One problem I've come to have with D&D is the realization that somewhere down the line, you're going to reach a high enough level that the only things a DM can throw at the party to challenge them is stuff that's basically god-tier. At that point you have to use magic of some kind, regardless of if you're a martial or not, just to scratch the thing, which I think only adds to the imbalance between mages and martials.
One time I ran a DND game for my family. The party woked up in a dungeon, only vaguely remembering heavily drinking last night and signing a contract. They explore, find some stuff and once they "complete" the dungeon they get teleported to a colosseum. They see floating magical eyeballs when suddenly a Lich, wearing ornate clothes and massive amounts of gold jewelry, announces that they passed the Initial test and are now part of the Dungeon Games. The Lich is kind of based of Bob Barker, the location of the campaign is in the outer planes (more specifically inside of a skull of a dead eldritch god), all the inhabitants have been kidnapped by the Lich for some reason. All the races are represented, even the "evil" ones like Gnolls, but they do show up as "bad guys" inside the dungeon. No one actually dies in the dungeon, the Lich feeds on the pain and suffering of the participants inside the dungeon so he doesn't need to eat souls. A reality TV dungeon crawling game with elements of wrestling.
I'm with you on like 75% of this, but the "magic is inherently boring" bit is a bizarre take. Like... sure, if you always describe it in as reductive a way as possible, it's always going to be boring. Same goes for literally anything. That's like saying "all descriptions of melee combat are just 'So-and-so raised their sword and swung it, cutting the orc' so therefore all melee combat is inherently boring". It's pretty transparently nonsense.
Like, he can say whatever he wants, but having a mage in my party having his soul in the shape of a forklift and being used as such in random spurs and moments has to be the sickest thing I've ever seen a character do. ABSOLUTELY RAD!
Started playing D&D forty years ago when my step mom gave me the old classic red box basic edition. Back then, the basic conventions of the fantasy genre were fun, because they were simple and straightforward. I was ten, so not really putting a lot of thought into stuff, ya know? By the time I was fifteen, I was thinking about this stuff a lot, though, and starting changing things up, adding in context and generally fleshing things out more as I built worlds for my friends to explore. That Elf Nation over there, it wasn't just Elves, but they held all the political power and controlled the government, so they got to set the rules. Orcs aren't evil by nature, but are an oppressed minority, and see themselves as rebels and freedom fighters. Dwarves have been forced back into the mountains after a particularly bloody war, and their culture became isolated. So on and so forth. The more I played with the ideas, the more I questioned why they existed in the first place. Obviously, the time in which the origins the genre were more or less codified played a big part, but so did the metaphorical meaning behind them. Context is everything, and understanding the why does matter, so you can better understand the mentality of those who first crafted the ideas. Understanding that doesn't mean agreeing with it, but it is knowledge, and can help flesh out the world your players inhabit, and challenge the thinking of the players themselves. All of this lead to me becoming an actual writer, and helped me think about how the worlds I was creating for my fiction would have developed and evolved over time. How they would be different to the usual medieval fantasy settings, and why. How technological development would change the way various cultures interact, how races interact, and what role various classes would play in a world that was constantly changing. How would a a wizard really fare in a world with machine guns, and why would anyone still carry a sword in that instance. The kind of thinking you are discussing here goes beyond just crafting playable worlds for table top rpgs, it encourages creative thinking in general, for writers and artists of all types. It even challenges us to think about the real world, and what has made it the way it is. Well done.
I think you are really underestimating the racial/ethnic homogeneity of pre-industrial civilizations. And even then, that took a while, and many nations still are. People don’t travel much. Especially in high numbers.
I don't agree with "saying orcs are strong but stupid is racist" necessarily. Orcs and humans *are* different species, and therefore them having different physical and mental capabilities to humans or dwarves or elves is completely plausible, as those things are *at least* influenced by genetics. It wouldn't be racist for me to say a bear is stronger but not as intellegent as your average human, even if bears could form their own civilization.
sure, maybe, but when people are playing these characters in a tabletop setting and races are largely interchangable cosmetics, it's a little...eh... even without that context, i agree that on paper it's not racist but in practicality, comparing the intelligence of two sapient beings is not a good look.
It's not necessarily racist, but it really comes down to implementation. Different species having different baseline characteristics is pretty safe. When every member of a species (with at most very rare exceptions) gets painted with the stereotype, that starts to echo real-world racist pseudoscience. D&D's mechanics imply the former, but the worldbuilding tends to imply the latter. It's also noteworthy how this conversation tends to focus on orcs. At least in my country, the stereotype of an unintelligent, brutishly violent "race" has been and is still used to justify violence against Black people, including murder. The same stereotype has been used by (mostly European) colonial powers to justify invading other nations, c.f. "The White Man's Burden". That's exactly the stereotype embodied by the classic depiction of orcs. In either case, I don't think it's *necessarily* a no-fly zone; those tropes can be used intelligently, as we see with Firefly's Reavers, Animorph's Hork-Bajiir, and many depictions of zombies. It can also work when the subject is an organization which people join voluntarily, which can as simple as pirates. When it's simply tied to "race", it's really fraught with echoes of real-life colonialism, racism, and slavery, and perhaps even more importantly, to pseudoscientific claims used to justify all of those things.
in addition to all the previously made good points... bears can't make civilization. Intelligence is one of the hardest things to measure, and even then if there is a slight decrease in whatever processing power is given, how would you even figure out how that manifests? Do orcs have worse pattern recognition? Are they therefore less superstitious? And would they also be bad detectives? Math is a cultural skill, not a genetic skill. At the point where you can talk to an orc and they have societal structures there is already not much of a difference between humans and orcs besides any possible culture, even if the averages are different.
It wouldn't necessarily be but, the legacy of orcs, drow, etc is that they are often framed as a inherently evil "other" for the good heros to fight. Especially when you're specifically using the term race and borrowing from real world racist stereotypes it becomes hard to see how it's not problematic. Take dnd for example. Traditionally the orcs are "uncivilized" brutes as opposed to the "civilized" heros... coming from generic western fantasy land based off europe. As another example Drow are as a species, made by an evil god, matriarchal, and literally called "dark elves". It's like pretty close to black face/minstrel shows in execution. Even ignoring the times where they have included more blatent examples of that. Oppose that to many times the patriarchal, not inherently evil other elves and humans... idk why anyone vibes with base dnd lore tbh.
About orcs being strong and stupid being "textbook racism" - Orcs are literally a different species, and not a variant of human, so they might just be physically less intelegent, being closer to children in their intellect. Same with strength. I think lots of settings miss out on very interesting ideas by making orcs and other races simply "humans with a quirk" instead wholly unique, alien creatures.
6:03 I think with a more...reserved quantity of magic, targeted use, and good anatomy knowledge you can get the same effects. Like targeting the head. Would you go for the eyes specifically? Does the hair singe or even catch? What degree of burning to the skin? Does it steal oxygen out of their lungs? And that's just with fire. Stuff like electricity and the damage convulsions can cause, cold, poisons, and other hazards have their own unique biological effects ripe for exploiting if you do the research (read: have a hyperfixation like I do).
There's always an interesting disconnect to what I see as "fantasy" and what most youtube media I see talks about when it comes to "fantasy". It's interesting to me, as a writer, to see these various videos critiquing or offering advice about fantasy stories, and using "fantasy" to often essentially mean DnD
I think one thing many people forget is that Fantasy wasn’t always supposed to be medieval. D&D took a lot of post-apocalyptic elements (the whole background of The Forgotten Realms is collapsed advanced civilizations), with cosmic horror thrown in. It doesn’t map well to modern fantasy, but a preindustrial setting with the longer lived races preserving lost advanced knowledge makes more sense. If you look at the lore of goblins/hobgoblins/bugbears it seems very much like they are the “mutant” survivors of a fantasy apocalypse (in D&D background). I like treating the different species as “people” but it takes something away if they’re just humans with funny ears. I think if you’re not going to have them do their own alien things you’re better off with a just human setting.
My little trick for making magic interesting is not just making it rare , but making it beholden to the laws of physics. So no conjuring shit from nothing and having to worry about equal and opposite reactions.
I find that to be the least interesting way to do magic imho. Because by doing that, you’re not making a magic system, you’re making a science with more glitter. I like it when magic is almost this unknowable, barely understood force that only a couple people can really utilise through strange means.
