TRPG General Chat - 2020-06-30 (page 2 of 2)

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10:00 PM

@A.B. Oh but they really don't. Wizard has the pejorative -ard suffix.

For "warlock" here's Merriam-Webster:
> Middle English warloghe, from Old English wǣrloga one that breaks faith, the Devil, from wǣr faith, troth + -loga (from lēogan to lie); akin to Old English wǣr true

the etymology may be oathbreaker but a word associated with the Devil for the "bargain power from a devil" class isn't the worst idea

I find etymology interesting but it often doesn't have that much to do with how words are used today

D&D has never cared about historical etymology? Classes are based on the developers' contemporary pop culture media preferences and names were chosen accordingly.

2

Like, a decent chunk of the original Cleric stuff comes from Hammer Productions horror films where priests fought vampires and such. Historical deconstruction of D&D elements always has to first filter through the pop culture lens rather than leaping directly to an academic lens.

@MarkWells Well, that's one I didn't know before, about "wizard", that is, although I really should have noticed that before.

("As the etymology suggests, the modern equivalent to the Cleric is the lawyer.")

Where were we?

10:06 PM

Australia?

:-D

lol

Let's also spare a thought for the Gorgon. No relation to the Medusa, which should have that name, or the Catoblepas, which is what the Gorgon actually should be called.

I thought Gorgon was the name for what the Medusa was?

@trogdor In real life it is. In D&D it's a metal bull that spits poison.

10:08 PM

oooooh

ok

I see

That snorts poison gas.

(In real life mythology, the metal bull that spits poison was the catoblepas.)

Oh, that's it.

Or the Rakshasa which was ripped from an episode of Kolchak the Night Stalker which had itself done EXTREMELY sketchy research, and then later the choices made by D&D illustrators got folded back into the text.

106

Q: Why is the D&D gorgon a metal bull?

In mythology, the gorgons were Medusa and her sisters; snake-like beings who petrified those who saw them. In Dungeons & Dragons, gorgons are bulls with metal scales and the ability to breathe petrifying gas as an attack (AD&D, 3.5): Is there any material (book or interview quotes, forum post...

monsters dungeons-and-dragons history-of-gaming

Any process that gives us this:

117

A: What's the inspiration for the owlbear?

It's based on a toy. And that's all most sources will give you, because they're drawing from an article (Ed Greenwood's "Ecology of the Rust Monster" in Dragon #88, later quoted by another article of the same name in issue #346) which is actually about the rust monster, and only passingly mentio...

can't be all bad =)

So entirely beside the fact the authors didn't care about real life etymology much, we have direct evidence the times they did dive into real-world history, they used books that got their facts wrong.

10:10 PM

XD

they did indeed

I don't have a source but I strongly suspect any Biblical inspiration in D&D owes more to Cecil B Demille than the source material.

even I know Gorgon is the name for what Medusa was, how did they make that mistake so easily? XD

@trogdor you know, i really don't know

I didn't know what catoblepas was but now I do XD

i am assuming they simply never read a book on Greek mythology at any point, or even heard about it

10:11 PM

@BESW I... thought I remembered reading about EGG being a pretty church-ey guy. It'd probably have been Empire of Imagination, a copy of which I'd be happy to mail to anyone who wants 'cause I'll probably never touch it again.

@trogdor i learned about it from Castlevania!

@doppelgreener and yet they decided to use Mythilogical Greek monsters anyway

@BESW Given the time frame I vaguely suspected they picked up the name "Rakshasa" from Zelazny's Lord of Light, but those weren't... tiger things?

for some reason XD

@trogdor y....yeah.......

10:12 PM

@doppelgreener oooh nice!

50

A: What inspired the D&D version of the Rakshasa?

There's an episode of the 1970s Kolchak: Night Stalker series that includes a shapeshifter called a rakshasa. It also involves a vulnerability to blessed crossbow bolts/piercing weapons, which isn't part of Hindu tradition (I think Ravana, greatest of the rakshasas, was actually killed by a round...

I can't remember why I know what a Gorgon is

I must have read it somewhere

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@trogdor People getting a source wrong seems to be how mythology procreates, heh.

In addition to the direct attribution, Kolchak is the ONLY source material I've been able to find which namechecks the Rakshasa and also features a blessed projectile as their weakness.

I'm feeling a distinct lack of sympathy in this conversation for those whose creative research/inspirations many decades ago likely came from a half-dozen weirdly-curated books that a librarian in a small town pulled off the shelves for us one summer Saturday....

10:14 PM

I even remember thinking Medusa was what all Gorgons were called at some point in the past

@trogdor see also Pegasus

I'm not saying the critiques aren't valid (and useful), just that I've been there....

