Hm... ooh I know Doom sayer! We have an opening since the last guy has been wrong four times now.Vague statements alone cannot replace ranks in Bluff. Politics remain outside my reach.Not all of them, just the ones I don't care about.Oh well in that case carry on. Have you considered a career in politics? I think you might be well suited for it.
Umm Apostle Paul was wrong about the date too which he assumed would be within his lifetime, of course eventually he had to revise his statement to be well it could happen any old time really so be ready. Pessimal thinking assumes the world can get no better or worse than it is currently and therefore this must be the end times.
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Pessimal thinking assumes the world can get no better or worse than it is currently and therefore this must be the end times.
Every generation has their 'The past was so much better than now! Society is falling apart! Kids were more respectful!' crowd.
To which I say; smallpox, trepanning, slavery, the dust bowl, Prohibition, bomb shelters, mustard gas, Kent State, trench warfare, labor disputes being settled by Pinkertons shooting everyone, unruly teenagers being sent to Bedlam or given electroshocks or prefrontal lobotomies, the Great Depression, the Holocaust, the Spanish Inquisition, etc.
In so many ways, great and small, the past sucked.
I, for one, do not miss having to get up to change the channel. :)
Umm Apostle Paul was wrong about the date too which he assumed would be within his lifetime, of course eventually he had to revise his statement to be well it could happen any old time really so be ready. Pessimal thinking assumes the world can get no better or worse than it is currently and therefore this must be the end times.Hm... ooh I know Doom sayer! We have an opening since the last guy has been wrong four times now.Vague statements alone cannot replace ranks in Bluff. Politics remain outside my reach.Not all of them, just the ones I don't care about.Oh well in that case carry on. Have you considered a career in politics? I think you might be well suited for it.
Oh I'm aware -- just trying to help the man find a new line of work.
The profession of shaman has many advantages. It offers high status with a safe livelihood free of work in the dreary, sweaty sense. In most societies it offers legal privileges and immunities not granted to other men. But it is hard to see how a man who has been given a mandate from on High to spread tidings of joy to all mankind can be seriously interested in taking up a collection to pay his salary; it causes one to suspect that the shaman is on the moral level of any other con man.
But it's lovely work if you can stomach it.
Hm... ooh I know Doom sayer! We have an opening since the last guy has been wrong four times now.Vague statements alone cannot replace ranks in Bluff. Politics remain outside my reach.Not all of them, just the ones I don't care about.Oh well in that case carry on. Have you considered a career in politics? I think you might be well suited for it.
Fifth time's the charm? Besides, does this board really need another shouting match over a greyer-than-grey vague statement?
What I like: Classic, old-school dungeon crawls, with traps, dark, ancient and ineffable magics, and weird, creepy monsters lurking around every turn--and the ever-present potential to uncover some archaic, arcane treasure. Anything that seems like it was inspired by a Larry Elmore or Erol Otis painting. Anything that riffs on the works of Professor Tolkien.
I respectfully believe that throwing in weird crap just because it is weird isn't actually "creative." It is the lazy or unimaginative person's way of faking it. Sure, giant half-robot amoebas that fly around in clockwork teacups and battle seven-armed psychic insectoid platypodes for control of the last remaining source of bioluminescent, psychotropic rock-candy in the universe might sound "creative" just because you've never read anything like it, but it is really just a bunch of unrelated nonsense.
Heh.
So I guess Tom Bombadil and the Ents (amongst lots of other "weird crap") really put you off old Professor Tolkien's work then, eh? That old geezer sure was lazy and unimaginative when he was faking it.
-Kle.
I'm pretty sure you left out the part where I say that what I don't like is weird stuff that doesn't make sense within the context of its own reality. ;-) Tom Bombadil was certainly weird--I could do without the yellow boots and all the singing, but when he came to their aid against the Barrow Wights, that was pretty cool--although I don't find Ents any more strange than a lot of classic fantasy monsters. (E.g. Celatinous Cubes, molds, slimes & fungus...). It seems pretty clear to me that Professor Tolkien didn't just throw sh*t in there just because it was weird--he put in things that were fantastic, but that made sense--I think one would find that it was all based on his extensive research in Folklore. That makes a lot more sense (to me) than a lot of other stuff that gets labeled "fantasy."
Just, MHO and YMMV, etc. :-)
Why can't we have magical slimes and molds and why are they wierd they make sense. This way every different type of organism can be modified by magic. There are even magical diseases. Do you really want magic to discriminate agianst fungi?