Comments on: I WAS A GOBLIN: There is another world, there is a better world https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/01/i-was-a-goblin-there-is-another-world-there-is-a-better-world Lollards in the high church of low culture Sat, 16 May 2020 11:15:03 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 By: slideyfoot https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/01/i-was-a-goblin-there-is-another-world-there-is-a-better-world/comment-page-1#comment-2414829 Sat, 16 May 2020 11:15:03 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/01/i-was-a-goblin-there-is-another-world-there-is-a-better-world/#comment-2414829 I absolutely loved Dark Sun and (to a lesser extent) Ravenloft, I think helped a lot by the associated SSI CRPGs (which IMO still hold up pretty well today, I’ll dip into them on an emulator every year or so). I also loved all the extra worldbuilding lore, I devour that kind of thing even now.

E.g., the relatively recent Volo’s Guide To Monsters was wonderful, providing a load of what I guess you could call fantasy ethnography on orcs etc. Or from back in the day with 3.5, those wonderful sourcebooks about the Nine Hells, with all the various subdivisions of devils. :D

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By: nickbjorn https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/01/i-was-a-goblin-there-is-another-world-there-is-a-better-world/comment-page-1#comment-629302 Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:09:57 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/01/i-was-a-goblin-there-is-another-world-there-is-a-better-world/#comment-629302 For me, whether it’s fantasy/SF literature or RPGs, you have to make a decision what it is you’re going to focus on and provide a level of logical and cultural consistency for that aspect of the world. For example, if you want to focus on heroic powergaming make sure there’s a logic to it that the players can grasp and use to their benefit. By contrast in a heroic powergaming world econmoic reality should be less important – exchange rates, weak currency, trading etc. Some games had this inbuilt – for example Call of Cthulhu focused on sanity management, Ars Magica on development of new spells and so on. The same seems to be true in the best fantasy literature I’ve read, Mieville, Moorcock and even straight up Tolkien rip-off stuff like Tad Williams’ Memory, Sorrow & Thorn books concern themselves with events specific to the narrative, not abstract exposition.

The greatest mistake a lot of fantasy writers make, and I imagine this comes from their experiences reading RPG sourcebooks, is to name drop inworld historical/cultural/economic/sociological facts with no narrative context in a vain attempt to make a world feel lived in. I just read Night of Knives by Ian Esslemont and it’s full of stuff like ‘Temper had seen this before at Splanjclonk during the wars of the Chablatz and at the Battle of Blibel’s Hall’ and it just sounds stupid because it’s pointless information that the author clearly made up on the spot.

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By: mark sinker https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/01/i-was-a-goblin-there-is-another-world-there-is-a-better-world/comment-page-1#comment-177758 Sat, 13 Jan 2007 11:31:17 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/01/i-was-a-goblin-there-is-another-world-there-is-a-better-world/#comment-177758 i think tom puts the “lack of trappings” in tolk point a touch too strongly — the various cultures do actually make things (the issue of the ethics of making is pretty much what the whole book is about): one of the things i really like abt the film is the amount of attention paid to the various different interior decoration and craft details in the various places

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By: mince https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/01/i-was-a-goblin-there-is-another-world-there-is-a-better-world/comment-page-1#comment-177151 Fri, 12 Jan 2007 22:30:19 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/01/i-was-a-goblin-there-is-another-world-there-is-a-better-world/#comment-177151 Well put. I hadn’t realy logged the lack of the trappings of a society in Tolkien, the whole authority of his mythology sold it for me. Asimov pulled a trick a bit like it in Civilization. The role playing game ‘Aria’ is worth a mention in terms of a game that lets GM and players work together in making their game world.

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By: Tom https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/01/i-was-a-goblin-there-is-another-world-there-is-a-better-world/comment-page-1#comment-155838 Fri, 05 Jan 2007 00:15:55 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/01/i-was-a-goblin-there-is-another-world-there-is-a-better-world/#comment-155838 Chap: Yes :) Well, I never played many games of Ravenloft or Dark Sun as settings per se, but they did seem to be resolving the problem a little more elegantly. I’ll touch on them next time hopefully. (if I remember to anyway)

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By: Chap https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/01/i-was-a-goblin-there-is-another-world-there-is-a-better-world/comment-page-1#comment-155721 Thu, 04 Jan 2007 23:53:47 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/01/i-was-a-goblin-there-is-another-world-there-is-a-better-world/#comment-155721 Some of the later d&d worlds, such as Ravenloft and Dark Sun, were actually rather interesting and elegant conceptually, or at least seemed that way to my young mind. I also liked the Warhammer world for its low-fantasy griminess (sorry if I’m skipping ahead of proceedings a bit here).

