More Bards!!! (v2.0)

[Kenneth Gauck]

- -----Original Message-----
From: Gary V. Foss
To: birthright@MPGN.COM
Date: Thursday, October 29, 1998 8:07 PM
Subject: Re: [BIRTHRIGHT] - More Bards!!!
>
>Gary Gygax might show up at my door and smack me around for this, but I
really
>hate that kind of description of a character class. I think character
classes
>should be the most basic outline of a character's abilities and skills.
That's
>it. I don't want the personality and behavior of a character dictated to
me. I
>don't think a bard should be inflicted with wanderlust and flightiness any
more
>than any other character class.

The Greeks said "Character is Destiny". The way you act and your attitudes
will obviously determine your skills and experiences. The Bard is clearly
based on a wide ranging character who dabbles in lots of areas. Doing that
requires a certain kind of person, who is different from someone who studies
one thing completly. Without the assumptions of many interests, you loose
the many skills. Selecting the good while ignoring the downside is
min/maxing. Classes are not just a bunch of stats to be used however you
like. They are the consequences of a way of life. The Warrior is not just
a guy with good combat stats, he is someone who chose to develope those for
a reason.
Whatever his reasons, motivations, and dispositions he retains them, though
they might change form and develope as the warrior matures. The same is
true with Wizards, who are not Warriors by other means, but scholars of
arcane secrets of nature.

I can imagine execeptions. I can imagine alot of things. But exceptions
need special justification, or a change in the skills the character has
available. I can imagine bards with spell casting from priest lists rather
than wizard's. Call them missionaries or mendicants. But maybe then their
ability to know random acts of lore about magical items should be replaced
with special knowledge about something else, or replace it with some other
skill that's more appropriat.

>Critical detachment is the will o' wisp of academia, luring scholars
through the
>forest of information until they fall headlong into the pit of opinion and
>languish there for the rest of their careers.

Take a look at _Historian's Fallacies_ by David H. Fischer for some 306
pages of discussion of why historians attempting to advocate a cause do so
irregardless of the facts. Without addressing any epistemological
questions, suffice it to say that the Bard character was designed with the
idea of objectivity in mind.

>In short, I think a bard might go ahead and have a few opinions and not
destroy
>his ability to perform his chosen profession of singing songs and telling
>tales. Telling such heroic tales might actually require locking in a
couple of
>political opinions. How is one going to motivate the soldiers to fight if
not
>by endorsing their cause in some way?


In responce to this, I heartily endourse Mark A Vandermeulen's post on this
subject, especially where he says, "No one listens when you sing your own
praises." I do not think the Bard's ability exceeds the Warrior's with
regards to self promotion. The Warrior does a pretty good job of getting
people to follow him into battle, but there is not game bonus for it. The
Bard's ability goes beyond that because of the perception that the Bard is
not self interested. "Hey I'm just a musician, I'm not what this is all
about." The more commited the opposition is to combating the Bard, the less
effect his abilities have.

Kenneth Gauck
c558382@earthlink.net

[Gary V. Foss]

Kenneth Gauck wrote:

> The Greeks said "Character is Destiny". The way you act and your attitudes
> will obviously determine your skills and experiences. The Bard is clearly
> based on a wide ranging character who dabbles in lots of areas. Doing that
> requires a certain kind of person, who is different from someone who studies
> one thing completly. Without the assumptions of many interests, you loose
> the many skills. Selecting the good while ignoring the downside is
> min/maxing. Classes are not just a bunch of stats to be used however you
> like. They are the consequences of a way of life. The Warrior is not just
> a guy with good combat stats, he is someone who chose to develope those for
> a reason.

I actually do think character classes are just a bunch of stats to be used
however I like. In fact, that's exactly how I see them. Aside from any "bought
and paid for" issues with the gaming materials I've compiled over the years, and
how they are now mine to do with as I please, and aside from the fact that
creativity by players and the DM is the game's most enjoyable aspect in my
experience, and aside from the fact that I play AD&D for pleasure not out of
some sort of ode to an extrapolation of early Greco attempts at psychological
determinism based on the statement that personality=ability, I just find my
gaming sessions go along more smoothly if character classes are less intrusive.

According to the Book of Magecraft, it takes all of a year of study at the
College of Sorcery to become a 1st level mage. While I'm not belittling how
much information can be learned in a year, I don't see that amount of time being
spent to give someone a character class being the fundamental lifelong
reflection of personality and lifestyle that you describe.

