#Look goblins and elves are exactly the same fantasy creature

[probablybadrpgideas]

Just came up with the concept that elves have a larval growth cycle and their larval stage is a goblin.

Then I came up with the better concept that goblins have a larval growth cycle and their larval stage is an elf.

#Look goblins and elves are exactly the same fantasy creature #it's just a matter of whether you're being mean about them or not #“I live in the moment while taking only what I need from nature and sit above the mundane trivialities of your fleeting society” #“I do whatever the hell i want I'm gonna eat a beetle fuck the police” #see? #same creature

[dateamonster]

Two Strange Magic thoughts that I had:

1) it is interesting to me how, for all that it is movie about fairies and elves and goblins, based on Midsummer Night's Dream, magic seems curiously absent; only one who shows magical abilities is Sugarplum, who is visibly entirely different sort of fairy from everybody else, and even then she more, makes potions than any inherent power?

2) I know I am overthinking it because it is just gag and bit given conventions in this sort of cartoon but; we see Bog courted by insects and animals and later Roland gets together with one of foiled suitors (the fly); so I wonder how sentient are animals in here, whats their relationship to more humanoid creatures, and how do relationships work?

yea yea yea now ur gettin into it.

personally i rly like how sparingly magic is used! it prevents the story from turning into the kind of thing where either everyone is always using magic to kinda arbitrarily solve all problems or else magic is obviously present but left largely unused in a way that makes you wonder why more people dont use it to solve the plots problems.

im also in favor of creatures that are kind of fantastical in nature but not inherently capable of wielding magic, and i like that plum is very noticeably set apart from other fairies by her use of it, to the point where (by my interpretation at least) she appears to have been physically transformed by it. and she does use some magic outside the potion making! mostly to change size and shape and make little mini-me fairies for dramatic effect lol so fair point. i guess its implied some kind of magic must have been used to trap her but i dont think we ever learn exactly who did it or how. makes ya think!

to the second point, first of all, i love how many bugs are in this movie!!!! ive said before i think probably a lot of the more animal/insectoid creatures in the dark forest are in fact goblins whove just evolved to look like that, but it def does raise questions about like. the lizard who gets love potion'd for example. like i think were supposed to take her as literally an animal because she doesnt talk and tries to eat sunny and dawn at the beginning, but then again she certainly wouldnt be the only sapient creature in the movie who also fits that criteria! and roland rides a squirrel as a mount so clearly thats got some weird implications if animals are fully intelligent here!

like yea its fantasy cartoon logic but its interesting! for all intents and purposes the dynamics here seem to suggest, at least to me, that animals and insects and such are thinking creatures but that they are still largely driven by the same instincts we know them for in the real world, and that the fairies and goblins and so on just kinda live with the fact that their world is populated by beings that both can and may communicate with them as equals, but will still try and eat them just because a lizard is big and an elf is small and full of meats and that generally overrides any common ground they might have as intelligent lifeforms. its dark, i kinda love it!!

#ask #strange magic

[tobswrites]

The Dragons I Know

I'm writing different one shots, alternative universes of the Fantasy Universe| 2nd Popularity Poll.  A llot of these are just ideas that ended up incomplete. This is part 1. 

The abandon tower was once part of a beautiful castle, the rest of it had completely disappeared through time and age. If Bakugou had not know the history of this village he would have never known an old kingdom had once prospered here.

The ruins, or could even call it that? Since there literally was almost nothing left. Well, anyways, the dirt underneath his boots felt different. Instead of the earthy thick soil, he felt more stationed on the path to the tower.

The castle must have been buried underneath, it was likely nature had taken back what was stolen from them, covering up a kingdom many have forgotten about.

There was rumors of the tower leading to an underground treasure. But one not easily found. There was a monster underneath this rubble. One that ferocious and easily angered when one trespassed its land.

Bakugou had respect for that, he would hate it if humans started to come in to his own to take his shit.

Which brings him to why hes here.

The creature, the monster, just from pure curiosity, he wanted to know what it was. And if he's seen it before.

He loves a good fight, a good trespassing monster slaying. But most of all, he loves the creatures that roam the world...excluding the humans, elves, fae, goblin and fairies. All of them thought too much alike, and because of that, those assholes were constantly at war with one another.

Why couldn't they simply coexist like the rest of the world?

There was only one opening into the ruined tower, and that was a previous dug hole, by a man simply intrigued of what was left behind.

Finding the hole was easy, but looking into the opening, Bakugou was a bit skeptic, it was complete darkness leading to the unknown.

But he's never been afraid of the dark.

He falls, completely to the unknown, and with his magic igniting his hand, he was able to see exactly when he was going to hit the floor.

Falling feet first, he landed comfortable with a roll to reduce any damage on his body. He wouldnt have been able to use his magic without the risk of closing his only known exit.

Darkness is still present, but following the echo of wind for a good twenty minutes, he found himself surrounded with mounted lit torches.

"Weird." He mutters, unless someone had arrived before him, it shouldn't have been impossible for these torches to be lighted from months ago, since the last known guy to come down and never resurface.

Information he should keep in mind, for all he knows the last person here could have offed the monster and could be living in these treasures.

Maybe he became cursed, or completely obsessed with the treasure that he couldn't possibly leave from.

So he should keep an eye not only for a monster but for a human too.

The empty corridors proves Bakugou's previous theory correct. The castle was indeed within the ground, fallen, and submerged into the earth. There was entryway completely closed off, and some crumbled brick and ash were pushed into the corners...which was odd.

Because...well...it was oddly clean down here.

