You're Either an Elf or a Pointy Ear Human Cosplayer
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- čas přidán 26. 12. 2021
- The failure of the kids these days to even understand mythic/archetypal concepts is sad. No wonder they think they're being 'creative' by playing their 1200th half-tiefling half-genasi fashionista self-insert character, when they're really just only playing humans, badly.
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I wonder if a lot of peoples perceptions of fantasy races/species has been hard influenced from MMOs where everyone wears a fantastical avatar but interacts with each other as modern day human selves.
That's a very insightful point.
MMORPGs certainly seem to have destroyed all respectability about dwarves.
I mean gnomes.
Did you look at the "Westmarches Style" Discord servers too?
Maybe to an extent from JRPGs as well.
Stay away from Twitter kids!
But then who will I ask about how to optimize my half dhampir warlock/sorcerer/monk ? How will I learn how to exploit a dozen broken ways to exploit the ways that unnecessary rules overlap and weaponize my expectations to do so with support from "The" community?
Play Magic the Gathering, at least the math part flows!
@@calvanoni5443 at least in MtG, you only have to look out for the referees who'll do horrible things
Gruumsh taught me that Tiefling and Genasi bards are turning the Mindlflayer tadpoles in the brine pools gay.
Remember those days when vampires were depraved, bloodthirsty, murderous monsters, and not cool, misunderstood, romantic souls struggling with their humanity?
Was the romanticizing of the vampire the foot in the door?
In a way, Stoker is kind of responsible for making vampires misunderstood
Vampires should NOT be blow-dried teen heartthrobs. This was obvious to me, why not the world?
@@darkknightofhibernia4815 Disagree. The vampires in Dracula were still monsterous and hardly anymore misunderstood than any other alluring devil.
Blame Rice
@@OtakuNoShitpost
Fair Enough
They may appear alive to beguile those they can vex, luring them to the kiss of deaths embrace!
A real-world owl is as bright as a bag of hammers. Working with one or closely observing it will drive the thought of wisdom out really quick.
The real problem is people do not study the mythological origins of the races like early fantasy writers did!
At this point, most people don't even know the races how authors like Tolkien envisioned them. At best they know D&D race descriptions or have seen the Peter Jackson LotR movies, which are really just presenting a bundle of stereotypes instead of laying out a culture of beings different from us.
This really struck a chord with me. The Dark Elves (Drow) of classic AD&D used to be one of the most interesting, compelling and cool archetypal villains Gary Gygax ever imagined. From my perspective, they were indeed *alien*. That is exactly the right word. Almost incomprehensible to human sensibilities.
The original Drow were supposed to be the dark mirror images of surface elves. They had jet black skin, white or silver hair and amber or orange eyes with only iris and pupil visible, enlarged due to millenia in the Underdark. Also, the females were taller and stronger than the males, like spiders, dominating Drow society completely. And of course, almost all of them, evil beyond comprehension.
Not much of this remains, it's only veneer now, if even that. They have been romanticized and humanized to the extent it might as well be, just like you say, cosplay. From mythical, evil archetypes to moody goth kids, much like vampires in modern culture.
Is this inevitable once a fantasy species becomes popular enough? Or are they victims of the perpetually offended? A bit of both probably.
I made a joke about the Mind Flayers being next a few years ago. Lo and behold...
Yeah, well, Mind Flayers and Beholders are literally next. You're right about pre-Realms Drow, by the way. And of course, they were based on all kinds of 'dark elf' mythic sources.
It seems like Baldur's Gate 3 has recently done some damage to Mind Flayers with how it represents them. The GND Tech reviewer criticized the game not following the archetype established in the third edition era D&D book that covered Mind Flayers heavily, and making them too human in personality and culture.
Long before I ever knew fantasy was a thing, I used to seek out kids history and mythology books, plus I have a mother who was classically educated, so by the time I started reading fantasy fiction that was already the benchmark I was measuring it against. King Cnute sitting on his throne on the beach, commanding the tide to go out. Alfred the Great burning a peasant woman's cakes because he was too preoccupied with his troubles. Those are the kind of places my mind goes when I'm sitting down to think about my characters and worlds.
I’m a big fan of mythology and find the babyfication of it idiotic.
The difference between the original Little Red Ridinghood and the modern depiction is that there was no hunter in the original story. She and her grandmother straight up died.
If that doesn’t teach your children to never tell strangers about your personal information I don’t know what will. We need to scare the shit out of our kids.
HA!! 5E DM and I have watched until the end. I think these "players" create characters, talk about them online, and that is the extent of it. They aren't sitting at the tables and rolling dice. They now that the players at the table wouldn't care about that stuff and just ignore it. Oh, your character is non-binary?? Great, I don't care, we need you to attack this dragon that is trying to eat us, that's why it's raining ketchup. Your pronouns aren't he, she, or they? No problem, I'll just call you by your name all the time, no help us with this dragon before we have to make death saves. The online spaces are the only places they can find like minded individuals, and they can stay there, my table doesn't need your BS.
Thanks for watching to the end. Spread the word to your fellow 5e gamers, and share the video!
it's weird how he pushes that narrative, he'd have some many new people listening to him if he just learned to cool it and not act like a tool, he has interesting takes just the stubbornness of a grognard unwilling to learn new things, sure alot of new players are dipshits who just wear a costume, but alot of new players are dipshits by nature because they are new to the game.
