I'm pretty sure, that when an average person reads any sort of fiction, they really do not care about politics or any possible political theme or correctness it has unless said fictitious work is intended to be political.
You'd think that, but the Order of the Stick forums have been taken over by very senstive people. I can understand not talking about contemporary real world religion in the context of religion in fictional settings. That's understanable, but I had posts scrubbed for drawing parallels to Greek and Norse mytholgy because that is technically real world religion and there a couple hundred people that still claim to keep the old religions.
Did other world builders say it's too politically incorrect? I'm not a world builder, so i don't know anything, but i feel like whether or not a fictional work is too politically correct/incorrect is incredibly banal compared to other important things it should work on in regards to their genre.
The Order of Stick forums are full of creative mature people but the moderators there are very cautious and very strict to anything even remotely related to religion. That's part of the reason I moved my world building thread here.
Now if I want to build a nation and come up with interesting noble houses and nobles to fill them with, those forums are a great resource but religion, even fake religions. Nope.
I did get attract a hostile non-moderator when I tried to talk about mythic gender archtypes.
I just wanna read and immerse myself in any fantastical world that borrows from the real one in varying degrees
Too much to ask.
I agree with
@Paradoxical Pacifism - trying to make a fantasy world appeal to political correctness-pedants and SJWs will just ruin it
I agree.
J.K. Rowling allegedly has made changes to her wizarding world based on such complaints and this has caused a fluff trainwreck.
I disagree. JK Rowling had a fluff trainwreck that attracted the attention of SJWs. SJWs were a symptom not the cause. Don't get me wrong, I really liked the
Harry Potter books. JK Rowling is a brilliant storyteller when it comes to character arcs and immersive narratives, but she is a terrible fluff writer, especially with continuity and math. She also struggles a bit with "Show don't tell" and she should never be allowed to write a screen play again which has hampered the
Fantastic Beasts series.
Sirius Black to Molly Weasley "You're too young to remember what it was like then..."
I immediately rememember, Mrs. Weasley is ten years older than Sirius. Why couldn't Rowling remember that. Very bad with math when it comes to character ages.
On some level I think Rowling is lonely and wants attention. That's why she feeds epilogue stuff in small tweets and what not rather than writing epilogue stories. She just happened to notice that if she says something political she gets more attention and more re-tweets.
You could always make the one they ganged up on a female. Turok? Although that does sorta almost sound like a male Vulcan name. (Tuvok)
(It was 5 v. 5 ...and then there were nine.)
Actually there were ten. One of the Ten sided with Tuorch against the Nine (though s/he pretended to side with the Nine then betrayed them). The oddball lost to history is called the Traitor. Most mortals assume the Tenth deity was female and there was a 5 v. 5 balance but the Nine and their agents refuse to divulge the Traitor's name or even whether the Traitor was male or female.
It is believed that the Traitor would be ressurected if mortals ever learned her true name.
Speaking of names, I based the name Turoch after
the Terrasque because both Turoch and the Terrasque try to eat everything in sight.
And now for something completely different...Do you guys want to read a lengthy musing about me trying to figure out how to realistically represent the effects of medieval armor abastracted into ten sided dice?
Most Readers said:
Too bad.
Weapons and Armor: Realism, Simplicity of Gaming and the Rule of Cool.
Shad is a big proponent of gambeson armor being surprisingly good and being at least as protective as leather armor if not more so. For my game system, I just lumped gambeson and leather armor. I made the stats the same and the cost the same. Players can select which one they'd rather envision their character wearing.
I was thinking, what if I did this for all armor...taking a page out of Warhammer fantasy and use very broad categories. Rather than figure out a chain shirt compares to brigadine armor I can just lump armor into three categories. Light armor, medium armor, and heavy armor. If you
really think orcs should wear brigadine armor or merfolk should wear armor out of interlocking sclaes, it doesn't really matter. The Rule of Cool says armor can look however you want and the Rule of Simplicity states at the end of the day, all armor fits into one of those categories.
Or maybe I want four categories, light, medium, heavy, and plate. I know plate armor is the best pre-gunpowder era armor but I'm having trouble drawing the line for real world armor distinction between medium and heavy.
Armor___Soak Value
Light_____3
Medium___4
Heavy_____5
Plate _____6
Or this.
Armor___Soak Value
Light_____3
Medium___5
Heavy_____6
Note that statistically a one die jump in soak value is significant.