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By: geoff https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/01/i-was-a-goblin-there-is-another-world-there-is-a-better-world/comment-page-1#comment-153518 Wed, 03 Jan 2007 23:19:57 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/01/i-was-a-goblin-there-is-another-world-there-is-a-better-world/#comment-153518 mark check this piece on ww2 called “Losing the War” by Lee Sandlin

http://leesandlin.com/articles/LosingTheWar.doc

Back when the forest still stretched in an unbroken expanse from Scandinavia to the Urals, the Vikings who inhabited its northernmost reaches wrote down their own stories about war. Their legends may have been garish fantasies — cursed rings and enchanted gold and dragon slayers and the fall of the realm of the gods — but when they wrote about battle, they were unsparingly exact. Their sagas still offer the subtlest and most rigorous accounts of the unique psychology of combat. The anonymous authors knew that the experience of being on a battlefield is fundamentally different from everything else in life. It simply can’t be described with ordinary words, so they devised a specialized Old Norse vocabulary to handle it. Some of their terms will do perfectly well for a world war fought a thousand years later.

The Vikings knew, for instance, that prolonged exposure to combat can goad some men into a state of uncontrolled psychic fury. They might be the most placid men in the world in peacetime, but on the battlefield they begin to act with the most inexplicable and gratuitous cruelty. They become convinced that they’re invincible, above all rules and restraints, literally transformed into supermen or werewolves. The Vikings called such men “berserkers.” World War II was filled with instances of ordinary soldiers giving in to berserker behavior. In battle after battle soldiers on all sides were observed killing wantonly and indiscriminately, defying all orders to stop, in a kind of collective blood rage. The Axis powers actually sanctioned and encouraged berserkers among their troops, but they were found in every army, even among those that emphasized discipline and humane conduct. American marines in the Pacific became notorious for their berserker mentality, particularly their profound lack of interest in taking prisoners. Eugene Sledge once saw a marine in a classic berserker state urinating into the open mouth of a dead Japanese soldier.

Another Viking term was “fey.” People now understand it to mean effeminate. Previously it meant odd, and before that uncanny, fairylike. That was back when fairyland was the most sinister place people could imagine. The Old Norse word meant “doomed.” It was used to refer to an eerie mood that would come over people in battle, a kind of transcendent despair. The state was described vividly by an American reporter, Tom Lea, in the midst of the desperate Battle of Peleliu in the South Pacific. He felt something inside of himself, some instinctive psychic urge to keep himself alive, finally collapse at the sight of one more dead soldier in the ruins of a tropical jungle: “He seemed so quiet and empty and past all the small things a man could love or hate. I suddenly knew I no longer had to defend my beating heart against the stillness of death. There was no defense.”

There was no defense — that’s fey. People go through battle willing the bullet to miss, the shelling to stop, the heart to go on beating — and then they feel something in their soul surrender, and they give in to everything they’ve been most afraid of. It’s like a glimpse of eternity. Whether the battle is lost or won, it will never end; it has wholly taken over the soul. Sometimes men say afterward that the most terrifying moment of any battle is seeing a fey look on the faces of the soldiers standing next to them.

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By: mark sinker https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/01/i-was-a-goblin-there-is-another-world-there-is-a-better-world/comment-page-1#comment-153462 Wed, 03 Jan 2007 22:50:39 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/01/i-was-a-goblin-there-is-another-world-there-is-a-better-world/#comment-153462 side issue: whatever happened to berserkers? was it a scand-only cultural meme and did the gene die out (ftb = ghey, for example?)

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By: Tom https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/01/i-was-a-goblin-there-is-another-world-there-is-a-better-world/comment-page-1#comment-153364 Wed, 03 Jan 2007 21:27:39 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/01/i-was-a-goblin-there-is-another-world-there-is-a-better-world/#comment-153364 Yes! “The Ecology of the Gelatinous Cube” etc. – I was hoping to fit this dreadful subgenre of RPGthink into one of these pieces.

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By: geoff https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/01/i-was-a-goblin-there-is-another-world-there-is-a-better-world/comment-page-1#comment-153246 Wed, 03 Jan 2007 19:11:11 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/01/i-was-a-goblin-there-is-another-world-there-is-a-better-world/#comment-153246 great post! can’t wait for the next one; i’ve been obsessed with campaign worlds and worldbuilding for some time.

there’s a huge amount of interweb resources on this. especially fun/wierd/maddening is all the amateur-Braudel theorizing like “how would scrying spells affect the development of literacy and communication” or “how could agriculture or industry put the gelatinous cube to use” etc

funny how stuff (monsters, spells, items) dreamed up as locally useful in a “dungeon” then get a whole fabric of fake-history either supporting them or coming out of them.

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By: Alan https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/01/i-was-a-goblin-there-is-another-world-there-is-a-better-world/comment-page-1#comment-152276 Tue, 02 Jan 2007 16:51:40 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/01/i-was-a-goblin-there-is-another-world-there-is-a-better-world/#comment-152276 I might take the time to list some of the campaigns and adventures that never made it among my friends

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By: DV https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/01/i-was-a-goblin-there-is-another-world-there-is-a-better-world/comment-page-1#comment-152275 Tue, 02 Jan 2007 16:47:25 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/01/i-was-a-goblin-there-is-another-world-there-is-a-better-world/#comment-152275 I’ve always associated Empire of the Petal Throne with a certain kind of tiresome RPG rockist. RuneQuest, though, was top fun. Or at least the first campaign of it was great, travelling around the world and encountering all the weird-ass stuff in it.

I gather that the reason why the Avalon Hill RQ did not have Glorantha in it was because they had acquired the rights to the rule system but not to the world.

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