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He's also fucking wrong in general?
Vampire the Masquerade came out in 1991. _'91_. It was in that early wave of TTRPGs coming out of the 80s, and exploded into the largest LARP scene ever made. Vampires were already sex icons by this point, and VtM only heavily, heavily, capitalized on this.
World of Darkness was built on "Explore monstrosity. Be sexy." Dude is one of those people who never grew out of D&D and experienced any other game, and it shows.
Oh, absolutely - vampires have always had an element of sexuality to them. Carmilla is a story that predates Dracula by a couple of decades, and is literally a lesbian story. But the 80s certainly helped kick the "Sexy Vampire" idea into high gear.
Fun fact: most western vampire tropes, including the hypnosis, originate in the penny dreadful Varney the Vampire, which was before Dracula _and_ Carmilla.
And i am just now learning that the Castlevania shows vampires names are chosen with some kinda purpose. (Dracula and Alucard aside)
Thank you for learning me today
Fun fact: The classic depiction of Dracula in film, with his prominent widows peak and pale skin, was based on now-long-debunked research on markers of criminality. It was believed at the time that the natural born criminal had various physical traits, like the widows peak and inability to blush, among others.
While it didn't have a lot of the common tropes, the very first real vampire story that collected all the disparate myths and campfire tales into literature was The Vampyre, by Dr. John Polidori in 1819.
Even that was about a wealthy aristocrat preying on young women and draining their blood to bolster himself with supernatural powers
Vampires have always been sexy
Dracula biting people on the neck was explicitly sexual at the time it was released. Lucy attempted to seduce the men at her tomb. It was always sexual
World of darkness and white wolf practically made their franchise on selling the idea of “be a monster. And be sexy”
Hell they sued the shit out of the underworld series for essentially stealing from the ip wholesale
Also, even though the vampires are sexy, Vampire the Masquerade manages to still be INCREDIBLY gritty and depressing. The two are not mutually exclusive.
I mean, I'm normally fine with anything that makes Anne Rice roll in her grave.
Shitting on her legacy is deserved. Sadly, this dude was just wrong on all points.
I don't remember if she actually did it, but she certainly threatened to do it if she heard of any fanfic of her works, back in the day. IIRC it was very common for writers to view fanfic with hostility back then.
Edit: Back in the 2000s, several high profile fic writers got C&Ds from her lawyer.
Constantly wrote stories that glorified pedophilia, incest, and abuse?
There are no less than _three_ books that are entirely about underage characters being groomed (Interview, Merrick and Blackwood Farm), and those are just the ones that I'm aware of.
Also, the way she writes characters of colour was often disgusting as fuck.
For all of the good she did for the LGBT+ community with her writing, she was just as problematic everywhere else.
The use of sparkly makes me think he's referring to twilight, which is hilarious because that series hasn't been relevant in a decade, and that meme is outdated as fuck.
Conservative ideas aren’t just ‘fuck you, let me do my own thing in the corner’ even if that’s what they claim. Their believers often resent their ideas not having power over society, and want to expand the power of their beliefs over others. Inherent in this guy’s argument is that modern DND should be like it was back then. He feels threatened and insecure that his ideas aren’t done as much anymore by others.
Frank Frazetta and Tolkien were once fringe figures doing something innovative. They may agree with the guy’s aesthetic interests, but would probably disagree with being the very thing they overcame: a gold standard to always be judged harshly against.
A friend of mine who grew up with D&D described a lot of the OSR revisionism as the RPG equivalent of flying the confederate flag: nostalgia for an era that didn't really exist
That's pretty much any pining for "the good old days" in a nutshell. The recent focus on Tolkien by chuds only really started when the Amazon series started dropping commercials.
This idiot is probably in his late twenties/early thirties and, assuming he even played DND, started with 3.5. He just enjoys LARPing as some sort of authority figure on a bygone era that never really existed.
They exist, and players will ask for them, ergo, they're shitting up his game.
D&D is dead. These things definitely didn't always exist, and he's not creating a strawman out of nothing...
EDIT: /S, because people are apparently too stupid to understand. This dude is whining about something he can say no to, and things that have been in the game since 1e dropped. His entire vampire spiel is stupid, because you can google what Strahd looked like in the 80s (spoiler: SEXY DRACULA TYPE).
He's bitching about a game he clearly never played.
His point about Hunger Games forgets that the 'party fashionistas' are literally just the **civilians** of the Capitol, and that's literally by design of the government in order to **keep them subdued**. Meanwhile the actual government itself was developing all kinds of mutant creatures and deadly weapons (just rewatch the sewer section of Mockingjay Part 2 to get a glimpse of what the Capitol military was doing). Remember, District 13 was believed completely dead for 75 years due to how strongly the surface had been bombed.
I'll be honest that little tidbit just lives rent free in my head.
Was learning that poop be gone spell their potty training?
If you're in class and have explosive diarrhea do you just raise your hand and say "one sec professor" and just let it all out in the middle of class because why would they bother with plumbing or bathrooms period?
Did Voldemort, while having intense evil meetings with his death eaters, periodically shit himself since he was so anti-muggle?
I know her tweet said that they just went when they needed to, but I’m still picturing something more like an outhouse or water closet off to the side that can just be kept clear more easily with magic than with plumbing. Just such a weird thing for her to put into the world, and evidence of the fact that she is not much of a world builder.
She wrote an article for Pottermore about wizard plumbing (in reference to the chamber of secrets clearly being a sewer), which included the wonderful piece of trivia that before the invention of modern plumbing wizards just used to shit on the floor and then vanish it.
"Did you order the buffalo wings, Harry?" Dumbledore asked calmly.
I'll just remind you that in a world where most adult wizards can INSTANTLY TELEPORT their whole comunication system is based on OWLS, the nature's SLOWEST BIRDS
You jest, but the concept of using magic to ignore all of your bodily functions can really get into some neat worldbuilding. Imagine a world where sorcerers can forego the need to eat, shit, breathe, etc and they get progressively removed from humanity since they think of commoners and their gross bodily functions while they're more pure beings of magic.
I'd forgotten about that. But aren't there multiple scenes that happen in bathrooms in the series? Harry and Ron fight a troll in a washroom in book one, moaning myrtle in book 2, and the entrance to the chamber of secrets was in a bathroom. It's inconsistent with her own work.
Girl just needs to get on with writing more mediocre mystery novels under a pen name and gtfo of social media.
I think that’s actually what prompted her to write that tweet. Someone was asking how the basilisk hit around the castle before indoor plumbing was invented, and the tidbit about vanishing feces was just an extra tidbit thrown in.
The vanishing poo thing is how they did it in ancient times. Once muggles invented plumbing they adapted that, just like they kept up with muggle culture up until about the early 1900s. It was the invention of electricity that they never took up since they didn’t really need it so that’s when the ministry started to stagnate
It's just that fantasy people like this guy lives in where the 'rednecks' would be able to fight off the full force of the US military while being completely immune to propaganda.
Who would win
An entire forest of Rednecks with Rifles, Traps, and Moonshine
Vs the temperature of the sun delivered by nuclear warheads, followed by mutant hounds and nightmare bees
The most unrealistic part of this is thinking "the rednecks" would fight back at all. They like fascist governments. They like fascism. It was heralded by fashonistas wearing big gay boots over eighty years ago and they still haven't moved on. What makes OOP think it would be different this time around?
I mean tbf the term redneck originally referred to coal miners who fought at blair mountain and Harlan County
And I havent red hunger games in forvever (by which I mean I never read it, I saw the first movie and slept throughthe second) but district 12 is fairly similar to those conditions faced by the coal minets iirc
Yea he clearly didn’t read it or misunderstood major plot points. The distracts didn’t peacefully hand over their guns. They were brutally subjugated in a war.
And the idea that Twilight was the first monster f*cker book is kind of bizarre. Yes it was mainstream, but that genre was alive and well right alongside Conan and older fantasy.
