It kind of fucks with me that somebody killed ötzi the iceman because ötzi himself is like whatever but the silent presence of human hands that drew back the string of the bow that shot the arrow that killed him is crazy. the idea that there were various people involved in that situation and while one of them has had his last hours painstakingly reconstructed and studied to no end, the others now only exist insofar that an arrowhead had to get into his shoulder somehow. imagine killing someone and then suddenly your entire existence is only a vague shadow implied by the fact that you killed them. much to consider
Testing the mummified bone marrow of ötzi to figure out his ancestry whole time there’s definitely another person, maybe more than one, standing in the room with us but I can never see or speak to them because I only know them through the assurance that they were there too in the form of one single arrowhead. I hate prehistory so much it’s unreal
There's a whole book or even multiple sagas to be written around the question of "why do adventurers exist in this world at all". I hate the term "murderhobo" with a passion but there is a lot, a lot to talk about what kind of society hires wandering questing warriors to solve problems and where do those "adventurers" come from and what role do they have in society.
Lots of people have talked about this but I would like to point out this essay on ACOUP that starts with seemingly a semi-related matter (why gold coins in fantasy don't make sense in historical societies) and ends with a very revealing insight... gold isn't the reward that "fantasy adventurers" should seek. It should be power and influence, noble titles, a comission in the local army, land.
This week on the blog I want to take a brief detour into discussing historical coinage, particularly in the context of modern fantasy and ro
As usual and expected from a blog titled A Collection Of Unmitigated Pedantry, it does take a long (but very interesting and worth reading) read to get to that point, but I'll point out the interesting thing in this context:
Here, "Big Man" is a stand in for the nobles and rulers and landowners of agricultural societies. While more urbanized and industrial societies may have a use for coinage, what do these societies based in interpersonal relationships can give you as a reward for a quest, as a reward for solving a problem? Social power; a title, a relationship, a promise of support. And not only that, but this isn't often a reward but a necessity in the first place. To have a horse, to have armor and weapons and the means to wage war (go adventuring) in the first place, you don't go to the medieval store and buy them with 20gp, you often have people supporting you and even , you are a man-at-arms, part of a noble retinue a noble yourself, maybe part of a holy order, or in more early-modern scenario, part of a mercenary group.
However, this doesn't happen often in fantasy because of these reasons reasons:
The idea of the selfless hero who doesn't choose glory or fame but instead continues questing endlessly to do good or defeat an ultimate evil. Making a hero have a patron feels like selling out (but I will address that)
Even with those characters who aren't selfless and would probably take the power and titles, it seems to tie them down to a place or obligation and this makes adventures boring (but I will address that!)
Dungeons & Dragons
People say that every generic fantasy world is inspired by Tolkien but I will argue that he's the grandfather of modern fantasy, the father is Gary Gyax. The ideas baked in D&D have been present in ALL over popular fantasy for decades now, even more prominently than Tolkien (and of course D&D 'borrowed' a lot from Tolkien). Now what this means in this particular case is the idea of wandering "adventurers" solving problems for "gold" in "dungeons", often with the undertone of a frontier or decaying civilization full of monsters and bandits to be killed and tamed into civilization (some other people have written about this better than me)
Nevertheless, even beyond the setting implications, there are deep gameplay implications that have filtered down popular fantasy. Dungeons and Dragons is a survival/combat game. It's a survival game because you have to rely in your abilities and limited equipment (which you buy with gold) to survive in a dungeon, through combat. Of course you can do a lot more than that, but this is the core of the game, what it was designed for: buy equipment, go into a dungeon, survive, get treasure, use it to buy equipment, go into another dungeon. Here "dungeon" can mean many things... combat, travel, puzzles, but the loop is clear.
There is no "gain a patron and get social capital" loop in the game, though it might be simulated, it isn't fun. So there is a lack of interest on exploring this, or really, anything beyond the "quest". And since again, it's D&D, not Tolkien, that shapes most popular fantasy, we see popular fantasy repeating this deeply baked in idea of fantasy once and again and again and again. Sometimes even making them into actual, literal points inside the world: making literal worlds with Adventurer Guilds and Dungeons and Quests and sometimes even Levels and XP as part of society (they're only lacking the dice... and that's because D&D is also the main influence behind videogames).
Is EVERY SINGLE FANTASY WORLD like this? No, not at all. But I want to talk about where does this idea of "gold" and "adventures" comes from, and it's NOT medieval or historical inspiration, and it's NOT even Tolkien. It's D&D.
I told you I would address the idea that having a patron or a story based on one's social standing could be boring or at least incompatible with "adventure", and there are many cases that I could point out, but I want to point to a very interesting one: Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, el Cid Campeador.
