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Faraer
Great Reader
3308 Posts |
 Posted - 19 Nov 2004 : 19:32:28
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Here is the short screed I just posted on the rasalvatore.com boards, re a 'who's the most powerful?' question.quote:
Answer depends on (a) what you mean by 'most powerful' and (b) the needs of the story.
But the Realms was designed, from the start, so that such questions of 'who's mightiest' are meaningless and irrelevant. The original Forgotten Realms Campaign Set recommends changing NPC levels to frustrate player expectations. No one in the Realms knows these things, and definitively, neither do we. The Realms literature is full of characters 'punching above their weight' and showing that community, diplomacy, wits, and kindness matter more than character levels. Whoever you say is the 'most powerful' is liable to be defeated by someone you underestimated, or someone you never heard of. (And to be sure, many high-level characters remain unpublished. Shaaan remained unmentioned until 1995; Iyraclea until 2001; Maraunth Torr until 2002.) The 'who's mightiest' question is wholly artificial: it has nothing to do with game play, the fiction, or the setting as written. The most you can do is catalogue character levels or CRs (which are game artefacts), and what a waste of time that is.
And yet, some people seem to enjoy the 'X vs Y' discussions -- I tend to think they should play Top Trumps. What's the appeal?
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George Krashos
Master of Realmslore
Australia
6680 Posts |
Posted - 19 Nov 2004 : 22:51:56
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Ahh Faraer it stems from the earliest days of D&D gaming when people would keep their old PC sheets and pull them out to show off in a sort of "and this is the character of mine that killed Thor with a 'push' spell"-type way.
I would hazard a guess (and this is a guess - and maybe a wild one) that most gamers these days don't use their old PC sheets anymore; they live vicariously through the exploits of Drizzt or Elminster or Larloch and a host of others. In the beginnings of D&D, powerful characters or NPCs were just names - usually with spells attached to them. You guessed that Mordenkainen was pretty hot but had no real clue as to his levels, spells, stats, et. al. Even the old 1E "Rogues Gallery" product, which showcased some of the Greyhawk PCs and NPCs, had no-one over 14th level IIRC - and most of the individuals showcased were just what everyone should have if they play a balanced, non-accelerated campaign: decent characters without obscene power levels and/or items.
Of course, the nature of the game meant that it was open to the abovementioned abuse and then came the Realms. The complaints that are often made about the power level of the Forgotten Realms and the "archmage behind every bush" syndrome stem, I feel, from the difficulty in melding the style of Ed Greenwood's actual campaign play with presenting a campaign world for other gamers to set their play in. In Ed's campaign (and again I'm guessing) the stats for Elminster and the Simbul and Khelben were secondary to their actions and deeds in terms of facilitating gameplay and the story. If Elminster needed to cast a wish, he cast it, no matter if he only could cast a single 9th level spell a day and he's just cast time stop the turn before. If it helped the story and the gaming enjoyment of Ed's gaming group, it was okay - in other words, you never let the rules/stats get in the way of a good story as long as it didn't become a habit and wasn't obvious to your players and to the detriment of the game.
For DMs other than Ed, without his gaming and DMing experience, it was impossible to translate the flavor of the campaign setting (What's Shadowdale without Elminster in 1E Realms?) without giving the DMs some stats and 'gaming guts' to help them understand the movers and shakers. In Ed's game Larloch was powerful and not to be messed with because he was Larloch. In anyone else's campaign, Larloch was powerful and not to be messed with because he was a 36th level phase doppleganger elf troll with lots of ioun stones and three Hands of Vecna attached to his rear end - it helped people getting into the Realms understand the setting, because it brought everything back to what everyone understood: the rules and the crunch.
Of course, when you stat anything up it instantly becomes killable (which is why I just cannot fathom why the gods of FR have stats - total stupidity IMHO) but even more importantly for our discussion here, comparable. All of a sudden you could sit down and play out a one on one fight between Larloch and Elminster if you had the time and inclination.
Harking back to our primordial D&D desires to have the "best" character (whose flipside was the "killer" DM with the best kill ratio), we could now have a "favourite" character or NPC who we could champion as the "best". It's akin to having a sports hero or if we delve back into ancient times, cheering on a particular gladiator in imperial Rome.
Sure it may be a waste of time and all the evidence points to the simple fact that the threads and arguments become cyclic, but if that's how people get their kicks, then more power to them! Of course, I personally think that those types of discussions waste valuable gaming "energy" that could be better harnessed in creating something new and interesting for the game or more importantly, the Realms. I sometimes wish that people would spend just a small percentage of the time and thought they use in justifying the power of Larloch to come up with a new, unique epic-level spell of his or new magic scepter, which would actually add something to the game and benefit other gamers. But then again, I've always thought that those who can, do. Those who can't, start "Drizzt v. Elminster" threads. 
-- George Krashos
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"Because only we, contrary to the barbarians, never count the enemy in battle." -- Aeschylus |
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Bookwyrm
Great Reader
USA
4740 Posts |
Posted - 20 Nov 2004 : 04:30:54
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That's such an amazing analysis, Mr. Krashos, that I can only add, in reference to wanting the "best" character, the following truism:
"The greatest swordsman in the world doesn't fear the second-best swordsmen. He fears the worst, because he can't figure out what the freakin' heck the guy's gonna do next!"
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Hell hath no fury like all of Candlekeep rising in defense of one of its own.
Download the brickfilm masterpiece by Leftfield Studios! See this page for more. |
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Faraer
Great Reader
3308 Posts |
Posted - 20 Nov 2004 : 16:43:44
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Yes, the same deification instinct that's sublimated into celebrities is applied to these characters, making them into giant, brightly lit figures, marble statues on a stage. Pride in one's own character is natural: if you killed Thor in your game, however stupid that campaign was, it's still a real experience you have. The X vs Y thing, in contrast, is cold and abstract; and involves deciding who to root for (when not based on sentimental attachment) according to who you think's going to win -- which *is* a part of sport and celebrity fandom, and is amoral, fascist power-worship. And is ironic as the Realms' moral scheme heavily features conflict between those who pursue power and those who combat its abuse. The rewards of this kind of worship are false: these are not gods. And the backlash, where people say they 'hate' such-and-such a character, is partly caused by the realization of that, I think.
There's a big difference between using the rules as the structure holding up and partly defining the game world, and a utility to occasionally resolve conflicts. In Ron Edwards's gameist/narrativist/simulationist scheme, D&D leans toward gameist with nods to the others while the Realms is simulationist, with a good amount of narrativism and little gameism. As you say, you can't introduce people used to one to the other without difficulty, and you can't describe the Realms in rigid 3E terms without unforeseen effects and a lot of what we see as missing the point. I think the 'fiction' model of roleplaying is far more accessible to most people than the 'wargame' model that was its origin or the 'boardgame' model that TSR and WotC use again and again to push D&D to children. In other words, 'what everyone understood' as you put it is learned behaviour.
We know that none of the three Faiths and Pantheons authors wanted the god stats. Was the decision a pure kneejerk 'rulez=good' command from marketing, or something more calculated? Either way, it combined unpleasantly with the avatar novels to depict the gods as superpowered mortals.
Huh -- must stop writing. The perception of the Realms as 'overpowered' could get its own essay. Not today. |
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X vs Y