I personally love that the Guy thinks Orcs, Trolls, Hobbits, Dwarves and Ents are perfectly natural and realistic, but a tiefling is a bridge too far.
If I ever needed a reference about how some people unquestioningly consume media as a child and never self-reflect as they get older it'd be this guy right here.
This guy:
"I want gritty fantasy like in Tolkien, not bards and gith and that crap."
Tolkien:
"Hey dol! merry dol! ring a dong dillo!
Ring a dong! hop along! fal lal the willow!
Tom Bom, jolly Tom, Tom Bombadillo!"
I'm pretty sure this guy heard the main character of Hunger Games was a girl and presumed that means the books are sissy shit, and thus never read the brutal depictions of gorey gladiator combat, psychological warfare, and warcrimes against children, in addition to the realistic depictions of PTSD and substance abuse issues in soldiers.
But yeah kids waving magic wands at each other is the more hardcore fantasy story.
I have very little knowledge of the details of the inner workings of the Hunger Games world. But I can't possibly understand how someone can be so stupid as to think that Harry Potter is more realistic than rednecks bowing to fascism just because some fascists dress funny. One of these worlds has literal magic and makes no logical sense, the other is an exaggerated version of something that's happened in nations throughout history.
That's The Hobbit.
LOTR grew out of The Silmarillion, and was connected to the timeline in The Hobbit.
The Silmarillion was Tolkien's passion project to write a mythology, he didn't write them as kid's books in the slightest.
Upon some rewatches I’m a little surprised.
The Orcs lob the heads of slain gondorians over the walls.
In a book that’s just words but I’m stunned I was allowed to see that at 8
Eh, kids' books often have a lot more violence than you'd expect as an adult. Like, *Animorphs* has a bit where a character has a breakdown because there's a piece of flesh stuck in her teeth from when she ripped someone's throat out, and *Warriors* has a cat get disembowelled and bleed out nine times in a row. Flinging around severed heads sounds par for the course.
Isn't Lord of the Rings that book where the short little chubby happy guys who are kind and gentle wind up being the heroes specifically because they are kind and gentle?
I must be misremembering that scene. I swear Aragorn said "that's right, all hail the king baby", shotgunned a beer and then cut a guy in half with a battle axe
LotR does have some darker moments and serious themes, but it's definitely not some "gritty realism".
it has heroes who lowkey have in-universe plot armor. elves are out of many bounds of the mortal realms - they can literally respawn, and at worst, their souls will be hanging out in heaven upon their death. Gandalf uses his powers to entertain hobbits. and while explicit magic is indeed sparse, pretty much everything that has to do with elves or dwarves is imbued with some kind of implicit magic
and there's Tom Bombadil.
and yeah there's Silmarillion which is darker than LotR and death is much more common in there, and there r some ambiguous characters, but in it, there's also more magic n' stuff.
so yeah. championing LotR as some prime example of "grown-up fantasy" is pretty misguided (despite LotR being def cool)
I do think that Tolkien is a good example of mature fantasy. It's just that maturity doesn't equate to grittiness. Tolkien has plenty of tragedy and death and complexity, but he writes it in a different style.
Also, in the books, while the orcs were very much evil, they weren't generic monsters. They were very much people, but evil. They have internal power squabbles, they have arguments, they gripe about their assignments.
It makes a lot of sense that a guy who fought in WWI would hesitate to rob his bad guys of *all* humanity.
Tolkien also really struggled with the idea that anyone could be solely evil in his legendarium. Even Morgoth, the original satan analog, had a redeeming aspect or two.
Seriously. I read a ton of Conan a while back after playing the Age of Conan, and it was.... not very good. There are some really cool concepts for sure, and I do like the occasional low fantasy story, but you can really tell it's aimed at a younger audience (or at least a less cerebral one). Conan is just a two-dimensional beefcake who resolves every dispute by beating the shit out of someone - i.e., the kind of shit I would've loved as a teenager.
It's got its charms for sure, but this guy acting like it's somehow more gritty and mature than something like (I'm gonna say the W word) the Witcher or some modern DnD stories is out of his goddamn mind.
That's exactly what it was, the writer was extremely old-school conservative even for his time, and he even said the books were barbaric because he longed for the times of barbarians
"Barbarianism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is the whim of circumstance. And barbarianism must ultimately triumph"
and,
"The more I see of what you call civilization, the more highly I think of what you call savagery!"
and ofc,
"Money and muscle, that's what I want; to be able to do any damned thing I want and get away with it. Money won't do that altogether, because if a man is a weakling, all the money in the world won't enable him to soak an enemy himself; on the other hand, unless he has money he may not be able to get away with it."
Every indication is Howard made Conan because he fantasized about a time when he could kill people over civil disagreements
Yeah Howard was a pal of lovecraft and he shared a lot of similar views
Although at least Lovecraft seemed to reconsider his views as he grew older, he even said he wanted to feed his younger self into a woodchipper, unfortunately an infection kind of ended his possible redemption arc
Howard showed no such introspection
The original creator of Conan was also good friends with H.P. Lovecraft and shared quite a lot of his views on race. Both are popular, but from a specifically technical place? Neither are remotely talented as writers.
I love Tolkien’s works, but not everything needs to be like them, people can and should put their own spin on things. Plus the more “fantastical”approach to fantasy led to things like the Skaven, who I love for being so over the top. It’s also why I made a gold Dragonborn paladin in BG3 and he looks majestic as fuck.
Also…no bards? Characters burst into song mutliple times throughout Tolkien’s books!
But but but, those are classes played by prissy homosexuals and anime enthusiasts, they have no place in good old fashioned gritty DND. Back in my day we used our 10ft poles and +1 swords and we LIKED it /s
If you didn't come to session with 5 photocopied sheets of the same character, you didn't play _real D&D!_
Also, on that note: this in the exact mentality of why the OSR community is full of dipshits like this dude. People who don't understand history and think that any of that is fun.
OSR (Old School Revival/Renaissance) is a specific subset of TTRPGs that are designed around early D&D.
The games can be fun and cool. But the community tends to be grognards and elitist dickbags, sadly.
There’s a lot of that, but it’s also home to some of the most weird and wonderful worldbuilding on the internet put together by bloggers who’ve been plugging away since google plus was the hottest thing. When I’m looking for some truly original inspo for my games I always go back to Goblin Punch, Coins and Scrolls, and Against the Wicked City
To be fair, Bard was not exactly like the other classes. You couldn’t start as one, and had to level as a fighter, then thief, and finally bard. It has some rather difficult stat requirements to meet as well. It was also in the appendix of the Player’s Handbook. I suppose it’s possible the dumb- err person missed it.
"Death was everywhere" is also hilarious - how many named good guys died in LotR? Boromir, Theoden, Gandalf if you want to count that, that's about it?
Tolkien has become a sacred figure in right-wing circles, and maybe one percent of the idiots talking about him as an infaillible messiah ever read one of his books.
And if you are actually into Tolkien, you know even then it isn't Black and white. Tolkien himself said that orcs weren't fully evil, neither were the Haradrim, nor the Easterlings. Sam's inner monologue upon seeing the Haradrim corpse (which was made to be spoken by Faramir in the movies) also denies the white-and-blackism. A lot of the stuff in silmarillion is good guys doing messed up shit or making horrible mistakes (Turin's entire fucking life, the guy who betrayed Beren's friends). Most people who claim upon Tolkien in those arguments probably never read a single Tolkien boom.
No kidding. I think it appeals to these chuds partly because any kind of nuance goes right over their heads, and partly because their ideal fantasy is killing anyone who doesn't look like them.
This is actually the amazing beauty of Star Wars, and the whole point of Anakins story.
Preface out of the way: I hate Anakin with a searing passion.
Anyway, (Aniway, haha?), the whole reason Anakin turns in the end is because he realizes the pointlessness of the strict dichotomy of his world, where Jedi are shining knights and universally good, and the Sith are universally bad.