I like it when magic systems are based on Pacts with higher entities. No manipulating the weave with mana; your only options for wild cosmic power are some outer god, demon, or nature spirit. "Why can't I use magic to start an industrial revolution?" "Because your demonic patron Dread McStabby says 'fuck you,' that's why."
Such a nice video and channel. The "Conflict" section of the video where you compared magic vs. melee made me think that "magic" in Tolkien's legendarium being subtle might be the reason why we can't have a good game based on that world. Maybe game devs/companies assume that if they put a magic user who slings fireballs and lightning bolts left and right they'll get harsh reactions and it won't be accurate and if they don't, a gameplay with just physical/melee aspect will be boring and not flashy.
Jeez this channel is so underrated despite having ultimately entertaining videos with humor, i love your content to the point that i literally forced my friends to subscribe to you, and surprise surprise they thank me for forcing them cause they love your content so much! Keep up the good work bro!
I had Chinese Elves with Dragon features and when they get to the end of their mortal lives, they transform into dragons, and pass into an afterlife where they can choose to stay, or reincarnate. They also aren't immortal, and hate being called "Elves" as well, and are quite xenophobic namely because of where they live. But they're chill with the ethnic Humans, Kumiho, Desert Elves and even the Steppe Amazonian SCythian-esque and Orc peoples.
I always kinda rationalized the “common language” trope in d&d being the product of the Faerun setting, since there was supposed to be a magocractic human empire which collapsed into a variety of smaller city-states following a weird war with anti-magic slugs. Now, do players ever think about this? No, of course not! This is exactly the sort of watsonian world building logic that fun but ultimately useless to anyone who isn’t this deep down the rabbit hole.
I think a good way to make magic more unique and creative is to give it unique forms of expression. For example in a story im writing eveyone has a latent magic ability inside of them that not many people ever unlock in their life time. This power can be anything at all from being able to conjure and control flames to being able to warp and control their own flesh to mutate themselves. But the thing that makes every one of these powers is their form of expression. 1 ability may at a fundimental level be very similar to another but each ability is used in a uinique way and form by its weilder that gives it its own personality. Another example is that someone may be able to generate electricty and harness its power to increase their strength and speed, and so that user might don a set of armor made from a magical gold that lets them charge it up to increase its affects. This gold might normally be useless for armor because of it being so maluable and it being infused with magic might make it not suitable to be used for currency. On top of this the lightning doesnt have to look like lightning these powers could look like flower petals, Water, raw energy, bones or anything else that helps give both the power and the weilder more personality to make them not all seem like generic mage number 21. This also helps set these abilities apart from normal magic which also exists in the story. Normal magic anyone can use but has limitations and is alot harder to use effectively as while while the abilities are unique to each person they have a subconcious understanding of how to use them unlike mana which requires training both phisical and mental to use. This makes spellcasters not common but rare enough to not cause widespread socital changes because of magic whilst making the abilitiy users even rarer and giving something to compare their power to. Also a small rant about monster A great way in my mind to help make monsters more interesting is to blur the line between monsters and humans or human like races. What if at a surface level goblins seem bad raiding villages and stealing but as more infomation is brought to light its revealed that they have no choice as the other monster races are too strong for them to take on leading to them targeting undefended villages. What if orc and kobold camps and settlements had a unique form of culture and way of life that not many people ever get to see due to people just thinking of them as monsters, Someone could try and enter a orc camp but have to prove their strength in a duel to gain their respect first. There are so many ways monsters, specifcally ones that are human like can be expanded upon other than just calling them monsters because they kill and eat stuff As for just pure monsters and beasts monster hunter does a great job at giving beasts personality due to showing off not only their unique design but their habits and tendencies that set them apart from others. Maybe the monster wants to kill you not because its hungry or territorial but because you did something it didnt like and was sacred to it like drinking from a certain pond, Harming a certain kind of creature or maybe just because it can sense your intentions or personality. Giving the "mindless beasts" a sense of strange inteligence but not enough to be on par with human like races can open many more opportunities with them and can make each of them unqiue with how they use it
7:27 Second edition of Pathfinder actually may have swung the balance the other way because now there are lots of people complaining that casters can't compete with martials (which is correct, they can't, they have a different niche)
I think you're too hung up on the word 'race.' When you're talking about Elves, Dwarves, Orcs and whatever else, they aren't different races, they different species. Saying they should all have the same level of variation as humans is as brain dead as saying real world gorillas have the same variability as real world humans do. For a real world example, look at Parakeets. Parakeets is a family made up of several different species, all of which have behavioral patterns that vary based entirely on species (genetics) alone, even as they have overlapping variability in behavior. Lovebirds and Budgies have some similar behaviors, but also many wildly different behaviors at the same time. Fantasy 'races' work the same way, because they aren't 'races' of the same species, they're different species with lots of similarities.
what bugs me is that lotr isn't even like the basic stereotype. Orcs were clever and industrial, and dwarves weren't engineers. I think early D&D taking inspiration from conan influenced it a lot more than people realize
magic wounds dont have to suck if you move byeond the basic "i throw fire at them", theirs no reason a magic spell cant inflict a physical wound, i would in fact argue magically conjuring slashes from nothign feels more magical then pulling what is basically a molotov cocktail out of your ass
I was casually listening to this really nice video while enjoying my manual hobby only to lift my head up to the screen IN THE EXACT MOMENT to see Borderlands spoiler. Not really your fault tho, just kinda "oof" moment for me
One of the definitions of _nation_ includes a shared ethnicity (in addition to a shared territory, history, and culture). So, it might be hard to build a nation of different ethnicity, races, or species. What you could build might be a state such, as an empire, the economics of which might be exploitative (i.e. "Core and Periphery"), which might create conflict between various blocs, but could also cause various blocs to align to work against their shared foes or resist their shared government. While you may not like characterization based on racism, racism and species-ism is real, alive, and well, and will probably always exist. Even if people were less racist, clans might still exist, and if reproduction in this fantasy section is like the real world where different species usually aren't compatible for hybridization, then clans will be single-race, meaning the culture around which you might build a nation or state might still be single race. I'm looking at it as a writer and political scientist, not a tabletop RPG player where humans have to get into character. I get what you're going for and agree that reducing racism is not only desirable but both realistic and achievable in-universe without forcing it. I can imagine fantasy states and societies with multiple species and races living together in relative peace with some shared identity and culture and history, despite their obvious biological differences. However, racism and species-ism might still exist, even if the people try to avoid it, because history, tradition, religion, reproduction, biological differences will all work together to create different and sometimes competing incentives for various behaviors. The saying, "Birds of a feather flock together" exists for a reason, and so many groups might remain mostly uni-species. The fun part is how individuals from different species who specialize in the same occupation will find similarity and shared desired to produce _Cross-cutting cleavages_ in economical, Social and political pillars of their culture, creating multi-ethnic, multi-race and multi-species blocs. That being said, maybe some physical traits are likely. Maybe Orcs are all muscular, like most bears on earth, but maybe some can be brainy like Bruce Banner/Incredible Hulk. One model might be modern humans and Neanderthals, where the differences may seem large by probably weren't. On the other hand, another model might be modern humans and modern gorillas. Or, if you want to get even more fantastical yet real, Homo Erectus and Gigantopithecus, who probably crossed paths in southeast Asia.
I think that magic is not more boring descriptively than martial combat, just that there is a very available creative pitfall with describing magic. a better description of fireball could go "she opened her palm in the direction of the momentarily stunned assailant and in a rush of hot wind flame surrounded his face, melting it like so much wax." and thats a description for bland magic, if you make a less dnd-esque magic system the descriptions can get much better. (not to mention the above description is off the cuff and not as good as a prepared one could be obviously)
6:29 i feel like the main mistake youre making here is degrading magic combat to essentially "we fire on each other". there is so much more there to be had. magic interacting with other magic for an example is by far the most interesting part of magic systems, and non-magic combat aspects weaving into the whole as well. If in your story your mage is just a living artillery then yeah your magic is gonna be very repetitive. so dont do that then
I kinda disagree with your take of "Orcs shouldn't be genetically bound to be dumb bodybuilders, that makes no sense." Like... different genes will lead to different things, it makes perfect sense for different species to have different adaptations that prioritize different traits. I'm not saying that orcs necessarily should be bound to that stereotype(especially since no other playable races usually see any kind of stat specialization via reduction), just that it's logical if they, or any other race, are.