When I played my first 5e game I played a half-elf eldritch Knight (chaotic neutral) made in Elric of melnibone fashion a nobleman of a multiversal empire who had travelled to the campaign's universe to lay the groundwork for invasion. I managed to roll up a considerable amount of starting wealth (500 gold) but that part got vetoed, my character got introduced and he started asking questions about the party, one was a warforged wizard he addressed him as automaton as it was what made sense from his world view and asked how he could use magic dispite being synthetic and asked if they could have exstenion modules added to him to improve his abilities (out of genuine curiosity mind you not malus) he got accused of racism and I was told playing a "predudisual character" was against the group rules after I suggested the warforged walk into I think it was a lake or gas filled cavern, as due to lacking the need for breathing he would be ideal for the job but this then just caused a argument on the reasoning behind counting a robot as part of the biological category of such as race was nonsensical (as its a object not part of a species), I was also told that having a character that addressed other characters as the closest proxy from myth was not on as it came off as abrasive even though this was the character and by extension my way of learning more about them as I was coming from becmi and had no idea what a Dragonborn or Warforged was (I found a copy at a recycling centre so my introduction to Dnd was that unlike others my age).
So I had to Change characters to a fairly inoffensive tiefling character who I had be the bastard daughter of a noble house dabbling the occult with her being conceived as part of a bargain with demons to provide them with an assassin, but that ran I to trouble when me and another character a warlock and also a tie fling when in to a town and they wanted to go to the church for info they were about to walk in when I stopped them at the door saying that A a demon open demon worshipper shouldn't walk into a lion den and two I gestured to mine and his characters faces and he looked perplexed and asked me to explain, I pointed out that demons are damaged by blessed or sanctified objects and places and being people with enough demon Ancestry to have clearly demonic physiology like horns, hooves, tails etc was probably an easy way to die from holy damage they walked in nothing happened the DM stated my logic was bad and was based on assumptions and suggested I wonder why he would make a location they couldn't enter? This is why I prefer Warhammer roleplay and pendragon approach of making every race have considerable mechanical differences and limitations, I currently making a sort of hybrid retro-clone of sorts to try and expand on the concept.
Humans Only 2: Electric Boogaloo
It seems to me that table top adventure gaming has been invaded by cosplayers, LARPers, and theatre majors. When it used to be engineers, computer scientists, mathematicians, etc. with an enthusiasm for both historical wargaming and early 20th century pulp fantasy. But more to the topic: I didn't know Gygax or Arneson, but I would guess that even adding elves and dwarves to the playable character choices was simply pressure from the popularity of LOTR and The Hobbit. I would suspect, based on Gygax's penchant for R.E. Howard, Burroughs, et. al. D&D would have ideally looked a lot more like a Conan story.
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Its so good
Awesome! Enjoy it, and spread the word!
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@@chriscotgrove9674
What happened to it?
What I find really funny is that people who probably call themselves humanists can't even have a definition of evil that includes creatures that are an existential threat to humanity (and demihumanity), e.g. mindflayers.
The difference between the original Little Red Ridinghood and the modern depiction is that there was no hunter in the original story. She and her grandmother straight up died.
If that doesn’t teach your children to never tell strangers about your personal information I don’t know what will. We need to scare the shit out of our kids.
Hmmm... well, maybe we could add the woodsman in... and he dies too!
@@austinreed7343 Oh that would be great!
My dwarves are obsessed with mining wealth, and my elves obsess over art, music and poetry. Neither are very warlike. They also lack much ambition for anything else.
Well said, Pundit. I think a lot of the reason they don't come to this realization is because they just haven't played enough.
How many years until they have some other way to channel their inner moppit? Or are we really talking about waging a war against illiteracy here?
Well, sort of. The problem is also that increasingly the products they consume are less and less viable for creating the effect they would actually want. D&D products today present all these races as just humans-doing-cosplay. They are being taught wrong, on purpose.
@@RPGPundit "This is Wimp Lo, we trained him wrong, as a joke!"
I also dislike the traditional depiction of dwarves in D&D, which shows them as basically anti-magical beings. I much prefer the dwarves of Germanic folklore, who are intensely magical.
Happy New Year, Pundit. Thanks for making some great videos over this last year. I've really enjoyed a lot of them. This one was great.
Thank you very much! Spread the word and share the video!
I have a tri-sexual 1/2 genesai tiefling that has 6 levels in warlock, 9 levels in paladin, and 1 level in rogue, and 4 in monk.
I named him Kaine.
honestly the most heinous part of this character would be the 4 levels in monk instead of more levels in rogue.
Kaine Toad?!
Man every single day i'm grateful that i was born in another era and was able to play the golden era of rpgs.
Virgins cosplay as Elves, Chads cosplay as Mudcrabs.
The new players must have SOME dim sense of allegory, because they accused Orcs of being an allegory for Black people! They have the definition, just not the correct mythic application.
And you said something to the effect that myths have plotlines of tests and perfecting the self to the point where you are good enogh to fight Evil effectively, but how is the current generation going to have a feel for that if they all get equal participation prizes from the start?
No, they think that orcs are a racist pantomime of what they think black people are like.
@@RPGPundit I think a lot of it stems from their idea that bigotry and prejudice are an outgrowth of "consuming bad media". They see real bigotry in TTRPG communities, but since most TTRPG players aren't playing genuinely racist games like Varg's Myfarog, whatever is currently popular gets twisted into being "bad media" to suit their pre-existing belief that "bad media" is the cause of bigotry, no matter how strained the reasoning is. Since there are racist D&D players, and “fiction affects reality”, surely D&D must be inherently racist, and if we change D&D, that should stop the racism, right?
