KhorasForum

Wow! That's a lot of big changes all at once. I guess I'll have to sit down sometime and do a deep dive pretty soon, and get up to date. Glad to see that the world is still growing and improving!

That's kind of the impression I've always had as well.

On a slightly different point, I'm curious about which mages have decoded Huridian in Khoras canon. I'm guessing Morlokk and Tolkarus?

As for the adventure you're describing, Delbareth, that sounds like fun, but it'll definitely be interesting to see how well you can keep your players unaware.

It's been a few months for me, too (been busy with life, going back to school, etc.), but I agree. I appreciate that you always ask this question, but my default answer will usually be in line with Laurent and Delbareth: we're petty tyrants of our own tables, so feel free to include as much canon information as you want, and we'll be free to take or leave anything you provide as it suits our needs.

All right! Four talismans against four more, here we come.

What a fun session. Excited to hear where things go next, and looking forward to the conclusion of the story!

Yeah, it goes into detail about how geography has affected human societies, going all the way back to early humans. I'm already quite enjoying it. And the other, like, five books I'm currently juggling, lol.

Great points, Dave.

I definitely agree with you that the value added by putting in that extra amount of work to use tiny details to stitch the narrative into the fabric of the world, so that it doesn't feel like the story could be transplanted to any other setting is well worth the effort required to do so, and I love that you've taken the time to do that with Khoras, because I think it's one of the reasons that Khoras never seemed flimsy in the way that many online campaign settings that I've since come across can.

As to how it adds to worldbuilding, you just reminded me, I've just started reading Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond (it's been a personal goal of mine for a long time, so I'm excited). Are you familiar with the book? It's certainly the sort of thing you'd find interesting, I suspect.

I know how it is with busy weeks, man. No worries.

I agree with you that Khoras strives for believability, which is one of the things I love about it. It manages to be a fairly "high magic" setting insofar as what the limits are, while feeling grounded in the way that low magic "sword and sorcery" worlds tend to do, and things generally don't feel as arbitrary as, say, a Forgotten Realms, which, as much as I like it, due to over a decade of playing cRPGs set there, has some serious issues as far as feeling organic. It often feels like the various aspects of the setting exist purely to provide areas to play in a particular way, without regard for the societies in question to function sensibly, e.g. the cities of the Sword Coast, which don't seem to have any good reason not to be confederated or SOMETHING, especially given how close rival power centers like Amn and Menzoberranzan are to cities like Waterdeep and Neverwinter.

I would like to hear your thoughts regarding material culture, though. I mean, it you've obviously thought about it some, with regions having different levels of technology, different building materials, etc., but a lot of what stands out is more to do with big things like the physical laws, magical laws, general ecology, etc. What about swords? Baskets? Food utensils?

It seems like you have thoughts about these things, and I'm interested in hearing them.

PS: Has anybody actually watched the video? If so, what did you think? Did you find it interesting/valuable as a resource?

You make several good points.

As for your mention of the Silmarillion, I would say that it's kind of a weird case (I was actually discussing this quite recently with my friends at my alma mater's philosophy club), because on the one hand, it's modern mythos, drawn from Tolkien's love of Germanic mythology and strong feelings about the loss of an "authentic" Anglo-Saxon identity in the wake of the Norman Conquest, but on the other hand, it's very much in the spirit of traditional epic poems, especially Beowulf and the Iliad, and while both have fantastic and mythical aspects, the people composing those poems had a visceral understanding of traditional warfare and the associated material culture that modern authors lack, and Tolkien's fiction is informed by his historical knowledge as well as his time in the trenches of World War I.

Obviously, Tolkien's fiction is fantasy, and there are many things that happen that are mythopoetic or allegorical, especially regarding the values and worldview of medieval Catholicism and recently (relatively speaking) converted Germanic pagans, but when I read the Silmarillion, knowing what I know as a scholar of that era's military history, I personally found it quite grounded in that older, more "realistic" style of description, which probably adds to that story's distinct feeling of being unlike a "normal" novel (though I don't really consider the Silmarillion to be a novel so much as a prose-poetic epic) that causes it to be so divisive among readers.

No problem, Drul. I'm as interested in starting a discussion as I am in reaching "an answer" (assuming this sort of question even, properly speaking, has an answer).

As to your point regarding narrative, I think that's got a bit to do with one's paradigm. I can easily imagine a group getting heavily invested in roleplaying "tactical" characters in that military campaign, and trying to forge an interesting narrative, but letting the tactical considerations guide how their narrative's structure develops over time. So for me, it doesn't necessarily have to be essentially adversarial, any more than the Player/DM relationship is always slightly adversarial given that the DM occasionally takes on the role of the party's enemies in the course of normal play (though, this is of course far less adversarial than the stereotypical "rocks fall, everyone dies" sort of Player/DM relationship).

