One of my ambitions is to develop a variant ruleset for single-class paladin campaigns, and indeed to run such a campaign over the long term.
The more you think about single-class campaigns, the richer they tend to seem. A singe-class paladin campaign in particular gives rise to a lot of interesting ideas about settings, about the way campaigns begin and hold themselves together across time, about the rules of experience and advancement, and about the basic structure of play. Let's deal with each of these in turn:
Settings
The basic conceit behind the D&D paladin is a largely ahistorical idea of a holy warrior or hero whose duty is to protect the faithful and smite evil. But this is a wide concept, and can include under its umbrella many variants. For example:
- The traditional D&D paladin, a paragon of lawful good, who attempts to 'do good' within a typical TSRan type setting
- A more Arthurian, Pendragon-inspired 'knight of the round table' fighting for Christian order within a world imbued with ancient magical forces
- A pseudo-Japan in which mighty heroic samurai do battle against demons and evil spirits
- A pseudo-Ancient Mesopotamia or Levant where Gilgameshian heroes or 'Book of Judges' style judges fight against primordial chaos embodied in monsters and devils
- A vaguely Iberian class of holy knights who do battle againts evil infidels
- A somewhat Warhammerian set of 'demon hunters' in a reformation-era Old World (with the serial numbers filed off)
- A group of dwarven warrior-priests in Lanthanum Chromate
- &c.
The point of all of this is that the necessary ingredients are simply that there is an objective good and an objective evil, that those things are personified in the world and have real content, and that the PCs belong to a class of heroes whose job unselfconsciously is to fight for the cause of good against the cause of evil. This can be ported to almost any type of setting.
Campaign Beginnings
An important consideration in the single-class campaign is, I think, having an 'HQ' - a reason why the PCs get together to begin with, a rationale for their endeavours, and an ongoing source of replacements and hirelings. This could, for example, be:
- A guild, which attracts a continued stream of apprentices and also has links to other guilds of adventuring trades (fighters, magicians, thieves, etc.)
- A temple, which has a body of novices and masters
- A holy site, which attracts pilgrims and healers
- A martial order, like the Shaolin monks or Knights Templar
- &c.
Experience and Advancement
The big change that would need to made to the standard D&D rules for a single-class paladin campaign would be to change the method of gathering XP. XP for GP simply wouldn't be appropriate, thematically. Possibilities to consider: XP for killing specific enemy types (demons, infidels, dragons, giants, etc.) is worth 10 times as specified in the Monster Manual? XP for rescuing people from harm? Specified XP hauls for slaying specified named individual monsters on the hex-map or dungeon? And so on.
Structure of Play
A single-class paladin campaign may envisage the PCs as something like knights-errant, who range across a hex-map (or adventure into the Abyss, or whatever) simply looking for
trouble enemies to smite and innocents to protect. Alternatively, they might be concieved as defenders of a particular city, region or holy site that is beset by enemies: this would require a process whereby threats are generated and deployed in a quasi-random fashion, to which the PCs must respond. Another possibility: something like my old
Random Demonic Incursion Generator; the PCs live in a region of the world which has its own dangers but which, from time to time, is invaded by evil beings from another plane which must be found, rooted out, and destroyed.
I find this idea appealing, and may elaborate it in a PDF.
I woud love to see this developed!
ReplyDeleteI might put it out as a shortish PDF/POD thing if I have time to flesh it out.
DeleteIn re xp for gp - just playing devil's advocate, but why doesn't that work? The group can "donate it all to charity" when they get back to town.
ReplyDeleteDepending on what they need to do, for example demons just arrived from the abyss, there probably wouldn’t be any gold around
DeleteWhat PBlottz said but actually that's not so terrible an idea. This could then be a way for enlarging/expanding the HQ - they have to give all the gold over to the Elders (or whatever) and they then spend it on pimping the HQ so to speak.
Delete@PBlottz, that makes sense. I was coming at it from a player incentive perspective, but I can see how some paladin activities don't generate much GP or monster XP. @noisms, 10x XP for certain monsters seems too high, but perhaps you could pair it with a 0.5x XP or even 0 XP for neutral animals, maybe even negative XP for killing "innocents". Alternatively, how about an advancement mechanism that's tied entirely to the completion of specific quests, i.e. no XP whatsoever, and advance when the cockatrice is slain? Feels thematic, but maybe too far from the DnD baseline?
