From the original Monster Manual (1st Edition):
"Drow: The "Black Elves," or Drow, are only legend. They purportedly dwell deep beneath the surface in a strange subterranean realm. The drow are said to be as dark as faeries are bright and as evil as the latter are good. Tales picture them as weak fighters but strong magic-users."
From Vampire: the Masquerade (Second Edition):
"It is whispered that the Sabbat knows of ways to break the Bond, but it is said that one must pledge to the sect before the process will be imparted. Whatever the case, those who most resent their Bondage and retain the free will to act independently flee to the Sabbat - fearing the Black Hand less than continued servitude to an elder."
My Point:
When Drizzt hit us, or when the guides to the Sabbat were published, the ability of these creatures to inspire any sense of wonder and mystery disappeared. If a DM wants to provoke any sort of awe and mystery about his criminal mastermind, he really can't make it a Mind Flayer. Similarly, Storytellers can't inspire any real mystery in Vampire any more, since the players are just too blase about garou, mages, inconnu, and everything else. There's no mystery any more, and no sense of wonder.
Perhaps White Wolf are right to end the World of Darkness. If they do the reset right, they might even build some new mysteries into the setting.
What this means for the individual games master is that he has three choices:
1) Play with newbies. To the new player, everything is new and mysterious again. They've never heard the name Illithid, so might rightly be scared of it.
2) Accept that the wonder is gone. Okay, so your PCs will never be scared of the Sabbat. This doesn't mean that you can't run a decent Vampire game, just assume that everyone knows all this stuff, and build accordingly.
3) Try new settings. When starting an Exalted game, immediately shoot any player who even thinks about reading the core book and supplements. Then, you can build on the mystery of the deathlords. Similarly, build a homebrew D&D setting with an entirely different set-up of NPC races and monsters (although you don't necessarily have to change the PC races, since these should be known anyway).
4) Move the goalposts. It doesn't matter how much your players know about Werewolf: the Apocalypse if the werewolves in your Vampire game aren't what that book claims. Likewise, if the Sabbat really are a canibalistic cult of death-worshippers whose only interest in other vampires is in killing them, your know-it-all player is in for a nasty shock.
Of course, if option 4 is in use, be sure to let your players know this before starting play, or they may well cry foul. It may be their own fault their elder Ventrue just got himself diablerised, but they'll probably not see things that way.
Right, I'm off to right an adventure about an attack on the fourth annual Granny Rally tournament by cyborg zombies, and the need for Ethel, Maisy, Jess and Dorothy to re-form their ninja-squad and fight back...
Archived comment by me:
ReplyDeleteOf course, the reason Vampire had the sense of wonder at the start, and why the mention of the Drow was cool way back was that it was new and shiny. No doubt, in five years Exalted will be just as tapped out as the World of Darkness is now.
This is also most likely the cause of the malaise that is afflicting both Star Wars and Star Trek these days - we've seen it all before. It was all new, and cool, and wonderful when we hadn't boldly gone for 30 years, and when we'd never seen a Jedi before. Granted, there are significant and legitimate criticisms of the new incarnations of both of these that can be raised, but the truth is that the originals weren't that good, especially when measured by the same yardstick.
But they were new. Like Buffy was new, and has already started to lose its lustre. Like Babylon 5 was awesome, but failed in both spin-offs.
Systems and Wonder
One thing I was mulling over while I had lunch was the question of whether you could build a d20 game with the sense of wonder I'm now looking for. With it being so well-known, is any chance of finding something new now gone?
I know that the Storyteller system can provide the Wow!-factor, with Exalted being the current example. This is probably the reason it's doing so well at the moment.
More when I think on it some more.
Archived comment be me:
ReplyDeleteThen again...
There's no denying the power of the Lord of the Rings films, and they're not exactly filled with new and exciting fantasy elements (not a criticism of the films, that, merely a reflection of the fact that the book first expressed many of those elements in their commonly-used form).
So, perhaps the sense of wonder is not purely due to things being new and shiny. Perhaps it is instead due to the creation of an emotional investment where people would otherwise have lacked one?
If that's the case, the way to regenerate this sense of wonder would be the creation of an RPG campaign of similar grandeur and scope, ranging across the emotions, and with every bit as much input from the players as from the DM. (And, there's no reason that couldn't be done in d20.)
Of course, I have no idea how that would actually be done, but there we go.
Archived comment by Mort:
ReplyDeleteI think you have made several good points, and I also think they are all valid to a certain extent.
What you don't know becomes intresting, you want to find out what it is and how it works, thus you get a sense of wonder the first time you learn more about it. This is the easy bit, as being impressed or intrigued by something you don't know much about is rather easy.
So what about settings you already know by heart?
Well as you said, you can turn the setting on it's head, change stuff around, or introduce some new previously unknown home brewed evil into it. Or you can draw out an epic storyline into which the characters are very emotionally invested.
The problem with the second option is that you need to have a group that is willing to provide that investment, and not spend most of it's time cracking old mony python jokes and designating gay elves. You really can't force people into an adventure like lord of the rings without their full co-operation.
I guess that some people pay more attention when the setting is new and interesting, only to stop caring when it becomes well known. Setting-driven instead of character-driven roleplaying maybe?
Archived comment by me:
ReplyDeleteInteresting...
Previously, my thinking on settings was that they shouldn't diverge too much from the standard without good reason, because if you stretch things too far, you lose the players. Especially if things are radically different, but have the same names ("elves" that are ten feet tall, purple skinned, and strictly anti-magical). However, the notion that newness can inspire interest would indicate the contrary - stick too close to the metaphorical shore and people won't see the difference.
The answer, I suspect, is that you can't stay too safe, but can't be too radical either, but somewhere in the middle. I have grave doubts that a setting without humans (at all) would be viable, at least without a humans-in-funny-suits race.
The other question to ask there is: how much to tell the players? Too little, and they can't get anywhere (you need enough to at least create characters), too much and the mystery is gone.
Finally, and not hugely related, is the question of systems. For some reason, Exalted feels markedly different than Vampire, despite having largely the same system, while d20 Modern and d20 Star Wars both felt much like Dungeons & Dragons to me. Though perhaps that's just the way those games played out.
Archived comment by Mort:
ReplyDeleteI think you are correct in noting that you need to find a decent middle ground, no matter how much new and wonderful stuff you add to a setting you need a certain familarity for players to associate with. A setting totaly without humans leaves you in a rather difficult position, as there is nothing to compare with. Mechanical Dreams is a game developed by some french-canadians, and is set in a fantastic world, where dream and reality mixes. The setting is wonderful, exciting and very different from anything else. But, there are no humans at all in it, so I can't see me getting anyone to actually play the game.
Hmm, I don't really have a point, I'm just confirming your observations.