El Cid is both a real person who lived a very interesting life and a folklore figure, and both are very interesting as inspirations for fantasy "adventurers". El Cid was considered (by the social standards of the time) as an ideal knight and a tragic figure. But his whole life is defined by the society he lived in and, as any knight (or noble warrior in general), how he walked the interrelationships of his society; his back and forth of loyalty and betrayal with King Alfonso, his loss and recovery of honor, his service to the Muslims rulers of Zaragoza which indeed gave him his title (these constant intercultural interactions were very common in medieval Iberia, which makes it a very unique and underused setting inspiration), his rulership over Valencia. Over time, El Cid changes and seeks patrons and his changes in his social status (and his dependence on them) are a major part of the story both in real life and fictionalizations.
But this doesn't mean that the life of El Cid is boring or lacking in combat and travels. He gets "adventures" all over the place, he travels and fights over the whole breadth of Iberia, he has countless legends to his name. He wasn't a "murderhobo" that got gold from each adventure and then went to the store to buy a new sword, he took command of armies and he even took power and governed his own realm, but his life wasn't lacking from excitement, he didn't just sit and became a paper-pusher. I need to be very clear I'm not saying El Cid was a hero, I'm saying he led an exciting, interesting life, worthy of most fictional adventurers, but he wasn't just going from place to place asking for gold... well, technically yes, but this involved his status, his honor and his place in society. Which makes for a rich story.
And he's not the only one, Medieval Iberia is full of stories of these characters that navigated the social networks of their time, a place where cultures interacted with each other in multiple complex ways and kingdoms and taifas often employed these wandering "adventurers". Maybe if you want to get inspired to write about adventurers, don't look to D&D for inspiration. Read about Al Andalus sometime.
Hi! Sorry to bother but I need your help trying to find a tabletop rpg.
This was a decade ago, I found a tabletop rpg where instead of classes, it used thematic kits (like Dragon, Martial Artist, Alchemist), which players could dip into, allowing for unique combos. I believe that the game had the word "Tales" in it (and maybe the kits were also called "Tales"?).
No one I've talked to has heard about this, even on discord servers with indie rpg fans, and trying to search for it yields nada, but maybe you've heard about it? I had found it on a website, so it might have been an indie rpg that never got anywhere. Thanks and love the blog.
Yeah i can't really help with that since it was a decade ago, i wasn't into ttrpgs then
I suspect this was tavern tales. It used free-form trait selection from a wide variety of themes ( dragon, alchemy and martial arts all being options)
It was relatively popular circa 2016 and had a kickstarter only for the creator to vanish before it fullfilled. Eventually the community discovered that the creator had abandoned it in favour of making overwatch youtube videos. He then released it under creative commons and there were a number of fan continuations of the project.
Here is one version of the rules:
Equal emphasis on combat, exploration, and interaction There's so much more to RPGs than combat. Tavern Tales gives you access to a wide var
I remember playing as a fairy and a kurapika from hunter x hunter rip off using the system.
It is implied through gameplay mechanics that the two kingdoms at war in chess both formally permit regnal polygamy, allowing the King to take at least nine wives of equal status, and that marriage can be bestowed as a military honour, but curiously that honour - in stark contrast to the conventional attitudes of the aristocracy - can only be bestowed upon soldiers of the unlanded class, leaving great questions to be asked of the material interests and stability of these kingdoms' aristocracies
How dangerous was being an alchemist traditionally?
Imagine working in a modern chemistry lab with no PPE. that's more or less what historical alchemists were doing. In fact, we have modern PPE because of all the ways alchemists learned to hurt themselves!
This is one of my favorite little facts: Rhazes has a list of things any aspiring alchemist should take into account when setting up a lab. One of the requirements is good ventilation! This is back in the 10th ish century. Clearly there had been some incidents.
Just today I got to see a chess book that I remember reading as a little kid. While it didn't give me a lifelong passion for chess, it did give me a lifelong passion for fantasy for its artwork.
The book is "Chess for Young Beginners" from 1975, and here's some of the artwork:
Like, this artwork goes hard. I especially appreciate the colour scheme for the black pieces, with its browns, bronzes, reds and oranges.
This artwork is amazing, evocative, exciting and dramatic. I recommend giving it a look if you have a chance - you can probably scrounge up a PDF of this thing with a bit of searching.
lvl 1: the plural of octopus is octopuses because the plural version of a word is the word with an s at the end
lvl 2: the plural version of octopus is octopi because if a word ends with "us" the plural version replaces the "us" with "i" e.g. cactus -> cacti and fungus -> fungi
lvl 3: actually, that rule is only for latin words. octopus is a greek word and the correct plural is octopuses or octopodes
lvl 4: actually, language is descriptive not prescriptive. since enough people over time have used octopi as the plural for octopus, it's a valid plural
lvl 5: the plural of octopus is octopeese, like geese
lvl 6: The plural of octopus is to increase the prefix according to the relevant number of legs. Two of them are hexadecopus, three are quadravigesopus, four are duotrigesopus. I cant see there would ever be cause to talk about more than four duotrigesopus.