DeleteThat pretty much is the current mainstream D&D (5E) baseline.
DeleteIt's interesting to have gone from a time where D&D had become its own fantasy heartbreaker, unaware of its own prior art and history, to a time where the OSR scene that came about largely as the reaction to that, can be similar, reinventing wheels due to unawareness of the current state of the art.
I'm happy to wear the label "unaware of the state of the art", but to clarify, I'm proposing that no XP is earned in scenarios that would, in either vanilla 1st or 5th D&D, have earned XP.
DeleteKilled a giant spider because you got lost on your way to the demon's lair? No XP. Saved a village from gnolls on the way to the demon's lair? No XP. Etc. What matters is the quest.
I think it depends on whether the paladin-focused game is aiming to reward paladins for behaving like paladins in an uncaring, OSR universe, or if the game is aiming to reward paladins for inhabiting the mimesis of a romance universe.
Yeah, I instinctively recoil from the concept of XP for quest events, but negative XP for killling 'innocents' is an interesting one.
DeleteThis is thematically similar to a campaign I am running right now for coworkers. Demons have overtaken the land, people have fled into major cities. There is a dedicated task force of volunteers who get sent out on specific missions/quests to try and reclaim territory or make contact with other groups. It works really well for the player situation I have, different people playing every week and for only two hours at a time.
ReplyDeleteYeah, this kind of 'high concept' campaign is good for rotating casts.
DeleteXP for GP would work if the Order was trying to build a chapter house or Krak des Chevaliers - depending on how ambitious they are. I recall a nice wheeze from the TSR game Knight of Camelot: the XP were divided by Virtue Points. Every time a paladin breaks the Code to get the mission done he gains a VP (1 VP being the parfait knight). VP can be brought down by quests, pilgrimages etc.
DeletePersonally, I think that Pendragon sucks the life out of a paladin campaign. It is very much Stafford’s vision and the great man was quite dirigiste. Pendragon bores are even worse.
I love the commenters on my blog. 'Personally, I think that Pendragon sucks the life out of a paladin campaign. It is very much Stafford’s vision and the great man was quite dirigiste.' Nowhere else do you get this level of insight.
DeleteWhy not play with Pendragon rules? At any rate, there should be plenty of good ideas an resources for single-class Paladin campaigns there, because it's the best developed knight-only RPG there is.
ReplyDeleteAbout the Paladin class, which appeared first in Greyhawk (1975) as an option to the fighter who has CHA 17+ and starts and remains Lawful, I believe the prototype was the Arthurian Lancelot. Why? Lancelot was famously the most handsome knight (very high CHA required) and, crucially, is the one knight famous for laying on hands to cure somebody, as he does for the Hungarian knight Sir Urry, whose cursed wounds could be repaired only by "the beste knyght of the worlde" (Malory). This is the most distinctive extra power for the original Paladin. In the immediate background of the D&D paladin is T.H. White's quartet of novels, The Once and Future King, the basis for the very successful musical Camelot, which toured in the '60s and was then used for the Hollywood film Camelot of '67. All the fantasy buffs who saw the movie would know that Lancelot was the handsomest pious hero and also laid hands to cure Sir Dinadan, his own foe. What a lawfully good guy! But vow of celibacy not required (as Lancelot broke his). But, then, for game balance, Paladins cannot accumulate too much stuff. Otherwise (we can almost hear Gary Gygax say) everybody would want to play one.
Luckily, one can do a lot of other things with the paladin class, as you point out with some good ideas.
I like Pendragon a lot but I think reskinning it for different variants and settings requires a lot of work. D&D is much more amenable to easy kitbashing.
DeleteI see your point with TH White *but* as memory serves in the novels Lancelot is actualy horribly ugly, while still being the most perfect knight. This is why he's the 'Ill-Made Knight'. Guinevere loves him because of this, not because of his handsomeness.
Memory didn't serve me, then. But you just strengthened the case for "Camelot" and, maybe, Malory.
DeleteEven if not playing Pendragon directly, there might be some bits like glory as an XP system worth examining and maybe adapting
DeleteDo paladins care about glory? Should they? Interesting question.
