Just saw the release of ravenloft expansion on DDO which I never tried (PLayed NWN...meh) but now will have to for this alone...better than nothing at least until one day it comes to IE
I used to play DDO. It is fun, but the lack of balance, lack of players playing the same content as you, and the amount of grind are astounding. I'd try rolling a character and making sure it is your thing before paying for the Ravenloft expansion.
For many of us writing skill is very important, but personal tastes are of course also a factor.
It depends what you mean by "skill". Someone can decide they want to be a writer, spend three years learning the craft, and then come up with something that is technically correct, follows all the rules of plot development and story structure, but feels entierly soulless.
But part of a writer's skill includes the evocation of wonder and feeling. Plot and structure are only part of the art. Great writers distill language to its essence and make colourful word choices to make their sentences sparkle with life. They develop rich, believable characters we become attached to, and use techniques like subtext to add layers of complexity that draw us more deeply into their psyches. This still doesn't mean it will resonate with everybody. For various reasons - for me it usually means just not being interested in particular characters or an author's observations - a reader may be bored to tears. But in these cases the work isn't truly soulless, though we often choose that word to describe it. It just means that we subjectively don't like it. I'm bored to tears by most of Alice Munro's work, for instance, but it's definitely full of soul. It's just not for me.
Truly soulless writing is bloated (the author tends to use ten words in a cumbersome, clunky manner, where five will do) and is riddled with cliches. There is absolutely nothing original on the page. Every simile has been used a thousand times before, e.g., "He had the heart of a lion." Their characters are shallow and stereotypical, the dialogue is too on-point and unoriginal... you see where I'm going.
As the saying goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. No writer is going to be liked by everyone. Good writing is so relative that I'd define good writing to be anything that either does its job well or reaches a wide audience. We could honestly argue to the end of time about what is good and bad writing and frankly, we'd generally be right because if you liked it, it did its job to reach you as part of its audience. And if you didn't, it failed. Yet at the same time you'd be wrong in the context of how that writing reached someone else. The only way writing is truly bad is if it fails to reach its intended audience or was a commercial failure.
The only way writing is truly bad is if it fails to reach its intended audience or was a commercial failure.
Nope. Good writing is not at all relative. Writing can be dreadful and yet be very successful at reaching its audience. There are swaths of awful books out there, and every genre is represented (take a browse through the romance section next time you're in a bookstore). It's the same in other arts, too. Look at music, for instance: Kanye, Katy Perry, etc.. Dreadful artists, yet incredibly successful. The problem lies in the lack of a critical audience.
Conversely, the greatest artists are, on large, almost always commercial failures in this society. Most of the authors who are held in the highest literary regard (including major prize nominees and winners, teachers at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, etc.) are living below the breadline (I happen to be friends with several). To use music as an example, go to any university guitar department and you'll find hundreds of musicians who are all miles better than anyone on the top of the charts, but they'll be lucky to make ten-thousand a year when they graduate.
For many of us writing skill is very important, but personal tastes are of course also a factor.
It depends what you mean by "skill". Someone can decide they want to be a writer, spend three years learning the craft, and then come up with something that is technically correct, follows all the rules of plot development and story structure, but feels entierly soulless.
Nothing personal, but that sounds like horsecrap. I agree someone can invest years and still be a bad writer, but I don't find it so nebulous.
I've read some shoddy works, but it was usually incorrectness, or failure to follow correct format/wording that made it bad. Maybe the pacing is awful, but the take away is that things are good for a reason. There isn't 'magic' that makes something good or bad, its how it works with our brains on an individual basis. Also, taste is greatly affected by what we want to like... people who are 'old guard' fans of fanstasy rarely are comfortable liking Harry Potter, and fans of newer fantasy usually aren't very pro-Tolkien.
Then again, there are some bands I never ever want to hear again, so... yep, its all magic, and Nickelback just has none. Because Star Wars took it all. Or maybe Taylor Swift.
The only way writing is truly bad is if it fails to reach its intended audience or was a commercial failure.
Nope. Good writing is not at all relative. Writing can be dreadful and yet be very successful at reaching its audience. There are swaths of awful books out there, and every genre is represented (take a browse through the romance section next time you're in a bookstore). It's the same in other arts, too. Look at music, for instance: Kanye, Katy Perry, etc.. Dreadful artists, yet incredibly successful. The problem lies in the lack of a critical audience.
Conversely, the greatest artists are, on large, almost always commercial failures in this society. Most of the authors who are held in the highest literary regard (including major prize nominees and winners, teachers at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, etc.) are living below the breadline (I happen to be friends with several). To use music as an example, go to any university guitar department and you'll find hundreds of musicians who are all miles better than anyone on the top of the charts, but they'll be lucky to make ten-thousand a year when they graduate.
I never said commercial success=great writing. All I mean is the purpose of writing is to communicate something to an audience. A writer can have fantastic prose, perfect grammar, and all the creativity and wit in the world and still be a terrible writer if they fail their audience. As a TA I graded lots of papers. I read many papers that sounded great but the student failed to remember I was their audience and had certain expectations. I had other papers from less talented students that met my expectations. Granted, if the student had talent and met those expectations, they were the truly superb writer.
I always eyeroll when somebody says x successful artist or y successful artist isn't good. If Katy Perry and Kanye weren't talented, they wouldn't even be in the industry. I don't like their music, but to claim they lack a critical audience is absurd.
Artists are a prime example of my point actually. Van Gogh was a fantastic painter. He has a wide audience that spans generations. But did he have naysayers? Plenty. That didn't mean they were right. But their were plenty that felt he was a "dreadful artist."
A writer can have fantastic prose, perfect grammar, and all the creativity and wit in the world and still be a terrible writer if they fail their audience. As a TA I graded lots of papers. I read many papers that sounded great but the student failed to remember I was their audience and had certain expectations. I had other papers from less talented students that met my expectations. Granted, if the student had talent and met those expectations, they were the truly superb writer.
The problem here is you're equating essay writing with fiction. The two have completely different objectives. Essays exist to persuade (and hopefully convey facts) while fiction is written to evoke an aesthetic experience. Of course an essay, no matter how well-written, is a failure if it doesn't succeed in convincing the reader or conveying the facts as required by the syllabus. But I submit that if a fiction writer does what you say in the first line and has, to quote, "fantastic prose, perfect grammar, and all the creativity and wit in the world," he or she has not failed their audience. I also submit that great writing can exist in a vacuum. Cannery Row would have been a great book even if Steinbeck had chosen not to publish it.
I always eyeroll when somebody says x successful artist or y successful artist isn't good. If Katy Perry and Kanye weren't talented, they wouldn't even be in the industry. I don't like their music, but to claim they lack a critical audience is absurd.
There's nothing absurd about it. Whether it sounds harsh or not, and whether you roll your eyes or not, there are people read crappy books and who like crappy music, tv shows and movies. There are people who vote for crappy politicians. We need look no further than the President of the United States to find evidence of a lack of critical thinking in our society.
@OrlonKronsteen I'm just going to number my responses to your responses.
1. In that case you are your own audience. I do journaling for me. It is a nice way to get the stress out
2. I am comparing much like you do your comparing. I agree they shouldn't be conflated, but if you use music and art I think I can make valid comparisons with writing to writing. Writing always has an audience--vacuum or not, published or not--even if the audience remains imaginary. A writer is always writing to someone.
3. I actually agree with what you are saying except you can't say top selling artists aren't talented. They can definitely be in poor taste. They can definitely be crappy because you despise their work, but that goes back to relativity. If I think Tolkien, Rowling, Weis, or Hickman are bad writers, that reflects my tastes, not their actual talent. Though they can certainly have flaws that warrant valid criticism, and those parts of their writing may be legitimately bad even. But that doesn't make them bad writers. As for politics, yeah we have a mess. I feel the comparison falls flat, but I hear ya.
When I talk about bad writing, I'm not really thinking of bad spelling or bad grammar, any idiot can avoid those. I'm really thinking of writing that is excessively formulaic. But if I hadn't read so much I can spot the formulae in the first paragraph it wouldn't bother me so much. One incredibly successful writer who was extremely formulaic was Agatha Christie. I quite enjoyed them until I worked out the formula. One of the things I like about Tolkien is the thing a lot of people don't like - he appears to break a lot of the established rules of story stucture and pacing (although he is actually just using a much older set of rules). However, as well as Tolkien, I also like Rowling and Pratchett.
Although maybe I am just being racist, since those are all British, whist those I have a low opinion of (such as Brooks, Eddings, Hickman) are American?
Rowling is alright, she can plot out a decent story, but doesn't really write very well moment to moment. To be fair, I haven't read anything of hers past HP, so she has probably improved over time.
Okay, so it hit me that I don't really care about this bad writing/good writing argument anyway. It's more that the topic has derailed into author bashing (or promoting). I really wanted more Ravenloft (or Dragonlance, or whatever) in Infinity Engine talk
1. Agreed - though nuking goblins with fireballs is also therapeutic.
2. True.
3. It is indeed possible to be very popular while having very limited talent. I definitely agree that some degree of talent - or at least drive - is required, but it's a surprisingly small amount. That doesn't mean that an artist can't be incredibly successful and good. While being popular doesn't necessarily mean something is good, nor does it mean that it's necessarily bad. My Trump example was definitely straying off topic, but I couldn't think of a better way to demonstrate that the notion of a critical public is wishful thinking. In terms of the kinds of artists we're talking about, I would argue that while they have some talent, their talent isn't proportional to their success.
4. The most important thing is that we agree on the need for a Ravenloft game.
No need to overly romanticize the craft of writing. Plenty of excellent, highly skilled writers are also extremely successful. Sure, there is the model of, say, James Joyce, creating works of genius while toiling in obscurity and only properly recognized after death. But that is far from the rule.
As someone who is contemplating the abandonment of a life as a well-paid corporate bard for the life of a fiction writer - and as one who has many friends in the literary world - I can tell you that the percentage of writers who make anything even remotely close to a living is incredibly small. I'll give you some scale: a writer who's published around 10 books with statistically average sales numbers, makes around $10,000, and most of that is generated from grants. By literary averages, he's considered a very successful author. A a really successful author who has managed to get a couple film deals (albeit, not big box office stuff) makes $30,000 per year. The J.K. Rowlings, Stephen Kings (and to a lesser extent the Terry Brooks), and successful writers in Hollywood and at HBO are utter statistical anomalies. They're freaks. Most authors - even genre writers who have published dozens of works - have to take menial day jobs or are supported by their spouses. The lucky ones get jobs teaching in universities.
Hey @themazingness what do you think of the new aasamir or what may be a good class to start with when I begin DDO ravenloft...thinking paladin or multiclass F/M maybe?
I think the point is, if you use a setting other than default FR for a D&D game you need a good reason to do so, since otherwise you are throwing away a degree of brand recognition for no benefit.
Ravenloft is significantly different to FR both in asthetics and story style. Eberron would bring a steam punk aesthetic, even if otherwise similar, Dark Sun is significantly different, Spelljammer would be very different. But how would a story (assuming original plot and charcters) set in the Dragonlance or Greyhawk worlds differ significantly from a story set in FR? Different names don't count.
Rowling is alright, she can plot out a decent story, but doesn't really write very well moment to moment. To be fair, I haven't read anything of hers past HP, so she has probably improved over time.
I think your issue is actually one of genre expectation. I've read bits of Mallory Towers, and it's actually more of a soap opera than an adventure story (occasionally threatening to turn into an all girl Lord of the Flies, but it never quite gets there). Wheras a genre fantasy story is more focused on the main good vs evil* plotline. The Bhaalspawn doesn't worry about missing the annual Candlekeep quiddich match.
Hey @themazingness what do you think of the new aasamir or what may be a good class to start with when I begin DDO ravenloft...thinking paladin or multiclass F/M maybe?
Hmm, unsure. I've been away too long. I'd ask the DDO forums. Whatever you do though, character planning is super important in that game. So you are asking the right questions. Multiclassing is often very powerful if you plan it precisely.
Rowling is alright, she can plot out a decent story, but doesn't really write very well moment to moment. To be fair, I haven't read anything of hers past HP, so she has probably improved over time.