I'm going to disagree with how you find magic boring because "you're going to always end up writing the same discriptions". Using your fire example, how people create that fire can be different depending on the setting. Is your character a magical creature like a dragonborn who's magic is more biological than mystical? How do they cast spells? Is it verbal? With movements? You also mentioned armor, and yes metal is going to have a much different reaction to fire than leather will. Same as that Ice will be pretty damn effective on a creature that's primarily water. I also just think that magic as a utility goes under appreciated. If you can create fire in your hands, you basically have your own free Infinite lighter. I also think there's a lot more interesting types of magic outside of the standard elemental magic, like time magic, gravity magic, necronancy, etc. I just don't agree that in comparison to martial weapons, that there isn't as much if not more freedom to be creative with it. I mean, there's only so many ways to swing a sword.
So, I personally disagree on some aspects, but absolutely agree on others. Personally, I like the idea idea of some species being longer lived than others - fantasy does not require genetics to explain this; it is, after all, fantasy. That said, it requires that the differences are played into, and thought about more seriously. In the same way that "common" is arguably just the most spoken human language in the region, "elvish" and "orcish" are presumably the languages spoken by the local elves and orcs - elves and orcs from other places most likely speak different languages. Likewise, I prefer there to be differences between the various species beyond the cosmetic - elves should not, imo, simply be humans with pointy ears. Give me elves who live for centuries, and then look at how that shapes their various societies. To take orcs in Pathfinder as an example, all orcs have a certain ferocity that humans don't. In Golarion's Europe equivalent, the orc society is one of violent raiders, who are commonly Chaotic Evil in alignment (or were, before pathfinder did away with alignment in the remaster). In Golarion's Africa equivalent, the orc society is one of brave demon hunters, and are (or were) commonly Lawful Good in alignment. Orcs in general are different from humans, but are also different from each other in the same way humans are. All that said, while I don't think that the differences between fantasy species should be purely cosmetic, I do agree that they should not result in entirely homogenous cultures. I want to see orc wizards, who might not be as smart as humans, but are still just as capable magically. I want to see elf barbarians, who might not be as durable as humans but take advantage of their improved senses and agility. I want to see halfling paladins and dwarf warlocks, and other such combinations. Of course, this is easier to do in systems that aren't D&D, but there you go.
Sounds like you are you just want historical fiction honestly, with maybe a few super special characters having slight magic, but then why aren’t those people in charge of everything if they can do anything more than just convincer with magic? Same with making your own cultures, religions, and nations, since you will need to think about the knock on implications of that just like magic. And I’m going to guess also in the “saving the world is boring, let’s be peasants hunting a thief through the woods”. And doesn’t going against an organization defeat the “make it personal” part? Unless you are going the “we are all victims of society” thing, which I personally find stupid.
I mean fantasy races are basically separate species. They should be very different from one another. Video kind of lost me at about 3 minutes in. If you want to be separate from Tolkien, make your own races or go whole hog into “there can be monsters, but not other sentient races” that’s underutilized imo. Add breach loading guns, if you need to add non european based cultures, don’t do Japan and “vaguely middle eastern”. Boom, your fantasy world is less trope-y. You’re welcome.
hell yea, someone else mentioned anatomical hurdles of fantasy languages, i think a human speaking draconic should sound as graceless and embarassing as an English speaker saying quesadilla wrong because they arent reptiles
Love this perspective. D&D (and subsequently works based off it and Tolkien's work) has always rubbed me wrong with how it's handled different groups of people, but the true ridiculousness of self-segregation hadn't really dawned on me until now
My man. You're fuckin' spittin' in this video, all good points. I do have one point I'd like to add not in opposition to this video I couldn't have said better myself, but alongside it. I've been running TTRPGs since 2007, always weekly, sometimes daily. I'm a screenwriter, and I really like running grounded fantasy. My longest running game, however, I find uses a setting that's not really talked about by the community at large - grounded HIGH fantasy. I find that grounding a game/story has less to do with mimicking life in setting, and everything to do with mimicking life in emotional honesty. The whole campaign is rife with Gods and high magic and crazy ancient things, and yet somehow turned out darker than my years-long Dark Heresy campaign. Everyone in the world agrees that life is fleeting, as wizards and monsters are capable of so much, and their relationships with death and loss reflect that. People are aware that they're just a tiny part of something impossible to understand, which turns grand wizards and leylines and other staple magic bullshit into less 'glowing blue rune goes pew' and something more akin to the eldritch. Magic use is hereditary, and parents keeping magical children hidden so they can't get sucked into the wild shit mages are put through is something semi-common - not just because it's dangerous, but because knowing how the world really works changes you. I also include magical wounds in interesting ways. Two examples. -A mage using bands of force to cut someone's hands off at the wrist, but not having enough strength to get through the bone, so she had to slowly squeeze until the bone splintered; all while the victim wailed and tried to escape, held in place by the force bands ripping into him, which didn't end at watching the agony, but at later befriending the character and having to watch how his life and self image have changed as a result of having this happen to him. -A paladin having her shoulder broken in several places by an exploding fireball, and after flash-healing herself to keep fighting, realizing she'd accidentally fused the joint together and had to find a druid to put her under, cut her shoulder open, re-break the bone and fuse it with an herb that would act like muscle when enchanted. Afterwards, she needed like three weeks to recover, because magically healing it would potentially re-fuse the bone and the process would have to start over. The whole game is very 'classic fantasy', but there's still so much you can do with that, even if it's tropey. Horror, drama, loss, grief, hate, depression, joy, dinners with friends, remembering the people you've lost silently, wishing you'd acted differently, paying for your mistakes, wondering how you're going to continue being a parent when you know that you live on the skin of a dying God and feeling just how small you are in the face of it. Be real with your characters as PEOPLE, and your story will always be grounded.
Instead of having clear cut pure magic characters and clear cut pure martial characters, how about we integrate them? If the magic is really as abundant in the high fantasy worlds of dnd as it seams, would it not make sense that EVERYONE would know some level of magic? A jack of all trades, master of none, is always better than a master of one. Why would warriors delibirately neglect a powerful tool they can use anytime anywhere? That's just illogical. To make a fantasy story make sense, use the three M's. Magic, melee, and muskets.
Really like the perspective on race and culture you bring up in fantasy. I've always hated how simple and one trait like they make races. Ignore some of the trolls on here that are not actually thinking it through and just attacking. The attitude they came at you with shows the kind of person they are.
I dont like tolkien and I hate how everithing is based on his wroks. Im a big myths fan, irish myhts, Snorri Sturlusons books, Amazonian tribes culture, stuff like this. I like them cause they give you ability to look upon world with new perspective, cause thoes people knew some things better than we today. Tolkien however writes about modern time with bows and stupid magic spells instead of guns and industrial technologies. His works are somewhat "historically inaccurate" if you get what i mean. My point are: 1. His representation of "magic" is the most missleading thing in the universe, there is no fireballs or lightning stikes. Magic is always seamless, magic is the set of rules that are too hard for us humans to understand or control. Also there is no "good" magic. All magic is inherently sort of evil, because its something that we can not comprehend, thoes who can are not really humans, most of magical creatures in myths and legends were at some point humans, but power took their humanity. 2. Fairies dont live in one world with Humans. Magical creatures live only on the other plane of existance, the world of death and spirits, they come in real world of people very rarly but their influence is all over humans. Tolkien is writing about united world where everyone exist. It is more of a monotheistic idea and this idea does not work with stuff like dwarfs and feries. 3. Tolkien puts difrent creatures from difrent cultures in one soup wich looks dumb. Also it cuts most of the original meaning of thoes creatures. Over all i think people cling to him cause he is easier to understand for us. Who did it better? Who is a better infuence for an interesting fantasy world? (outside of myths) I'd say Dunsany Lord is one of the best, his worlds are actually believable (no wonder, dude lived next to runes of ancient irish capital). Ambrose Bierce is nice too. Also i really recommend Northern Journey, beautiful game that nails "historical" fantasy.
