
Rondero |
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Opera Winfrey wrote:I OWN this thread...get it HahahahaReally, I'm suprised you didn't go with "Everyone look under your chairs..You get an alias. And you get an alias. And you get an alias...EVERYONE GETS AN ALIAS!!!"
Can you at least use the spoiler tag next time, that's my show in 3 weeks

Automated Troll Detector |
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After myself, Orthos, Ambrosia Slaad, Monkey and the Korean Spammers I'm pretty sure there aren't enough good aliases left.
Scanning...scanning...scanning...
TGTG in the same room. Captain has acknowledged his presence in previous posts...
Processing...Processing...
...This IS captain yesterday...
...calculating...
87.323% probability of troll.

Cap'n Yesterday's Winter Bliss |
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Hey all you CYs!
WINTER IS COMING!
HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Yes, thankfully if I want to make my voodoo snowman I either need to start mooching freezer scrapping off the neighbors, or make a trip up north to the family farm... hmm, I wonder if Ice Cubes will work...

Rock n' Roll Troll |
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Cap'n Yesterday, Forum Meme? wrote:After myself, Orthos, Ambrosia Slaad, Monkey and the Korean Spammers I'm pretty sure there aren't enough good aliases left.Scanning...scanning...scanning...
TGTG in the same room. Captain has acknowledged his presence in previous posts...
Processing...Processing...
...This IS captain yesterday...
...calculating...
87.323% probability of troll.
With a hundred percent probability of The F#~%ing Scorpions!!!
FTW!! S.O.D. Will rise again motherf$*!ers!!
Lemmy for Prez!!

Elminster, Rockstar of Wizardry |
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teleports in, Hasted, cops feel, takes picture, uploads it onto instagram, gives invisible Lhaeo a thumbs up, teleports out, fire bombs Zhentil Keep, shags The Simbul as Cats under Vangerdehast's bed, teleports back to tower, makes Lhaeo smell fingers, smokes some pipe, goes to bed like a f!#%ing boss!

The Demon's Advocate |
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Really? No Blackstaff showing up to b**** about Elminster? I thought that was more your style, but this? Tsk, tsk, tsk.
I, for one, think Elminster is overrated, and a bit of an annoyance, frankly. Who likes a hero that you know is going to inevitably win? That's why Superman is the least entertaining character in all of literature...after Elminster, that is.
I tried reading two of his novels. I actually somehow finished his origin one, which is more a testament to my pigheadedness than anything else, because that was an exercise in fighting insomnia rivaled only by the Silmarillion.
Ed Greenwood can world design, but he couldn't write a decent plot or some believable dialogue if his life depended on it. Elminster is a glorified Mary Sue GMPC written by that dick GM who always put his own character in to lead the party and save them and show them how tough he was and didn't really need their help.
At least Supes has moral conflicts, social isolation, and kryptonite. Elminster is all the way-too-powerful-to-add-an-element-of-the-dramatic and none of the...anything that could possibly make him remotely interesting.
Conflict defines literature. That's basic 9th grade level writing fact 101. Who gives a flying f*** about a guy who is a great fighter, a great thief, a great cleric, the world's greatest wizard, embodied with the essence of pure magic itself, and who bangs goddesses on the regular like Mystra just fell for Netflix and Chillin?
It is like the prototype poster child apex purest example of a Mary Sue that has ever existed. I have seen Michael Bay movies with more writing quality than that, and he's a guy who thought it would be easier to teach drillers to become astronauts than astronauts to run a drill.
I wouldn't be surprised if the Spellplague was his Magnum Opus instead of a crappy handwave crafted by WotC to justify reformulating all of their rules and shaving the deity count down to a more marketable number.

captain yesterday |
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That's all true, however for some reason it's more fun to write Elminster as an a$+~+*@ glory hound skeevey old dickhead.
yes Khelben "Blackstaff" Arunsun and all the Harpells were my favorite forgotten realms wizards (my dad was a bit of a mad scientist/chemistry teacher)
Never liked Superman, was always a Batman fan, also Robotech and science fiction comics, never was into Marvel personally, i also ate up all the cool ass 1920s-30s pulp shit, good times.

thegreenteagamer |

I wasn't a wizard guy. Too "I can do anything"...except Raistlin. That guy earned his power through hard work, dedication, and sacrifice. Tragedy and success. Giving up everything to get everything beyond...yeah he was a dick, but he was also tortured, proud, and honorable. He always paid his debts. He stood up for the bullied because of his own past...and he was still an evil Bastard willing to string a woman along and effectively use her to further his own goals. He was powerful but he had very real very visible very exploitable weaknesses. He had depth and dimensions to his character.
But then that's because Tracy Hickman, like Ed Greenwood, can make an awesome world, but is smart enough to realize that doesn't matter for dick if you're a s****y writer, and thus Margaret Weis does the heavy lifting in the Dragonlance books. Seriously. Read her solo stuff. She clearly is doing the actual writing in Hickman's world (the annotated trilogies almost spell it out for you in the notes from each of them - his notes are all about races and cities and such, while hers are about plot and character). Margaret's solo worlds, meanwhile, totally suck and are unoriginal, even though the plots are decent and the dialogue and emotional conveyance are excellent (Dragon's Son trilogy, I'm looking at you.) I'd still rather read a good story in a bland world than the other way around.
Smartest thing Greenwood ever did was selling FR to Wizards and them hiring authors who don't suck more than sucky ever sucked like he did. Salvatore is the only reason 4th and 5th edition are set in FR and not Darksun, Greyhawk, or Planescape. Because those worlds (except Greyhawk) are way cooler, but the others never hit the NY Times bestseller list.