I think your issue is actually one of genre expectation. I've read bits of Mallory Towers, and it's actually more of a soap opera than an adventure story (occasionally threatening to turn into an all girl Lord of the Flies, but it never quite gets there). Wheras a genre fantasy story is more focused on the main good vs evil* plotline. The Bhaalspawn doesn't worry about missing the annual Candlekeep quiddich match.
*or purple vs orange.
No, I've read many different genres, Rowling's actual technical writing is unimpressive to me.
I'd love both a Ravenloft and a Dragonlance IE game. I really dig gothic horror, and I grew up with Dragonlance. Though the setting did go downhill with Dragons of Summer Flame. I haven't payed any attention in forever so it could have improvied.
Honestly, any setting can work if the writers do a good job.
As an FYI, the DreamForge Ravenloft games are now on sale at GOG. I know @themazingness doesn't find them engaging - and nor would I, I suspect - but others might find them interesting. Two games for around $4.
As an FYI, the DreamForge Ravenloft games are now on sale at GOG. I know @themazingness doesn't find them engaging - and nor would I, I suspect - but others might find them interesting. Two games for around $4.
As an FYI, the DreamForge Ravenloft games are now on sale at GOG. I know @themazingness doesn't find them engaging - and nor would I, I suspect - but others might find them interesting. Two games for around $4.
I played them and Menzoberranzan all the way through and loved them back in the day. I think I've just been spoiled with more in-depth RPGs since.
There was a time I would have given anything to play those games. Unfortunately, I still had never owned a computer in 1994 and didn't even know they existed.
The Gold Box Krynn series is on sale too for you Dragonlance fans. To me, the Gold Box games aged better than the Dreamforge games since they were better written and feel more like PnP. https://www.gog.com/game/dungeons_dragons_krynn_series
how would a story (assuming original plot and charcters) set in the Dragonlance or Greyhawk worlds differ significantly from a story set in FR? Different names don't count.
Are you kidding? It would be wildly different. I mean, well, I don't know anything about Greyhawk so set that aside. And I assume we're talking about Dragonlance in the time period when the very first books were set, before all the dumb crap about Highlander dragons that kill and absorb each other, or whatever.
How, exactly? You could either set it during the period when clerics get no spells, or during the period where clerics function exactly like clerics in FR. But not many would choose to play with a gimped cleric. You could replace mage schools with subclasses based on the black, red, white Star Wars rip-off schools. But since using strong at low level weak at high level (and visa versa) as a balance tool has fallen out of favour, I can't see that improving gameplay.
But, the single most notable thing about FR's "everything and the kitchen sink" setting is that it is an absurdly high-magic campaign. Adventurers packed to the gills with magical gear are everywhere, every commoner has some enchanted trinket from an uncle or something, anyone can become a world-class mage by learning at one of dozens, if not hundreds, of wizard academies or organizations, there are literally more gods than I can count, all giving magical powers to their priests, and random swaths of the countryside are inhabited by herds of basilisk, or wyverns, or skeletons, or whatever.
No, magical inflation is a property of being a crpg, that has nothing to do with the setting. And monsters per square mile is part of D&D itself. there has to be enough for the players to encounter and fight. So you either have to assume that monsters are common, or the players are implausibly lucky/unlucky. I've played the Dragonlance modules, they are packed full of monsters, and have draconians from the first encounter, which are far more fantastical that the rats in the basement, wolves, and bandits that are the early encounters in Baldur's Gate.
t's a wildly different culture, with wildly different politics,
How? Different made up names for places, with a different made up history doesn't have any effect on the story of a crpg.
Anyway, FR is such a catch-all that you can have any culture or politicsyou want to fit your story. Just set it in a different part. Kara-Tur is far more different to the Sword Coast than anywhere on Krynn.
in a wildly different environment.
??!!!!
Again, I HAVE PLAYED the modules. They are set in an almost identical pseudo-north-American woodland as the Baldur's Gate version of the Sword Coast.
Which would result in wildly different adventures. "They both have swords, and they both have trees, so they are both the same" is a rather shallow way to compare.