Have you read any of Tolkien's work? Your statements are confusing and seemingly have no relation to the actual world Tolkien created. 1. Magic does not function like you've described it in Tolkien's world, and neither does every magical tradition (for the general description). 2. Many spirits, gods, and other supernatural beings can and do live within the mortal realm: Trees, forts, volcanos, homes, valleys and mountain tops. You can argue these places act as a gateway or passage into the "Otherworld", but the distinction between the "Otherworld" and "Our world" can be very wishy washy, and these could simply be places of wilderness or magic existing within the mortal world. It is a fine decision to place supernatural beings within our world, or without. 3. This is not an issue, drawing inspiration from multiple sources to create something unique isn't wrong or "dumb"; only execution can be flubbed, which it wasn't. Lossing the original meaning of a creature isn't an issue if: It replaces it with some new and interesting, and which isn't extremely sacrilegious to the original. I hate the copying, of the copies, of the copies, OF THE COPIES, of Tolkien's work. It's been reused and regurgitated to extreme abuse. Fantasy has cannibalized itself to meaningless. The clichés need a break and writers need to draw from the same wellspring that Tolkien originally drew from: Mythology and folklore. They then either have to use those ideas in unique ways or create new amalgams from them.
I think you're making unfair assumptions about what Fantasy as a genre is, and how a magical (high or low) medieval society would work. We as humans are individuals, but our humanity is defined by our relations with other humans, so no human can exist in a vacuum. We defined as individuals by the group. Fantasy as a genre is not all Tolkien, and a technological advancement would not necessarily be available to everyone (take for example, ourselves, we have nuclear energy yet we still burn coal and fossils). For fantasy and Tolkien, this is much more complex and would require an Appendix N discussion, for which I have no energy right now because I'm with the flu. Good video tho, really well put!!
"melee is better than magic because the descriptions of magic are boring" tell me you've never experienced a well written magic system without telling me you've never experienced a well written magic system /hj fr tho hard magic systems are my lifeblood and they are _anything_ but one note and boring, if you can't "just cast fireball" then you never describe someone just casting fireball :P
Well made video but...got to disagree with your comment about 'why would there be a human kingdom' which no offence is very obviously from someone from the New World. Before the advent of industrial technology which allowed mass transit most people lived and died where they were borm. Obviously if you have magic that allows easy teleportation that changes things but still that opens up more cans of worms for you to think about.
While I try to drag my current D&D game thru "Battle Brothers" vibe mud I become more and more aware arising issues that you've pointed in your video. Hence I would like to thank you for it by writing an extensive comment! First of all, I struggle to fight off culture/nation homogeneity (or how i like to call it "they are humans but with elf ears") by stating that the world I currently build on doesn't have a way of mass communication or mass transportion, therefore some bum farmer from Green Valley is still stuck in the iron age will not know there are goddamn airships in the realm over the mountains. Even if there was a way to quickly transfer the messages, there still would be language and culture barriers to overcome. For me its also important to remember that our modern idea of "nation" truely began once humanity developed mass media (newspapers) and it became possible to put larger groups of people into same thinking. I too faced the case of "magically boosted crops" when the party showed up in community that's a one giant farm (likely thanks to black soil it was built on) consisting of bounty goddess followers (Goldenfields) - I stated for myself (should players inquire) that the tenements of religion there are strict on not overusing miracles, in order to not create as much food, so it would spoil and thus anger the goddess. And even if it was the way to make "infinite food and explode the population" said farms would be massive, would require massive amount of security from outside threats (beasts, dragons, giants), manpower to collect the crops before they spoil and solid, secure trade routes to distribute the food. Scale is something empires in our history struggled with - once they reach certain scale, the bubble bursts and they slowly or rapidly whither away. Furthermore once players obtained "bag of holding" we stumbled upon case of "hey, why don't we stick all our food and water in there?". I simply said "that food and water becomes ash". At that point I stated that any arcane created resource is bland and doesn't provide sustenance or quench thirst with exception of miracles/prayers. So creating water make covered surface wet but not "WET", but at the same time you could petition your divine god of choice to conjure morsel of food BUT should you do it too often (ie "break the economy") you would incur it's wrath.
In one TTRPG I play (which as far as I know was unfortunatelly never translated into english), in the rules for world, autors said: "and yes elf, dwarf and others live as long as humans, maybe you yourself managed to overcome all of the isues (most of them hidden) but we as a team could not, so this is how we fixed it"
'All orcs are really strong but stupid' doesn't sound racist to me, but more like a race that is fundamentally different from humans, perhaps closer to the great apes. What _is_ racist is the concept of racial alignments. Heck, the idea of alignments in general is pretty shaky, since each culture in a setting will have its own moral codes. Also, magicking up water isn't going to seriously affect agriculture if it can only be done at a few dozen litres a day per person. And infinite water doesn't lead to infinite food, because only so much can be grown per acre, not mature how well irrigated it is. Where it might have an effect is on hygiene. As to the question of adversaries, 'people' is a very debatable concept. Is a sapient bear a 'person'? What about a tree-spirit? An _intelligent_ enemy is always superior to a stupid one, but the form that intelligence takes can be highly variable, while still being intelligent.
I have to disagree with you about races that have the same physiology should always integrate, humans have less differences between each other yet up until recently all the white people lived in Europe and all the black people lived in Africa, and all the Asian people lived in Asia
You saying magic is limited in its descriptions tells me that your imagination for what 'magic' is is extremely limited. Magic can be basically anything. Just defining the word is a challange. Throwing a fireball? That's nice. How big is it? How hot is it? How does it move? Does the intensity change? What are you thowing the fireball at? What defenses are put forth to stop it? There's a million billion different answers to everything magical and including it in a story can add anything from 2 to 20 different dimensions to your storytelling depending on what that 'magic' is.
If you’re gonna make all the races inherently the same as human but just with a different coat of paint, why even have them? At that point just only have humans.
7:26 Not related to the topic of the video, but you've triggered my autism trap card: I think habit of twin-pairing Pathfinder and D&D is a relic of previous editions and should not continue. PF2E, whilst it still may be a high-fantasy d20 game, is mechanically different enough that putting it under the D&D umbrella is a disservice. For a specific example, looking at the linked timestamp, you group them both in the context of "overpowered casters", despite a significant factor of PF2E's popularity coming from the fact that casters and martials are on an equal playing field. Paizo's handling of ancestries now is also a lot better than before, and better that WotC's (even still Tolkien-inspired). Note that all this applies to PF2E, for PF1E go for the throat.
i know this is an older video but if anyone knows the name of the game at 8:49 i would like to know it thanks, also i fully agree the culture and not race idea!
Love this video! Something this reminded me of, for one steampunk fantasy world I'm making I made different races and some of them have languages that cannot be replicated because some are non verbal and others are impossible to imitate. So my solution for communication was to create "trade languages" that were made specifically to allow communication between races.
I don't often find fantasy enthusiasts with whom I agree with on almost everything! I, too, have a low-magic DnD world split on cultural lines in which most conflicts are cultural, ethnic (not racial), or economic in nature and among sentient beings instead of monsters. Though if you do go this route, you will need to make humanoids far more interesting in combat than "soldierman roll to hit."
One problem I've come to have with D&D is the realization that somewhere down the line, you're going to reach a high enough level that the only things a DM can throw at the party to challenge them is stuff that's basically god-tier. At that point you have to use magic of some kind, regardless of if you're a martial or not, just to scratch the thing, which I think only adds to the imbalance between mages and martials.
A nest of kobolds beat a end game level party. You don't have to throw gods at players if you are a good gm.
One time I ran a DND game for my family. The party woked up in a dungeon, only vaguely remembering heavily drinking last night and signing a contract. They explore, find some stuff and once they "complete" the dungeon they get teleported to a colosseum. They see floating magical eyeballs when suddenly a Lich, wearing ornate clothes and massive amounts of gold jewelry, announces that they passed the Initial test and are now part of the Dungeon Games.
The Lich is kind of based of Bob Barker, the location of the campaign is in the outer planes (more specifically inside of a skull of a dead eldritch god), all the inhabitants have been kidnapped by the Lich for some reason. All the races are represented, even the "evil" ones like Gnolls, but they do show up as "bad guys" inside the dungeon. No one actually dies in the dungeon, the Lich feeds on the pain and suffering of the participants inside the dungeon so he doesn't need to eat souls.