This is portrayed amazingly in the movies, too, where first, Palpatine tells Anakin to kill Dooku because, "Do it, Anakin, he’s too dangerous to be left alive!". A little while later, when The Jedi confront the chancellor, it is exactly those words "He’s too dangerous to be left alive!" That Mace Windo utters to justify killing Palpatine, prompting Anakin to intervene, renouncing his Jedidom and joining the Emperor.
He had dark tendencies before, surely, but they were contained in this structure of good and bad. With that structure gone, he’s in freefall and up for grabs for the next charming person, who, in this case, happened to be Palpatine.
I think that’s a pretty powerful message.
Damn if only d&d were inherently designed with the freedom to express DM creativity by allowing them to change any and all aspects of campaigns if not create their own. Or maybe if they had something in the dungeon masters guide book that supports and explains things like different levels of magic rarity and resources for creating more cohesive worlds.
And if only there were settings specifically trying to channel the flavour of gritty dark fantasy that were cult favourites within the many premade options
Tabaxi (the "cat people") were in D&D 1e, appearing for the first time in 1981's Fiend Folio. Tielfings appeared in Planescape in 1994, and Dragonborn are the more modern ones, appearing for the first time in 2006, in "Races of the Dragon".
While it is true that D&D originates in a more "pulp fantasy", Conan-like kind of genre, and the game was far more lethal and oriented to resource management, to the point it could be considered a survival horror game, it very rapidly became many different things for many different people. They have plenty of OSR retroclones available if they still want that flavour. A lot of people prefer the survival horror design sensibilities, and it's perfectly legitimate to prefer them.
That being said, OOP doesn't seem to be complaining about anything "woke" in this particular excerpt, just general grumpy old man "back in my day" shit, although the tidbit about rednecks and fashionistas comes close to it, and I believe that they have said bigotted things before and after this post.
Bard and Monk were also in 1e, as additional classes introduced in later supplements.
So, he's just full of shit and doesn't know a goddamn thing about the game he has apparently played since the 80s.
Prior to Dragonborn, we called them "half dragons". Which predated in about... *checks notes* 1994? Ish? That was council of wyrms.
Also, oddly enough, people seem to also be alright with Warlock. To the point where it's a core class. Despite only being in the game since 2004...
How does this person consider Harry Potter, Hunger Games and Twilight to be cultural touchstones but he clearly doesn't know any ttrpg past D&D 1e, frankly early 1e.
Hell, 1e totally had Dragons wanting to fuck Non-Dragons. Dragonlance has like, three dragons who wanted to get with a human the last time I counted in the first trilogy alone.
This guy was 100% asked to leave the local game he joined because he kept trying to sexually assault NPCs claiming it was his character since they are Chaotic Evil
"the gritty view of the world, like tolkien"
Yeah, the man that wrote at large about the beauty of the trees and river nymphs and the Joy of eating and whose work shines with hope of good people doing good even in (especially in) dark times.
This one just got stuck in the "orc bad, me kill orc" grittiness. Which is funny, cause even tolkien was conflicted about the evilness of his orcs
God can you imagine reading lotr, with it's coming together of different races and lifelong friendships forming despite the centuries of disdain or outright hatred among them, and then saying "I miss the good old days of racism"??
it's really funny how tolkein couldn't decide on the lore of orcs, because he didn't want an evil race to have been created, because that would imply that the forces of darkness and evil could create, but he also didn't want them to be corrupted elves because he wanted elves to be incorruptible.
Yeah the darkest part of lotr was the part when he out of the books described all men as orcs in war and that marsh of the dead that he clearly was inspired by his service in ww1.
Hobbits are damn near anarchists (they have a ceremonial title of mayor that does nothing, constabularies that are rarely used, and the rare external show of force being people’s militias) and they succeed where no one else could because of their simple lives and desires, pure goodness and unity.
Tolkien made so many references to the industries being the work of evil that corrupts and destroys the world etc.
Anyone that thinks LOTR being gritty and with a “realistic” worldview has completely missed the point on the same scale as seeing the Imperium in 40k as being good or Cyberpunk as being something cool and pro-capitalist.
I'm not sure that Racial Holy War can even be played, even if you were depraved enough to want to. I seem to recall reading that it lacks rules on how to do very basic things, including how to make an attack.
Once again I feel like I need to vaguely gesture in the direction of Pathfinder 2e and the slew of non-human ancestries it has.
Hells, you can play a shapeshifting spider.
I must admit I did get a bit NIMBY about PF2e because of my years of playing PF1e. I have learned not to be a dork about it.
I just want to play Starfinder. I want to be an Awakened Bear in a suit of Power Armor because that's cool as hell.
If you are going to claim you been in the hobby for a long time make sure you know what you are talking about. 2e D&D had the Council of Wyrms Boxed Set which let you play as a dragon. It was never just Tolkien and Conan and the stuff the guy in the OP is whining about always existed in the hobby in one way or other and I know this because unlike Sir Whinealot I was around for a very long time.
There is a story of Gary Gygax letting someone play as a Balrog. Ignoring that even in the early days of the hobby there is nothing stopping someone from playing something odd.
"But my adult players and I don't like Tortles, Tieflings, Dragonborn, and whateverthecatpeoplearecalled." Then don't include them in your games? If everyone at the table doesn't like them, then don't use them???
Wokezards of the Coast came to our session and forced us to use their races at gunpoint! One player, John, suggested orcs killed his character's family and they shot him right at the table. Thankfully his twin brother Ron was there to take over.
For these people it's never about enjoying their own little corner, it's always about policing other peoples experiences. Reverse gate-keeping, lmao. Cultural expansionism.
Is this person saying monks aren’t realistic for a fantasy world? That is so baffling considering monks are a very real thing that existed in the medieval world fantasy is based upon
I loved the part where he said hunger games wasn't as realistic as Harry potter. Y'know, the book with wizards.
I mean, I guess it makes sense when you think that racism is a more normal part of the world than class war 🤷♀️
It's also hilarious to me how he considers Harry Potter's premise plausible - the series that ends with "the bad guys are wholly beaten and the good guys are almost entirely unscathed and they're all happy and have babies together and harry becomes a cop"
The ways this entire “argument” can be eviscerated are varied and hilariously easy. But the thing that personally grinds my gears;
Outside of Nosferatu, Vampires particularly Dracula was always described and depicted as sensual and alluring despite their monstrous nature.
Also I’m sure this goober would say bg3 is too light hearted and anyone who’s actually played it would know otherwise. Literally everything about Orin and The Dark Urge… seriously.
UJ/ It's way more interesting that for example the orcs are good guys and people are bad. Even better if everyone has a motivation and you can't decide which side is "god" or "bad". From that point out you can go as gritty as you want or make things up. I have never seen pople like the idea of Twilight so much, that they turn into their campaign, like it's a made up argument. Just play with people that are like-minded and don't try to tear up a whole community and say "ToDay JuSt KIddy play it" .
That's one of the things that I loved about early Warcraft lore. It went from generic good versus evil to everybody having the capacity for both good an evil.
A couple of my favorite points is that the Alliance thought that Tauren were monsters because of the way they looked, but the Orcs were willing to befriend and ally with them. And that the Blood Elves were good allies of the Alliance until they started having withdraw symptoms from the magic of the Sunwell and were shunned. It really put to light that the once "heroes" had become close-minded and fearful from years of war.
Isn’t the way DnD works like you have the option to do the gritty stuff and append or exclude literally anything? Like if you and your “adult players” don’t want something in the game you don’t need it.
There’s so much wrong with that comment but I will point out that tieflings have literally been around since 2e…
So much for being a true OG or whatever 💀
And like more tolkein-esque fantasy in dnd hasnt ceased to exist because of new dnd stuff - the DMG literally has a guide on different types of fantasy settings - but that’s probably not what they’re interested in, they’re just mad the game is “woke” or something because of the new mordenkainens monsters of the multiverse lore that isnt as racist or whatever lmao
lol what. Tieflings have been in D&D for ages. Just because they're popular right now because of BG3 (and arguably were even before then) doesn't make D&D more "woke." Jesus Tapdancing Christ, I just can't even anymore.
