Too Many Swords

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yes, you can, if you try hard enough, on a planet with 6+ billion people, find exceptions to the rule.  That's what makes it a rule: the fact that you can find rare, extreme examples that are different - their rarity and extreme nature make the rule the standard.

[womble]

Yes, you can, if you try hard enough, on a planet with 6+ billion people, find exceptions to the rule.  That's what makes it a rule: the fact that you can find rare, extreme examples that are different - their rarity and extreme nature make the rule the standard.

The point is, it's not rare. The examples are extremes in and of themselves; Lundgren is merely the buffest guy with advanced degree and Dan grades that I can think of; there are plenty of international professional sportsmen and women with the brains and focus to get an advanced education while remaining elite competitors in their field. Combinations of brain and brawn are not unusual, especially if you're looking at cadres from which protagonists might be drawn for the kind of adventures "we" like to represent around a table. There's plenty of room in most points allocations for someone to be an above-average physical specimen and still kick ass magically. They perhaps won't be as magically versatile as someone who has bought their physical stats down to "puny", but they can hit campaign caps in one or two directions.

 

There are other RPGs than Hero and DnD, too. RuneQuest, for example, has pretty much everyone being able to use magic in a minor way, and the true movers and shakers are Rune Lord Priests, who are masters of many physical skills, as well as having wodges of God-backed magic and their own mojo, but they're probably build on Superhero levels of points, since they're "very experienced" if they're PCs.

[sinanju]

GURPS is another example. I've played (in more than one campaign) a mage who masquerades as a fighter. He is physically tough, has plenty of combat ability, AND knows lots of spells. Is he as effective as a completely-focused swordsman? No. The points that guy spent on raising his skills and buying special maneuvers, my guy spent on learning magic. Is he as learned as a guy who put all of his points into learning spells? No.

 

But he's more than capable of being a very effective adventurer, and when he's trapped in a room with a vampire, the vampire is going to be VERY surprised when the "swordsman" breathes fire all over him (as happened in one adventure).

[csyphrett]

Several OCCs for Rifts do this. Favorite is the Techno mage, but the tattoo guys  among others combine magic with physical skills also.

CES

[zslane]

Mages are the math/science nerds of the fantasy RPG idiom. Nerds are not athletes. The nerd/jock dichotomy is very real, and for understandable reasons. In the context of medieval fantasy worlds, wizards are not inclined to become skilled and physically fit fighters for all the same reasons modern nerds are not inclined to become star athletes or celebrated combat vets.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah Zslane, we all know that, but now someone will trot out some nerd academic that can bench press 900 and pretend that's not abnormal.

[Manic Typist]

Yeah Zslane, we all know that, but now someone will trot out some nerd academic that can bench press 900 and pretend that's not abnormal.

You're comparing different populations, and arguing extremes that no one is discussing.

 

Who are these super tough, super fit, paragons of martial skill fighters we are discussing?

 

In a fantasy setting, they will almost always be military/part of the warrior segment of society (or outlaws, but those are really just the same kind of person operating on the other side of the law). People whose profession is violence. Therefore, you should include adventurers. There's simply no reason that an adventuring/military mage should be unfit simply by virtue of being a mage.

 

In the US armed forces, you have a wide spectrum of physical ability and intelligence, as well as fields of speciality. Nevertheless, your nuclear engineers, chemists, and biologists, engage in the exact same core physical training as their infantry counterparts. They have to pass the same physical fitness standards (even ones that don't make sense, like BMI tests which would flunk people like Dwayne Johnson) as a military police officer or water sanitation troop. Of course each group has additional tests and requirements on top- but in general they all march and do pushups.

 

Of course, in reality, many people who are in the profession of violence are also unfit.

 

No one's arguing that a dedicated magic user can be/should be as good as a dedicated fighter at melee combat (absent spells used to boost melee abilities)- just that the requirement that the magic user be "frail" is a false start.

 

If anyone's interested, there's a fairly good fantasy series (Schooled in Magic) that makes the argument better than I. The kingdoms in the setting are in a war against a bunch of insanely powerful, mad necromancers. All students at their version of Hogwarts must take at least a certain level of defensive magic yes, but on top there is a program called Martial Magic. It consists of grizzled sergeants making the students run with full ruck, camp, engage in search and destroy (or escape and evade) exercises, and the trainers employ every dirty combat trick they can think of to prepare these students to someday become combat sorcerers. 

