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Re: (TFT) progress report



On Jul 7, 2011, at 11:03 PM, Maou.Tsaou@gmail.com wrote:

On , Joey Beutel wrote:
To me it sounds like you should probably just leave everyone as human... At the very least, a goblin/viking match up doesn't make sense. Goblins
are small and weak. Vikings are basically your quintessential human.


Well sure but half-Goblins and one eight-Goblins and so on need not be so
small and weak.
Also if you want to get all technical about it the term Viking is a verb meaning a voyage of exploration or raiding, one who participated in such a
voyage was a Vikingr.
Ask a Swede if there's a ton of love for a Norwegian in their country for
example, and don't bring Denmark into it...
I get your point about the "bad visuals" in that the common perception of Viking and Goblin don't seem to mix so well but the Norse were a pretty
cosmopolitan culture for a pretty long time...
Also, I'm not so much interested in the "classic" view of the races but rather I'm more interested in defining races by the culture I've plopped
the players into.
In this case "human" is the native Rapi Nui.
A race that becomes opposed to the islanders is gonna take on some kind
of "Orc" status in the same way that the "Vikings" call any
aborigines "Skraelings".

Okay, I get that point, but from a game play POV goblins in TFT are very weak and have a low DX. Vikings (those who Vike... haha) should be capable fighters. If you want to 'call' them something else to make killing them less bad feeling, I'd suggest calling them orcs.... the same as humans in a gaming sorta way, but they are made the 'other' in the player's minds.
...
From a game pov this is a device for tension.
If I've got a group of classic gamers' then I'll just stick with
the "classic" old-school mental pictures of these races and just make the
islanders and all of Polyneisa caucasoid.

....What?
Often these days I've got folks that aren't quite as set in their mental pictures, they still know that's it's assumed to be a good thing to kill an
Orc or Goblin... or maybe at least not such a rotten thing.
Killing Goblins is pretty much a given in RPG's.
So to be lazy I let actual history give me the broad strokes of the
background so I have a basic idea of the "bigger picture" if a clever
player ever want's to try and break through my "frame" while still
communicating pretty clearly just whom it's okay to kill.
Why not call the Chinese "Elves" if they ever show up in the region?
They can look like whatever I choose to describe them as looking like, and if they can copulate and make a "half-breed" then they can't be TOO far
apart in actual abitities...
I choose to use fantasy terms because if I choose to use actual modern
racial slurs I might be even more misunderstood.

So what I'm getting from this is that you want to call the other human (in their actual physical capabilities and appearance) groups by fantasy names so that they are dehumanized within the game.

Okay, I thought you meant using the TFT stats for the various races for their real world 'counterparts,' in which case I took a bit of issue, as the goblin stats just don't match up with what a Viking needs to be, etc etc...
...
The principal of "The Dark Lord" in my gameworld is to diametrically oppose
the players.
If you've got a bunch of knights in shining white armor then the Dark Lord
is a black knight.
If you've got a bunch of cut-throats that are always ripping each other off and always looking out for themselves then the Dark Lord is the epitome of
law and order, just like a Earp.
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