing the slow slide.
- There are at least two major ongoing wars in the setting.
- The foundations of science, what little there is to be had in such a world, are crumbling due to religious fanaticism and racism.
- Long-dead horrors such as pogroms and slavery are coming back.
- Second mostly importantly not everyone is grimdark. Unlike like, say, Sin City there are actually a lot of White Hats in this world. The people on the whole still want peace and understanding and equality, it's just that the bastards who don't temporarily hold the winning hand. If you do something like negotiate a peace between the orcs and the dwarves, it'll probably stick as long as you don't do something like the Treaty of Versailles.
- Most importantly, the setting makes it really clear that this is still fixable. That is, you and your heroes can personally can stop the backslide of civilization into darkness.


As far as the setup of the world goes, I think something like Culdcept Saga or A:TLA where the world is divided up into elemental regions and nations would be the best. Of course it'll have to be subdivided some more to account for the increase in factions in this campaign setting, but still.


Also, there should be at LEAST one motherfucking major trainline. Because I love trains. And you should, too.

You might want to look at the Berserk manga for a campaign seed. The world isn't very well defined in terms of a world map, but it's surprisingly well defined in terms of society. And the story follows a D&D paradigm to the point that you can basically pinpoint the level and stats of most of the characters (the main character seriously goes from being a first level fighter, to a level 15 fighter with an artifact sword).

If you aren't familiar with the world, it goes like this:

The world is divided up into nation states that aren't so much in a constant state of war as in a constant state of "if we don't have an army trying to conquer our neighbors, then we'll get conquered by our neighbors." which results in a constant cold war where the border of a country is "how big of an army can we pay for". And "pay" is the operative word, since the majority of actual battles are fought with mercenary armies on at least one side.

The most interesting thing is that the early story involves the "raiding party". Which, depending on your interpretation, either means "delta force" or "your army of tiny men has nothing on my group of six dudes with class levels". There's even more crazy stuff, like how the entire party of Rogues and Paladins is replaced by spellcasters and weird monster levels around level 6-8 except for one character who manages to survive as a Figheter (and instantly gets an artifact sword) and one masochist holdout who insists on making a new pure rogue character.

What's interesting is that at the same time as the Great Party Swap it is revealed that the gods of "good" are literally absentee landlords and the gods of "evil" are Asmodeus-level powerful demon/weak god entities.

As time goes on, the entire region of nation-states starts getting invaded by the Persians, who have a literal demon-king leading them. And the PCs stop dealing with armies of humanoids and instead fight demon-twisted whales and corrupted nature spirits.

[Vnonymous]

Sorry. Berserk is good, but Guts is not a high level character. He's a ridiculously good fighter, but he isn't a high level character. I suppose the case could be made that he's a high level vanilla 3.5 fighter though.

Guts' list of abilities is this:

1. Swing a huge sword around
2. Take a lot of damage
3. Barbarian Rage
4. Throw knives
5. Attract monsters and see magic
6. Plane shift on self(with that funky planar cosmology berserk uses) with very limited circumstances.

Not only is Guts completely incapable of harming high level characters(Slan), all he ends up doing is giving one of them an orgasm, and then sustaining a wound nasty enough to keep him out of action for a long time. While he is a vicious fighter, he has two cool magical items and martial skill. That's it.

A high level martial character in Berserk is actually Skull Knight. The God Hand are also high level outsiders, not sure if they're very playable outside of Griffith though. Really, a lot of berserk is a very bad fit for a roleplaying game. While behelits are really cool, they're not something you want to put in a roleplaying game ever. "I kill the party and send them to hell in order to get shittons of bonus xp and a template" is not a decision you want people to be making at all, really.

Berserk would make for a great open world computer game where you get to choose your origin, background, destiny etc, but you'd have to fuck around with a lot of the setting to make it suitable for dnd.

[Sashi]

Guts fought a Huge Dragon apostle to a standstill by his lonesome, that's basically the definition of a level ~15 character.

Slan is an epic-level demon queen, the reason Guts is still alive after encountering her is because his impotent raging trying to kill her amuses her to the point of orgasm.

The crazy demon berserker armor is literally the Skull Knight's castoff but is also an artifact: it heals him in battle, gives him crazy rage buffs, and has DR 30/-

The huge sword is also an artifact by now. It's a 4d8 damage adamantine bane (all outsiders) greatsword at the minimum.

His final "magic item" is his prosthetic left hand, which has gone all inspector gadget and holds a cannon and a repeating crossbow.

Serpico is a 12th level or so duelist (he fights Guts to a standstill twice by challenging him only when the environment gives Guts penalties to bring him down 3-4 levels) and he's got a brilliant energy rapier that lets him cast magic missile at will as well as a "cloak" that occupies his armor slot and has a permanent shield spell and either a permanent Jump spell or a 10 rounds/day fly effect.

Shierke is the cleric from DrD+ and has bullshit magic powers that let her cast Tsunami but only if she finds a level 10 water spirit.