"Warlock" used to mean specifically someone who had powers from a pact with the Devil, the male equivalent of "witch", in the days of the old witch legends. So that works, except that that isn't all that's in the Warlock class now.

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica that's fair, but also they took something that already had a name, named it after a member of the group, and then gave the name they already had to something else. that's just weird in my book

XD

@MarkWells oh what are winged horses called?

@nitsua60 I've got no problem with "We're gonna make a game out of the stuff we like," I do that all the time. I have a problem with the modern curators of the franchise ossifying bigoted choices in the name of tradition, and I think that conversations trying to dissect the choices need to avoid treating them as more scholarly than they were.

10:16 PM

A lot of people have said that now that a Patron can be anything, a Warlock is, mechanics aside, the same thing as a Cleric...

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@trogdor That . . . happens all the time with words. I certainly find it annoying and confusing largely because it breaks reverse-compatibility. For example, people calling the whole system block (whether tower or horizontal) a 'processor'.

@A.B. I find it absurd to say that anything is "mechanics aside" the same as anything. If they're the same, they should use the same mechanics.

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica tis fair enough

Yeah, it's... not a big deal if the game stuff is wrong and gets rearranged, seeing as how the game designers probably have no idea why they did it that way anyway.

@A.B. There's some narrative difference to be found between "Formed a individual pact with an entity" and "Worships an divine(-esque) entity", I think

10:19 PM

@BESW Honestly if you're going to steal another culture's monster and do a bad take on it, at least do it justice and do some individual research rather than "I thought this thing in this show was cool". That's just the worst version of this outcome.

@BESW Ossification is an excellent characterization.

@trogdor "Pegasus" in the myth is the name of a specific horse. Similar to "Medusa" being a specific gorgon.

@nitsua60 Honestly I think it's too kind.

@MarkWells True, but they do have a kind of definition in the rulebook, what they're actually supposed to be, other than the mechanics.

@MarkWells oh but there isn't a name for flying horses

We just use that name to mean flying horses now

I see

I think

10:21 PM

@Someone_Evil True, Clerics don't actually have a pact with their patron as such. Those are Paladins.

Pegasus is reasonable; there's no other name for that thing.

@A.B. At some point they may have, but current Paladins don't have a pact with anyone in particular, they just make vows out into the universe for no reason

But gorgon is literally the name for the thing

Yeah

This would be like calling all men steves

10:22 PM

XD

:-D

Oh yeah, I forgot about that with Paladins.

Hmm but then you would need to have a half-steve

no, no, men as in dudes

But that's my point. If it's 1975 and you saw a show and heard this thing mentioned. Or, your friend tells you about this thing *they* saw... what're you expecting that creator to do? Go to the town library. Can't find the word anywhere. Ask for some books on Indian mythology? Might have one, probably not (in my experience), maybe they can get one from another library on loan?
So you read one, maybe two dubiously-curated sources on a thing. Let's say you really want to do a great job. You going to start calling the nearby university's... switchboard? To try and figure out the right departme…

@doppelgreener Sure there is, you could call it a "Flying Horse". "Animated Armor" is in the monster manual.

10:23 PM

Two and a half Steves?

XD

because medusa was female remember? so all the medusas in D&D are female

the men are maedars

because of course the male is a completely different species

(gotta run, sorry)

i wish this was not how things are but it is

Wat

@trogdor isn't this how Apple Computers got started?

10:24 PM

See ya Nitsua60

Doctor Who could totally be defined as a Warlock in D&D.

these folks really need to just back things up and rename these to Gorgons

@doppelgreener Do they at least have snakes for beards?

2

@doppelgreener watwatwatwat?

@BESW and, also, yes, definitely stop perpetuating racism because just doing it because it was already happening is not an excuse

@A.B. Yes, but only in this decadent post-XGtE era where you can make anything a warlock somehow.

10:25 PM

@trogdor yes. i'm not making this up. i'm so sorry.

they dug themselves a hole and decided the thing to do would be to keep digging

2

Hot RPG Questions

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Q: Murder in Dungeon World

I have a female fighter (level 3) just starting a personal quest to find her 'missing' twin sister. For the whole game to evolve it has to start with her openly committing murder in a crowded Tavern. She will do this by guile and subterfuge, playing on her beauty and apparent innocence, to obscur...

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@MikeQ that's... a really good question actually

@doppelgreener Oh hey, isn't that their mission statement?

@doppelgreener I don't even know what to say honestly

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@doppelgreener We sort of are calling them like that. Except it's Guy, not Steve.