DeleteI've been working on a similar idea, but using the Man at Arms group (2e) plus Cleric, using the guidelines to Magic from HR 2 e HR 7.
ReplyDeleteExplain? Sounds interesting.
DeleteThe campaign will be set in a Terra Legendária, circa century IX or XII (not yet defined) where the PCs will be good Christian types, only of the fighting and cleric classes, with the restrictions and options found in the historical supplements (in particular CharlesMagne HR2 and Crusades HR7). Encounters with pagan Celtic, Norse, Greek and Germanic legends will be on the menu.
DeleteI'd strongly suggest checking out the Paladin RPG by Clinton R. Nixon (2002), except that it appears to be unavailable these days (and Clinton seems to have changed his name...?!).
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, both Pendragon and Vincent Baker's Dogs in the Vineyard are good sources of inspirational material. Also Space Marine fluff and fiction (duh).
Yep - there's also the Complete Paladin's Handbook released during the 2nd edition era. Will have to see if I can find that on RPG Drive Thru (presumably it's available).
DeleteI'm reminded of David Eddings' Sparhawk books. They were fairly derivative of his earlier Belgariad, at least plot-wise, but the protagonist and his allies are all "church-knights" from different orders, working together to find the mystic MacGuffin and save the princess/world from evil.
ReplyDeleteOh God, I remember those. I read them back in the day. I read all of David Eddings' stuff, pretty much, despite its utterly derivative nature.
DeleteThe idea of a single-class campaign certainly does have a kind of pull! (My group's idle what-iffing tends to center around relatively-squishy classes like mages or bards.)
ReplyDeletePaladins might actually be more tricky to do well, from a social angle, simply because a misstep could pull in some seriously unfortunate associations.
As in, yes, a group of paladins fighting against truly inhuman monsters (demons, protoplasmic Chaos entities, etc.) is almost certainly not going to get any pushback. And I can see a lot of potential in e.g. a campaign to mostly *convert* humanoid worshippers of an objectively evil entity (a la Cthulhu-mythos cultists), with "neutralization" being the sad-but-necessary fallback plan.
But the musing about "Iberian" paladins focusing their violence on "infidels" is pushing into a danger zone, especially if you lean into the Christian imagery that old-school D&D tended to attach to the class. Like... Christians just straight-up murdering thousands of people and destroying entire cultures in order to stamp out *a form of spirituality they don't approve of* is one of the major narratives of the past two thousand years. Even with the temporal distance involved and a protective film of fantasy abstraction, playing Inquisition- or Crusader-type figures sounds just as awful and gross as it would be to deliberately play, say, a reskinning of the Taliban or ISIS.
If I *had* to run an all-paladin campaign, I think I'd actually want to lean into the mechanical contradiction hinted at above. Just as it would be an interesting challenge to have no front-line fighters in a "traditional" campaign, I feel you'd get the most mileage out of a mostly nonviolent paladin campaign where the PCs' access to lethal force of arms provides a feeling of security even as they mostly face social and intellectual challenges: persuading, investigating, solving puzzles, etc.
Is it really like playing a reskinning of the Taliban or ISIS, or is it more like a reskinning of the Ottoman Empire or the Mongols or the Umayyads or the Almohads or Dai Viet or any of the religiously motiivated empires of history? Or is it like playing as the followers of Pelagius or Charles Martel?
DeleteOr is it just a fantasy game which doesn't have any reflection in the real world?
"or is it more like a reskinning of the Ottoman Empire or the Mongols or the Umayyads or the Almohads or Dai Viet or any of the religiously motiivated empires of history" [sic]
DeleteYes, exactly; thank you for supporting my point! Anyone who runs a single-class paladin campaign should be careful to steer clear of emulating *any* historical entity that made bloody conquest its raison d'être, at least unless you're playing an explicitly evil campaign and everyone at the table is cool with the concept.
"Or is it just a fantasy game which doesn't have any reflection in the real world?"
Yes, that sort of deliberate divide would be one way to avoid the problems I was talking about. After all, I'm not saying that any and all paladin campaigns *must* be problematic; I'm saying that certain historical parallels should probably be avoided.
