From: seawasp@vm2.cis.pitt.edu (Sea Wasp)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Re: Adventurers? (was Re: Carrying weapons..(was Re: META: Swords..))
Date: 12 Nov 92 16:44:22 GMT
Organization: University of Pittsburgh
Originator: seawasp@unixd1.cis.pitt.edu

In article <1992Nov12.013738.60745@cc.usu.edu> sl9b4@cc.usu.edu (Deep Six) writes:
>In response to the several people who followed up to this discussion:
>First, I'm genuinely sorry if I touched a nerve. I know that nobody likes
>to think they're taking shortcuts in their games, but by scrambling for
>obscure examples from history and literature, you've really only reinforced
>my original conviction.

	I haven't been scrambling for any examples. There may not BE any
examples in history or literature... and that may simply be because the
worlds are DIFFERENT.

>have been changed to make the world ``funner'' for PCs. Some examples
>are those things I've mentioned before -- magic shops, female PCs, 

		[HACK]

>and I'm sure some of them are like the ones above, only more complex
>(with accompanying complex justifications). 

		[SLASH]

>WORLD that RPGs are sometimes set in. Scrambling around to come up with 
>examples just goes to show how bad you want to justify the existance of 
>campaign worlds that are created for, exsist for and revolve around PCs. I
>hope this is clear, it's getting kind of late. 

	You see, I think that the problem is that you're looking for an
example of a world that never existed and COULD never exist UNDER OUR
RULES.

	However, the typical RPG world ISN'T one that exists in our 
universe of rules. Perhaps other people don't put much time and consideration
into precisely WHAT makes their world as it is. 

	Zarathan is internally self-consistent (not just my opinion, my
many players' as well) and I don't have to "reach" to justify it. The
power and class structures are driven by imperatives and powers that
DO NOT EXIST and NEVER DID in our universe. Things like working, reliable
magic; efficient healing; direct presence of Deities; Good and Evil as
tangible Forces.

	In such a universe, it is not only possible, but likely (given
the other elements of the history I worked up for it a long time
ago) that while many medieval elements will be present (technology not
advancing much with magic around), the culture, behavior, values, social
classes, and ethics will NOT be medieval. 

	I'm writing stories set in Zarathan. They're interesting; the
only other writer I can remember who really considered the existence of
non-medieval magic [before the era of Shadowrun, and excluding horror]
and used it as a basis for a world was Randall Garrett; he used it
mainly for the sake of making magical mystery novels, but he did do
some work on the kind of civilization that would result. 

	I can't find any examples of worlds where the FULL result of
this kind of thing was ever really taken into account; Lyndon Hardy
did some work, like Garrett, in creating a strongly logical and
self-consistent system of magic and metamagic, and took into account
SOME implications of the existence of magic; somehow, though, the
world seemed to lack some of the most basic social changes I'd expect
from these forces.


	In conclusion, then, I think you're objecting to things on the
wrong basis. Certainly the "well stocked dungeon, waiting to be looted"
without anything else to justify it is WRONG. But expecting the setting
to have anything but the vaguest outward resemblance towards our
"medieval" settings is also wrong, if you want the thing to be 
consistent. 


	RE the plastic monsters later found in the AD&D Monster Manual:
why does that bother you? Didn't you ever translate a book, a movie,
a picture, etc., into game terms? Obviously that's what a lot of these
people at TSR did, and then they put the results into a book. Nothing
wrong, as long as there wasn't any copyright problem (and I doubt there
was...)


                                 Sea Wasp
                                   /^\
                                   ;;;
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc