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Originally Posted by Skywalker
Aldis is not a "Mary Sue" society as presented in Blue Rose. It has evil, horror, corruption, suffering and lots of grey bits too.
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Fair enough and I don't mean to totally slam Aldis, but Mary Sueness is certainly in the eyes of the beholder and, well, it's often the little things that rub. The things that bother me (from what I've heard so far) about Aldis really have nothing to do with the "the love that has no name."
I've thrown
that particular issue into my campaigns more than once in both positive and negative lights. I mean, it's not as if there aren't real human societies where the contentious social issues of our day such as homosexuality, lifelong monogamy, etc., weren't handled quite differently than ours, e.g., the Ancient Greeks. There's also some fantasy that dealt with these issues in various ways, e.g., the Thieves' World series.
No, it's rampant telepathic animals as PCs that do me in. (Despite my general enjoyment of David Weber's Honor Harrington series, the treecats really wear). Of course, it's no big deal to drop that sort of thing.
Some of the criticism of the source material for the genre <cough> Mercedes Lackey< cough> is that its MSQ is kinda high. Of course, one could level the same criticism at a lot of other genres, e.g., swords and sorcery or "high" fantasy. As I hoped to bring out with my citing "Epic Pooh" even such a "legitimate" book as Lord of the Rings has a big wish fulfillment aspect to it in its romanticization of pre-industrial English country life. My main point about Mary Sueness is that I think it's easy--whatever one's political or social persuasion--to make a fantasy society into one's ideal. As a principle of design, it seems to me that intentionally incorporating a serious flaw or two is a good idea.
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How Aldis differs from most settings is that it has a tangible manifestation of what is "good", rather than just an ideal. I can see how some can see this as rosy. However, presenting such a tangible manifestation and then putting it at risk from the numerous dangers provides an ever ready source of discussion, conflict and real weight to the PC actions. As such, the result is quite different than what a quick glance might suggest.
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It certainly depends on how this is handled, of course, but at first blush this is the sort of thing that often gets people's hackles up. Also to naysayers I'll note that if you file off the semi-controversial social issues, this is *exactly* the sort of thing that appears in many fantasy settings today. Most of them are simply de-sexualized.
Jay