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What professions should we consider working on?
https://www.libraryofhiabuor.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=131		 Page 2 of 6
Author:  Acoma [ Fri Mar 02, 2018 3:58 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: What professions should we consider working on?
I've recently done a bit on Volucreth advancement and other Professions. I might start a thread on Fan Projects, or maybe not as the Witcher thread isn't getting much love right now ;) .

I had some ideas for a Volucreth 'Battle Mage' or something, roughly equivalent to a Warlock, but more focused on augmenting combat abilities than individual spells.
Author:  Starkad [ Fri Mar 02, 2018 6:23 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: What professions should we consider working on?
Quoting Dave Morris on this subject:

"...You've bought the Dragon Warriors books, so your Legend is entirely up to you. We don't have no truck with authorial privilege in these parts. But I do have a good reason for recommending that you don't start neatly indexing elves and dwarves and what-have-you into suitable player-character templates. That's because it will ruin your game.

Mike Polling (the author of "The Key of Tirandor", an excellent scenario in White Dwarf #49-50 that is to be reprinted in "In From The Cold") describes a problem in fantasy fiction and gaming that he calls taxonomic reduction. It begins with a demand for details about elves, for example - their social organization, clothing, breeding habits, and so on. So you get a supplement with all that stuff... hit points for Grey Elves, magic for High Elves, eye colour and what they eat. Now you can play an elf. But actually all you are playing is another kind of human being.

Okay, so now your players start to sense that something has gone. Elves used to be mysterious. Now they know more about them than they do about Yanomami Indians. So you have to bring in something new. You scour legends until you find Trows, say, or Sith. Just words. Now they take the place of the elves who have been filed and categorized into meaninglessness. Yet pretty soon a player says, "How can I get to play a trow character?" and the whole reductive process begins again.

The point is: you don’t need player-character elves or dwarves. Unless of course you want to recreate Lord of the Rings in your games, in which case stop playing Legend right now because it’s not that kind of setting - what you want is D&D or MERP. Human beings (or rather mortals, as the term is in Legend) already have infinite diversity. If you aren't able to find that in your own role-playing ability, dressing up as an elf isn’t going to do it for you.

We have to have the rules in role-playing, but they’re a necessary evil. They shouldn't be allowed to shape the way we think about the world and characters. And most especially they shouldn't be allowed to stifle the magic and mystery that's the whole point of choosing Legend as your game world in the first place.

Of course, DW is a game system as well as a milieu. So you're perfectly at liberty to chuck out the low-magic medieval setting and spooky flavour and just use the rules for combat and magic. My own gaming group did it the other way round: our games are set in Legend but we use our own GURPS variant, 7URPS."
(Posted 24 August 2010 in "Fabled Lands")

If you want to create DW professions for non-humans, then that's fine. Personally, I prefer Dave Morris' approach and limit my players to humans only... That way the non-humans remain strange and exotic. (But that's just my preference.) ;)
Author:  Cobwebbed Dragon [ Fri Mar 02, 2018 7:06 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: What professions should we consider working on?
Starkad wrote:
If you want to create DW professions for non-humans, then that's fine. Personally, I prefer Dave Morris' approach and limit my players to humans only... That way the non-humans remain strange and exotic. (But that's just my preference.) ;)

To me, the question is what am I creating this option (such as non-human races, new profession, etc.) for? In what way will playing an elf, for example, be sufficiently distinct and transformative to the game that there is no way to achieve the same end with a human character?

I have never, in all my years (and there have been several), have I seen anyone play a non-human race in a way that they could not have played a human character. As Dave Morris says, that's just not Legend.

A similar problem to reductionism occurs when new professions are introduced to the game, too, in that they often stifle player choice and creativity rather than broaden to it.
Author:  Acoma [ Fri Mar 02, 2018 8:54 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: What professions should we consider working on?
Not as playable PC Professions, but as NPCs if a campaign is ever run in Mungoda. The Bestiary states that 'other Professions and Ranks can be extrapolated'.
Author:  Kharille [ Fri Mar 02, 2018 11:28 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: What professions should we consider working on?
The thread is an open one so I'm happy to see the discussion. I see where Dave is coming from, like the mysterious encounter with the elves in Wyrd in bloodsword book 2. Stuff the guy does like enchanting those 'chess' pieces aren't covered in the conventional rules. I've been corrupted by the palladium system which showed you how to generate ogre or dragon player characters, or at least the system was inclined in that direction. I think the 'culture' and mystery of non humans is up to the games master.