But, while I do agree that this sort of roleplaying is subtly different from the sort of roleplaying that more deliberately narrative-focused games tend to lead to, one of the things I'm curious about, as a corollary to everything else, is what everyone's attitudes not towards "tactical versus roleplaying", but rather "pseudo-realism (especially in terms of mechanics and lore) versus a lack of concern for realism", and how these different modes lead to different ways of roleplaying characters, designing campaigns, etc.

For example, Superman isn't a very realistic character, which is fine, because he's intended to be an allegorical figure, rather than a human figure. On the contrary, while still a "superhero" in some sense, Kick Ass (from the film of the same name) is a much more realistic character, and his story is no less believable for the slightly wacky situation he finds himself in. Both characters are larger-than-life, and both are well-suited to dramatic storytelling, but the sorts of stories that are interesting to tell about the two characters are very different, and the enjoyment one gets from telling or being told those stories rely on different artistic principles and rhetorical devices.

PS: I should probably clarify that I'm interested in people's thoughts on the "verisimilitude" style of play in general in this context, so primarily tactical games are just as valid in this discussion as the sorts of narrative-focused games in that style that I've alluded to above.

I just finished watching a video from one of the many YouTube channels that I subscribe to regarding medieval history and material culture, and I thought some of you guys might like it.

As a corollary, I was curious as to what your thoughts are regarding historicity and taking direct inspiration from history, especially as regards the actual tools and material culture of a particular society. Obviously, most RPGs are fundamentally, and historically, drawn from the Western fantasy tradition going back to the Victorian era, with notable influence from science fiction and horror, but I've noticed that there are, in a sense, two fundamental paradigms towards D&D and similar games: the first I'll call "pure fantasy", and the second I'll call "verisimilitude".

As I see it, in the "pure fantasy" paradigm, the goal is to revel in the exotic/fantastic aspects of the world, more or less totally unmoored from concerns about realism, and players' enjoyment seems to stem mostly from power fantasy and exploration of an alien world. These are the superhero-type campaigns where crazy things happen that couldn't possibly exist; one that comes to mind is a campaign I read about where one player rolled a terrible cavalier, but an incredibly high-stat steed, and eventually the steed actually became the central character of the campaign, even getting character classes, while the rider died shortly into the campaign (I might try to find the link to the story at some point, it's worth a few laughs).

On the other hand, you have what I'd call the "verisimilitude" paradigm: these people don't necessarily care that what they're doing perfectly corresponds to reality, but their ability to buy into and enjoy the world is heavily affected by a degree of plausibility, and the more sophisticated and granular the worldbuilding is, the more they enjoy the game. For these people, a human having more HP than a monster, mechanical abstractions notwithstanding, is a serious issue, and their primary enjoyment is in exploring and inhabiting a believable world, and playing a role that fits in that world in an interesting way. These are the people playing a gritty military campaign with a heavy tactical focus, or a sword and sorcery campaign where the evil wizard will absolutely crush the party with magic if they try to fight head on.

Now, obviously these aren't mutually exclusive, and you can play a really high fantasy game where the bits and pieces are believable, or a Conan-esque old school dungeon delve where no one worries about encumbrance or a support corps of hirelings, and the same person can enjoy both playstyles, but from what I've seen, there is a very real difference between players' expectations and concerns between these two ways of playing, and I'd be interested to hear y'all's thoughts on this.

Especially because it seems to me that so many systems, even those like 3.5 or Pathfinder which are ostensibly so heavily focused on tactical play and mechanical support for everything imaginable (sometimes at the expense of playability, even), really fail to capture that sense of verisimilitude, especially in regards to material culture, and that more recent editions have begun to swing more in the direction of the "pure fantasy" paradigm, whether to grow the player base or because of a shift in what players are looking for from RPGs, which seems to be leaving a gap between what experiences tabletop gaming can support and what people might want from tabletop RPGs.

Like I said, I don't think either is better, or anything, so much as it seems to me like heretofore RPGs have left something to be desired with certain types of play, and I'm curious to hear what you guys think. Can RPGs provide the sort of verisimilitude I'm talking about in a way that things like D&D sometimes fail to do? Is that even a worthwhile pursuit given the type of game in question? Is it simply an issue of player/game developer focus, and if someone wanted to make that game, they'd just need to design a system to support that sort of play? What do you guys think?

Here's the video, it's just over 15 minutes, so give it a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVuu34zOy2Q

Damn, that was an excellent session!

I particularly liked the casual disintegration. That'll get people moving quick. XD

I'm excited for the rest of the campaign.

Definitely a good birthday present, man. Thanks.

It sounds interesting, and I really like these ideas. I have a few thoughts/questions, but it's 6:00am here and I haven't been to sleep, so I'll have to table them until later, but I'm looking forward to hearing more.

Lol, the latter. It'll give you a bit more time to get things prepared.

Thanks, man.

In that case, thanks for the birthday gift, Dave.