So... yeah, don't beef with *me*. Take it up with whoever was deliberately stealing your pure-fantasy concept and loading it down with unfortunate real-world reflections like e.g. knights fighting for "Christian order" or Iberian-style holy knights who "do battle against... infidels."
Got it… all of human history is too problematic & immoral to approach in roleplaying games. Good to know!
DeleteWhat 'Anonymous' said. But also, I just don't understand what the 'historical parallels' are that should be avoided and why they should be. It's perfectly possible to make a fun role-playing game campaign set in, say, the crusades without implying anything about the actual crusades. I mean, for heaven's sake, the area where I live was once subject to constant raids from Scandinavia and monks were massacred not far from where I am sitting now. Should a campaign setting in which the PCs are a bit like Vikings, or which alludes to the Vikings, 'probably be avoided' because of this? Nah.
DeleteThe wider point is that there is no 'pure fantasy' - indeed, the idea that human beings can invent 'pure fantasy' that has no connection to our history or condition is itself utterly fantastical.
I'm afraid that both you and the brave, brave Sir Ann O'Nymous are making the same very common Internet Mistake - which is looking at an argument saying X, remembering an argument in which Y was said, and then responding to Y instead of to X. I would deeply appreciate it if you stopped yelling at Y and instead look at what I've actually been saying.
DeleteTo put it very simply: you seemed to react poorly when I brought up the idea of playing as even a reskinned version of ISIS. Even if that's a misinterpretation on my part, I hope you can acknowledge the reality that everybody in the world has some sort of character they would not want to play as, and some sort of campaign that they would not want to play in.
So, no, 'Anonymous' did not hit the mark. They simply got triggered by some word or phrase I'd used and immediately jumped to a strawman in an attempt to ignore this self-evident reality.
And in light of that self-evident reality, it's only logical to say that a given group would want to avoid certain character types, courses of action, systems, or tropes.
Perhaps you personally don't have any negative associations with historical Scandinavians. That's great! You can play in a Viking-inspired campaign if you want. But would you *insist* on such a campaign even if a member of your group really wasn't into it? That's kind of an asshole move.
Now consider that while "Viking raids" have minimal impact on our current day-to-day lives, racial and religious discrimination and violence definitely do. I hope you recognize the likelihood that a Jew might not want to roleplay as a member of the Inquisition; a Muslim might not want to roleplay as a Crusader; an Irish Protestant might not want to roleplay as a perpetrator of the Kingsmill massacre -- even if you file the serial numbers off. There are too many neo-Nazis out there trying to hands-on LARP the Crusades for you to brush this off as if it couldn't possibly ever be an issue for anybody.
TL;DR: Everybody has something that they don't want to deal with in their gaming time. Acknowledging and responding to this fundamental truth is an important part of not being an asshole and making sure that play is actually fun for the people involved.
-----
I'm confused by your "wider point." When we make a fantasy setting, is it a pure fantasy "which doesn't have any reflection in the real world" [emphasis mine], or must it necessarily have a "connection to our history or condition"? I don't see how it can be both.
Confanity make me want to change my next campaign. From Charles Magne and Pelágio legendaria to Crusades time legendaria.
DeleteOhhh, Anonymous reminded me - what about an all-troll campaign? You play like normal, but instead of combat etc., you go around saying things that you think will hurt people's feelings because that's the only way you can pretend to yourself that you're clever?
Delete"I hope you recognize the likelihood that a Jew might not want to roleplay as a member of the Inquisition; a Muslim might not want to roleplay as a Crusader; an Irish Protestant might not want to roleplay as a perpetrator of the Kingsmill massacre" - except, of course, all the times in gaming where this sort of thing happens all the time. Regardless of whether the serial numbers are filed off.
DeleteI think we often reveal our own biases and preconceptions about the world when we set about criticising and challenging those of others. "Not being an asshole" must surely involve seeing people as individuals, not as animate labels whose tastes we are empowered to presume.
There are, of course, limits. But in my games that limit is closer to "there's no need to describe in graphic detail what the raiders do to the PC's family while they look on", rather than "no guys in heaumes and tabards".
Confanity - you sound as though you're having an argument with a Martian. Yes, of course, if one of your friends would be uncomfortable with a suggestion for a campaign on any basis then it's not sensible to do it. Can we take it as read that we are all human beings who have some inkling about what other human beings feel and what is or is not appropriate in social situations?