No they don’t even have anything dim other than their brains. They are taught nothing now they are simply indoctrinated
You are completely right. In fact, that is a serious point of doubt for my own game, and each day that passes I lean more towards the mythic archetypes than cosplayers (which is kind of a bummer at one side because I used to like stuff like dragonborn and genasi). The thing that most people don't understand about what is going on in society is that all this "difference", all this "special-ness", all this "diversity", is only skin-deep. The actual content, the people you (whoever is reading this) are on the inside, is the same.
What makes your character interesting is not choosing a weird race, class, race/class combo, multi-class or anything like this. It's the work you put on the characterization of said character. That can be done just as easily with regular humans and the good-old 3/4 basic classes. It took me a long time to realize this, but if you cannot make an interesting human, you don't deserve the "shiny" options ^^
Correct. Spread the word and share the video!
"It's the work you put on the characterization of said character."
^ This
I seriously wonder what an elf/dwarf/halfling/non-human sourcebook by the RPGPundit would look like. It could easily end up on my bookshelf ...
Well, I write extensively about medieval elves in Cults of Chaos. Also, my adventure RPGPundit Presents #101: Tamlane, is a very good example of a medieval elf-legend in adventure format.
Good to know, but a dedicated sourcebook gathering the traditional demihumans with your unmistakable flare would be a great addition to your outstanding repetior! 😉😎🤘
Well, it's something to consider...
I said it before.
When I was teaching D&D in Syracuse, NY to 5th graders 2001/2 (to 9th graders) and one wanted to play a Hobgoblin. I'd make them buy the "Guide to Humanoids" (because divorced parents will buy anything for loyalty, accepting that as affection) and until they could satisfy my requirements, they had to play a Paladin. So that they understood what it meant to be Lawful. Not merely obedient.
If they wanted to play a Gold/Grey elf not just an elf, they had to know more than just min/maxing.
C.S. Lewis did a lecture on Pride...good source, C.S. Lewis Doodles.
Viva La Dirt League!
Part of the reason I never want to DM, is I have strong beliefs about this. If you can’t make it work with human, elf, dwarf, half-elf, gnome, and halfling, then take your halfcatfolk tiefling and go elsewhere. And truth be told I don’t have any use for halflings unless you’re playing some LOTR game.
And my take on elves is pretty divergent from most. Most every source portray elves as being superior to humans, and for me elves take that seriously. Many maybe darn near all of them are incredibly racist, and if asked about they’ll just point out that they clearly are superior to the other species. 3 or 3.5E Forgotten Realms had some secret elf supremacist organization trying to kill off humans, and that’s basically how I see most elves. They may hide it well. They may adventure with other races because it helps them more effectively kill off other races, but if the elf and a party member of another race get separated together there’s a good chance the elf will opportunistically murder the other PC if he thinks he can do it without implicating himself.
So basically the Thalmor from Elder Scrolls.
Elven superiority complex is legit. You need to go further though... elves could see "lesser races" as mere cockroaches filling the lands with their fecund hordes of (short-lived) offspring such that elves have pretty much given up on the idea of actual "pest control" outside of their own small and utterly sanitized forest ring-pass-not homelands. Rather than seeking to actively hunt other races (they also don't want unintended backlash) they just maintain cold indifference outside of their domains but have a strict policy of purging their own lands should any "infestation" pop-up. This actually occurs in existing fantasy works sometimes (because it makes sense). Elves don't allow "unworthy" to enter their lands, and especially don't allow them to leave again (which woud encourage more visitors).
This is a fantastic video and it really got me thinking about the use of allegory in settings as it pertains to humanity/and non-humanity in the current zeitgeist of the fantasy rpg. I don't think that you need to abandon a sense of myth or epic to have your more human non-humans, rather in those cases their allegory becomes an extension of the human condition in some manner. In Lord of the Rings you can see how each of the races typify virtue or flaw, and can serve as an example or warning.
Thanks. Spread the word, share the video.
Elves, dwarves, orcs, etc should be an alien species within the world (I am glad you used that word!). I despise that they were ever called humanoid "races"; they are NOT 'just' variations of humans. Doing so belittles the wide variation inherent within humanity AND makes these fantastic creatures dull and shallow,.
Correct. Spread the word and share the video!
SJWs: D&D IS RACIST! REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
Karens of the Koast: *Changes D&D*
SJWs: D&D WAS RACIST! REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
That is what i like to call the "rubber mask syndrome", and for me mythical fantasy dies where that begins.
I have a 21 year old niece that loves fantasy, yet hates mythology. She states that she has "no time to read about things that don't exist", yet loves fantasy novels based on movies and TV shows. I gave up on her when she said that.
Seems to be that your niece is allergic to education .
The question is what she values in fantasy and why she values like that ? The answers alone can tell what the result is , but it will be not a good result at all.
tell her that most fantasy is based of mythology, once she learns there is a connection her interest will grow in time(hopefully)
Imagination is like a muscle -- if you don't use it, it'll atrophy.
So yes,, playing a human is the biggest challenge as you need to ~work~ to make it interesting.
You have to work even harder to make non-human PCs interesting, but that's the problem, people assume that the different appearance is a substitute for actual personality.
Myth speaks to something deep within all of us.
Make Moria Great Again!
Playing a vanilla human?
[Greta Thunberg Voice]: "How dare you!"
I’m very much in favor of different fantasy species, well, being different. Dogs and wolves may look similar but they’re not psychologically the same. And in comparison to a cat they’re even more distant in behavior.
In my setting there is a species loosely based on dark elves (the idea being that they would evolve the characteristics needed for living in total darkness) that has the psychological characteristics of a cat (slow movement, lack of eye contact, fixation on objects, etc) and that helps make roleplaying them, and the world, much more interesting.
I think a big problem that old school rpg values face when interacting with new generation/ 5e players is that the culture that they have been taught strictly emphasizes very different values. Like you mentioned in your video, the new generation's perspective is that of the human/ self-centric experience. It's going to be very hard to get this kind of individual to give the good vs evil mythic perspective value, because they've been raised to esteem relativism as their standard.
Yes, it will be very hard. But the thing is that human beings inherently have concepts of objectivity, and of the ideals of objective morality (good and evil), so it's not impossible. Human nature will tend to realizing that the things we speak about are truth, and the SJW's propaganda are all fantasy or lies; they might still reject that realization out of resentment but it will be obvious to anyone who sees our works.
I live in California and we have power outages all the time. Just had one last night.
_Must_
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I think this one, which lasted all of 15 minutes, was only the second one in the entire year here.
Elves are either hipsters or snobs. Dwarves are lunatics on forever quests, and halflings are feral.
So,,, how long you been into 40K?
I've never been much of a 40K fan, but the design process was the same: you take the basic assumed archetype and twist it into a parody.
I've never been in a campaing where whatever non-human race was played as anything but humans in rubber suits. And that's because we don't know how anything intelligent but not human would act.
I honestly don't think we, as a species, are even capable of playing elves as anything but humans in cosplay, sure there might be the really, really rare exception to the rule but that's all.
Well, you can, you just have to use a few cheats. You have to make some 'rules' for the creature that seem very irrational from the point of view of humans, and stick to those.
@@RPGPundit Which would mean almost reading from a script until you get used to "thinking" like said creature, and you'd still be acting like what a human thinks such creature would act.
I like to use the analogy of Leonard Nimoy on Star Trek. Up until that point, there was a general idea of what a Vulcan would be like, and it was written down. Once he started to portray the character of Spock, it put into the viewers mind what a Vulcan is like.
@@MalakyoftheOSR And it was little more than a human with pointy ears and "no emotions". Come to think it was an autist, a highly functioning autist. So totally human but with pointy ears and funny eyebrows.
Just like ALL of Star Trek "aliens" ever.
The Predator is IMHO a better example of what Pundit is talking here.
Even so, most 5e players with non-human PCs don't even come close to being as non-human as spock.
I think a lot of this cosplay movement has to do with the misanthropy that is being indoctrinated in the youth. "Anything but human." But, as you say, people have no idea about anything that's not human. Has anyone asked some friends about a 5e campaign that they just finished, asked about their characters, and then asked, "How would you have played X differently if you'd chosen to be human instead?" And then, "What do you think the point of having different exotic races is in D&D from a roleplaying perspective? How do you think the game would be different if all PCs were human?" That might get some people thinking. Then as DM you might say, "We're going to try an experiment. I'm going to run a one-shot, and everyone will be human." Then for that one shot, you introduce an elven threat a-la Dark Albion. Make the players fall in love with how otherworldly elves are, how inscrutable their motivations. Then when it's done, ask the player who wants to be an elf next time, "Does it make any sense at all for an elf to be adventuring with humans unless for a very specific purpose? How do you think such an elf would feel being stuck with this group of humans? How could you bring some of that strangeness and mystery to your character?"
I don't know how to unravel the mess with tieflings and aasimar and all that beyond representing every exotic-race NPC as true to their mythic counterparts as possible. Dwarves aren't heirs to vast mountain empires, they're petty thieves and mischiefmakers. Tieflings are scummy devil-lovers who bring chaos and suffering wherever they go. Etc. Exotic PCs exist only because of their contact with and taming by the human world. Otherwise most non-human entities in the world are not at all interested in building a medieval Seattle, or in what Canadian style multiculturalism is supposed to be on paper.
I have no doubt your internet connection is superior to mine in North America! We are third world at best. I like your take on myth and allegory, I hope it genuinely educates some of the generations that are missing it. These are supposed to represent spiritual/psychological struggles and empowerment.
Some folks just don't get it 😒...and it seems modern/current society/culture is exacerbating this...
An unbalanced culture with the youth missing the support structure and community roles which made it what it is... take parents, education, and respect for anything other than instant gratification running at an all time low... then you just get everything being reduced to kindergarten improv night. Improv clubs are good fun and all, but it's antithetical to the wargaming ingredient key to what made tabletop rpgs what they are.
It makes Gygax's comments about how Dungeon Masters should have their roles and secrets protected seem less crazy.
Holy crap … they have no imagination.
In my setting, I've pulled the elves back to their fey origins, at least to some degree.
Elves are fey in fluff, humanoids in crunch. They are a branch of the fair folk that lived close to mortals for so long that it had rubbed off on them. They have the regular subraces of high/sylvan/wild elves, but even these divide into Seelie and Unseelie courts, and while the different types have some more dominant personality traits, they're still really hard to pin down.
Senior as a Belcadez elf i must challenge you to a duel as we are Spaniard, Spaniard elfs. Not to be confused by those annoying Alfhiem elfs.
here is an interesting human character. cityborn middle class human freeman with an education and experience in a day job. could be either male or female, lonely, but not thirsty. grandparents got sick. you saved thier lives by indebting yourself to a loanshark. now you must adventure to pay off the loan. sexuality is irrelevant and so is gender identity. as a spin, you could make the character a freshy graduated teenage apprentice, or make the loanshark nonhuman.
Best thing about all of that is the sheer number of contact points we could see from it with/to the setting and story. That's a character of the world. Just need an opportunity to manifest... invoke? ... that depth in a game
@@hellsente7826 exactly
Hmm, I never thought that much about our growing inability to understand symbolism and myth. These things probably serve an important purpose for our collective psychological well being. In order for these topics to still be relevant and come across to young people in an unstructured and ever changing educational landscape, we would have to find new methods of teaching that are not preachy and boring. That's why it would be even worse, if these themes were to also disappear from gaming.
It also depends how much emphasis is put on roleplay in any given campaign and how much myth or race-backstory there is.
The player base, especially the player base that started playing after the turn of the century definitely has a different philosophy and a lack of knowledge of (or interest in) mythology as you describe. They also definitely have, a sort of anti-human/anti-normal/anti-traditional/anti-mainstream chauvinism to the extent that "basic" is a pejorative term. That is certainly a cultural hubris on their part and it exacerbates the problem significantly.
But this is not a new problem and it is not unique to younger gamers of this decade.
Since the beginning game developers have written game rules and game settings treating nonhumans as nothing more than humans in cosplay. Very rarely does a setting or system actually provide any cultural information on nonhumans. There are exceptions, but most of these are really simplistic and lack either detail or depth - thing like "Klingons are a proud warrior race obsessed with honor" or "dwarves like to live underground and love metalworking and mining".
The D&D novels of the 80s and 90s made some pretty decent attempts to do better. While a lot of gamers read those books, in my experience, that never translated to game play where nonhumans had any cultural or philosophical distinction from humans - either as PCs or NPCs.
TSR in 2nd Ed made some good efforts at creating cultural information about non-humans with the Complete Book of [nonhuman race] series and books like the Monster Mythology. These were pretty decent efforts to make non-human PCs reflect mythology and have distinct cultures. Sadly, in my experience, a lot of players and GMs bought those books - but I never once saw anyone actually use them and create nonhuman PCs or NPCs that were culturally distinct beyond the very, very superficial. My generation of gamers from the 80s and 90s did little better - and unlike modern players, we had the source material available.
To be fair, from a game-writing perspective, it's a pretty delicate balance of how many pages you put into your sourcebook before the cost of the book gets too high to be marketable - and it's a legitimate question whether players would even pay attention to sections on culture. But still, the problem isn't new; it may be worsening, but this is a problem that has always been with us.
It's a lack of education partly. Partly kids being told they are special and amazing when they are actually average or below average. Kids don't read books. They don't even read modern literature. They can't even be bothered to read an article online, they only read the headline. We have created a shallow culture and the big publishers in the hobby are part of culture so they reflect that shallowness. Especially as the hobby has exploded.
I think the solution is to invite people to our games who we think can be saved. I'm running a BFRPG campaign and I invited a friend who has only ever played 5th edition. After 2 sessions I saw his eyes open. He is having a blast and is really enjoying it. He looks forward to the next game every time.
My last character was a malformed wood elf who resembles a weaker version of Gwendoline Christie in that no pointed ears, or odd shaped eyes and at best lightly tanned so unless you actually knew better she'd pass as human just doesn't age the same!
Try Comparing everything to “Harry Potter” for New players- all evil is like “Voldemort “ - unfortunately, now elves are a slave race exploited by wizards #freethehouseelves
I just bought new socks!
My group larps once or twice a year or much more of you count wargaming in costumes
I see this problem as an superficial one instead of a deep one.
When i play TTRPGs its for me work that you put as a character to archieve your goals and make him into the pillar of heroism and adventures .
But the problem is that people want already be on the goal instead working towards it. That kills the game and even the will to play because the superficial appearance is suddenly more valued than the adventure towards it.
5e makes everyone the avengers but not the Adventureres that should be . A hero isnt made but evolved too .
D&D5e is just a mary-/gary-sue fanfiction RPG now .
Players/people draw context from things they know or read/heard about, they'll always try to place some sort of allegory onto things, for the purpose of classification.
A game or DM could roughly define specific traits for eg. an Elf. Elves live long (this is basic knowledge); therefore, they could act more swiftly, assured by their life-times of experience. Now, a good DM could play of this to perhaps trick an Elf player to overcommit to something which could affect the party or the campaign.
You need good DMs and imaginative players, or at least people who are willing to listen, try, and learn as they go. New D&D strikes me as casual only, asking for no forethought, nor knowledge of basic myth. Sit. Play for x amount of time. Leave gratified.
Video games are to blame for this somewhat (some books to tbh), as players get instant gratification by having the tools to create a powerful characters right outta the box, with no need for back-story, nor living in a set world where growth happens by interacting with things in the said world/place. This system allows players to bring their preconceived notions and nuances and run with it, brining with them their real-life outlooks, thus making the game dull. This is how you get monsters with human "feels."
The paradigm is fascinating
I remember someone with this midset telling me that vampires were egalitarian, because female vampires were just as strong and capable as men, and would allow women to partake in male dominated power structures
And yet, i have also seen how they say vampires would be sexually predatious, physically abusive, and "symbolic" of toxic masculinity
How can they hold two contradictory positions at the same time
And what i mean is, why doesnt their ideological position have a definitive stance on stuff like this, rather than it be all interpretations on vague philosophical claims
In a "standard" fantasy campaign, playing elves keeping in mind their depiction in Poul Anderson's Broken Sword is a pretty good way to go about it.
This got me thinking and wondering now with the current design philosophy of 5e (where race does not matter to stats) about new players being met with choice paralysis (stemming from too many choices) with lessened mechanical benefits to one pick over another.
The lessened mechanical benefits plays two functions: one, to remove archetypes from the game, and two, to make it easier for players to base their decisions on the shallowest of aesthetic elements. Before if you wanted to have pointy ears, or horns, or to be short, you might have had some stat modifiers that you wouldn't have liked. Now you don't. Now it can ALL just be about how you look at skin-level, and nothing else.
