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Assignment: Creating a D&D Character

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Re: Assignment: Creating a D&D Character

#51

Post by guyzero »

walshemj wrote: post #39
guyzero wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traveller's system had the odd effect of making the best characters (those with the most skills) also really old. It was odd as a teenager roleplaying a 48 year-old military veteran. My main thought was always "why am I out adventuring instead of just getting some rest?"

I always assumed that this is the far future and life spans are longer so 40 is relatively young

Wait, did you ask for a huge lecture on the canonical background universe for Traveller? No? Darn.

Anyway, Traveller is the least futuristic science fiction setting ever (maybe). In game mechanic terms you have to start rolling for age-related characteristic effects starting at age 34 - you could lose strength, dexterity or endurance. At older ages you could lose intelligence too. But overall it assumes human lifespans more or less like they are today.

Re: Assignment: Creating a D&D Character

#52

Post by guyzero »

kephra wrote: post #36
guyzero wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traveller's system had the odd effect of making the best characters (those with the most skills) also really old. It was odd as a teenager roleplaying a 48 year-old military veteran. My main thought was always "why am I out adventuring instead of just getting some rest?"

Ask any old military veteran. To old to rock'n'roll, to poor to rest. You have 10 years to earn enough money for retirement. Is that a reason to risk an adventure, that could earn that money? Also children out of school, wife divorced, thats an other reason to try a new start somewhere far away from the old shit. A balancing rule is, that older characters earn less experience, and therefor younger learn faster by adv…

So... there actually wasn't an experience system in Classic Traveller. MegaTraveller had one but I don't think it actually had any relation to age or existing skill levels, just whether the character accomplished tasks or not.

Anyway, Traveller was unusual in that it used age in a slightly meaningful way, but it definitely got away from the trope of all PCs being young and/or inexperienced.

Re: Assignment: Creating a D&D Character

#53

Post by rbf_ »

vacri wrote: post #50
rbf_ wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the alignment system interesting and conducive to working on your role playing. But if you don't want to be role playing in a straight jacket I would pick chaotic neutral :)

heh :) Seriously though, few role-playing games have an alignment system, especially the ones that promote themselves as being more about roleplay than levelling. I remember one story about a guy whose group played 'evil' D&D characters, and one of them pointed out that what their characters were doing was 'naughty', but not actually 'evil'. So they tried out playing actual 'evil' characters. I can't remember all the…

Well that's why I suggested chaotic neutral as an alignment for your requirement. I think this would work well for your goals. It can be fun & challenging to play other alignments too however. Like an alignment that least resembles yourself or your natural personal tendencies.

Have a look.

A Chaotic Neutral character is an individualist who follows his or her own heart, and generally shirks rules and traditions.[citation needed] Although Chaotic Neutral characters promote the ideals of freedom, it is their own freedom that comes first; good and evil come second to their need to be free. Chaotic Neutrals are free-spirited and do not enjoy the unnecessary suffering of others. A Chaotic Neutral character does not have to be an aimless wanderer; it may have a specific goal in mind, but its methods of achieving that goal are often disorganized, unorthodox, or entirely unpredictable.[citation needed] If a Chaotic Neutral joins a team, it is because that team's goals happen to coincide with its own at the moment, but it invariably resents taking orders and can be very selfish in its pursuit of personal goals.

A subset of Chaotic Neutral is: "strongly Chaotic Neutral", describing a character who behaves chaotically to the point of appearing insane. Characters of this type may regularly change their appearance and attitudes for the sake of change, and intentionally disrupt organizations for the sole reason of disrupting a lawful institution.[citation needed] This includes the Xaositects from the Planescape setting, and Hennet from the third edition Player's Handbook. In Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Chaotic Neutral was mistakenly assumed to refer to this subset.

Re: Assignment: Creating a D&D Character

#54

Post by rbf_ »

jeffwass wrote: post #33
Apocryphon wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If one is examining D&D and fantasy tropes in the context of society's attitudes towards race at large, as well as Tolkien's cultural milieu > If you read Tolkein, it’s difficult to escape the conclusion that the tall pale people from the north are good and the dark ugly people from the south are bad. This reproduces the attitudes of the colonial era in which Tolkein came of age and its one of the worst aspects of hi…

Clearly y'all have not heard the fine alternative audio commentary for Fellowship of the Ring by Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky : http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/unused-audio-commentary-b... It's really a joke, but hysterically brilliant. (Edit - including a snippet of the 'commentary' below): ZINN: You’ve spoken to me before about Mordor’s lack of access to the mineral wealth that the Dwarves control. CHOMSKY: If w…

Haha!