DeleteYour argument seems to boil down to: 'don't be an asshole'. OK. We agree. Otherwise, a campaign in which the PCs are crusaders or ISIS members or Khmer Rouge soldiers or whatever else is fine and has no cosmic or moral significance.
I'm confused by your confusion about my wider point. All I said was that it's not possible to create 'pure fantasy' that has no connection to human history or the human condition. You can agree or disagree with this statement but is it really confusing?
@cmrsalmon - Come on, respect yourself enough to not talk like an extra-facetiious junior-high student. We all know that you can in fact assign people to categories, and categories to people, without ignoring the fact that they're individuals. Don't pretend that you don't go around every day sorting people into broad groups based on age, gender, clothing, etc. etc. etc. and using that as a basis for understanding further things about them as individuals.
DeleteAnd for crying out loud, it's clear that you're not interested in engaging what I said, but at the very least please save us both some time and don't act as if you actually believed that the tabards are the issue here.
@noisms: I was trying to simplify and clarify my point enough to keep trolls from having enough space to deliberately misunderstand it... my apologies for failing in that attempt.
DeleteI appreciate that you're engaging in my point in what looks like a good-faith discussion; let me simply say that you've outlined half of my point. I guess in very simple terms, it goes:
1. Don't be an asshole
2. It's easier to be an asshole when dealing with some topics than with others.
This should also be plainly self-evident. Most RPers are sane enough to realize that some issues are fraught (e.g. torture, sex, betrayal) and require extra caution, while others (e.g. bread, horses, what color the sky is) are less so.
It simply set off alarm bells for me - in a world where neo-Nazis do go around openly glorifying the Inquisition and the Crusades as if they were good things - that someone would invoke those events so cavalierly (pun intended).
Again: you seem to have caught on to my point that if everyone at your table is fine with it, then what you do at the privacy of that table is... fine. Whatever. No skin off my nose. But the more potentially-fraught a topic is, the more responsibility you have to actively make sure that everyone at the table really is fine - and that this scales to the size of your audience, if any aspect of the game goes outside of your private table.
I tried to make my confusion clear, so to speak. Again my apologies for failing there.
It's not about what I agree or disagree with. It's that you directly contradicted yourself. You said later that it's not possible to create pure fantasy that has no connection to human history, yes. I agree with that statement!
The problem is that earlier you also specifically invoked "a fantasy game which doesn't have any reflection in the real world." Unless you're trying to imply some sort of esoteric but vital difference between "connection" and "reflection" (in which case I'd appreciate it being explained a little further), that's nonsensical.
You either believe that
A. all fantasy must "have a reflection" in the real world (in which case anybody who doesn't want to be an asshole should just be aware of their potential for being unpleasant for the players),
or
B. some games do not have any such reflection (and thus cannot possibly be fraught, so no consideration is necessary).
I don't see how both of those can be true at the same time.
@confanity, I sincerely apologise that my reply was trollish in tone, but I strongly disagree with two elements of your position.
DeleteWhile I do "go around every day sorting people into groups", I believe that this is not desirable and would prefer I didn't. I would be surprised if most players of Jewish ancestry would think twice about playing an "inquisitor", but regardless I definitely would not presume to protect them from the experience by pre-emptively deciding they shouldn't have the option to. I want to live in a world where people are empowered to speak up in their own defence, expecting respectful treatment, not a world where choices are pre-emptively made on behalf of people, even for noble reasons such as to protect their feelings.
I also do believe that it is, in fact, about the tabards. On the subject of sorting people into groups, for perverse adsense reasons, I regularly see Google ads selling graphic tees that appear to be aimed at right-leaning, retiree patriots. There appear be a small number of core styles - twee slogans about being old, stuff with flags, and medieval crusaders. If it wasn't about the tabards, these images of knights with pot helmets and St George's cross tabards wouldn't feature so prominently in creepy right-wing propaganda. The target audience aren't students of the Council of Clermont; they just think crusaders look cool (and are God-approved).
I might be again misunderstanding your argument, @confanity, but let's say we do file the serial numbers off the crusades, and also remove the purely aesthetic elements, e.g. tabards, what is left? Generic holy war? I grant that some players may still not enjoy that, but it's hard to imagine such a bland/ahistorical setting triggering anyone.