Honestly, in a high fantasy place like forgotten realms, where contact between humans and fantastical creatures is pretty common, it's probably not unreasonable to think elves and dwarves and etc. might just pick up human mannerisms and behaviors after generations upon generations of dealing with em'
While in a low magic setting, pointy eared forest folk probably should be treated more alien. Depends what you want out of the setting I guess
Forgotten Realms went past the point of no return in this regard 3 editions ago.
Problem is WotC want to infect other settings with the same approach.
While true, that doesn't negate the fact that a lot of what is special about non-humans is lost because of that.
The thing with mythical creatures, be they Centaurs, Elves or Yokai, is that they serve as projections of the human extremes - They are us in our brightest and darkest forms. They also represent the fringes of culture and thought. Human civilizations are stable and orderly, Fey, Djin and Daemons are the great unknown.
That's almost right but not quite. Mythical creatures do not represent "human extremes", they represent moral and social virtues and vices. The end result is kind of the same but not quite. A dwarf shouldn't just act like an extremely greedy human, he should act as a creature for whom "not having more" is as inconceivable to him as "non-wet water" would be to us.
The new races no longer have a default racial language and the erratas basic removed their cultural "alignment" as well, all the please SWGs who, despite screaming "Diversity!", actually hates cultural identities. If you describe a wood elf to love living in the woods and communing with nature they would scream "Racism!" because to them that wood elf could grow up among the mountain dwarves. I'm sure they do the same thing if people try to describe a real-world ethnic group they would scream "Racism!"
Unto my experience, those that scream Racism wouldn't recognize it if it beat them on the head with a swastika.
So... World of the Last Sun is more Piers Anthony's Xanth, or Adventure Time?
Yes. Its inspirations are Mystara (& the Hollow World), Gamma World, Adventure Time, Rick & Morty, Venture Brothers, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, Wes Anderson movies, Discworld, etc.
It's a coherent world, but a silly one. And if it had an overarching epic theme, that theme would be "failure", as anyone who's listened to our sessions over on the Bill The Elf youtube channel could quickly surmise.
Very few people ever make an attempt to play characters with desires or interests much removed from their own. It's a shame because some of my favorite characters to play have had blue-and-orange morality (to use the TVTropes name for it) that occasionally caused issues when other people assumed I was playing them with human sensibilities. One was a god of honorable combat, and the other players couldn't understand why this cheerful, good-natured guy could enjoy watching a village's guards fighting for their lives against marauders but then massacre the victorious marauders after they attacked defenseless villagers. Another was a soulless automaton that existed only to complete his creator's final wish (taking revenge on everyone who destroyed his creator's home, in this case); having your sense of self-preservation and willingness to work with others tied purely to "Whatever advances my task is good" creates some fun opportunities. It takes some care not to flanderize them, but quirky character concepts with unusual priorities can be a lot of fun.
Of course, a lot of concepts don't really make sense for a PC in most games. For example, a member of a hive-mind species, anything that doesn't bother with self-preservation, a great many types of creatures that simply are not willing/able to leave on an adventure, etc. I think even elves, those in the Tolkien tradition, are very much borderline and almost can't work at all with low-level parties because beings with centuries-to-millennia of perspective are not likely to notice or take interest in more mundane travails.
And lastly, Pundit, I think it is high time you make a video about alignments.
Well, I've made videos where I talk about alignments. What do you think I need to say about Alignments?
@@RPGPundit
Been curious to hear your take on that system as a whole. Personally I've been fading it out of my games in favor of grey Song of Ice and Fire morality, but it's always an interesting subject.
OK, interesting topic.
I think this kind of hits on why I've been disappointed in Elves and Dwarves for a long time; culture has degraded them into "just another shade of human". That said, I'm also not particularly fond of playing humans... I like a character to embody something greater; a single all consuming concept that necessitates the shedding of one's mortal form in order to embrace it fully. Which is... Best codified by the sorcerer actually rather than a specific race, unless there's some OTHER class that can undergo a permanent metamorphosis into an angel or whatever else.
They're playing their games wrong and I'm here to let them know!
Well Pundit, I am the 5e player who watched this to the end, and I just have to say that I am not with those types. I honestly hate having to deal with them not only at the game table but in general. Yet if I want to play I just have to grit my teeth through it. By the way I did what you said about playing a human who was different than me and I got banned from the game shop's group for a time.
What a surprise!
@@RPGPundit Funnily enough when I was able to come back they started charging and they went away for the most part, isn't that funny.
In the course of social media ah… conversations with the woke 5E gamer sort, I’ve found that those hardcore SJW types virtually always oppose Alignment. They really seem to hate it and find offensive the idea of hard definitions of “good” and “evil”, even in a fantasy campaign setting where that distinction is so often very important to the setting and the basis for much dramatic conflict within the game! In one argument I was taking issue with the 5E concept that a paladin could now be any alignment; because if no longer LG that ceases to be a “paladin”; a black guard or chaos warrior perhaps, but no longer a paladin. Another was incensed about gnolls always being CE; I said well they do worship and are spawned by a demon god and all.. but no - they thought it wrong and that gnolls should just as easily be the local NPC shopkeepers in a town!
There are certainly people not in the “woke” crowd who also dislike using Alignment for whaever reason (I personally think it’s very useful for both player and DM) but it seems really prevalent with the SJW types, and I’m sure that it goes to the core of thier own personal political and philosophical (such as it is) outlook on real life.. where moral equivalence is very important to them and making a distinct judgment about what is “good” and what is “evil” is never acceptable to them..
