58
submitted 4 months ago by Dessa@hexbear.net to c/askchapo@hexbear.net

Lately, we've seen DnD and Pathfinder move away from some of the more blatant signifiers, like renaming "race" into "species" and "ancestry," and in the case of Pathfinder, having systems in place to mix ancestries in a character build. DnD has decoupled good and evil from species, and pathfinder has done away with good and evil entirely ( keeping a vestige of it present for things like demons and angels).

Race is almost alwys tied to a language and a culture, with, say, kobolds having the same certain cultural signifiers all over the world. To an extent, this makes semse because different peoples in these games can have different physical abilities, or have different origins entirely, which would naturally lead to them developing along different lines -- If one people can breathe underwater and another was born from a volcano by a specific god's decree, that would inform how these cultures behave.

Is it possible to have a fantasy along these lines with a materialist underpinning, or is this very idea of inborn powers anathema to that sort of approach?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] Mardoniush@hexbear.net 3 points 4 months ago

You are in absolutely no danger of writing like Saunders. His prose has been described as "making a heroic attempt to seem like English" and he likes it that way.

[-] Des@hexbear.net 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

i did some research and someone said he writes like an attempt at translating the language of his fantasy world. yeah might be tough

still i was working on something for years that is similiar enough to his basic premise that i might try to check out how he went about it. right down to the "military fantasy" because there's tons of focus in my works on revolutionary small unit tactics and adapting what are essentially arcane "waste products" into useful materials, technologies, and weapons by the mostly mundane radical human faction

[-] Mardoniush@hexbear.net 2 points 4 months ago

He's more about large unit operations, logistics, and large scale civil engineering.

[-] Des@hexbear.net 2 points 4 months ago

aww man i love those things. mostly the civil engineering part.

this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2024
58 points (100.0% liked)

askchapo

22743 readers
232 users here now

Ask Hexbear is the place to ask and answer ~~thought-provoking~~ questions.

Rules:

  1. Posts must ask a question.

  2. If the question asked is serious, answer seriously.

  3. Questions where you want to learn more about socialism are allowed, but questions in bad faith are not.

  4. Try !feedback@hexbear.net if you're having questions about regarding moderation, site policy, the site itself, development, volunteering or the mod team.

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS