Let's talk about Lacrymas' homebrew fantasy setting where paladins are eunuchs

[Bara]

Could also go a little dark sun with it and instead of banning nourishment relatec spells make it herrasy to use magic that crates food as it drains the land of life and fertility.

Short terms gains at the cost of long term life.

 

[Lacrymas]

No summoned thing?
Ok.
http://5e.d20srd.org/srd/spells/plantGrowth.htm

Yeah, the druids use Plant Growth to double the yield of the fertile lands (and avoid bad weather conditions which can lead to famines), that's one of their most important jobs, and one of the things which make would-be usurpers hesitant to perform a coup.

Pogroms and other massacres of undesirables are a real thing.

They are, but you have to admit they are a rare and extreme thing. They can still happen in my setting, it just isn't institutional policy at the moment. And I have fortified this with the extreme religious prejudice against killing in general.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

They are, but you have to admit they are a rare and extreme thing

They used to be called Tuesday.

 

[Lacrymas]

Could also go a little dark sun with it and instead of banning nourishment relatec spells make it herrasy to use magic that crates food as it drains the land of life and fertility.

Short terms gains at the cost of long term life.

Three things about that. 1) I don't want it to be Dark Sun. 2) It encourages sociopathy and not much else. 3) It doesn't solve the roleplaying problem of parties spamming food whenever they feel like it because it's a game. I want food to be a problem for the party sometimes because it opens up roleplaying opportunities and mechanical challenges.

 

[Storyfag]

No summoned thing?
Ok.
http://5e.d20srd.org/srd/spells/plantGrowth.htm

Yeah, the druids use Plant Growth to double the yield of the fertile lands (and avoid bad weather conditions which can lead to famines), that's one of their most important jobs, and one of the things which make would-be usurpers hesitant to perform a coup.

Ah-ha! Without arcane magic to challenge them, the priests are running the show and cannot be toppled!

 

[Lacrymas]

They can be toppled, it just comes with consequences. Maybe they don't double the yield, but at least make the most use out of the lands and avoid bad weather conditions.

 

[Zombra]

Extreme religious prejudice against killing in general.

Two questions -

• What are the boundaries of this ridiculously broad pronouncement? Is all killing harshly punished? Is swatting flies okay? Poisoning rats? Slaughtering dangerous beasts? Killing humanoid monsters with rich cultures? Is there a list of "PC races" whose lives are sacred, but everything else can be obliterated at will because "they don't have souls"?
• Assuming a more extreme answer to the first question, why on earth are you basing the setting on frickin Dungeons & Dragons, which is first and absolutely foremost a set of rules about things killing other things, and levelling up to get better at killing other things? Why not use a ruleset with richer skill resolution and more interesting character development for nonlethal situations, like Burning Wheel or even the HERO System?

 

[Bara]

Could also go a little dark sun with it and instead of banning nourishment relatec spells make it herrasy to use magic that crates food as it drains the land of life and fertility.

Short terms gains at the cost of long term life.

Three things about that. 1) I don't want it to be Dark Sun. 2) It encourages sociopathy and not much else. 3) It doesn't solve the roleplaying problem of parties spamming food whenever they feel like it because it's a game. I want food to be a problem for the party sometimes because it opens up roleplaying opportunities and mechanical challenges.

I don't agree that it encourages sociopathy at all. Does it give them tge ability to do it sure if they wanted too but thats the DMs job to show how their actions effect the land and the npcs the know and care about if their interested in telling a story instead of just treating the experience like a simple video game.

Points 1 and 3 I can respect.

 

[Cael]

The entire human population is ruled by a bunch of despotic tyrants, and their brand of despotism is just straight misery. They are mostly concerned with removing any source of unpredictability of excitement from life, regardless it it's good or bad. But they don't got far enough to be exciting.

Fucking this. Someone already likened Lacrymas' setting to Demolition Man. And with good reason!

Think that was me... :D

Saw it really early, which was why I have been mocking him all this time. The unutterable moron doesn't realise that Demolition Man is satire.

 

[Cael]

But this seems more like real life than anything else.

It seems like taking the worst part of real life and making them into a fantasy setting.

Also, the official stance of the churches regarding anyone doesn't mean there won't be tragedies. It actually is great kindling for tragedy. Let's take the dwarves and halflings, the church has nothing against them in theory and don't have official discrimination policies, in the cultural landscape however they are treated as a bad omen. Just like the governments technically don't have discrimination policies against the blacks and gays for example. However, that doesn't stop people from creatively interpreting cultural traits and segregating them in ghettos/not hiring them in the case of the blacks, or outright killing or torturing them in the case of the gays.