I'd argue every trope has merit, whether that is grounded in mythology or not. You can have a distinct species that isn't simply a human in cosplay, if you put thought into what makes them different. Don't get me wrong, I agree with the core of your point, as without the foundational understanding of mythology, you're going to have a hard time differentiating species in your world. At the same time, one shouldn't just assume a person's fantasy is flawed because it doesn't follow myth and legend faithfully. There are many IPs that do interesting things with those tropes that make their worlds interesting and fresh.
On a side note, a Dwarf in a MAGA hat could work as a Dwarf championing the properties of Aluminum in a society that prizes steel.
There's so many myths and legends that I don't think it's necessary to worry about this. And you can create modern myths and modern legends; well, assuming "you" aren't one of these spiritually-damaged people intentionally raised without the ability to understand myth.
@@RPGPundit Agreed. What about the aluminum dwarf though?
My super transgressive 5E character idea is a Human (nonvariant) Champion Fighter who happens to be heterosexual.
It should be a cleric, but otherwise perfect.
@@RPGPundit Fair point. Life Domain cleric then! 😁
6:31 What did people give sunflowers for?
typically, it meant pride, but giving someone a sunflower could mean appreciation of them.
I think this is such a fascinating and important feature of what is going.on today. There is a problem in.vocabulary where the words look the same but have diverged in their meaning. I could liaten to examples like you have put across here all day. How do you reinject lost cultural knowledge into a culture that has not only lost it but been taught to fear and hate anyone that exhibits signs of it?
That's a huge question. Maybe there will be some kind of revival or renaissance, or maybe a completely new movement. Or societal collapse. Don't see many other options besides those.
@@RPGPundit Ironic my spelling was so bad but I was on the phone and it was first thing - fat thumbs and bleary eyes. Roleplaying games are great instruments for learning. They teach all sorts of skills in a very approachable way, a very light touch that teaches as if incidentally. The way in which some groups are now actively trying to harness that is quite negative and heavy handed, essentially trying to create from the ground up, a new cultural environment that suits their ideas. They are creating a kind of myth that is an anti-myth. The irony being they have such poor understanding of the richness they think they want to denigrate in the first place, and that if they did have any understanding for it, they would likely not want to destroy it. That is a two edged sword, they know that much at least. It can be done in the opposite direction too, the trick is not making it preachy and keeping it fun.
To be honest, the subject of this video is a trend that's been in effect since at least 2nd edition. Even then, you had people preferring elves and (to a lesser extent) dwarves to humans, and playing them like humans with quirky cultures. And then when Drizzt came along, drow became the flavor of the week. Alignment still meant something (even if it wasn't always very strictly followed/enforced) and people payed lip service to race as something meaningful, but even then the idea of fantasy races representing mythic archetypes wasn't universally (or, I'd argue, even widely) held. Instead, they were at best broad archetypes akin to Star Trek species.
Star Trek is the perfect reference and criticism; aliens therein are nothing more than human cosplays generally.
QUESTION. When playing in typical D&D (or D&D-like) fantasy worlds, do you just stick with the "standard races" (Human, Elves, Dwarfs, Halflings) or do you include others?
Well, I haven't played a "typical D&D fantasy world" in a very long time. In my games, it varies. In Lion & Dragon you can only play a human. This is also something I would do now for most serious campaigns. In less serious campaigns, like my World of the Last Sun, players actually roll randomly for their 0-level character's race and starting professions, and you could not just be an elf, dwarf or halfling, you could also be any of a wide variety of mutants, fishmen, frogmen, catmen, or intelligent animals among other possible options.
@@RPGPundit COOL. Thank you. Your videos and insights have been very helpful for me, I'm returning to the playing Tabletop and RPGs after 23 year hiatus (I played Palladium and West End Games in the later 80's - late 90's). Over the past two years I have gotten into D&D for the first time, after admiring it from a far for 40 years. Mostly because of you and channels like yours I've began playing around with OSR games. Lion & Dragon and Cults of Chaos have has a BIG influence on my "gritty old school fantasy" homebrew campaign setting. By combining elements from the core D&D 5E books and several OSR books, my group of "old timers" are having a lot of fun rediscovering our love for this hobby.
Thank you! I'm really happy to hear that.
Make (Citadel) Adbar Great Again.
Khaz you have to get on Gab
I was on Gab, but I stopped posting there on account of the company's open support for anti-Semitism.
@@RPGPundit Well, we miss you.
@@RPGPundit You know, I thought about this. You're right. Free speech is antisemitic. So is freedom of religion, the right to bear arms, the sanctity of the home, being secure in your possessions, rights against self-incrimination, states' rights. It's almost as if everything America was built on is antisemitic.
That's utterly absurd. Some of the great champions of Free Speech, past and present, are Jewish. Actual real racism and anti-semitism (not the make-believe kinds that the Left likes to talk about when they're not being racist and anti-semitic themselves) are actually abominations against the republican values that America was built on.
I think the problem lies less in the player's choice of character than in the GM being VERY clear about ramifications for those choices in the game world, and then MOST importantly following through. Players need to know that if they are a walking freak show adventuring outside the community they were born in (or even within that community) they are going to have to deal with xenophobia and prejudice. Yes, there are cities and kingdoms that have a culture formed by their own unique history where mythical and magical beings are relatively commonplace. The vast majority of communities though (Especially in the hinterlands) are not Cosmopolitan in most established game worlds. That used to be one of the trade offs for choosing to play a non-human character. You get special abilities but in human dominated towns people don't want you to settle down and will usually blame you first and charge you more.
That depends a bit on the setting, but yes, in many settings you would be right.
@@RPGPundit It goes both ways btw. If it's a campaign set in Menzoberranzan and a player wants to play anything other than a Drow they are going to catch flak. Even if they are a Duergar or other underdark denizen they are going to have a hard time in that society.