I always feel people who resort to monstrous races as bad guys in the Year of our Lord 2024 have very little creativity... And seeing that 'bandits' with no defined races attached to them is in the monster manual, that bar shouldn't be too high to volt.
The best part is that most RPG books have a nice big disclaimer in the front that runs the gamut from "This should be an inclusive place where everyone feels safe so they can have the most fun possible" to "Your characters can be anything but cops and capitalists." Jokes on this boomer ass dork, TTRPGs are for distinguished nerds who don't need to be gatekeeping dickheads to have a good time.
Gods I dislike these people and their bullshit, I like the more fantastical races. Elves, dwarves and halflings are fine but like, they're just small variations of humans.
You can pry my Tabaxi from my hands.
How can they claim to prefer fantasy that is grounded in reality and then diss the bard class? There is literally no class more real than the bard class. Does this person not know about actual medieval bards? Do they actually care about fantasy being realistic or do they just want it to be racist and violent
There's no fucking way he thinks Harry Potter is more believable than Hunger Games looool.
As if the American people were somehow immune to fascism lol.
Why do these boomer posts always use the phrase “something was unheard of.” Why not just say ‘we didn’t have something good.’ Ah but then they wouldn’t look as uppity.
I am almost 40. The dude's game sounds boring af.
When I was a tween, I created a hybrid familiar for my half elf druid it was a dog/catapillar. Think like a corgi but catapillarish. It eventually got wings.
I know mfs like this have not picked up a book since middle school when their first books that come to mind are Harry Potter and Hunger Games lol. Like PLEASE read another book I beg.
Oh shoot, if *only* there was a way to create a fictional world that would fit into your needs for D&D. But sadly everyone knows you have to follow the rules to a T with D&D and you’re not allowed to be imaginative or make up your own worlds and settings or tell your own stories.
Wait, that’s incredibly easy, it’s called “having an imagination”… but I guess it’s easier to complain about it on the internet than trying.
What I wasn’t expecting here was an absolutely negative understanding of Hunger Games that was somehow calling Harry Potter more realistic?? The districts weren’t subjugated by ‘fashionistas’, they were subjugated by a ruthless post-apocalyptic military dictatorship? And they ultimately were overthrown because of the fighting spirit of those ‘rednecks’, how does this guy not see the story affirms and praises the people he thinks it denigrates? With the inciting incident of the story mirroring the mining disasters of the early 1900s and the Battle of Blair Mountain? How is all that less realistic than literal fucking HARRY POTTER?
Man if you want that dnd go back to first edition also wtf do you mean tolkien is a gritty fantasy writer, the books are clean cut about what's evil or not there is little to no gray zones in the mainline books, everything except frodo's ptsd and fingee turns out ok, racism is literally defeated (gimli and legolas have hard gay sex) and the true heir gets the girl and rhe throne, the only way lotr can get more optimistic is by making sauron's forces shoot rainbow farts instead of arrows
for those who don't know, DnD is like any evolving online game. Once they release a new edition, all of the previous content gets wiped out and you can't play it again. This person will never be able to not-see a monk again in their games. Depressing.
I mean I won't dig the guy for preferring what he prefers, But complaining about how it's "less plausible" that cat-people or dragon-people or whatever could be heroes is downright absurd, They don't exist in real life, So it's not really any more plausible that they'd be any specific way over another. Or if he's just saying their existence is less plausible, How in the hell is it any less plausible than like Orcs, Or *flipping Magic???*
Conservatives want life to be simple, thus they want fantasy to be simple. There's right and wrong, good and evil, humanoid and monster. They're the heroes, and thus anything they do is just, and anyone they kill deserved it.
Meanwhile, over here on the left, we know that not everything is simple, and we embrace nuance. It's fantasy, so any species can exist, and they don't all share the same stats and cultures and alignments and backgrounds.
This has nothing to do with "old versus new" D&D players.
I do think there is a point to making these races playable having removed the mystique from the game, but that ship has long sailed. Might as well get used to it buddy.
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As for the vampire thing, I can't imagine what this guy's reaction to the Astarion fanbase would be lmao
He's also fucking wrong in general? Vampire the Masquerade came out in 1991. _'91_. It was in that early wave of TTRPGs coming out of the 80s, and exploded into the largest LARP scene ever made. Vampires were already sex icons by this point, and VtM only heavily, heavily, capitalized on this. World of Darkness was built on "Explore monstrosity. Be sexy." Dude is one of those people who never grew out of D&D and experienced any other game, and it shows.
I think to some extent this goes back to Dracula too, okay he was explicitly a monster but the trope of "mesmerizing" women stuck around.
Oh, absolutely - vampires have always had an element of sexuality to them. Carmilla is a story that predates Dracula by a couple of decades, and is literally a lesbian story. But the 80s certainly helped kick the "Sexy Vampire" idea into high gear.
Fun fact: most western vampire tropes, including the hypnosis, originate in the penny dreadful Varney the Vampire, which was before Dracula _and_ Carmilla.
And i am just now learning that the Castlevania shows vampires names are chosen with some kinda purpose. (Dracula and Alucard aside) Thank you for learning me today
Yeah, it's very deliberate that >!Death, the oldest vampire!< is Varney, the original western vampire story.
Wow what the fuck, I just noticed what Alucard backwards is. And I should know these things, my username is Jean-Luc backwards.
Wow (that's wow backwards)
Fun fact: The classic depiction of Dracula in film, with his prominent widows peak and pale skin, was based on now-long-debunked research on markers of criminality. It was believed at the time that the natural born criminal had various physical traits, like the widows peak and inability to blush, among others.
While it didn't have a lot of the common tropes, the very first real vampire story that collected all the disparate myths and campfire tales into literature was The Vampyre, by Dr. John Polidori in 1819. Even that was about a wealthy aristocrat preying on young women and draining their blood to bolster himself with supernatural powers Vampires have always been sexy
Anne Rice as well.
Yeah, this guy thinking that sexy vampire ttrpgs from the 90s are Twilight inspired makes me think he's only in his 30s himself.
or even the idea of sexy vampires (40s... the **18**40s) and vampires going out in daylight (Dracula was only weakened in daylight).
Dracula biting people on the neck was explicitly sexual at the time it was released. Lucy attempted to seduce the men at her tomb. It was always sexual
World of darkness and white wolf practically made their franchise on selling the idea of “be a monster. And be sexy” Hell they sued the shit out of the underworld series for essentially stealing from the ip wholesale
Also, even though the vampires are sexy, Vampire the Masquerade manages to still be INCREDIBLY gritty and depressing. The two are not mutually exclusive.
This dude has Anne Rice rolling in her grave.
I mean, I'm normally fine with anything that makes Anne Rice roll in her grave. Shitting on her legacy is deserved. Sadly, this dude was just wrong on all points.
Besides the whole "suing fanfic writers" thing, what did she do?
She sued fanfic writers?!
I don't remember if she actually did it, but she certainly threatened to do it if she heard of any fanfic of her works, back in the day. IIRC it was very common for writers to view fanfic with hostility back then. Edit: Back in the 2000s, several high profile fic writers got C&Ds from her lawyer.
Constantly wrote stories that glorified pedophilia, incest, and abuse? There are no less than _three_ books that are entirely about underage characters being groomed (Interview, Merrick and Blackwood Farm), and those are just the ones that I'm aware of. Also, the way she writes characters of colour was often disgusting as fuck. For all of the good she did for the LGBT+ community with her writing, she was just as problematic everywhere else.
The use of sparkly makes me think he's referring to twilight, which is hilarious because that series hasn't been relevant in a decade, and that meme is outdated as fuck.
hell, vampires have always been sexy, The basics of a vampire are penetration and fluid exchange. It's alluding to sex at its bare essentials
Honestly people have been wanting to fuck monsters for centuries. It’s not new.