10:27 PM

@HotRPGQuestions Murder on the Dungeon World Express

"Maedar" is a good name and at least they made it up, rather than using another word that is not that!

@BESW based on how 5e viewed 4e and 2e, the answer seems to be yes?

They made an entirely separate species with a different name to have men with snake hair who turn you to stone?

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica ........ this is really unsettling to have pointed out, lol

Ah, apparently the maedar are hairless. So they're just... giants?

But specifically they're related to medusas. Because that tidbit is important.

10:28 PM

Well, snake men with snake hair I guess

Hey chat, what are some simple-to-learn mystery/investigation RPG systems? Mostly focused on criminal investigation (not supernatural mystery like CoC or others)

@trogdor Oh, no. Maedars turn the stone back into meat.

(I feel more comfortable asking about such a thing here than in reddits of sorts haha)

@BESW waaaaaasaat

Wat

Why

@BESW which has EXTREMELY UNSETTLING IMPLICATIONS for how they handle the obstacle of your big stone walls around your castle

10:29 PM

@HellSaint I'm a big fan of Bubblegumshoe although it's still got a lot of fiddly edge bits.

Obviously so they can work the grill, because they are only capable of MANLY things, and thus must buy into all MANLY MAN tropes

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@doppelgreener Genericification of a label is a thing. It's how we got Zippers too. Same with Guy/guy. I wonder how many other examples are there that are just to ancient to know their origins.

@BESW Oh 100% absolutely, I had a blast with that

(Manly tropes are drawn randomly from the Deck of Manly Things)

Lol

10:30 PM

@BESW Yeah I got interested in GUMSHOE but never managed to find people to actually play it... :( so I am trying to find one that is very very very simple that I can easily read, understand, explain to a bunch of people in like half an hour and try it out to see whether we like it or not lol

@BESW also yes excellent choice IMO

@HellSaint ...how about the two-person version of Gumshoe, "Gumshoe One-2-One"? Right now it's only available in L*vecraft flavor as Cthulhu Confidential but the back of the book has conversion notes. @trogdor can tell you if he found it easy to pick up when I ran it for him. (And I think I ran it for @doppelgreener too? my brain is hazy)

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica My attempts to trace down the etymology find that the generic "guy" appears to come from a French term for "guide" (guie), while the name "Guy" came from a Germanic root.

@BESW You, me, Troggy, Dan, possibly Raycia?

I think Raycia played Willow.

Or maybe she played Taylor.

Troggy, you played Willow, right?

oh yeah Gumshoe One-2-One seemed pretty easy to pick up

@doppelgreener I was Willow

That's it.

Dan played Marco Kingsley, I played Andrew Ryan. I think. It might've been the other way around.

10:36 PM

and I think Raycia made a character but didn't end up playing

or maybe she only played one session? I don't remember exactly

Maedar are rather good, actually. enworld.org/threads/maedar.170276 But yes, they should OF COURSE have snake beards.

@A.B. says they're rather lawful evil actually

[badum-tish]

lol

I mean regardless of the merits of the monster or the name, I will not stop dragging D&D for it until the day it collects Maedars and Medusas under the name "Gorgon".

yeah, I mean come on

XD

10:38 PM

@doppelgreener No, I mean the twosie version of Gumshoe now, the historical-ish L*vecraft thing.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@doppelgreener Hmm. I recall the trail leading to Fawkes, and a quick search also seems to bring up this: media.discordapp.net/attachments/265752913232527361/…

@BESW Just let me get something straight: Gumshoe is not necessarily related to LC or CoC, right? Could it be used for a more Sherlock Holmes-y adventure?

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

I wonder if we're dealing with parallel origins converging.

@BESW Ahh. No, I've never played Gumshoe One-2-One. But you have run vanilla Gumshoe for me (and probably Troggy and maybe Dan). You ran an adventure that had so many dead ends and red herrings that you could smell the trouble a mile away, pulled it apart and put it back together, and we still found a lot of ways to get off track.

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica guy in any of these usages extends to way before that

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

Or maybe one of those is a 'folk etymology'.

10:41 PM

@HellSaint Yes. Gumshoe was originally designed as an engine to power Trail of Cthulhu which was an investigation-focused alternative to Call of Cthulhu. But the engine itself, the Gumshoe part, isn't gear for horror pacing; Trail of Cthulhu accomplishes its horror elements via addon subsystems.

