Post by David on Aug 30, 2010 15:07:17 GMT -5
Howdy folks!
At the risk of sounding like I'm pontificating, I'd like to share what I really think we as (21st Century, vigorously-individualistic, anti-subjective, post-modern American) players need to keep in mind when playing our characters in Dnd. To be blunt, I don't think you can really be allowed to play if you can't keep in mind that our reality is FUNDAMENTALLY different from theirs and that requires, de rigueur, some serious attitude adjustments.
FIRST: Magic is real. The supernatural energies of the universe are a natural part of "physics" just like dynamics, mechanics, gravity, and the birds-and-the-bees. As a result, your CHARACTER'S understanding of the physical universe is NOT YOUR understanding of the physical universe. And it never will be, cuz you live in radically different ones...! I don't care how "obvious" you think neutralizing acids with bases might SEEM, it is NOT common knowledge so please, unless you have a SKILL in alchemy, do NOT bring it up...ever...on punishment of a pH 1 monsoon over your character!
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? that you need to accept that fireballs and sleep and cure light wounds spells get tossed around as part of your character's "reality" BUT that also means many "d'uh, of courses" of our reality are equally alien to them. No more "my character would understand the mechanism of a bullet" or "my character should be able to deduce the physical forces acting on this lever and fulcrum" or "I just build a flashlight / bicycle / steam-engine / telescope / repeating-crossbow / catamaran / whatever isn't already a part of the character's reality." Just as genes are said to transmit our genetic information, there is a concept of memes transmitting the IDEA of a cultural construct -- without the meme, you don't have the inspiration to build the device. And unless you have a GREAT reason to, your character does NOT have any memes that don't belong to fantasy "Europe". That's why Da Vince was so cool -- he had ideas before his culture had memes...but notice, 90% of them were ONLY sketches...!
SECOND: Good and Evil, Law and Chaos, Right and Wrong, Corruption and Purity are VERY REAL and not philosophical constructs without meaning or highbrow labels for cultural imperatives. Like magic, these forces are VERY real! Dnd is NOT a suitable milieu for post-modern thinking -- there ARE definitively certain, more-authoritative viewpoints in the game universe than others! In our world, we can argue what's good and what's bad for hours and not get anywhere especially as you look at an issue across multiple lenses, but in Dnd, you can travel to the plane of ultimate Evil or ultimate Chaos and have unimaginably-powerful beings native to these locales CLEARLY demonstrate the "corrupting force of necromancy" or the "insanity of chaos" in NO uncertain terms! This isn't to say there aren't places where ethics are subjected, but rather that there are ALSO very clear places where ethics are TOTALLY objective, much like gravity, magnetism, or thermodynamics...!
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? That there will be times YOU (as a player) may think your character should do something (like use the scroll of Dark Magic or murder all the monsters including the babies in cold blood) because it holds no meaning in our post-modern reality, but your CHARACTER might be restricted from performing that action because of the very REAL consequences s/he will experience in the game universe (such as risking their immortal soul in both cases!). This isn't "the DM making me play my character HIS way" but rather "the DM making sure you role-play in a manner consistent with the universe you're in"! It's the EXACT same situation as a player saying "I don't break under <insert horrible> torture" and the DM saying, "no, you're not being tortured, your character is...time to roll vs your character's willpower!"
THIRD: Gods are REAL. They are infinitely more powerful than you are. And you KNOW your place. Or you died a LONG time ago... There is NO such thing as an atheist; hell, the first time that word was used to mean "someone who believes in NO divine being" as opposed to "someone who believes that divine beings don't answer prayers and/or 'cheat' in the universe" is just over 100 years in our non-magical universe. For the 5000 years of previously-recorded history NO ONE DARED to not believe in supernatural agents running around creating the universe, manipulating events, and generally being 'in-charge'! And that's in a universe where Thor or Zeus will NOT show up and KICK YOUR ASS for disrespecting him...ever heard of the phrase "bolt out of the blue?" It comes from explanations of why Zeus KILLED someone for wise-cracking about the gods (freak lightning strikes were "obvious" punishment for hubris in Ancient Greece). Do NOT even start me on the fact that you WANT at least ONE divine power on your side when you die and your spirit changes realities...!
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?: unless your character has a FANTASTIC reason or a spiritual death-wish (bad enough that your character is dead already, play another one that's not so stupid, hint, hint, this means you!), s/he believes in the gods and has at least once patron deity. There are a VERY FEW exceptions, but, as I pointed out in the Second statement, Evil is real and not having a good relationship with a deity when they died has led more than one character to a TERRIBLE eternal afterlife and a bitch of a time getting the PC brought back to life too...!
