Re: Dying Earth: Rescuing Thea... Not

In article <1147914049.466831.224770@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
madafro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx says...

There are lots of players out there like that, but I've been lucky.
Most of the folks I've played D&D long-term with (not getting into the
other games) have been either wanna-be heroes, undiscovered
actor-types, or incurable romantics.

Drifting off topic here, but what exactly do you mean by this? What kind
of a gamer is an incurable romantic? :)

A long-time friend of mine that will likely be a part of the game I'm
working on now is one such. The books he reads, the characters he
creates, and the stories and people he empathizes with in fiction are
those with an air of romance, especially unrequited, angsty, or quirky
love.

How did he like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon?

Well then, let me just reiterate the suggestion one last time. If you
liked the raisins in Twelve Monkeys, you should probably like them in
The Anubis Gates.

It's not about travelling back to fix stuff (in fact, it starts more or
less as a tourist trip, but things go awry and people get stranded), and
any weird paradoxical stuff it does have is very tightly handled. No "we
have time travel, so whatever happens, it's no biggie" here.

And in there's also all sorts of nice fruit other than well done
raisins: wizards on stilts (or springs!), because they have an affinity
for the Moon, so the touch of Earth hurts them...

Fair enough, and well argued. Given that your rec on "Kushiel's Dart"
led me to one of the best books I've ever read (not "fantasy
books"...but *books*), I guess I should shut up about the raisins and
give this one a go.

Wow, cool! I remembered I got someone from rgfd to read Kushiel's Dart,
but didn't remember it was you, and I didn't know you liked it that
much.

But in any case, the Hierodules will probably be good guys and mind
flayers bad guys. I like moral ambiguity well enough, but I like it when
it's hard to see who are the good/bad guys are, not when there really
are no good guys at all.

I can understand this. No good guys at all would be a different game, I
suppose. You don't get grey without white.

You know how I mentioned my friend with Princess Bride on the endless
loop in his head? I think my endless loop is Taxi Driver. The heroes
and themes I find most appealing are those that carve out their own
standards of goodness; angels with dirty faces, as it were. My
characters tend to be broken and looking for a chance of redemption
more often than shining knights; Batman rather than Superman.

Are we agreeing or disagreeing here? :)

I have never watched Taxi Driver from start to finish, but my impression
of it (and Batman and the phrase "angels with dirty faces") is that, in
the end, they're about fighting the good fight. It might hard, or
confusing, or even ugly at times, and you're likely to make at least
some wrong choices along the way... but in the final analysis, there are
right choices, and you fight for what is right. I'm fine with that.

The kind of moral ambiguity I don't like is Warhammer 40000, for
example. From what I know of the setting, there's Chaos which is, in a
word, evil, and there's the Imperium which is opressive and cruel, but
hey, it beats being eaten alive by Chaos. So far so good, but in a setup
like that, I'd want heroes to be the people who try to break the vicious
circle, run away, bring down both Chaos and the Imperium and clear the
way for a new age, something like that... Instead, I get the feeling
that we're supposed to view those that fight for the the Imperium as
heroes, since they embrace the lesser of two evils. That, I don't find
very satisfying.

Or, if there really are no good guys, and humankind is faced with two
truly self-interested factions trying to manipulate it, what I'd tend to
do in-character (and what I'd like my players to do, if I put them in
such a situation) is tell them both to go *** themselves, and try and
carve our own way.

Hyboria! :)

Do you think Hyboria really has that vibe? Well, I guess it does,
telling them both to go *** themselves, and carving his own way is
definitely a part of Conan's schtick, but in the stories I read, it
always felt like he was doing it more because he didn't like jerks
bossing him around, not because he thought it was the right thing to do.


--
Jasin Zujovic
.