Tacticslion |

I wouldn't be surprised if the Spellplague was his Magnum Opus instead of a crappy handwave crafted by WotC to justify reformulating all of their rules and shaving the deity count down to a more marketable number.
Nope. Point in fact, though he was legally unable to comment much, he noted it was "disappointing"... and I'm pretty sure you've not read Elminster in Hell or the Sage of Shadowdale series. The latter would clear you of any illusions about the spellplague.
In any event, spoiler alert:
He fixes things due to being an agent of a higher power who'd thought out and planned out contingencies in advance, and it wasn't even him who "fixed" everything in the end... it was the Simbul. His lover. Who died and ceased to exist at the end of it, because she raised a god.
I'm not going to hold either as the epitome of literature - they're not. But you're overly harsh on the character as a whole. Though I've not read the origin stories, so, who knows, may he's earned it, there.
(Though, if you want to talk about Greenwood and Gary Stu characters, you'll want to look no further than his Dark Warrior Rising - dude spends twenty years as a slave and seduces his slave owner drow babe by faking subservience the whole time combined with sheer muscled-ness, until he overpowers and imprisons her as a hostage to escape back to the surface. At which point he seduces her for real, because "he's so hot, I don't want to be a bad guy anymore if I can't have my favorite slave" type reaction from her. Also, he apparently doesn't need to sleep, no matter how intense things get. This is actually called out as a confusing point in the book too - a couple of side characters just kind of... question how he can stay awake.)
I wasn't a wizard guy. Too "I can do anything"...except Raistlin. That guy earned his power through hard work, dedication, and sacrifice. Tragedy and success. Giving up everything to get everything beyond...yeah he was a dick, but he was also tortured, proud, and honorable. He always paid his debts. He stood up for the bullied because of his own past...and he was still an evil Bastard willing to string a woman along and effectively use her to further his own goals. He was powerful but he had very real very visible very exploitable weaknesses. He had depth and dimensions to his character.
... meh. I always got the impression that Raistlen "earned" his power by being really, needlessly, foolishly, reckless and arrogant.
(Then again, I'm also a wizard guy... so... you know. :D)
EDIT: This is not to say I dislike Raistlen - I think he's a well-written character. But his tragic flaws go beyond "I got power the hard way" all the way to "I make really stupid mistakes that I should know better than to make, to get power the hard way" territory.
I'd still rather read a good story in a bland world than the other way around.
This is probably true for me as well. But if the world is great enough, the writing can be mediocre...
Smartest thing Greenwood ever did was selling FR to Wizards
Yes, but that's mostly because he got (and continues to receive) cash moneys and fame from the deal.
... and them hiring authors who don't suck more than sucky ever sucked like he did. Salvatore is the only reason 4th and 5th edition are set in FR and not Darksun, Greyhawk, or Planescape. Because those worlds (except Greyhawk) are way cooler, but the others never hit the NY Times bestseller list.
On settings:
1) Darksun, tragically, never had the fanbase of the other worlds to begin with.2) Planescape was Forgotten Realms up until 3rd Edition (and then just kind of ceased to exist in 4th altogether).
3) Greyhawk is actually a solid and interesting world with a rich history and lore. It was just... underdeveloped in many ways.
4) You forgot "Eberron"... and if you didn't, well... alas, our tastes must strongly diverge.
On Salvatore: his debut novels were actually pretty "meh", if strongly thematic to D&D. As his novels went on, you can watch him become a better writer. But... he never ascends to "great author" status. It's always been somewhat confusing why Salvatore gets all the glory. Compare to the incredible Paul S. Kemp, for example - that guy's got writing chops to spare. I'd question what he's doing writing novels for D&D settings, but I desperately want someone of his caliber to write novels for D&D settings, so I just kind of let it go and revel.
(Seriously, though, go read Kemp's works. And give him money for them.)

thegreenteagamer |

I've read and enjoy Kemp's stuff. I remember the one about the cleric of Mask that was good, and his novel in the Spider Queen series was the best of them.
Salvatore writes excellent action sequences and monologues. The plots are above average, and the dialogue...meh...But compared to Greenwood he's Shakespeare.

Tacticslion |

Not gonna lie, reading that about The Simbul only makes me angrier about how far the forgotten realms sank in the suckpool.
The thing that I always liked was that the most powerful wizard in the whole world was a woman, oh well I jumped off that sinking ship years ago. :-)
Yeah... at least partially agreed with Simbul thing. It's made a little worse in that Elminster's Daughter is rendered effectively "irrelevant" by the Sage of Shadowdalw trilogy (the events and plots are directly related, and tied together, but none of the victories really amount to much that couldn't have been just handwaived in any number of ways. That said, several of the "irrelevant" parts really feel like executive order type things.)
That said, Elminster's current power level, it is made clear, is a bit lower than it used to be. And he's training his descendent? Niece? Something like that. At present, she has more potential, though he is more powerful, at present, and is still an archmage.
Anyhoo, I'm holding out hope.

Orthos |
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Tacticslion wrote:These words, is it possible to use them together in a sentence like that?captain yesterday wrote:I've never seen the filmHow is it no one favorite'd my Pink Floyd's The Wall alias?
I summed up like half the movie in one post.
Must be, as I've never seen it either. I've heard the song before though.