Puck is a bullshit pixie/bard who is completely enamored with his giant charisma bonus to his totally weak level-inappropriate spells. But at least he can cast Cure Light Wounds.

Pucks player is a shithead who took Leadership and decided he needed a full-classed Rogue. And that's how we have Isidro.

Farense, Caska, and the girl pixie are NPC's.

The early game consisted of a Raiding Party that involved:
Caska - Paladin
Guts - Fighter/Barbarian
Pippin - Cleric/Fighter
Judeau - Bard
Corkus - Rogue

Griffith is an NPC who gives the raiding party missions. At some point the DM wants to make the "creeping evil" more concrete and accidentally TPK's the party by putting them up against demons that completely slaughtered the party because they all had DR 20/silver or good but nobody had silver or holy weapons. So the DM retcons the entire thing as the "sacrifice ceremony" and turns Griffith from a beautiful bastard to an outright bastard. The PC's can't use the behelit because it only activates on DM fiat.

[Red Archon]

Good assessment otherwise, but absolutely nothing indicates that Slan is epic level.

Guts is an archetypal frenzied berserker build - the class most likely is based on Guts in the first place.

[Sashi]

How do you "indicate" epic level? The ELH and Deities & Demigods makes me sad, so I don't really follow them. If Guts is in the level 14-18 range (and he appears to be so, since he fought a huge half-demon carborundum dragon to a standstill with a few buffs from Shierke's level 8 Squirtle) and Slan is powerful enough that she bats Guts around like a cat toy, then Slan is in the level 21-25+ range, which is "Epic" in whatever ways that count.

Slan, Griffith, and the other Gods Hand are honestly so much more powerful than Guts and the rest of the party that the trip to "elf island" is obviously the DM applying arbitrary phlebotinum "elf nature spirit" MacGuffin powers to make it so Guts has a chance against him without depowering Griffith/Femto to just be a regular CR 21 Balor.

[FatR]

1. Swing a huge sword around
2. Take a lot of damage
3. Barbarian Rage
4. Throw knives
5. Attract monsters and see magic
6. Plane shift on self(with that funky planar cosmology berserk uses) with very limited circumstances.

You forgot machinegunning stuff with his crossbow, with pinpoint accuracy (or having a cannon for an arm), running so fast that human senses fail to register him, jumping several dozen meters without a running start and limited monster detection (but sufficient to never be actually ambushed by Apostles), and having some tricks that allow him to pretty much ignore AoOs. He needs artifacts to compete, but with them he holds his own against giants, a dragon and Huge-to-Gargantuan demon-whale thingies.

[mikal768]

Except 'gully' is a made-up name for fiction where as those are not.

-Crissa

Huh, I could have sworn gully was a real word...

Yeah. I don't think Gully dwarves have anything to do with Gullah.

There's plenty to blast Dragonlance for without having to make spurious claims.

[Lago PARANOIA]

People trying to convert the elements of a story to game mechanics and then using the D&D mechanics to analyze the story makes me fucking puke. 3E D&D is so schizophrenic that it's a waste of to try to draw any conclusions out of that. Guts could simultaneously be a min-maxxed 8th level character or he could be a 17th level character.

I mean, sure, feel free to do it for amusement, but if you're trying to get any truth out of the statement other than 'this is what my character would look like on a character sheet durr-HEY!' you're being a dumbass.

[Sashi]

That's a pretty shittastic view to take. Sure, trying to argue about what an anime character's jump modifier is based on how far they jump in some scene or what their strength score is based on things they lift is totally clownshoes.

It's even dumber to do the Elminster (HA! On topic!) thing and create a "chosen of mystra" PrC just so you can shoehorn all the stupid shit your favorite pop culture character can do into the game (first level of Cloud Strife gets an infinite bottle of perfect-hold hairgel).

But what's not stupid is taking a look at stories you like and trying to loosely translate that story into an RPG system paradigm as an exercise for thinking about how to tell stories in the RPG.

[Lago PARANOIA]

But what's not stupid is taking a look at stories you like and trying to loosely translate that story into an RPG system paradigm as an exercise for thinking about how to tell stories in the RPG.

No, but when you're starting to do things like attach D&D levels to named NPCs that's when you're starting to get into the realm of 'trying to argue about what an anime character's jump modifier is'.

[Sashi]

Yeah, I felt a little dirty typing out the stats for Guts' sword, or trying to justify why I called Slan "Epic".

But I don't feel bad pointing out that Kentaro Miura has kind of painted himself into a corner by turning the story into a godslayer quest while the PC's aren't actually powerful enough to go godslaying yet. So he has to either power down Griffith or artificially power up Guts so there can be an ultrapowered callback to the duel in the snow between the two.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Kentaro probably won't have to worry about that decision, since he'll be dead loooong before he gets to that point, the rate the story is going.

[Fuchs]

Gully in German means drain (in a shower, on the street, in a building). I associated Gully Dwarves with the (storm) sewers for that reason when I first heard of them.