Blinking with conflicting thoughts, Bakugou had moved to grab his sheathed sword, pulling at its hilt, he carefully takes his steps forward.

Although he finds no one. At least not a human.

On top of a mountain of rubble and trash, before Bakugou eyes, was a dragon, a red, breathtaking dragon.

"Holy shit" he whispers, letting his sword go, causing it to slide back to its home. Standing straighter than his attack position.

Bakugou quickly drops his head, shutting his eyes, he places his left hand, curled in lightly on his forehead. The other hand, his right, is flat over his heart. A sign of respect.

His people have treasured the dragons for hundreds of years. They were a sign of prosperity, lividity, and power to his people. Overall they represented the warmth and heart of his culture.

Bakugou may not follow many traditions in his family, but since he was a young brat, he adored the tales of the dragons.

When his mother was younger, younger than he is now, there was war that started out of jealously. Many were jealous of favoritism the dragons had given to his tribe.

And to protect both the tribe and the dragons it was decided that the dragons would leave to find a new home where they would be safe and at peace.

The dragon has noticed his presence, at first, the dragon huffs but once the creature gave Bakugou a better look it lifted his head, now interested.

Bakugou came here out of pure curiosity, maybe a little fight if the creature didnt let him leave.

But a dragon, and beauty like the one in front of them, was completely unexpected. Bakugou wasn't entirely sure where the dragons had flown off to. But to find one here?

He wants to give the dragon better than this.

The dragon stands, causing the rubble to fall, but Bakugou stays put in his stance, head still bowed, eyes still closed.

There's a loud thump and the dragon causes a draft from simply moving, he feels the creature getting closer, the air he exhales his hot on Bakugou's face, but the man stays put.

He's not afraid, he's never been so defenseless before, but he's not afraid.

"Why do you do this?" A voice that startles him, causes him to open his eyes and look at the man infront of him. Although they were relatively the same height, the other male's eyes held so much wisdom.

The dragon is gone. And in his place was this red head male, he had a heavy accent, his torso bare like his own, and covered with scars. There was even one just over his right eye.

Bakugou is smart enough to know who the man in front of him was.

"Out of respect."

"You dont even know who I am."

"You're existence is enough."

"Is it?" The red head looks away, expression now sad. "Why did you come here?"

Bakugou who bows slightly and says a quick prayer before he drops his hands.

"Curiosity."

"About a dragon?"

"About what was down here."

"To take my 'treasure' then?"

"I'm not interested."

The dull red in the dragons eyes changed, brightening only slightly. "Am I interesting enough?"

"More."

#kiribaku #dragon au #barbarian bakugou katsuki #bakugou x kirishima #kiribaku fic idea #kiribaku idea #dragon kirishima eijirou #tobswrites #incomplete

[paragonrobits]

gothic fantasy setting with two particular details: firstly, monstrous humanoids (goblins, orcs and more unusual variations, from ogres and giants to sapient undead or constructs) are the default ‘character races’; humans and the other default character types (dwarves, elves, ect.) are distinct minorities that lack much political power, and mostly live as small communities or are otherwise integrated into the broader society

this is not ‘the evil species are in charge’; the above monstrous societies are probably Neutral Good in general, and certainly on a societal level. they are exactly the same as any society where humans are in charge, they just happen to be monstrous or conventionally spooky creatures

the setting has backstory elements that make it so that unusual creatures being treated as people is the default, not an exception. for example, extremely blatant expies of Frankenstein’s Monster and his collective family are an important family in a mountainous city-state. The Monster (or his in-universe analogue) was created as a failed experiment, but instead of becoming consumed with revenge and becoming crueller than their maker, instead took their creator to court on grounds of abandoning a creation, which is a legitimate legal matter here.

the courts ruled that the creature was a legitimate heir, and so the Monster is still a member of the family, and now in good standing, having benefitted from this settings lack of immediate rejection towards blatantly inhuman creatures, since most people are inhuman enough that the Monster does not really stand out. they are now something of an unofficial leader of the family everyone looks up to, even if they’re a bit stand-offish and mostly do their own thing. a bit like Scrooge McDuck but with more body horror. (and slightly less magical vendettas. SLIGHTLY less. this is still a gothic horror scenario.)

#this is explicitly not the same as D&D settings with this similar vibe #this isnt like that one setting with thinly veiled classic movie monsters as rulers #the monsters are indeed the main protagonists and rulers #but they are also fundamentally decent and ordinary people #frankenstein's monster took their creator to court and was deemed correct #so that's the sort of tone you can expect there #the monster is also referred to with neutral pronouns to indicate in story variance #i actually thought of this version of the Creature as being she/her but if you want to do something different #that is fine! #concepts #ideas #queued

[jamiebluewind]

Pok The Nightmare King?

***

@skysfallingbaby proposed an interesting concept. "Maybe Pok Gukgak is the Nightmare King". And while this theory make a lot of things a lot more messed up (like trying to use Riz in a sacrifice), it got my theorist senses a tingling.

So, without futher ado, let's get started.

***

First off, What is Pok exactly? We can assume that the Nightmare King doesn't just look like a goblin as he doesn't actually look like any one race when people have tried to describe him. We could guess some kind of magical effect that alters his appearance, but the Nightmare King was also banished (a spell with no time limit outside homebrew rules, unless the spell is not held for a minute or the creature is banished while already on their own plane) and seeing as Pok lived on the material plane for years, he couldn't be the Nightmare King... technically. The thing is, the Nightmare King doesn't have to be there to be there. Ragh's mom was piloting a clone of herself in real time while her real body was unconscious and housed miles underground (possibly in the molten core of the planet). A goblin suit could be piloted by the Nightmare King using the same principles. Even a direct connection to the Nightmare King is established in game via his corrupting influence constantly leaking from his plane of existence into the material plane (specifically in Silvar).

