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What is a roleplaying game? Is it a military simulation? A wargame? It was in the beginning, clearly, as the original rules grew out of the idea of having individual "hero" units battle. But I think it has evolved beyond that. A roleplaying game is an interactive epic, a saga that unfolds from the decisions of the players and the seeming fatefulness of random chance. It is a story written in broad strokes, a tale of high adventure. It is a shared mythology. Want to make the game better? Dig deep into real mythology and make your characters mythic champions and villains. Don't create your character to fit a niche in a set of rules, make it a living, breathing myth based on iconic ideas and symbols. 

Look at the Ranger class. It was based directly on the work of Tolkien, but where did he get the idea from? The Merovingians, the sorcerer-kings of France who were betrayed and exiled. They became The Lost Kings, wandering in the wilderness to keep their heirs hidden from assassins. No one knew who was one of their number, but they watch over the land to this day, hiding in the shadows to keep their existence a secret. Sounds a lot more interesting than some genocidal berk who likes to hunt, right?

When you create a class or race for D&D you are creating a set of tools for making a myth, a dream people can share. You are making the building blocks of a legend...
  

Mar 9, 2012 -- 10:24AM, Jim11735 wrote:

Later editions of D&D almost reference classic fantasy RPG tropes to describe itself.  The earlier editions of D&D didn't have those references so they used real mythology and legends. 

I see a RPG as a story about characters, not their players.  The players play the game that shapes the story of the characters.  More emphasis should be placed on this distinction.

Exactamundo! A roleplaying game is drama, a form of interactive theatre in which the actors and the audience are one and the same, creating the script through improvisation as they play. The rules are secondary to the story...

Mar 11, 2012 -- 1:02AM, Bronze_Hero wrote:

 Wait a minute Merovingians as Sorceror-Kings my history books must have skipped over something.

I wasn't going to say anything. I'm finding that dicussing actual classical, medieval and renaissance European history on this forum meets with a stony lack of interest, even from people who claim that that's what the game should primarily reflect.

But let's be clear:

"The Da Vinci Code" and "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" are not history.
Renaissance faires are not history. "Renaissance" isn't pronounced that way, and "fair" isn't spelled that way.
"Braveheart" isn't history either.

The game doesn't have to rely on history for its source. I'd love to see one or more settings fron 5e that bear no close resemblance to any RL history.

But if we're going to use history as our sources, let's not be fools about it.

Z.

Mar 11, 2012 -- 3:02PM, Samloyal23 wrote:

There was a lot of folklore about the Merovingians, Tolkien knew that, he used the idea of an exiled king to create Aragorn...

Can you actually demonstrate that? For example, with a reference to Christopher Tolkien's History of Middle-Earth? Because I'm reasonably familiar with Tolkien's major RW influences, the history of European royalty, and the Holy Grail / hidden king mythos. And I'd be willing to bet that any claim that Tolkien was influenced by a legend about exiled Merovingian kings was made up out of whole cloth by notorious fraud Laurence Gardner. As an historian, it's my opinion that nothing the late Mr Gardner said or wrote should be taken remotely seriously.

Let's be clear about this: the stuff about the Merovingians isn't true, and isn't traditional folklore, and the stuff about Tolkien being influenced by it isn't true either.

Z.