You Had Had A Plan, Once. You Figured If You Acted Impressive Enough, Got Powerful Enough, No One Would

You had had a plan, once. You figured if you acted impressive enough, got powerful enough, no one would stop you. And it worked quite well for a while. People cowed at your reputation, your grandeaur. Eventually, though, some hero had come in, convinced they could defeat you, and you realized they actually could. So you put up a good fight, whispered some cryptic final words, and vanished away, leaving nothing but dust.

You'd ended up in a small farming down, covered in dust and dirt, though with all your past equipment. The first person you talked to was kind, and you returned the gesture. This felt a lot better than them cowering in fear.

Your time there continued with that pattern. You made friends. Repaid kindness with kindness. You farmed. You wed. You had children. You truly enjoyed your time.

One day you stood outside, tending your field. You could see a dust cloud in the air, coming closer. Odd. At its head were soldiers, clad in shining metal, glowing with light. You wiped the sweat from your brow, then wiped that hand on on the coarse brown pants you wore. Well, it couldn't hurt to see what was coming.

It appeared that it could, you thought, as the tallest figure slammed you into the wall of your hut. They glared at you through the slits in their helm. You recognized those eyes. That voice.

"You will pay tribute. Understood?" Their voice was a growl. The last time you had heard it, it was desperate. Hopeful, but afraid. Now it was angry. But you did not think they recognized you.

"The tribute. The one of souls?"

"Yes! You don't seem to understand, farmer. The demon kind is still out there. They must be stopped. They must be found. And I can only do so with this tribute. Do you want to see this land be wasted, all your crops destroyed? Sacrifices must be made."

You glanced over at your spouse. Your children. This shack. Out the window to your farm.

You could not give them up. The irony alone made it useless. Give them up for this fool to find you, right where you stood? You laughed.

"Why are you laughing! Fine. I'll simply take them then." The hero let you go, and turned towards their soldiers. You stood up, wiggling your hands behind your bag. Remembering those spells agains. Summoning your armor. Your weapons. The treasures you'd amassed, though never used. Always to impress. You needed to work quickly. For your families sake, now.

Within moments, it was done. They had turned away from you, and your spouse, running, caught your eye. They gasped. You'd told them the truth, though never shown them. The soldiers turned. The hero turned, and froze.

"I don't think you're going to need that tribute, fool." You raised the dark blade, etched with pain and weaping shadow, towards the silver armored figure. "You see, I never got to try this on you last time. I've heard it strikes with the vengeance of all damned souls. Well, I thank you for making it that much more effective."

The hero gasped, stepping back, and you grinned. "I didn't have a reason to fight last time. I thought fear would get me through. But it seems as though it wasn't enough. No matter. You've gotten me to want to fight now, I'm impressed. Let's see how strong you really are."

You were once the demon king. “Defeated” by the hero, you went into hiding to pursue a simpler life. Today the “hero” has appeared, threatening you family to pay tribute, not realizing who you actually are. Today you show them what happens when you have something worth fighting to protect.

I think we're finally finding the issue here, which is that dnd has pulled from so many different forms of media and archetypes, and often from different ones that are entirely different in set up and power scaling and magic and such. To simplify, we pulled wizards from things like myths and fancy magic users and the fighter is basically "well its medieval, gotta have a plate wearing sword guy" . And unless you set up a world to accomdate that, to either figure out the neccesarily limitations on magic to have a fighter make sense as being somewhat practical, or expand the magic (non-real elements) to include martial prowess and toughness, the fighter and the wizard basically come from different realities.

Anyway this is why wotc should publish more individual setting books with actual different rules that don't actually work together across settings. Because if you want different themes to your game world, the way players understand that is through the mechanics, and therefore how you define the theme. And if they want to have some big way it all works, they need to stop holding onto these fragments of tradition that say random things about how the rules should be, from earlier editions, that no longer actually work in the setting and world they're trying to build, but are just holdovers.

I doubt that will ever happen. But it would be nice, if they said "these rules are how greyhawk works, this is how eberron works, this is how the forgotten realms works." But at that point the ideal would be to have a different rpg for each one. Which won't happen.

I suppose a compromize could be to establish a firm setting, admit that the rules are unique to that setting and probably shouldnt be one to one ported elsewhere, and then make conversion kits galore for any kind of theme and setting, rather than trying to shoehorn them all into the original setting.

oh but as an aside: in terms of giving classes stuff to do outside their central domain of expertise, you don't really need to look for esoteric stuff for fighters, they've got, like, "being scary", "being beefy", "being good at smashing or moving things", "being athletic", and that's fine? Like if those aren't coming out as useful in a dungeon crawl, or if spellcasters are matching them just on the basis of some handwavey "magic can do anything!" explanation, maybe that's the problem and not that fighters need broader domains of built-in competence. those seem like things that should be useful and character-defining outside of fights, don't they?

Well, its not gonna be me, even when I finally do live up to my name.

All things aside, considering the sixth of the dusk sequel preview we got, I'm prone to say something new. Something we haven't seen before. Something that just pulls all the sides apart and it's just a big mess.

I feel like, though, there is a big bad that'll be around. It might be Odium, but considering stormlight, I don't think he'd still have the fused, after 10 books. Considering Kelsier, maybe, but I don't think he'd end up a bona fide big bad, just a meddler. Maybe a villain, definitely and antagonist, but I doubt the big bad.

We already have so many factions and I feel like we're just gonna keep adding onto that, especially as different groups leave planets in different ways, having different groups from different cultures on planets as well as different groups from the same culture on a planet to groups that are unified and from multiple planets.

I do think Kelsier is gonna last longer than Odium though. Hopefully I get the chance to punch him again.

It was made by those who were dead

01/07/3309 The Pleiades

The way is shut.

Reblog for a wider audience please!