The next question that comes to mind is Why did Kalvaxus eat Pok if they were allied? and to that I say Do we know for sure that he did? What we do know is this...

Kalvaxus taunted that he ate Pok, but he did it in the middle of a battle to throw off Riz.

Kalvaxus would have eaten Pok while bound. Barring being able to enlarge/reduce Pok (and even then, he would only shrink to about the size of a cat), it would have taken a 6 to 7 foot tall dragonborn a WHILE to eat someone 1/2 his height and 1/5 his weight, bones and all (and dragons and dragonborns don't even have the established voracious appetite goblins do).

Riz and Sklonda were told Pok died at sea until Kalvaxus said otherwise.

Pok and Shadow Cat/Calina worked together

Shadow Cat/Calina was absent at Pok's funeral and never contacted Sklonda or Riz afterward.

Shadow Cat was spotted immediately after the battle with Kalvaxus (making it possible that she was given a heads up about Kalvaxus' plans).

So, using this information it's not that hard to theorize that Pok might not have been eaten or was eaten under the orders of the Nightmare King. Reasons to taunt might have been something The Nightmare King told him to say once free or just something he said to rattle Riz knowing it couldn't be proven. Reasons to ask to be eaten could have been to dispose of a clone he was piloting without risking leaving a magical trace behind (which could have been done regularly for one reason or another, but if Kalvaxus got caught red handed, they would have had an established story set up and a witness to it happening).

There's also a few things that happen during the Shadow Cat/Riz dialogue that take on a whole new meaning. I'll link the dialogue below, but one exchange really stands out. She said "Pok Gukgak. It's a good man" and when Riz asked what went wrong between them, she said "Nothing went... wrong between us" immediately followed by her offering "a little information swap" and to answer a question about his dad in exchange for answering her own. This was despite Riz previously saying "I wanna know where the crown is. I wanna know where Fabian is. I wanna know why people are coming for us in our sleep." and thus already knowing what information Riz would trade for.

Finally, let's look at Riz.

He is the son of Pok and Sklonda Gukgak.

He is an inquisitive rogue and on more than one occasion has been described as being "one with the shadows".

He has always has issues with sleeping, often avoiding it or just not getting enough of it.

He has always been able to see Shadow Cat and has met her at least once.

He was going to be sacrificed on an alter by a Nightmare King controlled Fig to complete some kind of ritual.

He was not attacked in his dreams when he failed his throws, the first time getting Baron while awake and the second time pounced on by Shadow Cat while asleep (while even Ragh was attacked in his sleep and got up while already under dominate person as Adaine watched).

Shadow Cat knew a lot of stuff about Riz, including current stuff ("I know that YOU only do things to kinda distract yourself from how DEEPLY sad you are that your dad is gone, I get that. The maidens and then you find the maidens and then it's on to the next thing and the conspiracy board and you don't sleep and you're digging digging digging- it's like when you were in that palimpsest. You will dig until your own hands are bleeding...").

Shadow Cat's first offer to get his intel was to answer a question about his dad if she got to ask him a question in return (followed by saving Fabian despite that being one of the things he asked for).

Some of these wouldn't hold water alone, but combined they paint a very interesting picture. Shadow Cat being so familiar with Riz makes more sense if she has been keeping an eye on the son of her boss off and on for a long time. It also explains why Shadow Cat immediately offered to give him intell on his dad in exchange for answering a question and clicking her tongue when he turned it down like he did. Riz being the son of the Nightmare King (maybe only a tiny part or an infused thing due to how it happened) would mean he's probably immune to some Nightmare magic and skilled with others (like how half-elves are immune to Sleep, but can't trace), which explains why he has yet to get attacked while dreaming and his natural stealth skills, perceptiveness, and sleep issues. The Nightmare King trying to use Riz in a ritual sacrifice instead of just some guy on the street might mean his son is required for it.

This all leaves me with so many questions.

Considering how strategic the Nightmare King is, why exactly would he pick Sklonda?

Could Pok have fathered Riz specifically to sacrifice later, as a backup for something, or as a cover for being around certain people?

Why did Pok leave and was it planned?

What was Pok really up to during his life as a spy?

Is Riz required somehow to bring back the Nightmare King?

Does the ritual actually require Riz to die and if so, could they revive him without causing the ritual to fail (like if it required a lethal amount of blood from Riz or a mortal wound)?

What will Gorthalax reveal once he's freed (which will most likely happen once Ayda learns Plane Shift and has a slot free to use it)?

Could someone in the party potentially question Kalvaxus (maybe with the help of Gorthalax or a specific spell)?

***

Special thanks to @skysfallingbaby for the bardic inspiration for this tinfoil time. I honestly hadn't considered the possibility until you mentioned it, but the moment I did I just HAD to follow the logic to see where it led. It really surprised me how many pieces fell into place the further I went. It really was an absolute delight to research. Thank you ^_^

***

Original Post

#fantasy high #dimension 20 #pok gukgak #riz gukgak #calina #shadow cat #fantasy high live #fantasy high spoilers #tinfoil time #theory #d20 theory

[biot08]

Basically, as near as I understand, we define species by whether or not the members can interbreed true.

So, a horse and a horse gives you a horse, which can make other horses. Horses are a species!

A horse and a donkey give you a mule, which cannot reproduce. Mules are not a species.

And a horse and a giraffe cannot breed. They are different species.