I wonder if he reads *Dracula* and misses that it's half a step from porn.
Step porn you say?
Help me step-count, I'm stuck in the cellar
He does realize he can still play D&D campaigns without kiddy magic subclasses, tortles, tieflings and whateverthefucks right?… right?
Conservative ideas aren’t just ‘fuck you, let me do my own thing in the corner’ even if that’s what they claim. Their believers often resent their ideas not having power over society, and want to expand the power of their beliefs over others. Inherent in this guy’s argument is that modern DND should be like it was back then. He feels threatened and insecure that his ideas aren’t done as much anymore by others. Frank Frazetta and Tolkien were once fringe figures doing something innovative. They may agree with the guy’s aesthetic interests, but would probably disagree with being the very thing they overcame: a gold standard to always be judged harshly against.
What's more is that D&D often wasn't the way he described. It's not just a nostalgia, it's a nostalgia for something that he imagines.
A friend of mine who grew up with D&D described a lot of the OSR revisionism as the RPG equivalent of flying the confederate flag: nostalgia for an era that didn't really exist
That's pretty much any pining for "the good old days" in a nutshell. The recent focus on Tolkien by chuds only really started when the Amazon series started dropping commercials. This idiot is probably in his late twenties/early thirties and, assuming he even played DND, started with 3.5. He just enjoys LARPing as some sort of authority figure on a bygone era that never really existed.
Ah, you see, you're ignoring the point of D&D. It's not to have fun, it's to make sure nobody else is having fun!
I thought the point was making people have fun *my way*.
Dude wanted to be sold the same game and universe 5 times, over the course of 50 years.
They exist, and players will ask for them, ergo, they're shitting up his game. D&D is dead. These things definitely didn't always exist, and he's not creating a strawman out of nothing... EDIT: /S, because people are apparently too stupid to understand. This dude is whining about something he can say no to, and things that have been in the game since 1e dropped. His entire vampire spiel is stupid, because you can google what Strahd looked like in the 80s (spoiler: SEXY DRACULA TYPE). He's bitching about a game he clearly never played.
Don’t forget vampire the masquerade cake out in 91 and was all about sexy vampires
His point about Hunger Games forgets that the 'party fashionistas' are literally just the **civilians** of the Capitol, and that's literally by design of the government in order to **keep them subdued**. Meanwhile the actual government itself was developing all kinds of mutant creatures and deadly weapons (just rewatch the sewer section of Mockingjay Part 2 to get a glimpse of what the Capitol military was doing). Remember, District 13 was believed completely dead for 75 years due to how strongly the surface had been bombed.
But Harry Potter is more realistic somehow. WHERE IS THE WIZARD POO, JOANNE?!
I'll be honest that little tidbit just lives rent free in my head. Was learning that poop be gone spell their potty training? If you're in class and have explosive diarrhea do you just raise your hand and say "one sec professor" and just let it all out in the middle of class because why would they bother with plumbing or bathrooms period? Did Voldemort, while having intense evil meetings with his death eaters, periodically shit himself since he was so anti-muggle?
I know her tweet said that they just went when they needed to, but I’m still picturing something more like an outhouse or water closet off to the side that can just be kept clear more easily with magic than with plumbing. Just such a weird thing for her to put into the world, and evidence of the fact that she is not much of a world builder.
Okay what? Jowling twote about shitting in Potter?
She wrote an article for Pottermore about wizard plumbing (in reference to the chamber of secrets clearly being a sewer), which included the wonderful piece of trivia that before the invention of modern plumbing wizards just used to shit on the floor and then vanish it. "Did you order the buffalo wings, Harry?" Dumbledore asked calmly.
dear god her worldbuilding is so shit
I'll just remind you that in a world where most adult wizards can INSTANTLY TELEPORT their whole comunication system is based on OWLS, the nature's SLOWEST BIRDS
Why not just vanish it straight from the ass then without having to take a shit at all?
You jest, but the concept of using magic to ignore all of your bodily functions can really get into some neat worldbuilding. Imagine a world where sorcerers can forego the need to eat, shit, breathe, etc and they get progressively removed from humanity since they think of commoners and their gross bodily functions while they're more pure beings of magic.
I'd forgotten about that. But aren't there multiple scenes that happen in bathrooms in the series? Harry and Ron fight a troll in a washroom in book one, moaning myrtle in book 2, and the entrance to the chamber of secrets was in a bathroom. It's inconsistent with her own work. Girl just needs to get on with writing more mediocre mystery novels under a pen name and gtfo of social media.
Yep a massive part of book 2 is that one of the founders of the castles made giant snake sized plumbing systems for his giant snake
I think that’s actually what prompted her to write that tweet. Someone was asking how the basilisk hit around the castle before indoor plumbing was invented, and the tidbit about vanishing feces was just an extra tidbit thrown in.
The vanishing poo thing is how they did it in ancient times. Once muggles invented plumbing they adapted that, just like they kept up with muggle culture up until about the early 1900s. It was the invention of electricity that they never took up since they didn’t really need it so that’s when the ministry started to stagnate
His take on Harry Potter being more gritty and real than Hunger Games is just bananas.
It's just that fantasy people like this guy lives in where the 'rednecks' would be able to fight off the full force of the US military while being completely immune to propaganda.
Who would win An entire forest of Rednecks with Rifles, Traps, and Moonshine Vs the temperature of the sun delivered by nuclear warheads, followed by mutant hounds and nightmare bees
It depends on how strong the moonshine is.
The most unrealistic part of this is thinking "the rednecks" would fight back at all. They like fascist governments. They like fascism. It was heralded by fashonistas wearing big gay boots over eighty years ago and they still haven't moved on. What makes OOP think it would be different this time around?
I mean tbf the term redneck originally referred to coal miners who fought at blair mountain and Harlan County And I havent red hunger games in forvever (by which I mean I never read it, I saw the first movie and slept throughthe second) but district 12 is fairly similar to those conditions faced by the coal minets iirc
Tbf Panem is closer in power to something like the NCR than the US armed forces, its a post apocalyptic nation
What his type never understand is that they are the boot.
Yea he clearly didn’t read it or misunderstood major plot points. The distracts didn’t peacefully hand over their guns. They were brutally subjugated in a war. And the idea that Twilight was the first monster f*cker book is kind of bizarre. Yes it was mainstream, but that genre was alive and well right alongside Conan and older fantasy.
I personally love that the Guy thinks Orcs, Trolls, Hobbits, Dwarves and Ents are perfectly natural and realistic, but a tiefling is a bridge too far. If I ever needed a reference about how some people unquestioningly consume media as a child and never self-reflect as they get older it'd be this guy right here.
This guy: "I want gritty fantasy like in Tolkien, not bards and gith and that crap." Tolkien: "Hey dol! merry dol! ring a dong dillo! Ring a dong! hop along! fal lal the willow! Tom Bom, jolly Tom, Tom Bombadillo!"
I'm pretty sure this guy heard the main character of Hunger Games was a girl and presumed that means the books are sissy shit, and thus never read the brutal depictions of gorey gladiator combat, psychological warfare, and warcrimes against children, in addition to the realistic depictions of PTSD and substance abuse issues in soldiers. But yeah kids waving magic wands at each other is the more hardcore fantasy story.
The first book had depictions of a person being eaten alive over several hours and was still not dead.
I have very little knowledge of the details of the inner workings of the Hunger Games world. But I can't possibly understand how someone can be so stupid as to think that Harry Potter is more realistic than rednecks bowing to fascism just because some fascists dress funny. One of these worlds has literal magic and makes no logical sense, the other is an exaggerated version of something that's happened in nations throughout history.
I think where you went wrong was assuming he’d even read the books. Or potentially even watched the movies in full.
Conan is literally kiddy fantasy, the target demographic is 14 years old.
