RPG Superstar 2010 Top 32
|
Just read a great article on io9 and followed it to the source - Smithsonian article. Imagining Temples in Golarion just got a lot more fun :-)
|
In the defense of unpainted statues, they do look more stately and pristine.
A lot of the colored jobs on a number of these famous statues wind up making them look like bad pre-painted minis. Or like someone kept hitting Randomize in City of Heroes' character creation screen.
That said, I can't really see most places in Golarion rocking marble statues in their temples anyway. Absalom and a lot of the places that Azlanti culture touched maybe, but places like Ulfen lands, Mwangi lands, Osirion*, Jalmeray, etc. should be using their own traditional materials, which are going to tend to be more colorful than unpainted marble statues anywho.
*Okay, Egypt painted their stuff too, I admit. I'm busy being unfair to the Romans and Greeks dammit!
I see them as an ancient precursor of today's metal minis. Some will just buy a blank one and use that, but others paint them, maybe even using advanced techniques like dry-brushing and so on.
That was back in the day when kings would play chess and D&D with life-size representations (I'd call them miniatures, but they weren't) - though the real classy ones had the actual critters instead of statues.
"You there, paladin, attack the hydra."
"Oooh, I rolled a crit for that hydra, you will be decapitated. Sorry."
That's also the reason why all the monsters are extinct nowadays: They were used up when powerful rulers became obsessed with RPGs.
I hear Heliogabalus was really killed because his GM got fed up with him always making min-maxed lesbian succubi warlocks called Slu-ti in their games.
(It probably didn't help that he made Caligula seem a nice and competent guy by comparison.)
I heard the same thing. Also, Achilles was an incorrigible min/maxer, always abusing the flaws system to get thousands of building points for disadvantages that never saw play. Until the GM got fed up and introduced an NPC called Paris.
That GM was the vengeful type! Look what he did to Odysseus for maxing out Bluff and using it in a war.