Maybe "fellow" did come from Guy Fawkes ironically and I made a mistake actually

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

> guy (n.2)

"fellow," 1847, American English; earlier, in British English (1836) "grotesquely or poorly dressed person," originally (1806) "effigy of Guy Fawkes," leader of the Gunpowder Plot to blow up British king and Parliament (Nov. 5, 1605). The effigies were paraded through the streets by children on the anniversary of the conspiracy. The male proper name is from French, related to Italian Guido.

right

that's probbaly it

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

The guy rope/wire is probably a different trail.

but i mean, the name itself comes from a different (germanic) root than this word

10:43 PM

@doppelgreener you have it right, I was Willow in that game

@HellSaint To the best of my knowledge though Bubblegumshoe is the only commercially published version of Gumshoe that's not written for a speculative fiction setting, though.

@BESW Yeah, I heard about Gumshoe through ToC, so I had a quite strong mental link on them.

I'll do some digging and see if I can't find a simpler investigation game...

But, didn't you run a vanilla version of Gumshoe once? I'm sure you did

@BESW Interesting. Why do people associate Investigative RPG with supernatural stuff? I just want an RPG that I find out the murderer of the nice lady from the nearest marketplace ;P

10:44 PM

... maybe it was a trail of cthulhu thing. There was someone making people go missing, and we found a murderer at the edge of town.

I remember they had a pit near their house.

Without, you know, an Old One being involved.

And we opted to "deal with them" by leaving them down there and giving them no way to come back up.

@doppelgreener Yes, that was our Gumshoe One-2-One game.

Oh!

Wow! Then I have played that!

TIL

@HellSaint I think there's a certain inertia to the idea that TRPGs automatically need some kind of unreal element to draw people in.

11:00 PM

@HellSaint I'm asking around and simple-investigative-system-without-specfic-elements is apparently REALLY rare? Somebody's recommending Brindlewood Bay which has a "regular" murder mystery each session but also a kind of "campaign arc" to do with uncovering a cult. They're saying that the campaign arc can probably be either cut out, or re-skinned into something a more mundane Moriarty-like opposition.

It's PbtA which people generally find easy to bring new players in on.

How strange. You'd think it would be a common enough requirement.

@BESW That's interesting. And yeah, I would think "play like you are Sherlock Holmes" would actually be a quite popular genre, but it seems it's more restrict to cooperative boardgames rather than RPG then

Thinking about the classes again, "Barbarian" is the other really unintuitive one that I can think of, as someone was saying earlier. Their moveset has really got nothing to do with primitiveness and very little to do with rage.

Necessarily, that is.

I've gone looking for Sherlock games before with very little luck. I think there's a lot of trouble translating the "lone sleuth and maybe sidekick" into traditional TRPG troupe-style play forms.

So don't do that. shrugs

I don't see why you couldn't just as well have several people doing the detective work... but then I haven't tried.

11:07 PM

InSpectres would probably work well if you want to play a blue-collar detective agency kind of thing, its supernatural elements are all entirely narrative.

I love it already just for the name :-)

Barbarian could work for a primitive warrior, obviously, but it could also work for a lot of other things. I once made a Girl Genius Spark class based mainly on Barbarians, crossed with Artificer.

Why did they not call that class Berserker, anyone know? Barbarian doesn't describe the effects at all and seems a little rude honestly.

I found A Dirty World which is noir rather than specfic, don't know anything about it except the blurb on the site.

@A.B. You definitely can. Bubblegumshoe did it.

Bubblegumshoe puts you in the shoes of teenagers trying to solve mysteries around their town. They're mysteries that the adults aren't paying attention to because they don't seem important enough, but they're important to you or other kids. So you do as much as you can to try to resolve it.

Oh! Attractive Detectives is a thing.

nvm RPGSE already got it rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/36289/…

11:16 PM

But you're also only teenagers. You can't do everything yourself. Sometimes you need family or friends to rely on, so you have relatinoships with other people you can draw upon.

Murder Express looks promising.

That sounds a good game

But you have to toe the line between seeking help from adults, and letting them catch wind enough that they might choose to insert themselves into the situation and make it hard for you to solve it.

I knew itch.io wouldn't let me down!

Murder! looks good too and THAT COVER ART IS AMAZING.

@BESW Yes it is!

11:23 PM

@BESW Agreed

@HellSaint itch.io filtered for physical games with the murder and mystery tags

@BESW I am more interested than I should about the one called Don't trust the dog

Heh. Definitely not my kind of game but looks like an interesting premise.

@HellSaint itch.io games filtered for physical games tagged crime

tagged detective

That's a very good resource

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11:58 PM

@doppelgreener they were gamers first, pedants second. ;) They borrowed from any fiction and any myth if it seemed like it might fit into the game. You seem to presume a malice that wasn't there.

@doppelgreener doubt that, but what they did was put that mythical thing into a game. they were gamers first .

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