> Whatever his reasons, motivations, and dispositions he retains them, though
> they might change form and develope as the warrior matures. The same is
> true with Wizards, who are not Warriors by other means, but scholars of
> arcane secrets of nature.

> I can imagine execeptions. I can imagine alot of things. But exceptions
> need special justification, or a change in the skills the character has
> available. I can imagine bards with spell casting from priest lists rather
> than wizard's. Call them missionaries or mendicants. But maybe then their
> ability to know random acts of lore about magical items should be replaced
> with special knowledge about something else, or replace it with some other
> skill that's more appropriat.

All I said was that I think "character classes should be the most basic outline
of a character's abilities and skills." I'm not so sure I buy into your
argument that "character is destiny" (which I think the Greeks could just as
easily have meant in a "strength of will" sense rather than as a personality
assessment--but it doesn't really matter) as the definitive way of defining
character class in the game.

You know, just for the sake of context, I'd like to say that word again. Game.
Game, game, game! It's a GAME!!! Somehow I think that is getting lost in some
of these longwinded esoteric arguments about the nature of life, the universe
and everything. It's a GAME! Take it a little easy, folks. I asked a
question about why bards aren't rulers more often and you guys start throwing
the freakin' Greeks at me. Take a pill, get a massage, soak in the sauna. Do
SOME freakin' thing because I need another polemic discourse on
historiographical methods as the basis of a character description IN A GAME like
I need a jackhammer in my jockeys.

That said: I don't think I'm suggesting quite the drastic exception that you
suggest. I never said anything about changing the character class or modifying
the abilities presented to make them fit more with a less neutral, more
jingoistic bard. I think they work fine as published. I also think those
characteristics would make for a pretty good ruler.

We just finished a rather longwinded thread on alignment in which I said I don't
see alignment being tied directly to personality, and I'm going to go hop right
out on a different branch of that same limb and say the same thing for character
class. I'm of the radical (and apparently offensive gauging from the responses)
opinion that the personality of a character in a role playing game should be
mostly decided by the player. I'm also of the opinion (and here's an important
one) that the text in the published materials that is clearly designed as color
commentary should be recognized as color commentary and not cant. (Or Kant if
you prefer to get ontological about it.) The personality description of the
bard in The Bard's Handbook is pretty clearly color commentary meant only to set
tone, not to be actually set down as the only way to play that character class.

> >Critical detachment is the will o' wisp of academia, luring scholars
> through the
> >forest of information until they fall headlong into the pit of opinion and
> >languish there for the rest of their careers.
>
> Take a look at _Historian's Fallacies_ by David H. Fischer for some 306
> pages of discussion of why historians attempting to advocate a cause do so
> irregardless of the facts.

Fischer is not a bard. (Don't get me wrong, his prose is very good. I really
dug Paul Revere's Ride. In Albion's Seed he betrays a bit of his own
political/cultural bias but that is really inevitable in any historical work,
despite his own objections in Historian's Fallacies.) He's a scholar. In AD&D
terms, a sage. Quite a different beast. My question, however, is where did the
association of what bards do with historiography come from? Bards are described
in the Rulebook as "historians" but the historical methods you're talking about
are very much a modern perspective. The neutrality of bards isn't an
intellectual philosophical stance of objectivity, it's a professional code that
allows them to perform their duties without getting executed as spies or
traitors.

Bards are the exact guys that Fischer has written about as active participants
in history. Longfellow's apocryphal poem about Paul Revere and the way it was
accepted by the public is a much better description of what bards are like.
Longfellow was a bard. Bards are the tale spinners, not just fact gatherers. I
think the neutrality that bards are supposed to have means they will not
participate in any fighting per se, but will faithfully deliver the messages of
their lords as part of their role as heralds. It's more like a minor version of
ambassadorship. They have certain rights that are respected under the condition
that they don't engage in spying activities, etc.

> Without addressing any epistemological questions, suffice it to say that the
> Bard character was designed with the idea of objectivity in mind.

Oh, brother. The epistemology of the bard? Please let's not discuss the
epistemology of the bard, because then we'd have to go back to the days when
they started out as fighters, switched to thieves and then finally became bards,
and were so powerful they could wipe out armies let alone inspire them....

I think it was designed more with Will Scarlet, Browning, Poe, Gilgamesh, Byron,
Twain, Fafhrd, Milton, Vainamoinen and Shakespeare in mind rather than the idea
of objectivity....