Then we have dogs. I have read that dogs have a 'slippery genome'. Looking up what that means, exactly, did not yield much for me, and that's okay. It is enough to know that a chihuahua and a tibetan mastiff are the same species, despite being vastly different in appearance and size. They are both dogs. Dogs are just like that, from wolves to saint bernards, poodles to dachsunds. All the same species.

Hold that thought.

Okay so, take this slippery genome idea, and apply it to the typical fantasy world pastiche. We will call it Gaia, because I cannot be bothered to come up with a better name.

Anyway Gaia is a world much like Earth. Except it's called Gaia. And the maps are all different because I like making coastlines with the macaroni method. And it has two moons, because moons are awesome, and I have a plan for that second moon later. And it's bigger than Earth.

I dunno, maybe four time the surface area.

And it is a lot less stable, but that's okay, we'll fix that in a moment.

Anyway, there are a handful of sentient races on Gaia. Gaians, Dragons, and, iunno, squid people. There are not enough awesome squid people. Nevermind them, we'll get back to them, let's focus on the Gaians.

Anyway, Gaians are big. Like, as tall as dinosaurs. Because there are also dinosaurs on Gaia. Awesome. Gaians raise dinosaurs and ride them and maybe eat them. Sure, why not. Dinosaurs are livestock to Gaians. And Gaians have weird large floppy ears, and tusks, and their skin color is the entire rainbow. Green, blue, purple, brown, pink, you name it, they got it. Also, a fine layer of fur across their entire body. The hair on their face and top of head have started to differentiate from body hair, but still, these people are furry. Faint fur. No big deal, right?

Except that Gaia is not stable. Anyway, big planet from outside of the Gaian solar system cruises through the local neighborhood of planets, wreacking merry havoc with orbits, and Gaia gets wobbled from its usual place, and this is just too much. For you see, Gaia has an unstable core. Lots of lava, and the tectonic landmass plates sitting on top of it are not as stable or as well-fixed as the ones we have here on Earth.

So, the Harbinger (that's what we are calling the rogue planet) rockets though Gaian's solar system (need a name for the solar system), bringing about an event known to the history books as the Devastation. Not just -a- devastation, THE Devastation, capital D. Because the orbit change really badly messes with Gaia's climate, and to boot, it triggers Gaia into becoming more stable. By releasing all that sweet sweet hot magma pressure from its core. Across the surface of the entire planet, the places where tectonic plates meet fissures and cracks and spews magma into the atmosphere, cannibalizing oxygen aggressively and also creating huge, nigh-impassible volcanic mountain ranges.

And this is where the slippery genome bit comes in. The original Gaians had spread across the surface of Gaia, but now they are seperated from each other, either by huge volcanic mountain ranges or by large expanses where continents have simply split into chunks, torn asunder. The oxygen cannibalization is important here, because all of a sudden, the planet's not as good at supporting megafauna. Most of the dinosaurs die off, and so do... well, most lifeforms.

But the Gaians, they are a hardy people, and clever, and in their little isolated communities, their isolated tribes, they bounce back. It takes centuries, and during that time, the slippery genome effect makes itself felt.

See, all the typical fantasy pasitche races? They are all just small Gaians. Some of them are very small Gaians. But the long term isolation means that tribes all trend towards being samish to each other.

So, the original Gaians? Recognized in the historical archeological record. Big boned giant people from the before time. Primordial Titans.

But who do we have today?

We have humans. Humans are small Gaians, tending to have monochrome skin ranging from pink to dark brown. Their ears are round, their eyes sharp, their noses small.

Elves are light, thin, small Gaians. Taller than humans, sure, but shorter than the original race. They have long pointy ears, and sharp eyes that see well at night, and lithe, thin builds. They appear androgynous, because frankly, their gene line never really got in on the whole testosterone gig. Their skin is a bit more rainbow hued than the humans - pink to dark brown, and also some blues, some purples, some greens.

Orcs are also small Gaians, but not as small as humans or elves. About the same height as an elf, but more muscle. They are almost as muscular as the progenitor race. They have short, pointy ears, and 'good enough' eyesight, but with the neat trick of thermographic vision. Their skin colors tend to green, brown, blue, and a dusky gray. They appear androgynous, because frankly, their gene line bought so hard into the testorine gig, everyone got some.

Trolls are almost Gaians. The climate change and the volcanic activity really did a number on them, but they persisted. They are easily taller than any other race. Unfortunately, they lost all semblace of fur - and it took the hair with it. And their skin is tough, calcified, a layer of armor between them and the harsher world that really would rather they not live anymore. They no longer have the floppy ears of the original gains, but instead ears as long and point as en elf. They have big noses, and keen eyes. They are muscular, but not in the bulky way. Gaia no longer supports that kind of bulk on a creature this size. Their muscles are instead like steel cables, giving them a lean, tight look.

Dwarves are very small Gaians. Shorter than humans, but with the muscle build of orcs. They share a lot of characteristics with humans, like skin colors. They have large noses, and thermographic eyesight. Also, they are dense people - physically, not mentally. They are tough.

Gnomes are also very small Gaians, a little shorter than dwarves, but without the muscle and build. They are light and lithe, and many other races consider them childlike in appearance.

Goblins are also very small Gaians, but unlike the dwarves and gnomes which share skin colors with the humans, goblins share the orc skin color. And unlike the dwarves, who have orc-like muscle, Goblins have troll-like muscle. Goblins are doing better than the trolls here, though - they still have heads full of hair.

Anyway, history marches on as these races establish themselves in their little regions. Civilizations flourishes, gets on track. The volcanic mountain ranges weather over time, as mountain ranges do, and eventually these peoples meet each other. But remember! Slippery genome! They are all still Gaians, so they can interbreed.

