Elder Races, and Younger: a theoretical framework for D&D

Jan 30, 2008 14:27

fiona was complaining about the d&d setting, in particular she doesn't like alignment (a commonly recognized problem), or the treatment of goblins ( Read more... )

secret history, biological mythology, geekery, myth, game, tolkien, d20, who knew?, literary analysis

Leave a comment

Comments 3

jadeilyn January 31 2008, 03:29:04 UTC
I agree with your idea about the giant races. It also could have been a winning strategy that changed with the environment/time. Consider dinosaurs. The timescale involved here is much smaller, but I'd say that magic is an accelerator in the setting.

Reply

sedesdraconis February 1 2008, 01:02:41 UTC
Just to clarify, is the idea that you're agreeing with the idea that "the biggest races "won the race" so to speak", as opposed to the idea of them getting bigger as they age?

It also could have been a winning strategy that changed with the environment/time. Consider dinosaurs. The timescale involved here is much smaller, but I'd say that magic is an accelerator in the setting.

Those are definitely good points. For example, you could make a case for the ancient world having a different distribution of resources that either favored large races (e.g. patchy resources requiring travel over great distances) or simply allowed them (e.g. very rich resources, allowing very large organisms to congregate in number only seen in much smaller organisms in the present).

But I'm much seduced by the idea of kobolds and gnomes as proto-Dragons and Giants, at the moment :p

Reply


goonlord February 1 2008, 11:52:30 UTC
Where do beholders fit into all this?

Reply


Leave a comment

Up