[zslane]

We may be seeing a re-defining of fantasy thanks to series like Harry Potter. But Harry Potter is urban fantasy, not traditional medieval fantasy. You can't take a conventional D&D-ish setting, which is modelled after medieval folklore and a healthy dose of miniatures wargaming nerd wish fulfillment, and suddenly apply modern urban fantasy tropes without doing serious violence to the feel of the game. We are clearly talking apples and oranges here.

 

I think the moment anyone uses the word "realistic" or mentions anything in relation to modern times or modern fantasies written for tweens, they are talking about a new kind of fantasy setting that is worlds apart from Greyhawk, Middle-Earth, or Hyborea. The expectations will be quite different, and the genre conventions almost subersive in their desperate search to be "fresh and different". As such, what you folks mean by the terms wizard and fighter have clearly evolved into something very different than what I mean by those terms, and having a coherent conversation about them is turning out to be rather difficult.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I think the word "believable" or "plausible" is better than "realistic."  As in internally consistent and reasonable based upon certain assumptions like "magic exists" and "dragons can talk and fly."

 

To me, the modern need to inject scientific explanations or quasi-scientific explanations into every single situation and setting is a silly concept that is going to be very dated when people look back at the books from this era.  Who cares how dragons got here, why do you need to explain what evolutionary process gave orcs tusks?  Its going down a rabbit hole that does not need to be explored and for me at least robs magic and fantasy of its wonder and charm by delving too deeply into parts that are best left unexplained.

[sinanju]

It depends on your "scientific" explanation. I've been working a background for a D&D-style game which answers some of the questions that bother me about D&D if I think too hard about it. For instance, all the various humanoid races. The existence of ancient artifacts of great power. The presence of weird monsters. And so forth.

 

My answer: (Ancient) Wizards did it. Seriously. The world was once home to a race of men who were almost gods--they'd mastered the 'sciences' of magic and made themselves unaging and beautiful and rich and powerful beyond imagining. They also created all the other humanoid races to be their servants and playthings, giving them the appearances and temperaments they have to this day. Some were bred to work. Some to fight. Some to be unobtrusive servants. Some to be beautiful toys. Then, as always happens in these situations, these men who would be gods, destroyed themselves somehow.

 

And they left their works behind--ancient cities, deathtraps all as a result of the cataclysm, and their servants. Who fled the cities for centuries or millennia of survival in the wild and, eventually, in cities and nations they built themselves. Those who bred true still resemble their ancestors. Those who didn't, created the mutts (i.e., humans). Any species that doesn't police its bloodlines begins to revert to the mean, i.e., begin to resemble humans more and more closely, since they're the base stock from which all the other races were created. That's why they're all interfertile. That's why half-whatevers are so common.

 

The various races also tend to stick together, creating nations with common cultures and language. So "Orcish" isn't a racial language in my game, it's the language of the Orcish nation. Ditto for dwarven, elvish, etc. It's like French, German and English. So, yes, you can have members of various races who don't speak their racial language because they grew up elsewhere and never learned it. It makes almost no real difference in play, I admit, but I like it that way.

 

Most of the monsters in my game also tend to be found in specific areas of the world--because they "evolved" or wandered through open portals to other realms that existed or still exist in the long-abandoned Ancient cities. They fit well enough to be able to survive in the game world, but they have wierd abilities and features because they're from elsewhere. And non-adventurers who don't deliberately go poking them with sticks, who stay in the 'civilized' areas of the world will likely never encounter them.

[Markdoc]

Mages are the math/science nerds of the fantasy RPG idiom. Nerds are not athletes. The nerd/jock dichotomy is very real, and for understandable reasons. In the context of medieval fantasy worlds, wizards are not inclined to become skilled and physically fit fighters for all the same reasons modern nerds are not inclined to become star athletes or celebrated combat vets.

But if you have been following the discussion, you'll know that the nerd/jock dichotomy isn't real.

 

That's the point of the discussion. Yes, there are weedy smart guys ... and there are buff smart guys, in roughly similar numbers. There are big dumb guys .... and there are scrawny dumb guys, too, again in roughly equal numbers. In the real world, there is no dichotomy ... and the numbers on that are solid. So yeah, you can (and do) have nerd jocks - guys like vin Diesel.