Confanity - I wrote: 'The wider point is that there is no 'pure fantasy' - indeed, the idea that human beings can invent 'pure fantasy' that has no connection to our history or condition is itself utterly fantastical.' What part of this is contradictory or hard to understand? Is it my use of the word 'fantastical'? It means a fantasy - i.e. illusory, fanciful.
DeleteMore generally, I just don't agree with the position you are adopting that 'the more potentially-fraught a topic is, the more responsibility you have to actively make sure that everyone at the table really is fine'. I get why you are saying this - it's because it's in keeping with a very widespread pseudo-therapeutic approach to running RPGs, which itself is part of an even more widespread therapeuticisation of society, in which how people feel is never attributable to their own agency but placed on the shoulders of others. But I'm afraid I don't see the world, or human interactions, in that way. It isn't the responsibility of Adult A to make sure that Adult B 'really is fine' in any given circumstance. That's not what adult behaviour consists of. Adults don't need other adults to 'make sure that they are really fine' with situation X or Y. That's because, as grown-ups, they have some agency in the matter of whether they end up in situations in which they do, or do not, feel 'fine'. Adults ought to behave appropriately in social situations and be polite. But they're not resposible for whether other adults around them are 'fine' in any given moment.
More broadly still, I come back to the Martian point. Do you really think there are Jewish people out there who would be offended by a game involving something that looked a bit like the Spanish inquisition? Because I don't. I think that would be weirdly hypersensitive - akin to me getting offended by a game involving the Norman conquest or the Battle of the Boyne. And do you really think these purported neo-Nazis who go around glorifying the inquisition or the crusades (are there more than a couple of hundred such people in the entire world?) are in any way emboldened or have their cause strengthened because you or I happen to play a campaign of D&D behind closed doors in which the PCs are all paladins who, if you squint at them hard enough, kind of look like they are a riff on the reconquista? Because if you do, you need to realise that's just a really, really weird thing to be worried about.
@cmrsalmon - Thank you for the clarification! I truly appreciate the thought and effort. :)
DeleteThat said, it's hard not to feel like the "but..." segment devolves into more trolling. Perhaps I'm also falling victim to the "hear X, remember Y, argue against Y" trap, but you've loaded several false assumptions into the explanation.
1. 'I would be surprised if...' - This seems to rest on the suggestion that your expectations would determine reality.
2. 'most players of Jewish ancestry would think twice about playing an "inquisitor"' [emphasis mine] - Are you really going to saying that anything is fine as long as "most" people are okay with it? Like... would you specifically gift bags of flavored peanuts to all your friends while knowing that one of them is specifically allergic to peanuts because "most" have no problem?
3. "pre-emptively deciding they shouldn't have the option to" - This simply doesn't exist within my argument. I've already said, repeatedly, that if everyone at the table is fine with a given campaign concept, then it's probably fine. The idea is not "you need to one-sidedly ban anything that you can possibly imagine as being unpleasant for someone," but rather "you need to talk about themes and expectations before play instead of assuming."
4. 'I want to live in a world where people are empowered to speak up in their own defence,' - So do I But we both know that this ideal is not yet realized in the world we live in. And while you are possibly most familiar with groups comprising nothing but opinionated grognards who have no trouble speaking their minds, there are in fact lots of people out there just getting invited to their first game who don't know what's normal, don't know what's expected, and are anxious enough about being accepted to remain quiet in the face of some pretty awful treatment.
5. 'If it wasn't about the tabards, these images of knights with pot helmets and St George's cross tabards wouldn't feature so prominently in creepy right-wing propaganda.' - You've got this exactly backwards, I'd say. It's not like some boy somewhere thinks "Oh, dang, tabards are cooool!" and then gets sucked into a the-Crusades-were-great mindset. It's that right-wing incels and trolls like the idea of being given free rein to murder others for the crime of being different, and then they develop an affinity for related imagery. If the Crusaders were generally depicted with kilts and ankhs instead of tabards and crosses, then the right-wing propaganda would be filled with kilts and ankhs. In other words, the core of Crusade-worship is the killing people because they're different part, and that's liable to be noxious no matter what you dress it in.