FINALLY: cuz I do NOT like forcing anyone to do anything, I may actually let you have your character do something that's not appropriate for their culture. But, your character exists in the game universe and the laws, including supernatural laws which do NOT exist in our realty, do apply to him/her. As a result, there will be consequences...
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?: I do keep mental tabs (and even write in my log) when I think a given character has DEMONSTRATED "ruthlessness", "compassion", "gentleness", "anger", etc. These traits WILL change your alignment (and trump whatever you happened to write -- cuz how you play is more important than what you say) AS WELL AS have other consequences. Having a character suddenly become an insane NPC for messing with a "forbidden scroll" or finding POWERFUL LG angels hunting your ass for spiking a LG cleric that punished you for your sins are not only possible, but both are "been-there, done-that"...!
Of COURSE, there are character-specific reasons why one or more of these Big Four rules might be relaxed, but those are RARE in the extreme and "cuz it's my backstory" will never cut it.
You want to have a modern understanding of physics and chemistry? Go take about six or seven skills AFTER getting the justification for it (like spending a year aboard an alien starship in an alternate universe, perhaps?)! Anything less is actually selfish role-play on your part detracting from the efforts (and suffering) of other characters who've EARNED those skills (on that starship, fighting wolfoids, no less!).
You want to be post-modern? Play in someone else's (lame) world. There is a little post-modernism in Spell Jammer, as befitting a cosmos where the gods no longer are omnipotent, but at teh same time it's more like "slightly after" modern than anything else. The theory that no viewpoint is "elevated" above any other categorically can't fly in a universe with gods. Discussion over.
You want to be an atheist? Okay, when you die, you're gone. And any god can just claim your sorry soul with no one to countermand them... Honestly, only a couple of psis (trained at the Foundation / under Adam Malachitous) could even justify such a viewpoint...and I MADE them all take a skill in philosophy to reflect the intense internal debate that they had to have already gone through to reach such a (false!) conclusion...which is also actually more of an arrogant conceit and defect than anything in a Dnd universe! Similarly, while a given PC may LABOR under delusions of monotheism, it's just another psychological quirk, like drinking elf blood or something equally goofy!
You want to do "it" anyway? That's fine. Please do NOT complain when some supernatural agent shows up and "corrects" your character. It might be subtle like you showing up as a "blip" on detect evil spells or it might be more obvious like the furies chasing after you. But it'll happen...I promise...
At the risk of sounding like I'm pontificating, I'd like to share what I really think we as (21st Century, vigorously-individualistic, anti-subjective, post-modern American) players need to keep in mind when playing our characters in Dnd. To be blunt, I don't think you can really be allowed to play if you can't keep in mind that our reality is FUNDAMENTALLY different from theirs and that requires, de rigueur, some serious attitude adjustments.
FIRST: Magic is real. The supernatural energies of the universe are a natural part of "physics" just like dynamics, mechanics, gravity, and the birds-and-the-bees. As a result, your CHARACTER'S understanding of the physical universe is NOT YOUR understanding of the physical universe. And it never will be, cuz you live in radically different ones...! I don't care how "obvious" you think neutralizing acids with bases might SEEM, it is NOT common knowledge so please, unless you have a SKILL in alchemy, do NOT bring it up...ever...on punishment of a pH 1 monsoon over your character!
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? that you need to accept that fireballs and sleep and cure light wounds spells get tossed around as part of your character's "reality" BUT that also means many "d'uh, of courses" of our reality are equally alien to them. No more "my character would understand the mechanism of a bullet" or "my character should be able to deduce the physical forces acting on this lever and fulcrum" or "I just build a flashlight / bicycle / steam-engine / telescope / repeating-crossbow / catamaran / whatever isn't already a part of the character's reality." Just as genes are said to transmit our genetic information, there is a concept of memes transmitting the IDEA of a cultural construct -- without the meme, you don't have the inspiration to build the device. And unless you have a GREAT reason to, your character does NOT have any memes that don't belong to fantasy "Europe". That's why Da Vince was so cool -- he had ideas before his culture had memes...but notice, 90% of them were ONLY sketches...!
SECOND: Good and Evil, Law and Chaos, Right and Wrong, Corruption and Purity are VERY REAL and not philosophical constructs without meaning or highbrow labels for cultural imperatives. Like magic, these forces are VERY real! Dnd is NOT a suitable milieu for post-modern thinking -- there ARE definitively certain, more-authoritative viewpoints in the game universe than others! In our world, we can argue what's good and what's bad for hours and not get anywhere especially as you look at an issue across multiple lenses, but in Dnd, you can travel to the plane of ultimate Evil or ultimate Chaos and have unimaginably-powerful beings native to these locales CLEARLY demonstrate the "corrupting force of necromancy" or the "insanity of chaos" in NO uncertain terms! This isn't to say there aren't places where ethics are subjected, but rather that there are ALSO very clear places where ethics are TOTALLY objective, much like gravity, magnetism, or thermodynamics...!