The long time apart means that the genome has a bit of base fixing, now, so a child is going to likely have the predominant build of one of the parents, but the children may pick up secondary characteristics that can be a mix and match of the parents. An otherwise elven child with the large nose of a troll. An otherwise orcish child with the floppy ears of a goblin. An otherwise human child with the tusks of an orc.

So that's the Gaians, with a slippery genome, giving rise to the various fantasy races!

Oh, and for the others, outside of the Gaians - dragons exist and are sentient, and of course there is magic, and of course the dragons have had a hand at making their own races, so the various fantasy dracoforms exist here. They cannot cross mix with the Gaians, because they are not the same species, but maybe they can mix with each other. Or not. Haven't thought that far ahead yet, I just wanted to make sure there was space for lizardfolk. Because I like snake people.

And the oceans have naga, because naga are awesome, and also Cephalids, because cephalopods are also awesome. They're not evil automatically because screw it, I want to avoid the good versus evil archetypes here. People are people. The cephalids might have a bit of orange and blue morality, because that's interesting, but not the kind that looks suspicously like always evil to the rest of us, because that's boring. More like the kind that often seems inscrutable, but hey, if you explain what you were thinking, okay I can sort of see where you were coming from but maybe next time ask before doing that, okay?

I need a better name for this planet.

Anyway. Short version: Fantasy world, where a lot of the fantasy races are all the same species, because slippery genome.

#202002-15 #gaia #gaia? #world building #fantasy #borderline nonsense #this is going to be great

[curriebelle]

Where Law and Chaos Came From: a D&D History Lesson

I’ve seen a few interesting posts about Dungeons and Dragons alignments that all share two interesting commonalities:

1) They think the two-axis system of Law vs Chaos and Good vs Evil is too restrictive for people who like to roleplay. 2) They try to redeem the two-axis system by redefining Law and Chaos in ways that make sense to them personally.

Good and Evil aren’t usually a topic of debate on these posts - it’s easy enough to play a character as generally doing the right thing or as being a total bastard. Discussion on acts of more debatable morality (e.g. torturing a villain for vital information, killing an innocent person by accident, sacrificing one for the good of all) tends to veer towards whether the action itself qualifies as good or evil, and not whether good and evil themselves need to be redefined. Conversely, I’ve seen Law and Chaos rewritten as Community vs Individuality, Tradition vs Cultural Mutability, Authority vs Anarchy - all interesting ideas that tend to reflect more on the person writing them than the actual purpose of the Law vs Chaos axis.

I’m not saying these people are wrong, but that these players (as well as the fine folks who wrote the 5e Handbooks) are placing too much significance on the purpose or intention of Law vs Chaos. The historical secret is that Law vs Chaos alignment never had any deep meaning behind it - or, at least, it never had any meaning deeper than the Pittsburgh Penguins versus the Vancouver Canucks.

I’ll explain how, but it requires a bit of a history lesson. The idea of Lawful and Chaotic alignments - as well as a number of other cornerstones of Dungeons and Dragons - came from a different game: a miniature wargame called Chainmail. It’s time for a deep dive.

In 1970, before he helped create Dungeons and Dragons, Gary Gygax developed a ruleset for modeling Medieval-Era battles using miniatures. Miniatures were organized into opposing armies, and the modeled battles were long, drawn-out math sessions, preoccupied with calculating distances, damages, casualties and morale. If you’ve ever played or seen Warhammer 40k, it’s a lot like that, except with English Longbowmen instead of Space Marines.

The purpose of Chainmail was to recreate historical battles, and so the gameplay mechanics were painfully precise, with rules for weather, terrain, and siege weapons. Only at the tail end of the Chainmail rulebook, in a tiny ten-page appendix, did Gygax include the rules that would become the basis for all of Dungeons and Dragons. This was the Chainmail Fantasy Supplement.

Even in the Fantasy Supplement, the purpose was still to recreate battles. The second edition of Chainmail - the oldest version I could find, from 1971 - instructs players on how to “refight the epic struggles related by J.R.R. Tolkein...and other fantasy writers”, only suggesting that the player could “create [their] own world” as an afterthought. Chainmail’s fantasy supplement was made so LOTR nerds could re-create the battles of Helm’s Deep or Pelennor Fields, down to the walking trees and boulder-throwing trolls.

Still, a couple of fun details are kicking around in those ten pages. Even back then, fireball and lightning bolt spells were the main tools in the wizards’ arsenals. Dragons and other powerful fantasy creatures could only be hit with magic weapons - an immunity that lingers on some powerful D&D monsters to this day. Even the colour varieties of dragons were introduced here, and they’ve remained largely unchanged for nearly half a century now:

“White Dragons live in cold climates and breathe frost. Black Dragons are tropical and spit caustic acid. The Blue variety discharges a bolt of electricity. Green Dragons waft poisonous vapours--chlorine--at their opponents”

Classic! (I did omit the mottled purple dragon with the poisonous stinger, but those stuck around too - they’re just called wyverns now). 

At the very end of the fantasy supplement, you can find the following list:

I’m not sure why Gygax thought it was “impossible to draw a distinct line between “good” and “evil” here - honestly, this looks like a pretty straightforward good-neutral-evil list to me, but there you are. So Goblins, Orcs, Balrogs and Dragons are CHAOS, and Hobbits (who became Halflings later once copyright started getting huffy), Heroes, Ents and Magic Weapons (?) are LAW. Wizards can be either LAW or CHAOS; Elves are neutral (but kinda lawful sometimes); and apparently there are Super Heroes in the Lawful camp (Gygax describes them earlier as “like Conan”.)