A reality TV dungeon crawling game with elements of wrestling.
I'm with you on like 75% of this, but the "magic is inherently boring" bit is a bizarre take. Like... sure, if you always describe it in as reductive a way as possible, it's always going to be boring. Same goes for literally anything. That's like saying "all descriptions of melee combat are just 'So-and-so raised their sword and swung it, cutting the orc' so therefore all melee combat is inherently boring". It's pretty transparently nonsense.
Like, he can say whatever he wants, but having a mage in my party having his soul in the shape of a forklift and being used as such in random spurs and moments has to be the sickest thing I've ever seen a character do. ABSOLUTELY RAD!
Started playing D&D forty years ago when my step mom gave me the old classic red box basic edition. Back then, the basic conventions of the fantasy genre were fun, because they were simple and straightforward. I was ten, so not really putting a lot of thought into stuff, ya know?
By the time I was fifteen, I was thinking about this stuff a lot, though, and starting changing things up, adding in context and generally fleshing things out more as I built worlds for my friends to explore. That Elf Nation over there, it wasn't just Elves, but they held all the political power and controlled the government, so they got to set the rules. Orcs aren't evil by nature, but are an oppressed minority, and see themselves as rebels and freedom fighters. Dwarves have been forced back into the mountains after a particularly bloody war, and their culture became isolated. So on and so forth.
The more I played with the ideas, the more I questioned why they existed in the first place. Obviously, the time in which the origins the genre were more or less codified played a big part, but so did the metaphorical meaning behind them. Context is everything, and understanding the why does matter, so you can better understand the mentality of those who first crafted the ideas. Understanding that doesn't mean agreeing with it, but it is knowledge, and can help flesh out the world your players inhabit, and challenge the thinking of the players themselves.
All of this lead to me becoming an actual writer, and helped me think about how the worlds I was creating for my fiction would have developed and evolved over time. How they would be different to the usual medieval fantasy settings, and why. How technological development would change the way various cultures interact, how races interact, and what role various classes would play in a world that was constantly changing. How would a a wizard really fare in a world with machine guns, and why would anyone still carry a sword in that instance.
The kind of thinking you are discussing here goes beyond just crafting playable worlds for table top rpgs, it encourages creative thinking in general, for writers and artists of all types. It even challenges us to think about the real world, and what has made it the way it is.
Well done.
I think you are really underestimating the racial/ethnic homogeneity of pre-industrial civilizations. And even then, that took a while, and many nations still are.
People don’t travel much. Especially in high numbers.
I don't agree with "saying orcs are strong but stupid is racist" necessarily. Orcs and humans *are* different species, and therefore them having different physical and mental capabilities to humans or dwarves or elves is completely plausible, as those things are *at least* influenced by genetics. It wouldn't be racist for me to say a bear is stronger but not as intellegent as your average human, even if bears could form their own civilization.
sure, maybe, but when people are playing these characters in a tabletop setting and races are largely interchangable cosmetics, it's a little...eh...
even without that context, i agree that on paper it's not racist but in practicality, comparing the intelligence of two sapient beings is not a good look.
It's not necessarily racist, but it really comes down to implementation. Different species having different baseline characteristics is pretty safe. When every member of a species (with at most very rare exceptions) gets painted with the stereotype, that starts to echo real-world racist pseudoscience. D&D's mechanics imply the former, but the worldbuilding tends to imply the latter.
It's also noteworthy how this conversation tends to focus on orcs. At least in my country, the stereotype of an unintelligent, brutishly violent "race" has been and is still used to justify violence against Black people, including murder. The same stereotype has been used by (mostly European) colonial powers to justify invading other nations, c.f. "The White Man's Burden". That's exactly the stereotype embodied by the classic depiction of orcs.
In either case, I don't think it's *necessarily* a no-fly zone; those tropes can be used intelligently, as we see with Firefly's Reavers, Animorph's Hork-Bajiir, and many depictions of zombies. It can also work when the subject is an organization which people join voluntarily, which can as simple as pirates. When it's simply tied to "race", it's really fraught with echoes of real-life colonialism, racism, and slavery, and perhaps even more importantly, to pseudoscientific claims used to justify all of those things.
in addition to all the previously made good points... bears can't make civilization. Intelligence is one of the hardest things to measure, and even then if there is a slight decrease in whatever processing power is given, how would you even figure out how that manifests? Do orcs have worse pattern recognition? Are they therefore less superstitious? And would they also be bad detectives?
Math is a cultural skill, not a genetic skill. At the point where you can talk to an orc and they have societal structures there is already not much of a difference between humans and orcs besides any possible culture, even if the averages are different.
It wouldn't necessarily be but, the legacy of orcs, drow, etc is that they are often framed as a inherently evil "other" for the good heros to fight. Especially when you're specifically using the term race and borrowing from real world racist stereotypes it becomes hard to see how it's not problematic.
Take dnd for example. Traditionally the orcs are "uncivilized" brutes as opposed to the "civilized" heros... coming from generic western fantasy land based off europe. As another example Drow are as a species, made by an evil god, matriarchal, and literally called "dark elves". It's like pretty close to black face/minstrel shows in execution. Even ignoring the times where they have included more blatent examples of that.
Oppose that to many times the patriarchal, not inherently evil other elves and humans... idk why anyone vibes with base dnd lore tbh.
@@cassius_scrungoman story be a really big fan of is James Wendell he wrote soon as the soulmate saga check it out it's a really it's really good
About orcs being strong and stupid being "textbook racism" - Orcs are literally a different species, and not a variant of human, so they might just be physically less intelegent, being closer to children in their intellect. Same with strength. I think lots of settings miss out on very interesting ideas by making orcs and other races simply "humans with a quirk" instead wholly unique, alien creatures.
6:03 I think with a more...reserved quantity of magic, targeted use, and good anatomy knowledge you can get the same effects.
Like targeting the head. Would you go for the eyes specifically? Does the hair singe or even catch? What degree of burning to the skin? Does it steal oxygen out of their lungs? And that's just with fire. Stuff like electricity and the damage convulsions can cause, cold, poisons, and other hazards have their own unique biological effects ripe for exploiting if you do the research (read: have a hyperfixation like I do).
There's always an interesting disconnect to what I see as "fantasy" and what most youtube media I see talks about when it comes to "fantasy". It's interesting to me, as a writer, to see these various videos critiquing or offering advice about fantasy stories, and using "fantasy" to often essentially mean DnD
I think one thing many people forget is that Fantasy wasn’t always supposed to be medieval. D&D took a lot of post-apocalyptic elements (the whole background of The Forgotten Realms is collapsed advanced civilizations), with cosmic horror thrown in. It doesn’t map well to modern fantasy, but a preindustrial setting with the longer lived races preserving lost advanced knowledge makes more sense. If you look at the lore of goblins/hobgoblins/bugbears it seems very much like they are the “mutant” survivors of a fantasy apocalypse (in D&D background). I like treating the different species as “people” but it takes something away if they’re just humans with funny ears. I think if you’re not going to have them do their own alien things you’re better off with a just human setting.
disagree on many points but still interesting perspective
My little trick for making magic interesting is not just making it rare , but making it beholden to the laws of physics. So no conjuring shit from nothing and having to worry about equal and opposite reactions.
I find that to be the least interesting way to do magic imho. Because by doing that, you’re not making a magic system, you’re making a science with more glitter. I like it when magic is almost this unknowable, barely understood force that only a couple people can really utilise through strange means.
@@pyrrhusofepirus8491 In my opinion, that is the most boring way to do magic. By making it unknowable, you are making it boring
I like it when magic systems are based on Pacts with higher entities. No manipulating the weave with mana; your only options for wild cosmic power are some outer god, demon, or nature spirit. "Why can't I use magic to start an industrial revolution?" "Because your demonic patron Dread McStabby says 'fuck you,' that's why."
Such a nice video and channel.
The "Conflict" section of the video where you compared magic vs. melee made me think that "magic" in Tolkien's legendarium being subtle might be the reason why we can't have a good game based on that world. Maybe game devs/companies assume that if they put a magic user who slings fireballs and lightning bolts left and right they'll get harsh reactions and it won't be accurate and if they don't, a gameplay with just physical/melee aspect will be boring and not flashy.