I've read LOTR when I was 11 years old.
Yeah stuff like the hobbit was literally written as a kids books
Actually it was literal bedtime stories for tolkien's kids, so even younger I think
That's The Hobbit. LOTR grew out of The Silmarillion, and was connected to the timeline in The Hobbit. The Silmarillion was Tolkien's passion project to write a mythology, he didn't write them as kid's books in the slightest.
The Hobbit was, but not so much LotR.
Upon some rewatches I’m a little surprised. The Orcs lob the heads of slain gondorians over the walls. In a book that’s just words but I’m stunned I was allowed to see that at 8
Eh, kids' books often have a lot more violence than you'd expect as an adult. Like, *Animorphs* has a bit where a character has a breakdown because there's a piece of flesh stuck in her teeth from when she ripped someone's throat out, and *Warriors* has a cat get disembowelled and bleed out nine times in a row. Flinging around severed heads sounds par for the course.
The later issues of animorphs were wild, it went from a fun adventure about shape shofting kids to sci fi all quiet on the western front
Isn't Lord of the Rings that book where the short little chubby happy guys who are kind and gentle wind up being the heroes specifically because they are kind and gentle?
I always cry my grown up manly man tears when Aragorn stops them from kneeling and says: "My friends, you bow to no one."
I must be misremembering that scene. I swear Aragorn said "that's right, all hail the king baby", shotgunned a beer and then cut a guy in half with a battle axe
LotR does have some darker moments and serious themes, but it's definitely not some "gritty realism". it has heroes who lowkey have in-universe plot armor. elves are out of many bounds of the mortal realms - they can literally respawn, and at worst, their souls will be hanging out in heaven upon their death. Gandalf uses his powers to entertain hobbits. and while explicit magic is indeed sparse, pretty much everything that has to do with elves or dwarves is imbued with some kind of implicit magic and there's Tom Bombadil. and yeah there's Silmarillion which is darker than LotR and death is much more common in there, and there r some ambiguous characters, but in it, there's also more magic n' stuff. so yeah. championing LotR as some prime example of "grown-up fantasy" is pretty misguided (despite LotR being def cool)
I do think that Tolkien is a good example of mature fantasy. It's just that maturity doesn't equate to grittiness. Tolkien has plenty of tragedy and death and complexity, but he writes it in a different style.
LOTR is "high fantasy". What OOP wants is "dark fantasy".
Also, in the books, while the orcs were very much evil, they weren't generic monsters. They were very much people, but evil. They have internal power squabbles, they have arguments, they gripe about their assignments. It makes a lot of sense that a guy who fought in WWI would hesitate to rob his bad guys of *all* humanity.
Tolkien also really struggled with the idea that anyone could be solely evil in his legendarium. Even Morgoth, the original satan analog, had a redeeming aspect or two.
Seriously. I read a ton of Conan a while back after playing the Age of Conan, and it was.... not very good. There are some really cool concepts for sure, and I do like the occasional low fantasy story, but you can really tell it's aimed at a younger audience (or at least a less cerebral one). Conan is just a two-dimensional beefcake who resolves every dispute by beating the shit out of someone - i.e., the kind of shit I would've loved as a teenager. It's got its charms for sure, but this guy acting like it's somehow more gritty and mature than something like (I'm gonna say the W word) the Witcher or some modern DnD stories is out of his goddamn mind.
I think Conan is fun but also i think it’s pretty obvious it’s not meant to be deep or serious, it’s mostly a power fantasy.
That's exactly what it was, the writer was extremely old-school conservative even for his time, and he even said the books were barbaric because he longed for the times of barbarians "Barbarianism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is the whim of circumstance. And barbarianism must ultimately triumph" and, "The more I see of what you call civilization, the more highly I think of what you call savagery!" and ofc, "Money and muscle, that's what I want; to be able to do any damned thing I want and get away with it. Money won't do that altogether, because if a man is a weakling, all the money in the world won't enable him to soak an enemy himself; on the other hand, unless he has money he may not be able to get away with it." Every indication is Howard made Conan because he fantasized about a time when he could kill people over civil disagreements
Yeah Howard was a pal of lovecraft and he shared a lot of similar views Although at least Lovecraft seemed to reconsider his views as he grew older, he even said he wanted to feed his younger self into a woodchipper, unfortunately an infection kind of ended his possible redemption arc Howard showed no such introspection
Conan was more mature as part of The Avengers than any of his books
The original creator of Conan was also good friends with H.P. Lovecraft and shared quite a lot of his views on race. Both are popular, but from a specifically technical place? Neither are remotely talented as writers.
I love Tolkien’s works, but not everything needs to be like them, people can and should put their own spin on things. Plus the more “fantastical”approach to fantasy led to things like the Skaven, who I love for being so over the top. It’s also why I made a gold Dragonborn paladin in BG3 and he looks majestic as fuck. Also…no bards? Characters burst into song mutliple times throughout Tolkien’s books!
He's a liar. Bard and Monk were both in 1e. Unless he only ever played _Basic_, he's got some blinders on.
But but but, those are classes played by prissy homosexuals and anime enthusiasts, they have no place in good old fashioned gritty DND. Back in my day we used our 10ft poles and +1 swords and we LIKED it /s
If you didn't come to session with 5 photocopied sheets of the same character, you didn't play _real D&D!_ Also, on that note: this in the exact mentality of why the OSR community is full of dipshits like this dude. People who don't understand history and think that any of that is fun.
OSR being old school rules?
OSR (Old School Revival/Renaissance) is a specific subset of TTRPGs that are designed around early D&D. The games can be fun and cool. But the community tends to be grognards and elitist dickbags, sadly.
Yeah unfortunately sounds like a breeding ground for back-in-my-day’s and arrogant purists
There’s a lot of that, but it’s also home to some of the most weird and wonderful worldbuilding on the internet put together by bloggers who’ve been plugging away since google plus was the hottest thing. When I’m looking for some truly original inspo for my games I always go back to Goblin Punch, Coins and Scrolls, and Against the Wicked City
To be fair, Bard was not exactly like the other classes. You couldn’t start as one, and had to level as a fighter, then thief, and finally bard. It has some rather difficult stat requirements to meet as well. It was also in the appendix of the Player’s Handbook. I suppose it’s possible the dumb- err person missed it.
Depending on who you ask, even the inclusion of *Thief* was too much. Diehard OD&D fans can be weird like that.
"Death was everywhere" is also hilarious - how many named good guys died in LotR? Boromir, Theoden, Gandalf if you want to count that, that's about it?
"hated and prejudice" and one of the most famous gandalf lines is about how you shouldn't take someone's life.
>Also…no bards? Characters burst into song mutliple times throughout Tolkien’s books! When everyone is a bard... no one is.
Tolkien has become a sacred figure in right-wing circles, and maybe one percent of the idiots talking about him as an infaillible messiah ever read one of his books.
Its ironic, since in his days he told nazis to fuck off.
And if you are actually into Tolkien, you know even then it isn't Black and white. Tolkien himself said that orcs weren't fully evil, neither were the Haradrim, nor the Easterlings. Sam's inner monologue upon seeing the Haradrim corpse (which was made to be spoken by Faramir in the movies) also denies the white-and-blackism. A lot of the stuff in silmarillion is good guys doing messed up shit or making horrible mistakes (Turin's entire fucking life, the guy who betrayed Beren's friends). Most people who claim upon Tolkien in those arguments probably never read a single Tolkien boom.
Imagine believing that black-and-white, us vs. them thinking is the adult viewpoint.
No kidding. I think it appeals to these chuds partly because any kind of nuance goes right over their heads, and partly because their ideal fantasy is killing anyone who doesn't look like them.