The mind-frame behind this setting is the exact opposite of how fantasy world-building usually works. At the best circumstances the discrimination against the dwarves can get as eventful as it is in real life in XXI century. When fantasy gets inspiration from real-life social issue it usually makes it much more eventful and for the lack of better word "epic".
So in this word a dwarf might not get hired because of the prejudice. Sometimes someone might even kill him. But it won't happen, since as you've said before there is a huge stigma against killing. That's about as exciting as the first world country in the XXI century. But in addition to that you have ISIS which was hell-bent on exterminating homosexuals, or some African countries where blacks which are majority murder white farmers.
From what I see the setting lacks these more colorful aspects of discrimination.
Take Witcher for example. There Dwarves are discriminated because of how they look as well, but it's far more interesting than just some souless monolithic organization keeping them down (but usually not too much).
First of all, they aren't commonly discriminated and there are many people who openly accept them. Pogroms are common and in the games players have an opportunity to stop them. Anti-human terrorist organizations recruit them as soldiers and political powers try to buy their loyalty by promising them better, more equal society.
That's much more true to life and exciting than what I see here. I'd like the setting much more if some churches wanted to mercilessly exterminate all the dwarves while others embraced them. Which would of course sometimes spark religious wars. I just don't get why enforce this mild oppression everywhere. It's so much better to be hunted by 1d10 anti-hobbit inquisitors rather than get paid 20% less for a quest because quest-giver is prejudiced.

In the case of the paladins, it can lead to personal tragedy or large scale rebellion, Alan Turing killed himself after he got chemically castrated for daring to be gay, his status as a war hero be damned. I purposefully built this setting with this in mind because it's much closer to real life and how I view RPG parties, a group of individuals with their own personalities. They can get embroiled in large-scale conflicts, but it's not the meat and potatoes of RPGs.

It is a tragedy but It's possibly the least exciting form of tragedy. I can't really imagine anyone being hyped about the setting where depressed paladins kill themselves after being castrated.

The entire setting is a caricature of what a sjw would think a world controlled by the alt-right would be, down to the racism and Church mandated misery and torture.

 

[Lacrymas]

Extreme religious prejudice against killing in general.

Two questions -

• What are the boundaries of this ridiculously broad pronouncement? Is all killing harshly punished? Is swatting flies okay? Slaughtering dangerous beasts? Killing humanoid monsters with rich cultures? Is there a list of "PC races" whose lives are sacred, but everything else can be obliterated at will because "they don't have souls"?
• Assuming a more extreme answer to the first question, why on earth are you basing the setting on frickin Dungeons & Dragons, which is first and absolutely foremost a set of rules about things killing other things, and levelling up to get better at killing other things? Why not use a ruleset with richer skill resolution and more interesting character development for nonlethal situations, like Burning Wheel or even the HERO System?

They are against killing of humanoids in theory, so no killing as punishment (they won't hesitate to exile you, though, which will most likely lead to death), and killing of humanoids is seen as a grave sin, but they will take orc lands by force sometimes.

 

[Cael]

They can be toppled, it just comes with consequences. Maybe they don't double the yield, but at least make the most use out of the lands and avoid bad weather conditions.

So, clerics with magic can be toppled, but you all starve. But wizards with magic cant be toppled because the author is a bad DM and a retard.

Got it.

 

[Lacrymas]

No, you don't all starve, you just lose the magical help with the harvest, the yield becomes if it were real life. You can expect some people not having enough food if the druids no longer bless the land, though, yes.

 

[Zombra]

They are against killing of humanoids in theory, so no killing as punishment (they won't hesitate to exile you, though, which will most likely lead to death), and killing of humanoids is seen as a grave sin, but they will take orc lands by force sometimes.

OK, well that's an obvious contradiction and I assume they do a lot of soul-searching on it, which is fine.

I guess what I am really getting at is ... what the hell kind of D&D campaign can you actually run in this world? Are the PCs hunted outlaws because they fight goblins sometimes? Do they only fight 4-legged monsters and then go home to the horribly oppressed towns and beg the clerics for food? What on earth would players do in this world, and again, if it's not killing stuff, why D&D?

It's fine to have a super OCD detail level of culture, but if you don't keep an eye open to what kinds of stories you can tell, won't the campaign go over like a lead balloon?

 

[Lacrymas]

You can defend yourself, obviously, and dead men tell no tales, soooo yeah. In my one-shot, you have the possibility to not kill a single humanoid. It's also widely accepted such things happen in war and adventuring and, while it is very admirable to try not to kill anyone, they know it's ultimately unavoidable in certain circumstances. It's kind of like real life, it's technically a sin to kill anyone but...

 

[Zombra]

You can defend yourself, obviously, and dead men tell no tales, soooo yeah. In my one-shot, you have the possibility to not kill a single humanoid. It's also widely accepted such things happen in war and adventuring and, while it is very admirable to try not to kill anyone, they know it's ultimately unavoidable in certain circumstances. It's kind of like real life, it's technically a sin to kill anyone but...

So ... the basic plan is for the party to go around rolling dice and doing basic murderhobo shit and pretty much getting away with it, just like any other campaign? I mean, okay, but it seems like you're setting up this big religious extremism as a foundation of the world, and then handwaving away any payoff.

Wait a second ...

things happen in adventuring

... so if you say, "It's okay officer, I'm what you call an 'adventurer' ... you know, a D&D character!", they let you go?

 

[Bara]

So Larianshill how far into this abyss have you read.