Re: Assignment: Creating a D&D Character

#55

Post by walshemj »

guyzero wrote: post #51
walshemj wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always assumed that this is the far future and life spans are longer so 40 is relatively young

Wait, did you ask for a huge lecture on the canonical background universe for Traveller? No? Darn. Anyway, Traveller is the least futuristic science fiction setting ever (maybe). In game mechanic terms you have to start rolling for age-related characteristic effects starting at age 34 - you could lose strength, dexterity or endurance. At older ages you could lose intelligence too. But overall it assumes human lifespa…

It was my second ever rpg purchase after the 3 brown 1st ed dnd books :-)

I think at imperial tech level's life extending drugs where not uncommon for the well off - depends on how you build the traveller universe.

Re: Assignment: Creating a D&D Character

#56

Post by Steko »

bobcostas55 wrote: post #37
Steko wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congratulations you removed all the context and qualifiers ("if you approach it from a very generous mindset,... You can soften the racism of deriving personality traits directly from a character’s race") in his statement and made an absurd analogy.

How does the context make it better?

A mermaids ability to swim is not a personality trait. That's why context matters.

Re: Assignment: Creating a D&D Character

#57

Post by mesozoic »

skywhopper wrote: post #46
jxcl wrote: post #15

> Dwarves are good at building things not because of some essential genetic racial qualities, but because they are raised in a culture that values building and passes on a certain set of traditional practices around it. Really? Let's say that the DM chose to run a game with mermaids in it. Would anyone question the (theoretically) superior swimming ability of mermaids? Let's see how a similar statement reads: Mermaid…

Well, mermaids do have obvious genetic differences (the fish tail and ability to breathe in water) that would make them better swimmers than humans and humanoids. But I'm struggling to come up with what genetic characteristics about D&D dwarves you assume would make them inherently good at building things. There's nothing obvious that I'm aware of.

One would be the dwarves directional sense which is a genetic ability of dwarves to tell cardinal direction just like we can see or smell things.

Re: Assignment: Creating a D&D Character

#58

Post by dragonwriter »

TillE wrote: post #13
guyzero wrote: post #7

I'm not sure if the author of this page understands what "race" means in D&D terms. It's basically species. Dwarves aren't just little people. They're literally not inter-fertile with humans. Now, fair enough, much of the "race" difference manifests itself as differences in cultural background - cultural norms, language, etc. But it's not the same way people use the term "race" in the real world.

There's a lot of little things that D&D invented and have quietly become standard gaming tropes, and I think that slightly incorrect usage of "race" might be one of them. Other games have both "races" and cultures, which makes things a bit clearer.

> I think that slightly incorrect usage of "race" might be one of them.

D&D "race" isn't exactly like "race" in the real world, but I don't think its an incorrect use of the term so much as deliberate, context-specific jargon because there is no existing readily recognized term that exactly captures D&D race (which isn't species -- though some D&D races are also distinct species from some or all of the other D&D races -- since there are D&D races which both can produce fertile offspring and do voluntarily produce offspring together) and "race" is the nearest readily recognized term.

> Other games have both "races" and cultures, which makes things a bit clearer.

D&D has both races and cultures (and in some settings in some versions of the rules, the latter also can have game mechanical effects), though only the former is somewhat "generic" across different game worlds, and the latter is gameworld specific.

Re: Assignment: Creating a D&D Character

#59

Post by jxcl »

Steko wrote: post #56
bobcostas55 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does the context make it better?

A mermaids ability to swim is not a personality trait. That's why context matters.

Neither is a dwarf's ability to build things. They're both abilities and not personality traits.

Re: Assignment: Creating a D&D Character

#60

Post by guyzero »

jxcl wrote: post #59
Steko wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A mermaids ability to swim is not a personality trait. That's why context matters.

Neither is a dwarf's ability to build things. They're both abilities and not personality traits.

This being fiction and not reality, the dwarfish ability to build underground structures is actually literally innate. Not genetic perhaps, but somehow bound to dwarves racially. Remember this is the same game that prohibited halflings from being magic-users (well, it used to. I haven't read 5th ed). Whatever the reason, the game presents certain abilities as actually being racially innate.

It's not reality. It's a fantasy world. Additionally, it's a literary fantasy world. Real-world concepts of race don't apply.

If you think it's a terrible concept, by all means play a different game, build your own world, whatever. But just because the author doesn't like D&D doesn't mean it's wrong.

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