Jeez this channel is so underrated despite having ultimately entertaining videos with humor, i love your content to the point that i literally forced my friends to subscribe to you, and surprise surprise they thank me for forcing them cause they love your content so much! Keep up the good work bro!
I had Chinese Elves with Dragon features and when they get to the end of their mortal lives, they transform into dragons, and pass into an afterlife where they can choose to stay, or reincarnate. They also aren't immortal, and hate being called "Elves" as well, and are quite xenophobic namely because of where they live. But they're chill with the ethnic Humans, Kumiho, Desert Elves and even the Steppe Amazonian SCythian-esque and Orc peoples.
I always kinda rationalized the “common language” trope in d&d being the product of the Faerun setting, since there was supposed to be a magocractic human empire which collapsed into a variety of smaller city-states following a weird war with anti-magic slugs.
Now, do players ever think about this? No, of course not! This is exactly the sort of watsonian world building logic that fun but ultimately useless to anyone who isn’t this deep down the rabbit hole.
I think a good way to make magic more unique and creative is to give it unique forms of expression.
For example in a story im writing eveyone has a latent magic ability inside of them that not many people ever unlock in their life time. This power can be anything at all from being able to conjure and control flames to being able to warp and control their own flesh to mutate themselves.
But the thing that makes every one of these powers is their form of expression. 1 ability may at a fundimental level be very similar to another but each ability is used in a uinique way and form by its weilder that gives it its own personality.
Another example is that someone may be able to generate electricty and harness its power to increase their strength and speed, and so that user might don a set of armor made from a magical gold that lets them charge it up to increase its affects. This gold might normally be useless for armor because of it being so maluable and it being infused with magic might make it not suitable to be used for currency.
On top of this the lightning doesnt have to look like lightning these powers could look like flower petals, Water, raw energy, bones or anything else that helps give both the power and the weilder more personality to make them not all seem like generic mage number 21.
This also helps set these abilities apart from normal magic which also exists in the story. Normal magic anyone can use but has limitations and is alot harder to use effectively as while while the abilities are unique to each person they have a subconcious understanding of how to use them unlike mana which requires training both phisical and mental to use.
This makes spellcasters not common but rare enough to not cause widespread socital changes because of magic whilst making the abilitiy users even rarer and giving something to compare their power to.
Also a small rant about monster
A great way in my mind to help make monsters more interesting is to blur the line between monsters and humans or human like races. What if at a surface level goblins seem bad raiding villages and stealing but as more infomation is brought to light its revealed that they have no choice as the other monster races are too strong for them to take on leading to them targeting undefended villages.
What if orc and kobold camps and settlements had a unique form of culture and way of life that not many people ever get to see due to people just thinking of them as monsters, Someone could try and enter a orc camp but have to prove their strength in a duel to gain their respect first.
There are so many ways monsters, specifcally ones that are human like can be expanded upon other than just calling them monsters because they kill and eat stuff
As for just pure monsters and beasts monster hunter does a great job at giving beasts personality due to showing off not only their unique design but their habits and tendencies that set them apart from others. Maybe the monster wants to kill you not because its hungry or territorial but because you did something it didnt like and was sacred to it like drinking from a certain pond, Harming a certain kind of creature or maybe just because it can sense your intentions or personality.
Giving the "mindless beasts" a sense of strange inteligence but not enough to be on par with human like races can open many more opportunities with them and can make each of them unqiue with how they use it
7:27 Second edition of Pathfinder actually may have swung the balance the other way because now there are lots of people complaining that casters can't compete with martials (which is correct, they can't, they have a different niche)
I think you're too hung up on the word 'race.'
When you're talking about Elves, Dwarves, Orcs and whatever else, they aren't different races, they different species.
Saying they should all have the same level of variation as humans is as brain dead as saying real world gorillas have the same variability as real world humans do.
For a real world example, look at Parakeets. Parakeets is a family made up of several different species, all of which have behavioral patterns that vary based entirely on species (genetics) alone, even as they have overlapping variability in behavior. Lovebirds and Budgies have some similar behaviors, but also many wildly different behaviors at the same time.
Fantasy 'races' work the same way, because they aren't 'races' of the same species, they're different species with lots of similarities.
lets just twist everything
what bugs me is that lotr isn't even like the basic stereotype. Orcs were clever and industrial, and dwarves weren't engineers. I think early D&D taking inspiration from conan influenced it a lot more than people realize
magic wounds dont have to suck if you move byeond the basic "i throw fire at them", theirs no reason a magic spell cant inflict a physical wound, i would in fact argue magically conjuring slashes from nothign feels more magical then pulling what is basically a molotov cocktail out of your ass
I was casually listening to this really nice video while enjoying my manual hobby only to lift my head up to the screen IN THE EXACT MOMENT to see Borderlands spoiler. Not really your fault tho, just kinda "oof" moment for me
One of the definitions of _nation_ includes a shared ethnicity (in addition to a shared territory, history, and culture). So, it might be hard to build a nation of different ethnicity, races, or species. What you could build might be a state such, as an empire, the economics of which might be exploitative (i.e. "Core and Periphery"), which might create conflict between various blocs, but could also cause various blocs to align to work against their shared foes or resist their shared government.
While you may not like characterization based on racism, racism and species-ism is real, alive, and well, and will probably always exist. Even if people were less racist, clans might still exist, and if reproduction in this fantasy section is like the real world where different species usually aren't compatible for hybridization, then clans will be single-race, meaning the culture around which you might build a nation or state might still be single race.
I'm looking at it as a writer and political scientist, not a tabletop RPG player where humans have to get into character. I get what you're going for and agree that reducing racism is not only desirable but both realistic and achievable in-universe without forcing it. I can imagine fantasy states and societies with multiple species and races living together in relative peace with some shared identity and culture and history, despite their obvious biological differences. However, racism and species-ism might still exist, even if the people try to avoid it, because history, tradition, religion, reproduction, biological differences will all work together to create different and sometimes competing incentives for various behaviors. The saying, "Birds of a feather flock together" exists for a reason, and so many groups might remain mostly uni-species. The fun part is how individuals from different species who specialize in the same occupation will find similarity and shared desired to produce _Cross-cutting cleavages_ in economical, Social and political pillars of their culture, creating multi-ethnic, multi-race and multi-species blocs.
That being said, maybe some physical traits are likely. Maybe Orcs are all muscular, like most bears on earth, but maybe some can be brainy like Bruce Banner/Incredible Hulk. One model might be modern humans and Neanderthals, where the differences may seem large by probably weren't. On the other hand, another model might be modern humans and modern gorillas. Or, if you want to get even more fantastical yet real, Homo Erectus and Gigantopithecus, who probably crossed paths in southeast Asia.
gotta love imperial empires
My question would be: what general tabletop system would you recommend for taking on these sorts of changes?
I think that magic is not more boring descriptively than martial combat, just that there is a very available creative pitfall with describing magic. a better description of fireball could go "she opened her palm in the direction of the momentarily stunned assailant and in a rush of hot wind flame surrounded his face, melting it like so much wax." and thats a description for bland magic, if you make a less dnd-esque magic system the descriptions can get much better. (not to mention the above description is off the cuff and not as good as a prepared one could be obviously)
6:29 i feel like the main mistake youre making here is degrading magic combat to essentially "we fire on each other". there is so much more there to be had. magic interacting with other magic for an example is by far the most interesting part of magic systems, and non-magic combat aspects weaving into the whole as well.
If in your story your mage is just a living artillery then yeah your magic is gonna be very repetitive. so dont do that then
what's the game at 8:50?
Sir, you are being hunted
I kinda disagree with your take of "Orcs shouldn't be genetically bound to be dumb bodybuilders, that makes no sense." Like... different genes will lead to different things, it makes perfect sense for different species to have different adaptations that prioritize different traits. I'm not saying that orcs necessarily should be bound to that stereotype(especially since no other playable races usually see any kind of stat specialization via reduction), just that it's logical if they, or any other race, are.