 

[Lacrymas]

You can defend yourself, obviously, and dead men tell no tales, soooo yeah. In my one-shot, you have the possibility to not kill a single humanoid. It's also widely accepted such things happen in war and adventuring and, while it is very admirable to try not to kill anyone, they know it's ultimately unavoidable in certain circumstances. It's kind of like real life, it's technically a sin to kill anyone but...

So ... the basic plan is for the party to go around rolling dice and doing basic murderhobo shit and pretty much getting away with it, just like any other campaign? I mean, okay, but it seems like you're setting up this big religious extremism as a foundation of the world, and then handwaving away any payoff.

Wait a second ...

things happen in adventuring

... so if you say, "It's okay officer, I'm what you call an 'adventurer' ... you know, a D&D character!", they let you go?

I'd say it's up to the DM and the content. I made the one-shot with the intention of it being possible not to kill any humanoids, but if this setting is out there in the world I wouldn't expect every DM to try to structure their campaigns like this or enforce the no-killing rule all the time. If I were to create more content (which I will), I'd keep trying to make it possible not to kill humanoids. The situation gets messy if orcs get involved. The last time we played, they did end up killing humanoids (not orcs), though, because they thought they could have their cake and eat it too. As for adventurers, adventuring is an officially recognized role in this society, so yes, you do get more of a leeway with this, especially since most of the time nobody sees you doing it. If you openly kill people in a city, it's going to cause trouble for you, but if you kill an orc in the desert nobody will know.

 

[Zombra]

So murder is a crime, but anything else is fine because there are no cops in the woods. Sounds like every D&D campaign ever, but whatever.

"Adventurer" is a recognized job, like "lamplighter" or "pig farmer"? What the hell does that even look like? Do you get an adventure badge you can flash as your license to kill? Is there a pension plan? I thought the whole point of "adventure" is it goes past boundaries - that's what adventure is. Way to suck the fun out of everything.

And ... this isn't a campaign setting you're developing for yourself to DM, but rather a D&D sourcebook you're going to try to sell? With 1/4 of the classes cut because everyone likes fewer character creation options? I mean wow okay

I mean you're a good guy and I sincerely wish you luck but wow

 

[Cael]

You can defend yourself, obviously, and dead men tell no tales, soooo yeah. In my one-shot, you have the possibility to not kill a single humanoid. It's also widely accepted such things happen in war and adventuring and, while it is very admirable to try not to kill anyone, they know it's ultimately unavoidable in certain circumstances. It's kind of like real life, it's technically a sin to kill anyone but...

Actually, no. The original phrase was, I believe, "Thou shalt not commit murder."

Which is incredibly different to "Thou shalt not kill."

 

[Lacrymas]

So murder is a crime, but anything else is fine because there are no cops in the woods. Sounds like every D&D campaign ever, but whatever.

"Adventurer" is a recognized job, like "lamplighter" or "pig farmer"? What the hell does that even look like? Do you get an adventure badge you can flash as your license to kill? Is there a pension plan? I thought the whole point of "adventure" is it goes past boundaries - that's what adventure is. Way to suck the fun out of everything.

And ... this isn't a campaign setting you're developing for yourself to DM, but rather a D&D sourcebook you're going to try to sell? With 1/4 of the classes cut because everyone likes fewer character creation options? I mean wow okay

I mean you're a good guy and I sincerely wish you luck but wow

Adventurer is a recognized role, which gets quite a lot of special benefits, like absolving you of staying in the kitchen and making babies as a woman, but it's not a job you get a monthly paycheck for. How would you enforce the no-killing rule out in the desert? This thing is mostly to frame discipline and punishment, not so much for the adventurers. Well, they could roleplay a party or character which is really into the no-killing thing and feels soul-crushingly guilty after that. It's not a D&D sourcebook, it is a setting for my own use, I was just giving a hypothetical example of what I could expect if it were a setting for mass use.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

Pogroms and other massacres of undesirables are a real thing.

They are, but you have to admit they are a rare and extreme thing. They can still happen in my setting, it just isn't institutional policy at the moment. And I have fortified this with the extreme religious prejudice against killing in general.

I know, I've mentioned in my first post why I it makes me dislike the setting so much.

 

[Reinhardt]

like absolving you of staying in the kitchen and making babies as a woman

I've thought you can't just make babies as a woman because it's regulated by church. I guess they don't want even more angry wommyn barbarians roaming the world.

 

[Lacrymas]

like absolving you of staying in the kitchen and making babies as a woman

I've thought you can't just make babies as a woman because it's regulated by church. I guess they don't want even more angry wommyn barbarians roaming the world.

You don't plop out babies all the time as a woman, but doing housework and being an incubator is your role in society unless you are an adventurer of some sort (incl. barbarian) or clergy basically.

 

[Reinhardt]

like absolving you of staying in the kitchen and making babies as a woman

I've thought you can't just make babies as a woman because it's regulated by church. I guess they don't want even more angry wommyn barbarians roaming the world.

You don't plop out babies all the time as a woman, but doing housework and being an incubator is your role in society unless you are an adventurer of some sort (incl. barbarian) or clergy basically.

Also i've heard food is scarce so poor wommynz don't even need to stay in kitchen that much.