Chamomile wrote:So are you arguing that elves don't feature in Dragonlance or that elves don't feature in Tolkien?
No, I'm arguing elves in Dragonlance are not somehow a more objectionable borrowing from Tolkien than elves in other D&D settings, so calling out specifically DL for daring to have elves from the Player's Handbook is unfair.
(I'd expected a mention of draconians made from good dragon eggs being a parallel to orcs being corrupted elves; but while Tolkien is very probably the source [unless a closer blatant ripoff exists], all the purposefully different details of the implementation separate the settings even further.)
Chamomile wrote:That there is Gandalf saying "if literally anything in all of Middle-Earth outlives Sauron without being corrupted by him, I'll call that a win." Gandalf might call it that, but the rules of narrative call that Sauron winning super hard.
Gandalf might have had his panties in a bunch, but Sauron winning was never a possibility. *His* higher-up got fucked arbitrarily super hard without a save. You know how when you watch a Bruce Willis movie and there's no chance he's going to die (unless it's Sixth Sense and he's already dead)? At least a Bruce Willis movie presents an objective power imbalance in favor of the bad guys. No matter which side of the conflict you're on in LotR, your victory can be negated or made meaningless
by two extra tiers of built-in MC fiat.
Now, while the backstory of DL a "high god" (because Mormonism), he does not have a preference and does not get involved in the affairs of the pantheon at all. The gods of neutrality are (duh) neutral; Reorx can help you in your mortal business if you're a dwarf and a worshiper, and Gilean can help you in your mortal business if you're determined to fuck up your life in interesting ways so he can write something lulzy down. Neither is going to tell worshipers to fight the dragonarmies. If Takhisis wins, she just fucking wins.
Chamomile wrote:Who even is Samwise Gamgee?
Samwise Gamgee is a peasant with a major artifact which is useful in extremely limited scripted circumstances. He's not a playable character.
Chamomile wrote:...yes? Obviously and completely? Like, you're complaining that a novel has a linear plot. What exactly is your objection, that Lord of the Rings isn't a choose your own adventure book?
My objection is to people calling the DL modules railroaded. They aren't, and you can go have adventures as custom characters. Even in the books, there's like
one adventure-relevant plot development that relies on the heroes having specific backgrounds (Tanis having fucked Kitiara), and that development isn't exactly good for the book protagonists. Progress through further DL adventures doesn't require the players having taken the same steps as the book characters, it doesn't even require that the setting facts from the books hold true. The forcefield over Silvanesti mentioned upthread by souran, there's a bunch of tables in the module for how it was raised and what to do with it, and none of them require one of your party to be the Silvanesti princess for the plot to work. Your white or red
wizard magic user doesn't need to have golden skin or a twin sibling for an evil undead wizard to offer him/her some power, and (s)he doesn't have to accept.
On the other hand, while in the story of LotR some characters are easily replaceable (Legolas and Gimli), one of you has to be "the lost heir of the main kingdom" and one has to be "one of like half a dozen named angels". The hobbits are unplayable before their upgrades, and their stories amount to getting said upgrades. What then? Oh, one of them kills half a death knight because the latter is
allergic to hobbits. Fucking seriously.
Chamomile wrote:How many non-human Solamnics can you name?
Solamnic Knights are human feudal lords. Solamnia is the mainland area they collectively rule and it's like 10% hill dwarf and 3% kender, and there's a huge-ass allied gnomish city on an island the current grandmaster considers his ancestral holdings.
Chamomile wrote:Only if you mean "super-national" in the sense that they intend to conquer all nations.
Yes. I'm not saying they're
good virtuous*, I'm saying they're different.