Really? Are the trees on Krynn pink, or carnivorous, or sentient? Do the swords fire laser beams or torn the person you hit with it into custard? I will answer that far you - no, the trees and the swords are identical to the trees and swords in the forgotten realms.
On topic, something like that kind of low-magic campaign would actually be the best way to run a Ravenloft game IMHO.
Its easy enough to play a low magic campaign in any PnP setting. My Cormyr set campaign has exactly one magic sword on my fourth level party. Its the act of turning it into a computer game that inflates the amount of magic, since you need to keep increasing the quality of loot when players are getting through far more fights than they ever would in PnP. Not to mention the "meaningful crafting" which is a crpg expectation these days.
That would be way better than FR, where you are attacked by a hive of 14 vampires... and you cut through them easily and then amble comfortably into a temple on the high street and pay a couple hours' wages for a restoration spell.
Again, that is Baldur's Gate II you are thinking of. It's not a normal situation in the FR. My players would be whipped by a single vampire, and there is no-where they could go for resurrection.
Here is an extract from p33 of "tales from the Yawning Portal".
"Dragonlance. On Kyrnn Khundrukar can be placed anywhere in the Khalolis Mountains." "Eberron. One an outpost in the eastern Mror Holds, Khundrukar eas besieged and cleared of it's inhabitants when the Kingdom of Galifar invaded the land." "Forgotten Realms. Located northwest of Mirabar, Khundrukar was a shield dwarf stronghold." "Greyhawk. Khundrukar stands in the Pomarj."
I.e. same adventure, any of those worlds, no changes.
Comments
Truly soulless writing is bloated (the author tends to use ten words in a cumbersome, clunky manner, where five will do) and is riddled with cliches. There is absolutely nothing original on the page. Every simile has been used a thousand times before, e.g., "He had the heart of a lion." Their characters are shallow and stereotypical, the dialogue is too on-point and unoriginal... you see where I'm going.
Conversely, the greatest artists are, on large, almost always commercial failures in this society. Most of the authors who are held in the highest literary regard (including major prize nominees and winners, teachers at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, etc.) are living below the breadline (I happen to be friends with several). To use music as an example, go to any university guitar department and you'll find hundreds of musicians who are all miles better than anyone on the top of the charts, but they'll be lucky to make ten-thousand a year when they graduate.
I've read some shoddy works, but it was usually incorrectness, or failure to follow correct format/wording that made it bad. Maybe the pacing is awful, but the take away is that things are good for a reason. There isn't 'magic' that makes something good or bad, its how it works with our brains on an individual basis. Also, taste is greatly affected by what we want to like... people who are 'old guard' fans of fanstasy rarely are comfortable liking Harry Potter, and fans of newer fantasy usually aren't very pro-Tolkien.
Then again, there are some bands I never ever want to hear again, so... yep, its all magic, and Nickelback just has none. Because Star Wars took it all. Or maybe Taylor Swift.
I'll, uh... I'll just leave before I'm lynched.
I always eyeroll when somebody says x successful artist or y successful artist isn't good. If Katy Perry and Kanye weren't talented, they wouldn't even be in the industry. I don't like their music, but to claim they lack a critical audience is absurd.
Artists are a prime example of my point actually. Van Gogh was a fantastic painter. He has a wide audience that spans generations. But did he have naysayers? Plenty. That didn't mean they were right. But their were plenty that felt he was a "dreadful artist."
1. In that case you are your own audience. I do journaling for me. It is a nice way to get the stress out
2. I am comparing much like you do your comparing. I agree they shouldn't be conflated, but if you use music and art I think I can make valid comparisons with writing to writing. Writing always has an audience--vacuum or not, published or not--even if the audience remains imaginary. A writer is always writing to someone.
3. I actually agree with what you are saying except you can't say top selling artists aren't talented. They can definitely be in poor taste. They can definitely be crappy because you despise their work, but that goes back to relativity. If I think Tolkien, Rowling, Weis, or Hickman are bad writers, that reflects my tastes, not their actual talent. Though they can certainly have flaws that warrant valid criticism, and those parts of their writing may be legitimately bad even. But that doesn't make them bad writers. As for politics, yeah we have a mess. I feel the comparison falls flat, but I hear ya.