6. 'what is left? Generic holy war?' - I would tend to lean in the opposite direction. The idea of different groups, directed by different gods with opposing goals in the mortal plane, is a common enough fantasy trope in game and fiction, and it doesn't have to be problematic. The thing is, you want to set it up with enough specificity that the conflict centers on what the groups are trying to accomplish rather than a mere 'holy war' predicated on murdering people because they happen to have "wrong" beliefs or practices. After all, good people might offer some sort of prayer or worship to even the nastiest death-god not because they're death-cultists, but because they want to avert the evil deity's wrath. If you're killing the followers of the nasty death-god, it's to stop the ones who want to turn the whole world into zombies or something; it's NOT a generic holy war "because my god said so" or "because my priest said that it's probably what my god wants" or the like.
@noisms: Once again, you first wrote "Or is it just a fantasy game which doesn't have any reflection in the real world?" [emphasis mine] It's right there, time-stamp July 6, 3:40.
DeleteYou can't logically claim that a fantasy world is simultaneously so disconnected from reality as to have "no reflection" and also so inextricably connected that it cannot avoid unpleasant associations.
And:
Delete"...a ... pseudo-therapeutic approach to running RPGs, ...in which how people feel is never attributable to their own agency but placed on the shoulders of others"
- The core idea of "triggers" is not giving up agency. That, sir, is the right-wing propaganda cmrsalmon warned against.
The core is that human minds automatically make associations, and those associations can cause real harm. I hope you wouldn't startle a military veteran with a firecracker, or include gratuitous rape scenes when someone at your table has been the victim of sexual violence, or kill off a character's family when the player has lost real-world family members recently.
I'm sure some people are more sensitive about some topics than necessary. But it doesn't harm you to make the basic gesture of taking others' feelings into account, especially when the goal is to play a game together.
"It isn't the responsibility of Adult A to make sure that Adult B 'really is fine'"
- Even setting aside the fact that kids also play D&D, this comes off as sociopathic.
Think of the player who has recently lost family. The DM unwittingly causes that player to feel intense grief by killing off a member of the character's family.
Is that player feeling grief over the death of a loved one an abdication of personal agency? Should the DM sneer "It wasn't my responsibility to avoid rubbing your loss in your face"? Wouldn't it have been better to just be more careful beforehand?
"But they're not resposible for whether other adults around them are 'fine' in any given moment." [sic]
- This feels like a straw man. I didn't say we have to be on high alert every moment. I said that we have more responsibility to check when a topic is more fraught. Take the veteran: you don't need to check before grilling sausages or going to the park, but IMO you should check before subjecting them to sudden explosions. Refusing to ever check is your abdication of responsibility, not theirs.
"I come back to the Martian point."
- Are you repeating this ad hominem attack because it makes you feel clever?
"...a bit like the Spanish inquisition"
- The phrase "a bit" doesn't hide the fact that we can't know, without asking, what might make someone form unpleasant associations.
"Because I don't."
- You're just wrong. Not only about Jews and historical genocides, but about people and potentially-fraught topics in general. Aside from my own experience, "RPG horror stories" is a whole genre with dedicated YouTube channels &etc. Many stories go "I didn't want X in our game, but the DM/a fellow player refused to stop."
"these purported neo-Nazis ...(are there more than a couple of hundred such people in the entire world?)"
- E.g. the "Unite the Right" march at Charlottesville was filled with Nazi and Confederate imagery and phrases such as "deus vult" and "Jews will not replace us." Estimates of the rally numbers put it between 500 and 600 people. In light of the facts, your rhetorical question and use of "purported" aren't convincing.
"do you really think these purported neo-Nazis... are in any way emboldened by [straw man]?"
- You already know that the answer to this is No. If theme X stays at your table, and everybody there is fine, it should be OK.
But again: people's brains make associations. Your limited knowledge does not define reality. There are people who have been targeted by bigotry and violence. So it's good:
1. To make sure everyone is okay with themes invoked at the table, with care proportional to the potential for harm, and
2. If you do make things unpleasant, to take responsibility by apologizing and repairing the harm. Don't throw a hissy fit.
That doesn't sound too unreasonable, I hope?
