Ursula Vernon Explains It All

[wombat_socho]

Well, not really. But she does, in her own gentle and indirect way, explain why "realistic" steampunk, which shows the horrors of Victorian life for the proletariat, isn't that common and is rarely popular when it does show its head. Basically, nobody wants to read itAnd I'm totally on board with that argument. People read fantasy (and let's face

Comments

[darksumomo]

I never knew that about Chivalry and Sorcery. All I read and heard was that it had the most "realistic" magic (this from gamer who dabbled in the occult) and combat (again, from people in the SCA, who actually handled swords) systems of all tabletop role-playing games. That it was realistic in other aspects shouldn't surprise me, but I'd never heard about it until now, 30 years after the fact.

I suspect the people behind C&S had watched "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" and took seriously the scene in which one peasant tells another "There's the king." "How can you tell he's the king?" "Because he's not covered in shit."

[wombat_socho]

Well, according to Wikipedia, the creators were annoyed at the lack of realism in D&D, so I'm thinking they had a better grounding in medieval history than Arneson & Gygax, who were basically miniatures gamers with some exposure to fantasy. I actually played C&S a couple of times, and it was SERIOUS BUSINESS. You could easily spend an afternoon on character creation alone, disease was an ever-present threat, and dragons didn't have to be Huge and Ancient in order to find you crunchy & good with ketchup. Orcs weren't swordfodder either.

[darksumomo]

Well, that explains things. Then again, the members of Monty Python knew something about medieval history, too. They may have been comedians, but they did have Oxford and Cambridge educations--other than the American Terry Gilliam, who went to Occidental College.

As for elaborate character creation, if I wanted to play a game like that, I could play Traveller or one of the later editions of D&D. No wonder I never played C&S!

[wombat_socho]

Well...it's not like you were writing a short story; there were a lot of optional things that could be put in for additional color or left out to make gameplay go a little faster.

[huladavid]

"You want to have heroes the reader can identify with, after all, and most readers aren't into reading about losers.

You have made my head hurt what with the hysterical laughing and falling on the floor. (I may be taking your line the wrobng way, though.)

[wombat_socho]

There may have been a better way to put that, but it's what came to mind at the time.

[harvey_rrit]

Naturally. People enjoy fiction because it's better than real life.

Of course, the reason it's better is because fiction is controlled by a writer, but all real life has is a Director.

Which is why there are so many explosions, no plot, and the star is the director's girlfriend's illegitimate sonD

[wombat_socho]

And fiction (usually) comes out in a way the reader likes, which isn't always true of real life.