(* Alignment in D&D has always been shit, and I don't see the reason to single out DL for it. All this "genocide is actually good" is really the authors trying to call out D&D because in the end it's a fucking children's book that had to fight for the word "mien". The message is, "okay, look here, kids, these guys in black spiky armor who call themselves Evil with a capital E and wear babies' entrails for necklaces are bad, don't be like them, but those other guys in polished silvery armor and flowing white robes who'd quietly disappear you in the middle of the night in the name of peace and justice without bothering anyone? they're bad too, don't be like them either." Hell, the lead writers wrote another fucking series hammering in this Very Important Lesson for seven books; they also cover some advanced stuff like gaslighting and lovebombing. If you claim DL says "genocide is actually good, you guys" rather than "D&D alignments are actually bullshit", you're not arguing in good faith.
Still, to prevent confusion, I'm going to use the word "virtuous" as a replacement for the English word "good".)
(I'm also not going to discuss
monsters there - "monsters" in fantasy is a bigger discussion than any setting -- or the inherent racism of appropriating a real-world marginalized ethnicity to spice up a fantasy world. So for the purpose of this post, in-universe racism only counts if it's directed at beings the author designates as
people.)
and don't racially discriminate.
Chamomile wrote:What even are Black Numenoreans?
I have no idea what you're trying to say here. The notion of different races
of humans and some races being superior to others is a
fact in Tolkien. Black Numenoreans are a typical racist narrative: white people leaving their homeland for the lands of the dirty brown untermenschen (the Haradrim in this case) and immediately establishing themselves as the rulers there due to their inherent racial superiority. Black Numenoreans aren't "enlightened" because they chose to figuratively rule in (Arab) hell rather than serve (elves) in heaven.
And then, when the War of the Ring happens, "the Haradrim support Sauron because they're Arabs and Arabs are evil" is basically plaintext.
In DL, there's no "the Nerakans support Takhisis because they're Mexicans" -- they don't and they aren't, Neraka is just where the ruins of the temple stood, not an evil nation itching to plunder noble Solamnia and raep their wimminz. The guy who lived there, stumbled onto the ruins and accidentally restored the temple definitely wasn't a worshiper of Takhisis.
The elves and the Solamnics aren't virtuous either. The elves and the Solamnic
lords are culturally worshipers of Paladine, so if the dragonarmies have their way their power structures are going to be toppled. So if the players need an army by yesterday to fight the emergent militarist theocratic dictatorship, those are the places to look. But that doesn't make them virtuous -- they're lazy, cowardly and corrupt, books 1 (elves) and 2 (Solamnics, the other elves) make it very clear. They aren't virtuous because they worship Paladine, and they aren't virtuous because they are ethnic Anglo-Saxons and Anglo-Saxons are good. Sturm is Tracy Hickman's favorite character; they drag him through hell and he commits suicide by dragon highlord. THOSE GUYS AREN'T NICE.
DL doesn't have Designated Good, it has designated evil -- the militant cult of a demon dragon god who intends to personally rule the world -- and the corporate entities that it considers enemies up for destruction for arbitrary doctrinal reasons need more slapping around from you the heroes than kicking out one enemy spy to become a resistance capable of resisting.
Chamomile wrote:Who even is Denethor?
Denethor is one crazy guy who prevents the virtuous, genetically superior people of Gondor from mounting an effective resistance. Grima is one evil spy who prevents the virtuous, genetically superior people of Rohan from mounting (hur) an effective resistance.
Meanwhile, in DL, the elves are cowardly, the Solamnic Knights are classist, and they'd much rather fight each other even in the face of what might be an existential threat; the dwarven kingdom is neutral and has a sizeable evil minority. None of them inherently deserve to win, but it's a post-apocalyptic world and if you want to project force ASAP because the enemy has
dragons and is blitzkrieging though the continent, these are your options.
In book 2, an elf becomes slightly less of a tapeworm and Sturm gets accepted into the knighthood at the lowest rank, but reforming the knighthood or reuniting the elves is not as simple as throwing Derek Crownguard off the High Clerist Tower and making the royal offspring marry each other. (In the books, both of these things happen but it takes two human generations and two more world wars. I think the first lady knight in the books is a granddaughter of the original heroes. The game only has a gendered cap on STR.)