Post originally by Kobold Lord at 2004-06-25 06:26:29
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The reviewer stated:
"My biggest fear is that the high fantasy elements---those elements that make D&D what it is---would be watered down by Sci-Fi until it was a painfully diluted shadow of itself...Clearly, when dealing with a subject so far removed from traditional high-fantasy conventions, a D&D sourcebook must make its case immediately that it doesn’t upset the delicate balance inherent to the system and its game worlds."
Why do so many people believe that mecha violate the high fantasy conventions? Not just this review, of course; there's been several fantasy mecha reviews popping up recently, what with the near-simultaneous releases of Striders, Stryders, and Eberron, and most of those reviewers have cited similar sentiments.
Yet... Every Final Fantasy at least since FFIV has featured mecha. Plenty of fantasy-themed animation, from Escaflowne to Scrapped Princess and whathaveyou, have featured mecha. And it isn't just Japan, either; let's not forget that mecha were written into D&D Greyhawk canon way back in first edition. Check the Artifact section of the DMG. Then in second edition, one of the most important planes in the Planescape setting was appropriately called "Mechanus."
There are more examples, if anyone cares to remember them. While mecha aren't appropriate to every world, it seems odd that so many of us forget that there's plenty of people out there using this very source material. I'm rather surprised we didn't get mecha rules sooner, considering all the people that must have had to homebrew them.
In most campaign worlds, mecha actually make logical sense. Humans in the real world are very inventive. It doesn't seem logical to donate such an easily accessible power source as magic (and if you've got a single spellcasting PC, magic is probably easily accessible) to a society of humans and not have them develop technology with it. Several official campaign worlds have recent cataclysmic events that wiped out all magitech (the Cataclysm of DL, the fall of Netheril in FR, etc.), but it's nice to see some support for those GMs that don't want to have the same cliched disaster immediately preceding PC activity in their own campaigns.
Post originally by Skinner's Pigeon at 2004-06-25 07:02:14
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I flipped through a friend's copy of Doom Striders. I thought it looked pretty cool--the mecha were definitely distinctive (much better looking than the hideous ones on the front cover), and overall they seemed to be made with fantasy in mind. They really answer the question, "what would a giant robot built using magic and clockwork look and act like?"
But I could never use Doom Striders in a fantasy game, because while they're cool, they wind up asking more questions than they answer. The "arcane furnaces" most of them have on their backs are obviously an incredible power source. Why not put them to more practical use-- assembly lines, transport vehicles, a magical-industrial revolution? How could Doom Striders possibly come into being without any other major, world-changing technological advancements? Why WOULDN'T the world turn into the "painfully diluted shadow" that you mention?
I just can't wrap my brain around it. Only if you came up with some incredibly convoluted story (salvaged precursor technology, religious stigma, etc.) could you have such a technical disparity. And even then it would only last for a brief period of time. You would have to set all your campaigns in this small window of a couple years to run this particular world. After that, everybody's got arcanotrucks and flamestrike pistols, and it's just like modern day or sci-fi drivel. For an example, note the differences between tech levels in Final Fantasy X and FF X-2. X-2 seems like modern day set in a fantasy world, complete with camcorders, guns, computers, cellphones...
In short, I love the concept, but it would just make more work for me to design a world instead of less. So no thanks. I have a hard enough time with vanilla D&D.
Post originally by aeon at 2004-06-25 08:08:37
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Rune Stryders answers many of the questions you ask below. I don't know if Doom Striders does because I haven't read it.
Read sample pages and reviews of Rune Stryders here:
http://www.pigames.net/runestryders.php
Skinner's Pigeon wrote:
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But I could never use Doom Striders in a fantasy game, because while they're cool, they wind up asking more questions than they answer. The "arcane furnaces" most of them have on their backs are obviously an incredible power source. Why not put them to more practical use-- assembly lines, transport vehicles, a magical-industrial revolution? How could Doom Striders possibly come into being without any other major, world-changing technological advancements? Why WOULDN'T the world turn into the "painfully diluted shadow" that you mention?
Post originally by access.denied at 2004-06-25 14:22:14
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Isn't Final Fantasy series very much science-fantasy oriented? That is, mixing SF and Fantasy elements?
Because I very much doubt Conan's, Frodo's, or Fafhrd's (to pull some fantasy icons) Weltanschauung would survive when confronted with mecha. Well, Fafhrd's might, as his universe was given to much weirdness.
Anyway, as long as fantasy is kept close to its usual definition (i.e. medieval world + magic), mecha don't really fit very well. On the other hand, it may be of course argued that pure fantasy is a pretty barren genre these days anyway, and it needs the injection of new themes to keep it potent. I'm just not convinced that mecha constitute that needed injection.
Post originally by Eric Tolle at 2004-06-25 15:14:16
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access.denied wrote:
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Anyway, as long as fantasy is kept close to its usual definition (i.e. medieval world + magic), mecha don't really fit very well. On the other hand, it may be of course argued that pure fantasy is a pretty barren genre these days anyway, and it needs the injection of new themes to keep it potent. I'm just not convinced that mecha constitute that needed injection.
I am one of those people who do indeed argue that the standard "medieval European" fantasy model is completely creatively bankrupt by this point. It has been copied over and over again so many times that any semblance of origninality has been lost. It's silly as well- why SHOULD a completely independant universe, one which has magic in it, look like medieval Europe?
As for mecha- why not? Why not explore where the concept goes and make an original universe? It's not THE answer of course to the hidebound nature of "fantasy", buit its AN answer. One of many possibilites for taking the genre in new directions. As such, I wish it luck.
Post originally by The Lost Soul at 2004-06-25 15:55:43
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I have been speculating about how well this book fits into Ian Irvine's "The Well of Echoes" serie. His "clankers" bear some simularity with the base descriptions of the "Doom Striders," that I have read. So does this book make one able to create doom striders that are similar to "clankers?"
Post originally by access.denied at 2004-06-27 06:58:01
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Eric Tolle wrote:
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As for mecha- why not? Why not explore where the concept goes and make an original universe? It's not THE answer of course to the hidebound nature of "fantasy", buit its AN answer. One of many....
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Fore me the answer to "why not?" is simple--because I think they are a rather silly concept and because I don't like them (i.e. for mostly aesthetic reasons). Which is of course totally irrelevant to the issue of defining the genre, but, if enough fantasy readers (or perhaps writers? publishers?) share this part of my aesthetics, might explain the mechas' conspicuous absence.
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