 

Cheers, Mark

[zslane]

I assure you that the nerd/jock dichotomy is very real, at least on planet Earth. What planet are you living on?

[bigbywolfe]

The planet earth, where a skinny little geek is more likely to be dumber than a rock than above average intelligence and a smart, successful person is statistically more likely to be at least fit and healthy if not above average physically.

EDIT for grammar (I forgot an "a").

Edited March 5, 2016 by bigbywolfe

[Christopher R Taylor]

Well, there's a difference between worldbuilding and the overwhelming compulsion to find a scientific answer for how everything works.  Its one thing to say "Dragons were once rulers of the land and all died out, but are coming back to life because the king dragon, banished in time, has returned" *COUGHskyrimCOUGH*  Its another to say "dragons were evolved from smaller lizards and experimented on by aliens so they have a gland which produces flammable gas allowing them to fly yadda yadda...

 

The former has a good feel of magic and wonder and fantasy that takes you to another world and feels special, like when you were a kid and around that corner there might be a pegasus, based on that shadow and the forest has faeries in it that hide when you come but if you sit quietly enough....

The latter is just another blah place with different shaped animals working exactly like ours.

[Lucius]

When I think about it, I don't think old school AD&D even enforced that stereotype too strongly.

 

You could not have a magic user with STR 18/00 but you COULD have a magic user with STR or CON of 18, or a fighter with INT or WIS of 18.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Insert palindromedary tagline here

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah but d4 hps, and +4 per level isn't going to make up for that.  And you couldn't wear heavy armor (for the AC), so you weren't a bruiser that could take a heavy hit and keep going.  And that THACO was terrible.

[Ninja-Bear]

This argument seems to become the classic high kick argument. High kicks are useless in a fight. But so and so used high kicks or I know a guy who can. But was it a "real" fight. And continue the repeats.

[Christopher R Taylor]

No attack is useless in a fight, but some of them are not going to serve you very well against any sort of skilled combatant.  The problem with combat simulation and movies etc is that things go wrong.  Your foot slips. You get a catch in your side.  You get an eyelash in your eye.  Your opponent surprises you by doing something you were completely unready for.  Someone gets distracted.  Your clothing binds up and restricts your movement.  Real life us messy and ugly, and the best fighter in the world can lose against a complete amateur just because of something stupid.

[womble]

It occurred to me the other day that my 10-18 school was, at least on the male side, close to 50% jocks. This an examined-entry school from which University entrance was the expectation for every child; maybe half a dozen a year didn't achieve that. A year's intake was four classes of 30, 50% boys. In the winter, we boys played Rugby or (field) Hockey. Rugby required a 15 man side and 3 subs. Hockey has a team of 11 and I don't know how many substitutes. So of 60 boys in an age group, at least 29 were playing school-representative sport. The girls didn't have as high a proportion, as their Netball teams were half the size of the boys' rugby teams.

 

While the "Jock/Nerd divide" might be institutionalised in American High Schools, it's far from universal.

[Markdoc]

I assure you that the nerd/jock dichotomy is very real, at least on planet Earth. What planet are you living on?

 

Same planet ... but a different culture. You look at the culture you grew up in, where the nerd/jock dichotomy is enshrined in pop culture and think that's the way the world is. I grew up in the english public school culture where it wasn't considered at all odd that the captain of the rugby team and the captain of the cricket team were also top scholars. Not only was it not odd, it was kind of expected. In that culture, physical prowess and academic excellence were expected to go together. Or at least, that was the goal: this is real life, so of course, they didn't for a lot of us. Academically inclined kids were also expected to push themselves physically as well - to become top at sports and - yes, to become war heroes. It's why the war dead enshrined at my school, also had their academic bests listed. Thus Lloyd Trigg, DFC, VC, Latin (1st). Or Lawrence of Arabia - nerdy school literature fag ...and tough as nails war hero, rolled into one. That was the ideal. So there really wasn't a nerd jock dichotomy. Being good at sports was no reason to shirk your studies and vice versa.