To cover the issue of certain weapons being better against certain. Swords and most other edge weapons is pretty good at slicing through gambeson or unarmored targets but is not very effective at cutting through plate.
Blunt weapons and weapons that put a lot of force into a small area (military picks, warhammers, etc) are very good at piercing heavy armor.
I think I have a good system that balances realism and efficiency. Each weapon has two damage classes S damage and H damage. S damage applies to light armor and unarmored targets and most monsters. H damage refers to metal armored targets and monsters with rock like hides.
Bladed weapons have higher damage against S targets. Blunt weapons have higher damage against H targets. Piercing weapons tend to have equal H and S damage. Heavier weapons inflict more damage but have an accuracy penalty.
Fighting defensively with a weapon like an axe is not easy, hence they are
top heavy. Top heavy weapons have a slight penalty on defense.
Duelist weapons (ie rapiers) give the wielder a small bonus when fighting one opponent. The narrow point of a rapier is hard to parry, but rapiers are bad for fending off crowds.
Weapons with a long pole or a chain have the trait
+1 die to trip attacks which is pretty self explanatory. Weapons with a hook or chain have
+1 to disarm attacks. Bet you can't guess what the
shield breaker weapon quality does? This applies mainly to warhammers.
Parry weapons have a parrying bonus. Like the parrying dagger for instance.
I cannot for the life of me think of a real world weapon besides a rapier tha would qualify for the duelist trait, but a magial weapon of any sort can have the duelist trait if it was enchanted to fight duels. Likewise magic can let any weapon be a shield breaker or give bonus to disarm attacks.
I have a few other traits.
Brittle weapons apply to many improvised weapons. On a botched roll, brittle weapons break.
I think I have a pretty good handle on the various weapons and their pros and cons. I am fairly satisfied that my armor ratings are fairly realistic in their protective value.
The sticky wicket for game design that I'm not sure what to do with is armor penalties.
Most point based systems I've played, White Wolf's d10 system or West End's d6 system give fairly heavy Dexterity penalties for wearing armor and leave it at that.
I've dabbled in amateur HEMA (with foam weapons) and I've watched hours of video where HEMA enthusiasts use far more authentic weapons and armor. The main drawback to wearing armor is not that constricts movement. Armor impedes movement a little bit, but the main issues is that people wearing armor tend to tire out much faster than people who are not armored, especially because human sweat only works as a coolant if it's exposed to air.
In fact, if you fight or do other strenuous activity while unarmored, you can still get pretty tired. Realistically my game system should have some system incorporating fatigue, but the Rule of Simplicity says keeping track of character fatigue is a pain in the butt. The Rule of Cool states that characters getting fatigued is not very heroic.
I will point out that in all the games I played with a points based system, players (and myself) nearly always limit themselves to armor that carries no Dexterity penalty even if the character in question had a veyr high Dexterity. In Star Wars, Mandalorian Armor was the holy grail of armor because it provided great protection and no penalty.
In my current game, the players are of like mind. The players are all self-limiting themselves to armor with no dice penalties at all which in this case is gambeson or leather. They are not opposed to me switching out Dexterity penalties for a system based on fatigue, but they said this was not change the armor they are wearing. Gambeson and leather have a negligible fatigue penalty.
D&D and a lot of video games limit the armor that rogues and wizards and other character classes can wear as part of balancing the character classes. They also generally don't have a problem with fighters and other tank characters wearing plate armor all day long, day after day, which is something that wasn't done much in real life. Sometime's it's justified saying armor interferes with magical energies or something but usually the in-setting justification is pretty weak.
After much pondering I have decided not to give any spell-casters a penalty for wearing armor.
Then there is the issue that wearing bulky armor is inconvenient. I've seen people climb rock climbing walls or doing cartwheels in plate armor but it's still easier to do these things without wearing armor. A part of me wants to impose a small Dexterity penalty
and fatigue rolls, but it's hard to come up with a small penalty. D10 points based system are nice and streamlined but even one point penalties are pretty severe.
Then there is the issue with helmets. Helmets realistically limit one's vision and would penalize perception rolls if not attack rolls. This of course lead to characters saying "screw the character" which will also lead to characters saying "I aim for the head."
I don't like "I aim for the head." Called shots to do more damage just slows things down. I prefer to assume that combatants
always aim for the most damaging spot. If you roll damage and you roll well it means you hit a vulnerable spot. if you roll damage and don't roll well it means you did not hit a damaging spot.
.