The purpose of dividing these units into Law or Chaos is not to dictate how they are played, but what team they will play for in the conflict. That’s why I made my hockey analogy earlier: all Law and Chaos defined back then was what team you played for. So, by these rules, if you were building a Lawful Army and your buddy built a Chaos Army, you would both be able to add wizards to your team, but your buddy would have exclusive rights to dragons. You’d be able to add magic weapons, but your buddy couldn’t. Moreover, if you decided to hold a fight in a forest full of pixies and werewolves, you would actually roll off to determine which side those Neutral creatures would join. 

If Law and Chaos did have any deeper meaning in this context, it sometimes dictated how the units behaved. Units of orcs would attack other units of orcs if they failed an obedience check; dragons, being “evil and egotistical”, always had to attack the biggest, most badass targets first. With rules like that, commanding those armies would be more ‘chaotic’, while the lawful side could generally be trusted to obey the commands of the player.

So at worst, the Chainmail law vs chaos axis is a purely logistical division that dictates which units get to join which teams; at its most #deep, it characterizes the combat behaviour of some military units. I think this is probably also the source of D&D racism, e.g. “all orcs are chaotic evil”. That’s a rule that makes much more sense when you’re trying to divvy up the teams in an extremely complex wargame, because you’re looking at orcs en masse, and you’re not too interested in the personalities of individual units.

So, the alignment system does make some sense in Chainmail, where it originated. Here’s where I show you exactly how much influence Chainmail had on D&D and how it struggled to transfer this concept of alignment in a meaningful way.

The “first edition” of D&D - at least the one most of us would recognize as D&D - is officially called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. That’s the 1977 version in which players create an adventuring party. (It’s called “Advanced” because a “Basic” edition was also released, strictly for levels 1-3). There was actually one other, earlier edition of D&D, which was released in 1974. It was intended to be another Chainmail expansion, so much so that you needed the Chainmail rulebook to play it!

I’m going to ignore that edition, though, since 1) it’s pretty hard to find the rulebook,  2) AD&D was where the game found its own identity anyway and 3) The AD&D handbook is hilariously bizarre, especially when dealing with player morality.

You might know of some of the weirdness of AD&D alignments already. For example, certain classes had to be certain alignments. Paladins were always lawful good; druids were always true neutral. Assassins were automatically evil, and thieves could not be good. Weirdly enough, all monks were lawful - I guess because they adhered to the traditions of their vaguely-east-asian dojos. (By the way, this means that everybody’s favourite Feather Leather Fashionista, Vax’ildan the dual-classed Rogue/Paladin, is a mechanical impossibility in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.)

It’s easy to see how this move was just an ungainly step forward from Chainmail. Again, this is Gygax telling you what teams your characters must play for - what armies they would join if this were a Chainmail game - without recognizing that the need for an alignment system has basically vanished. We're not picking our fantasy kickball teams anymore; everyone is on the same team, adventuring together, and all an alignment system becomes in that context is a hindrance.

And oh was alignment ever a hindrance in AD&D. Each alignment was a moral code of sorts, but it was also a language. Chaotic Neutral characters shared a language that only Chaotic Neutral characters could understand. Assassins could learn to speak other alignment-languages as they leveled up (or Druidic, if they wanted to be nerds I guess), but if you changed alignment in any way you would lose access to your previous alignment language. This makes absolutely zero sense. Worse still, if you committed an act that didn’t fit with your alignment, it would screw you over mechanically. If a paladin ever willingly committed an evil act they straight-up lost their healing powers and become regular fighters FOREVER. Even if they did something a little bit chaotic, they lost their powers until they could pray the cray away with the help of a lawful good cleric. The book even vaguely suggests that alignment shifting in other classes be met with “great penance”. You’re not allowed to be an assassin again until you do enough poison murders! We’re taking your poison away!

The book describes each individual alignment, but not with any subtlety. This is long before the game itself grasped that the most fun part of tabletop roleplay is the roleplaying, and alignment rules still seem to recall the behaviour of army units rather than the behaviour of individuals. Chaos - as is usually the case - is the alignment that suffers most. The Chaotic Good description gets a nice Robin Hood-y bent, the Chaotic Evil one is the “carnage is good” mantra you’d expect - but here’s Chaotic Neutral:

“Above respect for life and good, or disregard for life and the promotion of evil, the chaotic neutral places randomness and disorder. Good and evil are complimentary balance arms. Neither are preferred, nor must either prevail, for ultimate chaos would then suffer.”

Leaving aside the misuse of the word “complimentary” (you’re looking for complementary, Gygax) and the poorly-structured first sentence - yeah, that’s what the big secret of Chaos is, apparently. It’s not rebellion or individuality (which get championed in the Chaotic Good description), it’s pure, unadulterated, dice-rolling randomness. “Fuck it” made manifest. Don’t think about it too hard, because it doesn’t make any sense, and it will take you down a (fittingly) chaotic wormhole of self-contradiction. 

Lawful Neutral and True Neutral are weird, too. Both are described as pursuing the absolute harmony of the word, but like...you know, in different ways. There’s also a bizarre association between goodness and beauty. “Life and beauty are of great importance”, says the Lawful Good blurb. Does this mean that Delilah Briarwood, Wildemount’s hottest necromancer, is Lawful Good after all? shucks.