I have neither the time nor inclination to continue this - you're adding nothing to what has already been said and agreed. Be nice and considerate to other people. Okay, good.
DeleteOn the fantasy 'contradition' point, there is no contradiction. What goes on in a fantasy role playing game session has no connection to what happens in the real world - it is make-believe. But what happens within that make-believe world can't be severed from human experience, by definition, because we are human beings and human beings are historical. Whether what is happening in a game looks a bit like the reconquista or the crusades is simply a feature of the inevitable consequences of human beings doing things in the world, which will always to some degree or other look like other things which human beings have done at some point in time, somewhere in the world. Surely you can understand that proposition and hold it in your head at the same time as you understand my other proposition, which is that what happens in an RPG session has no wider moral or political significance. There is no contradiction - I understand from your comments here that you are proud of your internet jiu-jitsu skills but you're overreaching.
Since I long ago decided I would not get involved in internet jiu-jitsu, and least of all on my blog, I'll not respond to any further comments.
Well, I understand your feelings on deciding to get in one last jab while also declaring the conversation over.
DeleteWhat I don't understand is how anyone, in good faith, could literally claim that two things simultaneously "have no connection" and yet also "can't be severed," as if there would be anything *to* sever in the absence of a connection. But then again, it's clear that this blatant contradiction never will be explained, only rephrased slightly, so I guess that's that.
Thank you for your time, at any rate. It was an enlightening discussion.
Re: Slaying monsters for XP -- It's worth pointing out that, on page 127 of the Rules Cyclopedia:
ReplyDelete"Characters earn experience points by defeating monsters and other opponents. Defeating a monster doesn't necessarily mean killing it; defeating an opponent can mean killing it, capturing it, tricking it into destroying itself, trapping it forever so it can't menace the rest of the world, and so forth."
Might one add bringing to justice, banishing, converting from evil ways, etc.?
(EGG, on page 84 of the DMG1e, seems to imply similar but PCs don't get all the XP they would from slaying a monster.)
Great idea. I like this.
DeleteYou might also enjoy this 2009 post by Jeff Rients, which talks about MERP/ Rolemaster awarding experience for distance travelled. Useful for a game about pilgrimages (about which I've been thinking a lot, recently) or quests, perhaps?
ReplyDeletehttp://jrients.blogspot.com/2009/12/exploration.html
God, I'd totally forgotten about that, and I played a lot of MERP back in the day. Thanks for the reminder.
DeleteThis is something in a similar vein, definitely worth looking to for inspiration:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bastionland.com/2022/07/primeval-bastionland-playtest.html
It’s like a more impressionistic Pendragon, leaning into the dream-like and symbolic elements. Makes me think of Dark Souls, Elden Ring, and the recent Green Knight film. (You might not like it, but the fact it’s illustrated using Midjourney emphasises the uncannines.)
Intriguing!
DeleteAccording to Deities and Demigods not all Knights are Paladins. You could still have a common order/mission with more game-mechanical role differentiation via Clerics, Fighters, Cavaliers, possibly even Rangers and some kind of robe-wearing character riding along as an advisor.
ReplyDeleteAnother option is the Captain Planet/Voltron idea with each paladin having a different set of divine powers based on resonance with a different part of the celestial order. One lays on hands and has a buff horse, another shoots lightning bolts and rides an eagle, etc.
Yes, there's a bit of that in the Complete Paladins Handbook from what I remember.
DeleteI have thought about this kind of campaign a lot. Really loving the direction of the posts of late, this kind of Good vs. Evil tone is perhaps much harder to do, and much less common than campaigns about avaricious rogues. (I am as guilty as the next man of running those of course, nothing wrong with that). I'm looking forward to more about this. Deus Vult!
ReplyDeleteFor a similar perspective, maybe, I refer you to Melan's classic post about Good Vanilla Fantasy: https://beyondfomalhaut.blogspot.com/2017/10/blog-osr-module-o3-good-vanilla.html
I also love mashups, so here's another knightly campaign idea:
- Far-future power armoured knights riding giant bugs on a desert planet battling grey aliens, Fungi from Yuggoth and other eldritch terrors. (Then again, that's pretty much warhammer 40k, hmm...)
I am slowly putting together a singe-class paladin campaign sourcebook for OSR games.
Deleteyay!!!
Delete