Hi cassius! :D
I'm going to disagree with how you find magic boring because "you're going to always end up writing the same discriptions". Using your fire example, how people create that fire can be different depending on the setting. Is your character a magical creature like a dragonborn who's magic is more biological than mystical? How do they cast spells? Is it verbal? With movements? You also mentioned armor, and yes metal is going to have a much different reaction to fire than leather will. Same as that Ice will be pretty damn effective on a creature that's primarily water. I also just think that magic as a utility goes under appreciated. If you can create fire in your hands, you basically have your own free Infinite lighter. I also think there's a lot more interesting types of magic outside of the standard elemental magic, like time magic, gravity magic, necronancy, etc. I just don't agree that in comparison to martial weapons, that there isn't as much if not more freedom to be creative with it. I mean, there's only so many ways to swing a sword.
So, I personally disagree on some aspects, but absolutely agree on others. Personally, I like the idea idea of some species being longer lived than others - fantasy does not require genetics to explain this; it is, after all, fantasy. That said, it requires that the differences are played into, and thought about more seriously. In the same way that "common" is arguably just the most spoken human language in the region, "elvish" and "orcish" are presumably the languages spoken by the local elves and orcs - elves and orcs from other places most likely speak different languages.
Likewise, I prefer there to be differences between the various species beyond the cosmetic - elves should not, imo, simply be humans with pointy ears. Give me elves who live for centuries, and then look at how that shapes their various societies. To take orcs in Pathfinder as an example, all orcs have a certain ferocity that humans don't. In Golarion's Europe equivalent, the orc society is one of violent raiders, who are commonly Chaotic Evil in alignment (or were, before pathfinder did away with alignment in the remaster). In Golarion's Africa equivalent, the orc society is one of brave demon hunters, and are (or were) commonly Lawful Good in alignment. Orcs in general are different from humans, but are also different from each other in the same way humans are.
All that said, while I don't think that the differences between fantasy species should be purely cosmetic, I do agree that they should not result in entirely homogenous cultures. I want to see orc wizards, who might not be as smart as humans, but are still just as capable magically. I want to see elf barbarians, who might not be as durable as humans but take advantage of their improved senses and agility. I want to see halfling paladins and dwarf warlocks, and other such combinations. Of course, this is easier to do in systems that aren't D&D, but there you go.
Sounds like you are you just want historical fiction honestly, with maybe a few super special characters having slight magic, but then why aren’t those people in charge of everything if they can do anything more than just convincer with magic? Same with making your own cultures, religions, and nations, since you will need to think about the knock on implications of that just like magic.
And I’m going to guess also in the “saving the world is boring, let’s be peasants hunting a thief through the woods”.
And doesn’t going against an organization defeat the “make it personal” part? Unless you are going the “we are all victims of society” thing, which I personally find stupid.
I mean fantasy races are basically separate species. They should be very different from one another. Video kind of lost me at about 3 minutes in. If you want to be separate from Tolkien, make your own races or go whole hog into “there can be monsters, but not other sentient races” that’s underutilized imo. Add breach loading guns, if you need to add non european based cultures, don’t do Japan and “vaguely middle eastern”. Boom, your fantasy world is less trope-y. You’re welcome.
hell yea, someone else mentioned anatomical hurdles of fantasy languages, i think a human speaking draconic should sound as graceless and embarassing as an English speaker saying quesadilla wrong because they arent reptiles
Love this perspective. D&D (and subsequently works based off it and Tolkien's work) has always rubbed me wrong with how it's handled different groups of people, but the true ridiculousness of self-segregation hadn't really dawned on me until now
My man. You're fuckin' spittin' in this video, all good points. I do have one point I'd like to add not in opposition to this video I couldn't have said better myself, but alongside it. I've been running TTRPGs since 2007, always weekly, sometimes daily. I'm a screenwriter, and I really like running grounded fantasy. My longest running game, however, I find uses a setting that's not really talked about by the community at large - grounded HIGH fantasy. I find that grounding a game/story has less to do with mimicking life in setting, and everything to do with mimicking life in emotional honesty. The whole campaign is rife with Gods and high magic and crazy ancient things, and yet somehow turned out darker than my years-long Dark Heresy campaign. Everyone in the world agrees that life is fleeting, as wizards and monsters are capable of so much, and their relationships with death and loss reflect that. People are aware that they're just a tiny part of something impossible to understand, which turns grand wizards and leylines and other staple magic bullshit into less 'glowing blue rune goes pew' and something more akin to the eldritch.
Magic use is hereditary, and parents keeping magical children hidden so they can't get sucked into the wild shit mages are put through is something semi-common - not just because it's dangerous, but because knowing how the world really works changes you. I also include magical wounds in interesting ways. Two examples.
-A mage using bands of force to cut someone's hands off at the wrist, but not having enough strength to get through the bone, so she had to slowly squeeze until the bone splintered; all while the victim wailed and tried to escape, held in place by the force bands ripping into him, which didn't end at watching the agony, but at later befriending the character and having to watch how his life and self image have changed as a result of having this happen to him.
-A paladin having her shoulder broken in several places by an exploding fireball, and after flash-healing herself to keep fighting, realizing she'd accidentally fused the joint together and had to find a druid to put her under, cut her shoulder open, re-break the bone and fuse it with an herb that would act like muscle when enchanted. Afterwards, she needed like three weeks to recover, because magically healing it would potentially re-fuse the bone and the process would have to start over.
The whole game is very 'classic fantasy', but there's still so much you can do with that, even if it's tropey. Horror, drama, loss, grief, hate, depression, joy, dinners with friends, remembering the people you've lost silently, wishing you'd acted differently, paying for your mistakes, wondering how you're going to continue being a parent when you know that you live on the skin of a dying God and feeling just how small you are in the face of it. Be real with your characters as PEOPLE, and your story will always be grounded.
Most depictions of magic are just super powers. The occult should be secret and rare and it shouldn't boil down to DBZ ki blasts.
Instead of having clear cut pure magic characters and clear cut pure martial characters, how about we integrate them?
If the magic is really as abundant in the high fantasy worlds of dnd as it seams, would it not make sense that EVERYONE would know some level of magic?
A jack of all trades, master of none, is always better than a master of one.
Why would warriors delibirately neglect a powerful tool they can use anytime anywhere? That's just illogical.
To make a fantasy story make sense, use the three M's. Magic, melee, and muskets.
Really like the perspective on race and culture you bring up in fantasy. I've always hated how simple and one trait like they make races.
Ignore some of the trolls on here that are not actually thinking it through and just attacking. The attitude they came at you with shows the kind of person they are.
I dont like tolkien and I hate how everithing is based on his wroks.
Im a big myths fan, irish myhts, Snorri Sturlusons books, Amazonian tribes culture, stuff like this. I like them cause they give you ability to look upon world with new perspective, cause thoes people knew some things better than we today. Tolkien however writes about modern time with bows and stupid magic spells instead of guns and industrial technologies. His works are somewhat "historically inaccurate" if you get what i mean. My point are:
1. His representation of "magic" is the most missleading thing in the universe, there is no fireballs or lightning stikes. Magic is always seamless, magic is the set of rules that are too hard for us humans to understand or control. Also there is no "good" magic. All magic is inherently sort of evil, because its something that we can not comprehend, thoes who can are not really humans, most of magical creatures in myths and legends were at some point humans, but power took their humanity.
2. Fairies dont live in one world with Humans. Magical creatures live only on the other plane of existance, the world of death and spirits, they come in real world of people very rarly but their influence is all over humans. Tolkien is writing about united world where everyone exist. It is more of a monotheistic idea and this idea does not work with stuff like dwarfs and feries.
3. Tolkien puts difrent creatures from difrent cultures in one soup wich looks dumb. Also it cuts most of the original meaning of thoes creatures.
Over all i think people cling to him cause he is easier to understand for us.
Who did it better? Who is a better infuence for an interesting fantasy world? (outside of myths)
I'd say Dunsany Lord is one of the best, his worlds are actually believable (no wonder, dude lived next to runes of ancient irish capital). Ambrose Bierce is nice too.
Also i really recommend Northern Journey, beautiful game that nails "historical" fantasy.
Have you read any of Tolkien's work? Your statements are confusing and seemingly have no relation to the actual world Tolkien created.
1. Magic does not function like you've described it in Tolkien's world, and neither does every magical tradition (for the general description).