It’s pretty clear that AD&D is the awkward gangly phase between wargaming and genuine tabletop roleplay, with lots of weird vestigial features and obnoxiously pedantic mechanics that would later be dropped. For some reason, despite the fact that it never made sense to begin with, alignment wasn’t one of those mechanics - or at least it tended to vanish as a mechanic and then come back again in later editions, slightly different but never fixed. This led to another awkward gangly phase at the turn of the millennium, when D&D rules were adapted into games like Baldur’s Gate or Planescape Torment. Alignment creates fallacies and failures everywhere in those games. If you play Evil in Baldur’s Gate, the game can become basically unwinnable, as NPCs begin to attack you on sight. The way to bond with the Chaotic Neutrals in Planescape Torment is to literally spout gibbering nonsense at a man on the street until he barks at you. Even on Critical Role, with its 5e gameplay and extremely talented dungeon master, alignment feels like an arbitrary interloper rather than an important part of the game. Percy stays Good even after torturing a teenager, but Vex goes Neutral for stealing a broom. Nobody in their right mind would believe Fjord is Lawful Good because of his deception and warlockery, but he technically hasn’t violated the LG handbook so far. 

So because of these repeated failures to use alignment in a compelling way, I see a lot of people hunting for the right way to do alignments, the right way to understand chaos, law, neutrality and the like. They want alignments to fit. But they never did fit. The truth?

Two-axis alignment is stupid, and it always has been.

Honestly, I don’t see the benefit in remedying two-axis alignment as a system. I have my own re-interpretation of chaos that I like fairly well, and I’ve seen a few compelling ones, but I also think that alignment could use a complete makeover. There are some fun examples of morality systems that I’m sure DMs could experiment with, if they so wished. 

You could steal from Ultima IV, for example. The Ultima series was a product of the early days of the computer/tabletop romance - and by early I mean 1980s early. Ultima IV does not use the alignment system: instead, it lets the player ‘train’ in eight virtues to achieve ultimate avatar awesomeness. The virtues are Honesty, Compassion, Valor, Justice, Honor, Sacrifice, Spirituality, and Humility, further divided into the camps of Truth, Love, and Courage. Maybe angels of each of those virtues have corresponding devils (Deception! Cruelty! Cowardice! Injustice! Dishonor! Greed! Blasphemy! Pride!). That could be one way to play with morality without worrying about chaos or law.

I’m also a fan of Pillars of Eternity’s spectra of dispositions, which fit loosely into pairs (not necessarily good or evil pairs, mind you). Benevolent or Cruel, Stoic or Passionate, Honest or Deceptive, Clever or Rational, Diplomatic or Aggressive. Heck, those remind me of the personality sliders in the Sims. What were those again, like - Grumpy/Nice, Playful/Serious, etc?

Those trying to give alignments the benefit of the doubt often suggest that alignments were created to help people roleplay. That’s not...entirely untrue, it’s just misleading. They were created to help people make gameplay decisions, but they were pulled from a different kind of game altogether. It’s like trying to play checkers with chess pieces, and it always has been. The D&D alignment system doesn’t work for D&D because it wasn’t designed for it - it was designed for wargaming. We probably should have just chucked the whole thing instead of enshrining it in nerd culture, but it’s too late for that. Still, our creative energy now would be better spent on a new morality system that actually gives us a thing or two to think about.

#dungeons and dragons #tabletop roleplaying #critical role #currie academia #cuz i learned most of this researching Stuff

[planar-echoes]

Circumnavigation (Alara) By Doug Beyer (3/25/09)

It's a strange time for the mages of Alara. As the war between the shards proceeds on all fronts, the study of magic deepens rapidly. New revelations have bred new magical specialties. Mages' new insight into their enemies has honed their spellcraft into tailor-made, shard-hating weaponry.

The elvish druids of the Knotvine Altar on Naya puzzle over the strange strains of mana twined around the three colors they're used to. Sighted-caste mages on Bant reread the old prophecies of the archangel Asha, looking for some magical defense against the rising tide of chaos and death. The archwizards of Esper devote their brilliance to researching the wild sorceries that continuously thrash their etherium armies, trying to stem the onslaught on their grid-lined home realm while simultaneously searching for the components for fresh etherium. Even the putrescent lethemancers and fleshwarpers of Grixis have found cause to broaden their scholarly horizons as they encounter new forms of mind and body to twist to their own self-serving ends.

Knight's Departure

 He never chose to leave Jund—he was forced.

He was a proud member of one of the human warrior clans, possibly the clan Tol Antaga led by the warrior champion Kresh the Bloodbraided—but he never charged with that clan into a hellkite's lair, where many of their number died. He may have met Rakka Mar, the elementalist shaman—but he never heard her fireside urgings to spread the warriors' Life Hunts into the foreign shards, the secret propaganda of the dragon Nicol Bolas. He may have scaled to the lava pool known as the Sweltering Cauldron or explored the cavernous depths of the Bloodhall—but he never drew a drop of mana from those places' rich stock.

He was reasonable with a polearm. He was passable at riding lizardback. He enjoyed a spar now and again with his clanmates, two warriors of good skill and excellent friendship. He never thought he would see beyond the borders of his own world, let alone see the contours of four others from that viewpoint up in his worn, scale-leather saddle.

When the Conflux came, it brought thunder with it. As a denizen of Jund, the knight had felt rumblings in the crust before, but this was different. Countrysides broke with splashes of lava. Ugly black towers burst up through the land, flooding the land with shambling creatures that looked more dead than alive. Shaggy behemoths lumbered along the mountain trenches, crunching Jund's teeming predator-web without regard. The lands of Jund sloughed off at the edges, sliding into new adjacent worlds, and great plates of those other worlds hunched their way into Jund.

(It's hard being a 2/2 when worlds are colliding.)