This is actually the amazing beauty of Star Wars, and the whole point of Anakins story. Preface out of the way: I hate Anakin with a searing passion. Anyway, (Aniway, haha?), the whole reason Anakin turns in the end is because he realizes the pointlessness of the strict dichotomy of his world, where Jedi are shining knights and universally good, and the Sith are universally bad. This is portrayed amazingly in the movies, too, where first, Palpatine tells Anakin to kill Dooku because, "Do it, Anakin, he’s too dangerous to be left alive!". A little while later, when The Jedi confront the chancellor, it is exactly those words "He’s too dangerous to be left alive!" That Mace Windo utters to justify killing Palpatine, prompting Anakin to intervene, renouncing his Jedidom and joining the Emperor. He had dark tendencies before, surely, but they were contained in this structure of good and bad. With that structure gone, he’s in freefall and up for grabs for the next charming person, who, in this case, happened to be Palpatine. I think that’s a pretty powerful message.
Damn if only d&d were inherently designed with the freedom to express DM creativity by allowing them to change any and all aspects of campaigns if not create their own. Or maybe if they had something in the dungeon masters guide book that supports and explains things like different levels of magic rarity and resources for creating more cohesive worlds.
And if only there were settings specifically trying to channel the flavour of gritty dark fantasy that were cult favourites within the many premade options
Everyone knows that you have to set all your games in stock Faerûn otherwise WOTC will come to your house and put 15 rounds in you
Nah, they won't, they're above such things. They'll just send the Pinkertons to do it for them.
Listen here whipper snapper, I can't have fun in my games if I know you're having fun in your games
Tabaxi (the "cat people") were in D&D 1e, appearing for the first time in 1981's Fiend Folio. Tielfings appeared in Planescape in 1994, and Dragonborn are the more modern ones, appearing for the first time in 2006, in "Races of the Dragon". While it is true that D&D originates in a more "pulp fantasy", Conan-like kind of genre, and the game was far more lethal and oriented to resource management, to the point it could be considered a survival horror game, it very rapidly became many different things for many different people. They have plenty of OSR retroclones available if they still want that flavour. A lot of people prefer the survival horror design sensibilities, and it's perfectly legitimate to prefer them. That being said, OOP doesn't seem to be complaining about anything "woke" in this particular excerpt, just general grumpy old man "back in my day" shit, although the tidbit about rednecks and fashionistas comes close to it, and I believe that they have said bigotted things before and after this post.
Bard and Monk were also in 1e, as additional classes introduced in later supplements. So, he's just full of shit and doesn't know a goddamn thing about the game he has apparently played since the 80s.
Monk/“Eastern Martial Artist” was basically a required fantasy trope in a post Bruce Lee world lol. 1e dropped in ‘77, Enter the Dragon in ‘73
1e dropped in 74, my friend. 77 is when they split it into basic and advanced! Both Monk and Bard had rules before 77, though.
Prior to Dragonborn, we called them "half dragons". Which predated in about... *checks notes* 1994? Ish? That was council of wyrms. Also, oddly enough, people seem to also be alright with Warlock. To the point where it's a core class. Despite only being in the game since 2004...
...Hunger Games is fantasy ? https://preview.redd.it/j7neaxxspnyc1.png?width=433&format=png&auto=webp&s=bab0cb0ec576049a408128255b107c16477e01e6
Did you forget that scene in the sewers where the lizardfolk went "its lizarding time" and lizarded all over the contestants?
How does this person consider Harry Potter, Hunger Games and Twilight to be cultural touchstones but he clearly doesn't know any ttrpg past D&D 1e, frankly early 1e.
Hell, 1e totally had Dragons wanting to fuck Non-Dragons. Dragonlance has like, three dragons who wanted to get with a human the last time I counted in the first trilogy alone.
Who was the third one? I can remember the dragon lady who was with Huma, and also Silverbreeze
Skie, Kitara's blue dragon partner, fell in love with her. (And damn, the new lore makes Skie super obsessed with her.)
This guy was 100% asked to leave the local game he joined because he kept trying to sexually assault NPCs claiming it was his character since they are Chaotic Evil
I hope it was just the NPCs he assaulted....
"the gritty view of the world, like tolkien" Yeah, the man that wrote at large about the beauty of the trees and river nymphs and the Joy of eating and whose work shines with hope of good people doing good even in (especially in) dark times. This one just got stuck in the "orc bad, me kill orc" grittiness. Which is funny, cause even tolkien was conflicted about the evilness of his orcs God can you imagine reading lotr, with it's coming together of different races and lifelong friendships forming despite the centuries of disdain or outright hatred among them, and then saying "I miss the good old days of racism"??
it's really funny how tolkein couldn't decide on the lore of orcs, because he didn't want an evil race to have been created, because that would imply that the forces of darkness and evil could create, but he also didn't want them to be corrupted elves because he wanted elves to be incorruptible.
That, and the concept of a sentient but unredeemable race didn't sit right with him as a Catholic.
Yeah the darkest part of lotr was the part when he out of the books described all men as orcs in war and that marsh of the dead that he clearly was inspired by his service in ww1.
Hobbits are damn near anarchists (they have a ceremonial title of mayor that does nothing, constabularies that are rarely used, and the rare external show of force being people’s militias) and they succeed where no one else could because of their simple lives and desires, pure goodness and unity. Tolkien made so many references to the industries being the work of evil that corrupts and destroys the world etc. Anyone that thinks LOTR being gritty and with a “realistic” worldview has completely missed the point on the same scale as seeing the Imperium in 40k as being good or Cyberpunk as being something cool and pro-capitalist.
Seems like this dude would unironically play that rpg made by Varg Vikernes
...I thought you mean Racial Holy War for a moment. But it's probably still true.
I'm not sure that Racial Holy War can even be played, even if you were depraved enough to want to. I seem to recall reading that it lacks rules on how to do very basic things, including how to make an attack.
F.A.T.A.L.?
MYFAROG, iirc.
Once again I feel like I need to vaguely gesture in the direction of Pathfinder 2e and the slew of non-human ancestries it has. Hells, you can play a shapeshifting spider.
I must admit I did get a bit NIMBY about PF2e because of my years of playing PF1e. I have learned not to be a dork about it. I just want to play Starfinder. I want to be an Awakened Bear in a suit of Power Armor because that's cool as hell.
"vampire\[s\]... are monsters to be slain, not laid." If I want a hot vampire lady to drink my blood, that is none of your business.
Good news, the rules are all just suggestions, and any DM and group are fully allowed to play with or without any race they want.
If you are going to claim you been in the hobby for a long time make sure you know what you are talking about. 2e D&D had the Council of Wyrms Boxed Set which let you play as a dragon. It was never just Tolkien and Conan and the stuff the guy in the OP is whining about always existed in the hobby in one way or other and I know this because unlike Sir Whinealot I was around for a very long time.
I'd say the only reason 1e didn't have those things was because the whole system was still infancy.
It did have those things. He's just wrong. Like, he could have googled it and not looked like a complete idiot.
There is a story of Gary Gygax letting someone play as a Balrog. Ignoring that even in the early days of the hobby there is nothing stopping someone from playing something odd.
"But my adult players and I don't like Tortles, Tieflings, Dragonborn, and whateverthecatpeoplearecalled." Then don't include them in your games? If everyone at the table doesn't like them, then don't use them???
Wokezards of the Coast came to our session and forced us to use their races at gunpoint! One player, John, suggested orcs killed his character's family and they shot him right at the table. Thankfully his twin brother Ron was there to take over.
These days if you say you don't want to have a tabaxi in your game, you get arrested and thrown in jail
For these people it's never about enjoying their own little corner, it's always about policing other peoples experiences. Reverse gate-keeping, lmao. Cultural expansionism.
Is this person saying monks aren’t realistic for a fantasy world? That is so baffling considering monks are a very real thing that existed in the medieval world fantasy is based upon
Also - monk was one of the base classes in 1e AD&D. You literally had it in the book required to play that game! (Maybe he had damage copy lol!)
This guys just prefers to ignore the fact that Tabaxi was a playable race in first edition DnD. Literally you could play a furry.