2. Many spirits, gods, and other supernatural beings can and do live within the mortal realm: Trees, forts, volcanos, homes, valleys and mountain tops. You can argue these places act as a gateway or passage into the "Otherworld", but the distinction between the "Otherworld" and "Our world" can be very wishy washy, and these could simply be places of wilderness or magic existing within the mortal world. It is a fine decision to place supernatural beings within our world, or without.
3. This is not an issue, drawing inspiration from multiple sources to create something unique isn't wrong or "dumb"; only execution can be flubbed, which it wasn't. Lossing the original meaning of a creature isn't an issue if: It replaces it with some new and interesting, and which isn't extremely sacrilegious to the original.
I hate the copying, of the copies, of the copies, OF THE COPIES, of Tolkien's work. It's been reused and regurgitated to extreme abuse. Fantasy has cannibalized itself to meaningless. The clichés need a break and writers need to draw from the same wellspring that Tolkien originally drew from: Mythology and folklore. They then either have to use those ideas in unique ways or create new amalgams from them.
You would know about fantasy considering you had to make up your own sexuality lmao
and can you tell me what that sexuality is
@@cassius_scrungoman Non-existant, like your fanbase
@@anatomicalx9355 if you're going to be bigoted you could at least use the proper terms
you're trying to diss my gender and can't even get it right
@@cassius_scrungoman Lmao, you dont even know your correct gender or sexuality, too many disorders
@@anatomicalx9355 im not sure if you actually read a single word i said, but regardless, thanks for the engagement & the view!
I think you're making unfair assumptions about what Fantasy as a genre is, and how a magical (high or low) medieval society would work. We as humans are individuals, but our humanity is defined by our relations with other humans, so no human can exist in a vacuum. We defined as individuals by the group.
Fantasy as a genre is not all Tolkien, and a technological advancement would not necessarily be available to everyone (take for example, ourselves, we have nuclear energy yet we still burn coal and fossils).
For fantasy and Tolkien, this is much more complex and would require an Appendix N discussion, for which I have no energy right now because I'm with the flu.
Good video tho, really well put!!
"melee is better than magic because the descriptions of magic are boring"
tell me you've never experienced a well written magic system without telling me you've never experienced a well written magic system /hj
fr tho hard magic systems are my lifeblood and they are _anything_ but one note and boring, if you can't "just cast fireball" then you never describe someone just casting fireball :P
and no, nothing in D&D or Pathfinder or any of its ilk are well written magic systems imo, vancian magic is boring and lazy
Well made video but...got to disagree with your comment about 'why would there be a human kingdom' which no offence is very obviously from someone from the New World. Before the advent of industrial technology which allowed mass transit most people lived and died where they were borm. Obviously if you have magic that allows easy teleportation that changes things but still that opens up more cans of worms for you to think about.
While I try to drag my current D&D game thru "Battle Brothers" vibe mud I become more and more aware arising issues that you've pointed in your video. Hence I would like to thank you for it by writing an extensive comment!
First of all, I struggle to fight off culture/nation homogeneity (or how i like to call it "they are humans but with elf ears") by stating that the world I currently build on doesn't have a way of mass communication or mass transportion, therefore some bum farmer from Green Valley is still stuck in the iron age will not know there are goddamn airships in the realm over the mountains. Even if there was a way to quickly transfer the messages, there still would be language and culture barriers to overcome. For me its also important to remember that our modern idea of "nation" truely began once humanity developed mass media (newspapers) and it became possible to put larger groups of people into same thinking.
I too faced the case of "magically boosted crops" when the party showed up in community that's a one giant farm (likely thanks to black soil it was built on) consisting of bounty goddess followers (Goldenfields) - I stated for myself (should players inquire) that the tenements of religion there are strict on not overusing miracles, in order to not create as much food, so it would spoil and thus anger the goddess. And even if it was the way to make "infinite food and explode the population" said farms would be massive, would require massive amount of security from outside threats (beasts, dragons, giants), manpower to collect the crops before they spoil and solid, secure trade routes to distribute the food. Scale is something empires in our history struggled with - once they reach certain scale, the bubble bursts and they slowly or rapidly whither away.
Furthermore once players obtained "bag of holding" we stumbled upon case of "hey, why don't we stick all our food and water in there?". I simply said "that food and water becomes ash". At that point I stated that any arcane created resource is bland and doesn't provide sustenance or quench thirst with exception of miracles/prayers. So creating water make covered surface wet but not "WET", but at the same time you could petition your divine god of choice to conjure morsel of food BUT should you do it too often (ie "break the economy") you would incur it's wrath.
In one TTRPG I play (which as far as I know was unfortunatelly never translated into english), in the rules for world, autors said: "and yes elf, dwarf and others live as long as humans, maybe you yourself managed to overcome all of the isues (most of them hidden) but we as a team could not, so this is how we fixed it"
'All orcs are really strong but stupid' doesn't sound racist to me, but more like a race that is fundamentally different from humans, perhaps closer to the great apes. What _is_ racist is the concept of racial alignments. Heck, the idea of alignments in general is pretty shaky, since each culture in a setting will have its own moral codes.
Also, magicking up water isn't going to seriously affect agriculture if it can only be done at a few dozen litres a day per person. And infinite water doesn't lead to infinite food, because only so much can be grown per acre, not mature how well irrigated it is. Where it might have an effect is on hygiene.
As to the question of adversaries, 'people' is a very debatable concept. Is a sapient bear a 'person'? What about a tree-spirit? An _intelligent_ enemy is always superior to a stupid one, but the form that intelligence takes can be highly variable, while still being intelligent.
I can't believe I forgot to bring up moral alignments in this video that shit is some horsecock and not in a good way
thank you for bringing it up
I have to disagree with you about races that have the same physiology should always integrate, humans have less differences between each other yet up until recently all the white people lived in Europe and all the black people lived in Africa, and all the Asian people lived in Asia
far travellers have always existed. immigrants have always existed.
@@profeseurchemical you're saying it as if it was common
You saying magic is limited in its descriptions tells me that your imagination for what 'magic' is is extremely limited. Magic can be basically anything. Just defining the word is a challange. Throwing a fireball? That's nice. How big is it? How hot is it? How does it move? Does the intensity change? What are you thowing the fireball at? What defenses are put forth to stop it? There's a million billion different answers to everything magical and including it in a story can add anything from 2 to 20 different dimensions to your storytelling depending on what that 'magic' is.
If you’re gonna make all the races inherently the same as human but just with a different coat of paint, why even have them? At that point just only have humans.
Doesn't "orcs being cockney" come from Warhammer, not Tolkien?
Titanfall spacebattles is just trying very hard to out accend eachother to drop titans for boarding.
Good video, ty
7:26 Not related to the topic of the video, but you've triggered my autism trap card: I think habit of twin-pairing Pathfinder and D&D is a relic of previous editions and should not continue. PF2E, whilst it still may be a high-fantasy d20 game, is mechanically different enough that putting it under the D&D umbrella is a disservice. For a specific example, looking at the linked timestamp, you group them both in the context of "overpowered casters", despite a significant factor of PF2E's popularity coming from the fact that casters and martials are on an equal playing field. Paizo's handling of ancestries now is also a lot better than before, and better that WotC's (even still Tolkien-inspired).
Note that all this applies to PF2E, for PF1E go for the throat.
How I worldbuild races is to give them plenty of space to have diffrent cultures.
Now this is an Aatrox level threat
i know this is an older video but if anyone knows the name of the game at 8:49 i would like to know it thanks, also i fully agree the culture and not race idea!
it's Sir, You Are Being Hunted, a indie game that was pretty popular about a decade ago
@@cassius_scrungoman oh, that would be why I've never heard about it I wasn't in the pc gaming space, defiantly will take a look at it!
Love this video! Something this reminded me of, for one steampunk fantasy world I'm making I made different races and some of them have languages that cannot be replicated because some are non verbal and others are impossible to imitate. So my solution for communication was to create "trade languages" that were made specifically to allow communication between races.
Well I have found my new Etalyx. Love finding creators with the same niche interest in games as me
I don't often find fantasy enthusiasts with whom I agree with on almost everything! I, too, have a low-magic DnD world split on cultural lines in which most conflicts are cultural, ethnic (not racial), or economic in nature and among sentient beings instead of monsters. Though if you do go this route, you will need to make humanoids far more interesting in combat than "soldierman roll to hit."