Although maybe I am just being racist, since those are all British, whist those I have a low opinion of (such as Brooks, Eddings, Hickman) are American?
1. Agreed - though nuking goblins with fireballs is also therapeutic.
2. True.
3. It is indeed possible to be very popular while having very limited talent. I definitely agree that some degree of talent - or at least drive - is required, but it's a surprisingly small amount. That doesn't mean that an artist can't be incredibly successful and good. While being popular doesn't necessarily mean something is good, nor does it mean that it's necessarily bad. My Trump example was definitely straying off topic, but I couldn't think of a better way to demonstrate that the notion of a critical public is wishful thinking. In terms of the kinds of artists we're talking about, I would argue that while they have some talent, their talent isn't proportional to their success.
4. The most important thing is that we agree on the need for a Ravenloft game. As someone who is contemplating the abandonment of a life as a well-paid corporate bard for the life of a fiction writer - and as one who has many friends in the literary world - I can tell you that the percentage of writers who make anything even remotely close to a living is incredibly small. I'll give you some scale: a writer who's published around 10 books with statistically average sales numbers, makes around $10,000, and most of that is generated from grants. By literary averages, he's considered a very successful author. A a really successful author who has managed to get a couple film deals (albeit, not big box office stuff) makes $30,000 per year. The J.K. Rowlings, Stephen Kings (and to a lesser extent the Terry Brooks), and successful writers in Hollywood and at HBO are utter statistical anomalies. They're freaks. Most authors - even genre writers who have published dozens of works - have to take menial day jobs or are supported by their spouses. The lucky ones get jobs teaching in universities.
Ravenloft is significantly different to FR both in asthetics and story style. Eberron would bring a steam punk aesthetic, even if otherwise similar, Dark Sun is significantly different, Spelljammer would be very different. But how would a story (assuming original plot and charcters) set in the Dragonlance or Greyhawk worlds differ significantly from a story set in FR? Different names don't count.
*or purple vs orange.
Also, ddowiki.com is your friend. Good luck!
God I love that movie.
I'd love both a Ravenloft and a Dragonlance IE game. I really dig gothic horror, and I grew up with Dragonlance. Though the setting did go downhill with Dragons of Summer Flame. I haven't payed any attention in forever so it could have improvied.
Honestly, any setting can work if the writers do a good job.
https://www.gog.com/game/dungeons_dragons_ravenloft_series
Anyway, FR is such a catch-all that you can have any culture or politicsyou want to fit your story. Just set it in a different part. Kara-Tur is far more different to the Sword Coast than anywhere on Krynn. ??!!!!
Again, I HAVE PLAYED the modules. They are set in an almost identical pseudo-north-American woodland as the Baldur's Gate version of the Sword Coast. Really? Are the trees on Krynn pink, or carnivorous, or sentient? Do the swords fire laser beams or torn the person you hit with it into custard? I will answer that far you - no, the trees and the swords are identical to the trees and swords in the forgotten realms.
Its easy enough to play a low magic campaign in any PnP setting. My Cormyr set campaign has exactly one magic sword on my fourth level party. Its the act of turning it into a computer game that inflates the amount of magic, since you need to keep increasing the quality of loot when players are getting through far more fights than they ever would in PnP. Not to mention the "meaningful crafting" which is a crpg expectation these days.
Again, that is Baldur's Gate II you are thinking of. It's not a normal situation in the FR. My players would be whipped by a single vampire, and there is no-where they could go for resurrection.
Here is an extract from p33 of "tales from the Yawning Portal".
"Dragonlance. On Kyrnn Khundrukar can be placed anywhere in the Khalolis Mountains."
"Eberron. One an outpost in the eastern Mror Holds, Khundrukar eas besieged and cleared of it's inhabitants when the Kingdom of Galifar invaded the land."
"Forgotten Realms. Located northwest of Mirabar, Khundrukar was a shield dwarf stronghold."
"Greyhawk. Khundrukar stands in the Pomarj."
I.e. same adventure, any of those worlds, no changes.