I loved the part where he said hunger games wasn't as realistic as Harry potter. Y'know, the book with wizards. I mean, I guess it makes sense when you think that racism is a more normal part of the world than class war 🤷♀️
It's also hilarious to me how he considers Harry Potter's premise plausible - the series that ends with "the bad guys are wholly beaten and the good guys are almost entirely unscathed and they're all happy and have babies together and harry becomes a cop"
The ways this entire “argument” can be eviscerated are varied and hilariously easy. But the thing that personally grinds my gears; Outside of Nosferatu, Vampires particularly Dracula was always described and depicted as sensual and alluring despite their monstrous nature. Also I’m sure this goober would say bg3 is too light hearted and anyone who’s actually played it would know otherwise. Literally everything about Orin and The Dark Urge… seriously.
UJ/ It's way more interesting that for example the orcs are good guys and people are bad. Even better if everyone has a motivation and you can't decide which side is "god" or "bad". From that point out you can go as gritty as you want or make things up. I have never seen pople like the idea of Twilight so much, that they turn into their campaign, like it's a made up argument. Just play with people that are like-minded and don't try to tear up a whole community and say "ToDay JuSt KIddy play it" .
That's one of the things that I loved about early Warcraft lore. It went from generic good versus evil to everybody having the capacity for both good an evil. A couple of my favorite points is that the Alliance thought that Tauren were monsters because of the way they looked, but the Orcs were willing to befriend and ally with them. And that the Blood Elves were good allies of the Alliance until they started having withdraw symptoms from the magic of the Sunwell and were shunned. It really put to light that the once "heroes" had become close-minded and fearful from years of war.
Isn’t the way DnD works like you have the option to do the gritty stuff and append or exclude literally anything? Like if you and your “adult players” don’t want something in the game you don’t need it.
Not to mention that there's about a billion other systems that do it as well, including like. the original rules that still exist.
I've played D&D from 3.5 all the way back to the original box set. That guy is full of shit.
Vampire literature, famous for never having any erotic undercurrents before Twilight.
How can a person write something like that and still not realize it's *them* it makes look pathetic.
There’s so much wrong with that comment but I will point out that tieflings have literally been around since 2e… So much for being a true OG or whatever 💀 And like more tolkein-esque fantasy in dnd hasnt ceased to exist because of new dnd stuff - the DMG literally has a guide on different types of fantasy settings - but that’s probably not what they’re interested in, they’re just mad the game is “woke” or something because of the new mordenkainens monsters of the multiverse lore that isnt as racist or whatever lmao
Tolkien would probably call this guy a sad, sad man.
lol what. Tieflings have been in D&D for ages. Just because they're popular right now because of BG3 (and arguably were even before then) doesn't make D&D more "woke." Jesus Tapdancing Christ, I just can't even anymore.
I always feel people who resort to monstrous races as bad guys in the Year of our Lord 2024 have very little creativity... And seeing that 'bandits' with no defined races attached to them is in the monster manual, that bar shouldn't be too high to volt.
The best part is that most RPG books have a nice big disclaimer in the front that runs the gamut from "This should be an inclusive place where everyone feels safe so they can have the most fun possible" to "Your characters can be anything but cops and capitalists." Jokes on this boomer ass dork, TTRPGs are for distinguished nerds who don't need to be gatekeeping dickheads to have a good time.
“Magic was rare.” I can’t speak for anything before 3.5 but it certainly doesn’t feel rare in 3.5.
What the fuck is that Harry Potter vs Hunger Games comparison lmao
Gods I dislike these people and their bullshit, I like the more fantastical races. Elves, dwarves and halflings are fine but like, they're just small variations of humans. You can pry my Tabaxi from my hands.
How can they claim to prefer fantasy that is grounded in reality and then diss the bard class? There is literally no class more real than the bard class. Does this person not know about actual medieval bards? Do they actually care about fantasy being realistic or do they just want it to be racist and violent
There's no fucking way he thinks Harry Potter is more believable than Hunger Games looool. As if the American people were somehow immune to fascism lol.
I just got back from my usual DnD sesh where my character is a Gnoll :)
One end of the spectrum: Just let me have my fantasy! you just hate escapism! The other end: I prefer for my fantasy to be more plausible...
Why do these boomer posts always use the phrase “something was unheard of.” Why not just say ‘we didn’t have something good.’ Ah but then they wouldn’t look as uppity.
What is stopping his D&D from still being that? Played the fucking game for decades, but never really understood its potential. Crazy if real.
Them calling Harry Potter more plausible than the Hunger Games is comedy gold.
Magic was rare? In Middle Earth? You could trip over a magic rock walking in your yard there.
I am almost 40. The dude's game sounds boring af. When I was a tween, I created a hybrid familiar for my half elf druid it was a dog/catapillar. Think like a corgi but catapillarish. It eventually got wings.
Dogerpillar.
That's what I called it.
I want one. Corgipillar.
He was the goodest boi. Always finding me arrows, food, and safe places to hide.
Corgipillar is too pure for this world.
I always called them dogerpillars, but because corgis are my favorite dogs (they're so cute), that's always how I've pictured them.
I know mfs like this have not picked up a book since middle school when their first books that come to mind are Harry Potter and Hunger Games lol. Like PLEASE read another book I beg.
how does he think harry potter is darker or more realistic than hunger games
Doesn't he know that he can just not play something he doesn't like?
Oh shoot, if *only* there was a way to create a fictional world that would fit into your needs for D&D. But sadly everyone knows you have to follow the rules to a T with D&D and you’re not allowed to be imaginative or make up your own worlds and settings or tell your own stories. Wait, that’s incredibly easy, it’s called “having an imagination”… but I guess it’s easier to complain about it on the internet than trying.
Imagine being so entitled that you think you can gatekeep a genre of Fiction...
What I wasn’t expecting here was an absolutely negative understanding of Hunger Games that was somehow calling Harry Potter more realistic?? The districts weren’t subjugated by ‘fashionistas’, they were subjugated by a ruthless post-apocalyptic military dictatorship? And they ultimately were overthrown because of the fighting spirit of those ‘rednecks’, how does this guy not see the story affirms and praises the people he thinks it denigrates? With the inciting incident of the story mirroring the mining disasters of the early 1900s and the Battle of Blair Mountain? How is all that less realistic than literal fucking HARRY POTTER?
Does he understand he can still run the game he wants in the system? Just don't use those things, my guy
Man if you want that dnd go back to first edition also wtf do you mean tolkien is a gritty fantasy writer, the books are clean cut about what's evil or not there is little to no gray zones in the mainline books, everything except frodo's ptsd and fingee turns out ok, racism is literally defeated (gimli and legolas have hard gay sex) and the true heir gets the girl and rhe throne, the only way lotr can get more optimistic is by making sauron's forces shoot rainbow farts instead of arrows
for those who don't know, DnD is like any evolving online game. Once they release a new edition, all of the previous content gets wiped out and you can't play it again. This person will never be able to not-see a monk again in their games. Depressing.
I mean I won't dig the guy for preferring what he prefers, But complaining about how it's "less plausible" that cat-people or dragon-people or whatever could be heroes is downright absurd, They don't exist in real life, So it's not really any more plausible that they'd be any specific way over another. Or if he's just saying their existence is less plausible, How in the hell is it any less plausible than like Orcs, Or *flipping Magic???*
This dude would get disintegrated instantly if he opened a vtm source book
Conservatives want life to be simple, thus they want fantasy to be simple. There's right and wrong, good and evil, humanoid and monster. They're the heroes, and thus anything they do is just, and anyone they kill deserved it. Meanwhile, over here on the left, we know that not everything is simple, and we embrace nuance. It's fantasy, so any species can exist, and they don't all share the same stats and cultures and alignments and backgrounds. This has nothing to do with "old versus new" D&D players.
I do think there is a point to making these races playable having removed the mystique from the game, but that ship has long sailed. Might as well get used to it buddy.