Also I think even in blood sword there was some entry about running the rules to suit yourself. Something about the cup of truth being drunk so many ways. Was that a Ta'ashim saying in book 3?... I don't recall which book had it, or maybe that was some character quote in book 3/4.
Author:  Starkad [ Sat Mar 03, 2018 7:47 am ]
Post subject:  Re: What professions should we consider working on?
Quote:
Was that a Ta'ashim saying in book 3?... I don't recall which book had it, or maybe that was some character quote in book 3/4.

Bloodsword, book 3, page 38 (the end of the introduction):
In the words of Hasan i-Sabah, Grandmaster of the Marijah Assasins, 'There is no single truth; everything is possible.'
Or, as the Saviour of the True Faith said, 'From the Cup of Truth one can drink a thousand times.'

Palladium, D&D, Pathfinder, MERPS, WFRPS... All these games allow (and even encourage) non-human characters. I'm not sure they fit the world of Legend as it is generally depicted... But every game is different; the main thing being that everyone has a good time.
(When I started GMing - a long time ago - I set my campaign in the world of Legend but using Palladium rules. It was a very different, rather more 'high fantasy' game than those I run now. The players at the time liked it, and that's the main thing IMO.)
Author:  WodenKrait [ Sat Mar 03, 2018 11:51 am ]
Post subject:  Re: What professions should we consider working on?
I always liked the Volucreth as a species; their brief description in Book 1 left just enough for me to conclude that they were a genuinely "other" intelligent race, one which simply did not think like humans do. In my rationalist framework of Legend they were from an evolutionary branch originating from prehistoric birds like Phorusrhacos. With the last common ancestor of Humans and Volucreth lying hundreds of millions of years in the past, it is inevitable that the Volucreth would be fundamentally different from us, and therefore ultimately implacable and unknowable.

Cheers,

-Kyle
Author:  Kharille [ Sat Mar 03, 2018 12:03 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: What professions should we consider working on?
One way to look at it. We have sorcerors. I mean, ok, no big deal, its known and I can't see how a 'witch hunt' is going to happen when there are so many sorcerors and warlocks about. I know the assassins of yamato had a certain mystique that could silence a pub. If sorcerors are forming guilds or acting as advisors, perhaps peasants wouldn't be so surprised by these miracles. I mean, who is gatanades when some wandering low rank sorceror produces a BANQUET here and there.

Wouldn't mind having a medica profession but he would be outshone by the sorceror. Perhaps we can create a supplement on the nitty gritty aspects of wounds and disease, but the sorceror seems to make them obsolete.


Well, maybe more emphasis on 'fun professions'. I might recommend some form of 'scout' profession, one that differs from the Assassin, and possibly with similar STEALTH and PERCEPTION scores. Possibly one that can traverse rough terrain more easily, simple climbing and swimming skills and maybe even one that runs as fast as elves, to get away from combat.
Author:  Starkad [ Sat Mar 03, 2018 12:41 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: What professions should we consider working on?
Quote:
I always liked the Volucreth as a species; their brief description in Book 1 left just enough for me to conclude that they were a genuinely "other" intelligent race, one which simply did not think like humans do.

I agree. I've never used them (my campaigns have never run that far south), but I'd like to someday.

Quote:
I might recommend some form of 'scout' profession, one that differs from the Assassin, and possibly with similar STEALTH and PERCEPTION scores. Possibly one that can traverse rough terrain more easily, simple climbing and swimming skills and maybe even one that runs as fast as elves, to get away from combat.

That has possibilities. Sounds like a cross between a Barbarian and an Assassin (losing the Assassin's "shock attack" and alchemical abilities, but gaining a Barbarian's health and, perhaps, the Hunter's wilderness abilities)?

As I was typing those very last words, I started to wonder if that's not already what the Hunter is? :?
Author:  hermes421 [ Sat Mar 03, 2018 1:30 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: What professions should we consider working on?
Starkad wrote:
Quote:
I always liked the Volucreth as a species; their brief description in Book 1 left just enough for me to conclude that they were a genuinely "other" intelligent race, one which simply did not think like humans do.

I agree. I've never used them (my campaigns have never run that far south), but I'd like to someday.

Hi all my pc was out of order. And my first sentence is hello, and I agree with volucreth as an intelligent race. If anyone created professions for this species, feel free to share it, :).
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