 

You can also see it in the heroes popular in the same culture - invented heroes like Richard Hannay - amateur spy, soldier, fantastic fighter ... and educated gentleman, fluent in several languages. Or real life heroes like Hannay's inspiration Baron Edward Ironside - fluent in seven languages, functional in 10 more, student of history, amateur architect .... and star rugby player, spy, and highly decorated war hero, etc etc.

 

But forget about examples: there's a simple, definitive answer to this discussion: if the nerd/jock dichotomy was actually real, you could measure it. Bigger body mass would correlate with lower academic performance and lower IQ. And guess what? It has been measured (a lot). That's the kind of thing people tend to measure and argue about. And it's not real. There is no negative correlation between body mass and intellectual performance - at least in any way that we can measure. If anything, there is a slight trend in the opposite direction: bigger body mass and better athletic performance tends to correlate with a higher IQ and better academic performance (the trend is weak though, and not significant in many studies). So there you have it.

 

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

It occurred to me the other day that my 10-18 school was, at least on the male side, close to 50% jocks. This an examined-entry school from which University entrance was the expectation for every child; maybe half a dozen a year didn't achieve that. A year's intake was four classes of 30, 50% boys. In the winter, we boys played Rugby or (field) Hockey. Rugby required a 15 man side and 3 subs. Hockey has a team of 11 and I don't know how many substitutes. So of 60 boys in an age group, at least 29 were playing school-representative sport. The girls didn't have as high a proportion, as their Netball teams were half the size of the boys' rugby teams.

 

While the "Jock/Nerd divide" might be institutionalised in American High Schools, it's far from universal.

 

Exactly. We didn't have girls at our school, but otherwise, the picture is the same. It was a school dedicated to academic excellence. We dominated the scholarship lists every year for our region. And we also crushed all our rivals every year at rugby, which was the only sport that really counted.

 

This was before D&D so there was no roleplaying, but at high school we certainly had our nerd group, who were into music, literature (both fantasy and "serious") and drunken rambling philosophical discussions - but half of the group were also successful athletes (one went on to play hockey at international level while he was at university).

 

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

When I think about it, I don't think old school AD&D even enforced that stereotype too strongly.

 

You could not have a magic user with STR 18/00 but you COULD have a magic user with STR or CON of 18, or a fighter with INT or WIS of 18.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Insert palindromedary tagline here

 

Yeah but d4 hps, and +4 per level isn't going to make up for that.  And you couldn't wear heavy armor (for the AC), so you weren't a bruiser that could take a heavy hit and keep going.  And that THACO was terrible.

 

I think Christopher has the right of it here: the combination of no armour, no weapon proficiencies, low THACO, and low hit points meant that you could not effectively build a fighting mage (except in 1st ed. AD&D, with its wildly unbalanced  multiclassing rules) regardless of what your physical stat.s were. I fact, as far as I can tell, that's what actually started the whole "weedy wizard" meme. Other fantasy games current at the time (EPT, Runequest, C&S, etc) allowed you (or in some cases, actively encouraged you) to build armoured, fighting spellcasters. But of course, D&D became the standard, and I think that's where the dominant meme emerged from. Amusingly, given the discussion above, I suspect that meme emerged from the US high school nerd/jock divide - US popular culture being written into the game's underpinnings.

 

cheers, Mark

[massey]

 

A model of intellectual prowess indeed.

[Markdoc]

 

A model of intellectual prowess indeed.

 

But it makes the point beautifully! Because of course that's not an actual person, but an actor playing the stereotype that launched this discussion. We look at it and laugh precisely because we know it's a stereotype. As an actual example, it's right up there with "all Poles are dumb", "all Jews are miserly", "all Africans got rythym" ... etc. There are plenty of people who will insist that those stereotypes are real as well. 

 

cheers, Mark

[Ninja-Bear]

Exactly. We didn't have girls at our school, but otherwise, the picture is the same. It was a school dedicated to academic excellence. We dominated the scholarship lists every year for our region. And we also crushed all our rivals every year at rugby, which was the only sport that really counted.

 

This was before D&D so there was no roleplaying, but at high school we certainly had our nerd group, who were into music, literature (both fantasy and "serious") and drunken rambling philosophical discussions - but half of the group were also successful athletes (one went on to play hockey at international level while he was at university).

 

cheers, Mark

Which proves you know of an anomaly?

I can point out how many of our football stars cannot complete an elementry education yet they make millions. Does that prove the sterotype?