> In responce to this, I heartily endourse Mark A Vandermeulen's post on this
> subject, especially where he says, "No one listens when you sing your own
> praises." I do not think the Bard's ability exceeds the Warrior's with
> regards to self promotion. The Warrior does a pretty good job of getting
> people to follow him into battle, but there is not game bonus for it. The
> Bard's ability goes beyond that because of the perception that the Bard is
> not self interested. "Hey I'm just a musician, I'm not what this is all
> about."

No one listens when you sing your own praises? All evidence to the
contrary.... Leaders have sung their own praises for thousands and thousands of
years. Leaders build monuments to themselves. I can't turn on the TV without
seeing some leader or another singing his own praises. There was a brief period
in the 18th century in which politicians affected humility. (Ben Franklin
satirically commented upon this affectation from time to time, saying that he
found himself becoming proud of his humility.... That Ben... what a kidder!)
But aside from that period I don't really see a lot of times when leaders didn't
sing their own praises quite a bit. In fact, some of the most successful
leaders in history were also the most self-egrandizing. That's why we remember
them. Sometimes leaders aren't particularly good at singing their own praises,
so they hire bards to do it for them. Are these bards really politically
neutral?

The political neutrality of the bard (which I still contend is misinterpreted as
being apolitical when it really means something more like protected,
professional noncombatant) is something added to the character class in the BR
setting. This use of bards is from celtic tradition, which the PHB character
class description takes pains disassociate the class from. The ability of the
bards to motivate people and influence reactions as printed in the PHB has
nothing to do with the BR neutrality. Non-BR bards can motivate people just as
well without the neutrality added to them in the BR setting.

> The more commited the opposition is to combating the Bard, the less
> effect his abilities have.

I don't see how you can come to this conclusion. Any bard with his weight in
lutes would be able to turn the attacks of his detractors to his advantage as
deftly as an analogy slips from a poet's tongue....

Gary

[Craig Dalrymple]

- -----Original Message-----
From: Gary V. Foss
To: birthright@MPGN.COM
Date: Friday, October 30, 1998 2:38 AM
Subject: Re: [BIRTHRIGHT] - More Bards!!! (v2.0)



>You know, just for the sake of context, I'd like to say that word again.
Game.
>Game, game, game! It's a GAME!!! Somehow I think that is getting lost in
some
>of these longwinded esoteric arguments about the nature of life, the
universe
>and everything. It's a GAME! Take it a little easy, folks. I asked a
>question about why bards aren't rulers more often and you guys start
throwing
>the freakin' Greeks at me. Take a pill, get a massage, soak in the sauna.
Do
>SOME freakin' thing because I need another polemic discourse on
>historiographical methods as the basis of a character description IN A GAME
like
>I need a jackhammer in my jockeys.
>


Um, Gary, just because others like to inflect more reality or logic for
everything
in their game do not imply that it is any less of a game for *them*. We all
play
a little differently in this sandbox. You asked an open ended question. It's
not polite
to slam them for running with the idea.

>We just finished a rather longwinded thread on alignment in which I said I
don't
>see alignment being tied directly to personality, and I'm going to go hop
right
>out on a different branch of that same limb and say the same thing for
character
>class. I'm of the radical (and apparently offensive gauging from the
responses)
>opinion that the personality of a character in a role playing game should
be
>mostly decided by the player.

Radical? Naw, I don't see anyone slamming on your definition of the bard at
all.
There are some differeing ideas out there, but nobody as of yet has tried to
invalidate your ideas on the game; which would be a bad move IMHO as it
is just a game and your ideas are dead on right in reference to your own
games.


Personally, I don't like the idea of a bard as a full fledged regent. It's
too much
responsibility for my view of the bard. I once had the grand idea of writing
a
Dragon article for bardic colleges, life got in the way and I haven't had a
bard
pc in BR as of yet so it never mattered to my game. I do have the
foundations
for the article on my HD somewhere. Perhaps I can flesh it out and post it
later this weekend. In general I focused on the Bard's college as a place
for "artists" to gather. Not just musicians. The college dealt mainly with
trade just like rogue guilds, but trade only in the more "fine" goods such
as arts and other high line items. Getting involved in the local cattle
trade would
not be an interest of the guild. Also worked a tad on the idea of an
archeologist type character set from the guild as it kinda fit in. Kinda
like a medieval Dr. Indiana Jones. Due to the nature of the guild, it
could only thrive in large markets and could not take on more than
1/3 of all available guild slots for the province.

More later perhaps if anyone is interested.

Craig