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? That there will be times YOU (as a player) may think your character should do something (like use the scroll of Dark Magic or murder all the monsters including the babies in cold blood) because it holds no meaning in our post-modern reality, but your CHARACTER might be restricted from performing that action because of the very REAL consequences s/he will experience in the game universe (such as risking their immortal soul in both cases!). This isn't "the DM making me play my character HIS way" but rather "the DM making sure you role-play in a manner consistent with the universe you're in"! It's the EXACT same situation as a player saying "I don't break under <insert horrible> torture" and the DM saying, "no, you're not being tortured, your character is...time to roll vs your character's willpower!"
THIRD: Gods are REAL. They are infinitely more powerful than you are. And you KNOW your place. Or you died a LONG time ago... There is NO such thing as an atheist; hell, the first time that word was used to mean "someone who believes in NO divine being" as opposed to "someone who believes that divine beings don't answer prayers and/or 'cheat' in the universe" is just over 100 years in our non-magical universe. For the 5000 years of previously-recorded history NO ONE DARED to not believe in supernatural agents running around creating the universe, manipulating events, and generally being 'in-charge'! And that's in a universe where Thor or Zeus will NOT show up and KICK YOUR ASS for disrespecting him...ever heard of the phrase "bolt out of the blue?" It comes from explanations of why Zeus KILLED someone for wise-cracking about the gods (freak lightning strikes were "obvious" punishment for hubris in Ancient Greece). Do NOT even start me on the fact that you WANT at least ONE divine power on your side when you die and your spirit changes realities...!
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?: unless your character has a FANTASTIC reason or a spiritual death-wish (bad enough that your character is dead already, play another one that's not so stupid, hint, hint, this means you!), s/he believes in the gods and has at least once patron deity. There are a VERY FEW exceptions, but, as I pointed out in the Second statement, Evil is real and not having a good relationship with a deity when they died has led more than one character to a TERRIBLE eternal afterlife and a bitch of a time getting the PC brought back to life too...!
FINALLY: cuz I do NOT like forcing anyone to do anything, I may actually let you have your character do something that's not appropriate for their culture. But, your character exists in the game universe and the laws, including supernatural laws which do NOT exist in our realty, do apply to him/her. As a result, there will be consequences...
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?: I do keep mental tabs (and even write in my log) when I think a given character has DEMONSTRATED "ruthlessness", "compassion", "gentleness", "anger", etc. These traits WILL change your alignment (and trump whatever you happened to write -- cuz how you play is more important than what you say) AS WELL AS have other consequences. Having a character suddenly become an insane NPC for messing with a "forbidden scroll" or finding POWERFUL LG angels hunting your ass for spiking a LG cleric that punished you for your sins are not only possible, but both are "been-there, done-that"...!
Of COURSE, there are character-specific reasons why one or more of these Big Four rules might be relaxed, but those are RARE in the extreme and "cuz it's my backstory" will never cut it.
You want to have a modern understanding of physics and chemistry? Go take about six or seven skills AFTER getting the justification for it (like spending a year aboard an alien starship in an alternate universe, perhaps?)! Anything less is actually selfish role-play on your part detracting from the efforts (and suffering) of other characters who've EARNED those skills (on that starship, fighting wolfoids, no less!).
You want to be post-modern? Play in someone else's (lame) world. There is a little post-modernism in Spell Jammer, as befitting a cosmos where the gods no longer are omnipotent, but at teh same time it's more like "slightly after" modern than anything else. The theory that no viewpoint is "elevated" above any other categorically can't fly in a universe with gods. Discussion over.
You want to be an atheist? Okay, when you die, you're gone. And any god can just claim your sorry soul with no one to countermand them... Honestly, only a couple of psis (trained at the Foundation / under Adam Malachitous) could even justify such a viewpoint...and I MADE them all take a skill in philosophy to reflect the intense internal debate that they had to have already gone through to reach such a (false!) conclusion...which is also actually more of an arrogant conceit and defect than anything in a Dnd universe! Similarly, while a given PC may LABOR under delusions of monotheism, it's just another psychological quirk, like drinking elf blood or something equally goofy!
You want to do "it" anyway? That's fine. Please do NOT complain when some supernatural agent shows up and "corrects" your character. It might be subtle like you showing up as a "blip" on detect evil spells or it might be more obvious like the furies chasing after you. But it'll happen...I promise...