The knight was hunting tar crocodiles when the shard-quake found its way to his part of Jund, the bejungled lowlands. He had heard of the phenomenon striking the lands farther out, so he knew exactly what to do when he felt the ground lurch. He steered his iguanar steed toward his two trusted clanmates, bounding through the razor-toothed foliage as fast as the lizard would go, ready to carry his two comrades-in-arms to safety.

He found them floating in the air, their mortal souls seeping out of their bodies.

Another force had moved into Jund even faster than the Conflux—the army of Zarratha, a lich lord from the necropolis of Unx, shard of Grixis. The souls of the knight's clanmates became fuel for the lich's undead forces, their vis harvested like mere wheat. As the bodies of his clanmates fell to the ground, two conflicting impulses struck him—to lower his polearm at the misshapen form of the lich and charge, or to run. The choice he made saved his life.

Escape Across Worlds

Mages in the time of the Conflux have some insight into what's going on. As their worlds' landforms change, they can sense the new mystical tang in the air, the psychic aroma of (to them) new types of mana. The knight had never had any shamanic training, and had no such mystical perception to help him make sense of what he saw as he fled.

Wherever he rode, he saw the forces of Grixis. Vampires stalked and circled like greedy dragons. Necromancer barons and their whip-stitched monstrosities pummeled the local viashino thrashes, harvesting their sturdy hides for further necromancy. The diseased, black-feathered kathari, silhouetted against Jund's volcanic sky in great swarms, out-scavenged the scavenger drakes, picking off the weakest goblins from the mountain heights.

Grixis was everywhere. So the knight fled in the other direction.

(I mean seriously. If you were given a choice between Grixis or Naya, which way would you run? I think I'd rather be squashed by a rampaging thoctar than be drooled on by the undead forms of my former friends. That's just me.)

The knight felt something strange as he crossed over into the lands he would come to know as Naya. Even as a non-mage, he could see evidence of changes in the mana landscape, an experience even more bizarre than seeing the alien flora and fauna of Naya's overgrown jungles. Jund had never been privy to the power of white mana, but he could see it with his own eyes.

He saw it in the fighting styles of the Nacatl lion-folk and witnessed its power to protect the sunsail tents up in the elves' canopies. He had never seen spells that could create life energy itself or bind a pride of lion warriors into a single, efficient hunting weapon.

(It's like if you crossed into the next country over, and it turned out they run their civilization not just on electricity and geothermal energy, but also on the perfume of daisies. "You don't have daisy perfume? How do you power your flying cars?" "We... don't." And they'd never heard of fossil fuels at all.)

It was off-putting at first, but also strangely thrilling. Something within him stirred, the same feeling he had when he saw flights of dragons taking off and arcing across the heavens, their breaths carving ragged black scars in the ashen tumult. He mistook the feeling for wistfulness.

Farthest Shores

 The knight headed on, propelled by the death and wildness behind him. He probably thought he was heading in a linear direction, getting farther and farther away from his native Jund as he crossed borders—but really he was on a long, slow round-trip. As he left the behemoths, Cylian elves, and noble cat-folk behind, he found knights riding cat-steeds, and huge rhoxes, and a race of bird-men. The influence of white mana was even more powerful here. And he found blue mana.

The feeling stirred again. He remembered a couple of years ago, when his clan met a man named Sarkhan Vol, a strangely-dressed shaman who seemed to know the minds of dragons. Vol was only with their clan briefly, but the knight had been taken with this man, who moved alone across the savage lands of Jund and shared the rage of hellkites. The knight felt now, in the presence of such diverse mana, that he had new perspective into the man.

He began to have strange dreams. They were night-terrors in which his body tore apart, revealing a fledgling dragon inside, a whelp that stretched its wings and flew away into the sky, trailing the knight's own blood. He always awoke screaming—awoke to the weird smells of Bant's meadows and the sea.

The knight headed on, into Esper, where the call of blue mana was strongest, and where he saw wonders he could never explain. He had never felt so far from home here, and unfamiliar passions warred in his chest. He had the dreams nightly now. All he knew to do was to drive on. What would the next world hold? How could it be stranger than the last? He could scarcely imagine.

The Eyes of the Enemy

 Perhaps the plume breath of the beacon behemoth in Naya should have been a clue. Perhaps the locals' whispers of the Maelstrom should have made him realize what he would see next, or the surprisingly understanding glance from a wandering knight of Bant, whose shield was emblazoned with a prismatic pattern that felt oddly familiar.

But he was still surprised when he rode into Grixis. His lizard steed reared up, upset for the first time at the stench of a foreign land. He recognized the home-world that spawned Zarratha, the lich who harvested the souls of his clanmates.

The fires within him were stoked.

He rode boldly through Grixis, his polearm finding its way through many shambling corpses, the claws of his steed becoming sticky with ichor torn from the damned. When he slept, he only slumped in his saddle. The dreams were as horrible as ever, his fantasies of gory dragon-birthing mingling with the reality of the dead world around him. His iguanar knew not to pause. The two of them cut a swath, aiming for the familiar volcanic plumes on the horizon.

Then he saw them.

His clanmates. Here in Grixis? Alive again?

No. Dead. Forming the front lines for the lich Zarratha.

And that's the story of how Dragonsoul Knight, an unremarkable warrior of Jund, touched the five corners of Alara and used mana he never understood to unleash a raging power within him. It's the story of how the lich Zarratha perished under a siege of dragonfire, and the story of how a knight finally cremated his fallen friends, and returned home to begin a new warrior-clan, and a new life.

#magic the gathering #vorthos #alara #kresh #zarratha #jund #grixis