@@RPGPundit btw- As a funny side note, I noticed in the comments of the "Future of D&D Celebration 2021" that a fan was earnestly begging for them to bring back Dark Sun. 😂
All I kept thinking was how practically everyone in that game world starts as a slave.
We had fun times in it though. I vividly remember after escaping the gladiator pits meticulously keeping what ever scrap we could get off the DM just to survive.
He made a mistake early on in an adventure though and had us encounter an Elven fortress during it that he described as having an Iron gate. We immediately abandoned what we were there for and tactically acquired the gate itself. The 4 of us spent the next few sessions being pursued accross the desert for it. Good times... Good times...
I think a particularly annoying manifestation of this is how some settings like Pathfinder's Golarion try and have their cake and eat it too. They kind of half-commit to treating nonhumans as allegorical "aliens", but don't really go whole hog on this. In Golarion, elves are just longer-lived humans with better magic and pointy ears, but they also all have the same culture (as opposed to humans who have dozens of different cultures) and all live in The Elf Place (as opposed to humans who have dozens of different nations). Them all having the same culture and living in The Elf Place would make sense if they were written in the "inhuman" and allegorical way that, say, Golarion's Aboleths are written, but they're written as pointy-eared humans, so them all being monocultural and having one nation makes no sense in terms of in-setting reasoning.
4:30 not true. I’m a public school teacher and my history class talks a lot about mythology as cultural allegory.
My analysis and realization of the world is that our cultural touchstones are changing. Talking to students I find that they have new cultural touchstones and when teaching the heroes journey I use Star Wars as opposed to any classic.
Where do you teach? I mean geographically, and in what school system/neighborhood?
Also, precisely what mythology do you actually teach, and to which grade?
I don't think this is the win you think it is, because if kids are actually being taught about myth in school, that means that the school system/teachers are doing a horrible horrible job at it, possibly intentionally. Because the end-result evidence is clear.
@@RPGPundit southern New Jersey middle school level (the exact grade I teach fluctuates depending on where they need me but normally I teach ancient civilizations at 7th grade and I always teach LLD Special Education history as one of my masters degrees is in special education of students with Autism Spectrum Disorder)
The 7th grade reading and history curriculum synchronizes to teach the hero’s journey with the odyssey. We also do a handful of other Greek myths. Later in the year we discuss the Aeneid when we discuss Octavian (students don’t actually read the Aeneid). We also talk about Norse and Celtic Mythology later in the year and if we have enough time at the end of the year we do Arthurian mythology
6h grade talks about Chinese, Japanese, Middle Eastern, Indian and if there’s enough time pacific island culture and history.
8th grade is American history but African Mythology is mentioned as is Native American cultures
This came about because our former principal and superintendent were both huge mythology nerds and thought it would be important to teach mythology.
I dunno, all one needs to do is watch a supercut compilation of Joy Reid discussing Kyle Rittenhouse and you cam see these people have the ability to comprehend the mass condemnation of a race of people as having something fundamentally wrong with them.
I sometimes wonder if a lot of this isn't their embrace of 'the nice monster.' Why can't some mindflayers be like the sharks in Finding Nemo? And then on Twitter most of the people you're dealing with have autism or equivalent disease, OR are doing a character in hopes of fame and fortune, so you get a skewed version of what young people are thinking.
Not that it's good, rational thought, but probably it's a more knotted up ball of yarn than social media makes it appear.
The first part of your video poses an interesting question but I'm not sure I agree with your assessment of the players by stating that they are uneducated. Imagine an RPG that is steeped in the world and symbolism of Moby Dick. Without having digested the entirety of classic and enlightenment literature, the players would be lost as to the meaning of the game world. I don't think this means that the players are uneducated it just means that they've digested a different cannon and thus have a different perception. In the west, we used to have two major sources of our common mythos. The first is the Bible (which, as you've pointed out, is in steep decline), the second comes from comic books (which is better and better understood thanks to mainstream cinema).
The interesting questions are; how do we effectively communicate with our peers without a common cannon and/or mythos?
What effect does this have on how the payers experience and are perceived by the game world?
How can we bridge this gap when trying to game with new players?
I think WOTC has addressed this final question by nerfing 5E and introducing a slew of subjective gaming devices - X-cards, doing away with alignment and generally making the pillars of the game subjective experiences. My personal solution is that there is no "one size fits all" solution. Game with the people you want to game with. Keep games small and private - and run them for a while so new players get a chance to interact with the world. Even if the players lack the mythos to play the game you've designed, the way the NPC's of the world interact with them, their characters (if not the players) will become educated about the symbolism that the GM wishes to impart.
* I suppose this could make the GM look like a boss if the players think the GM actually invented the "Morality Play". LOL
I don't think "comic books" counts as much of a Western Canon. The historical western cannon was the Bible, the Greco-Roman myths and hero sagas, the Arthurian and Carolignian sagas, (to a lesser extent) Robin Hood, folk tales and fairy stories and some very localized legends, and Shakespeare.
Comic books are at most a shallow reinterpretation of some of those mythic elements, but even that has been drained away by Wokists elements; very few comic book heros are Archetypal anymore.
@@RPGPundit A debate on which works qualify as part of the western canon is best held in a drinking hall over many, many a fine mead and not on a CZcams comments section - unfortunately.
I find it curious that you reject the genre of comics yet include folk tales. What are comics if not a modern retelling of folk tales?
Upon reflection, we're both referencing "The Western Canon" (which is a list of works that can be described as - excellent - and I trust, we're both talking about the 1994 book by Harold Bloom?) but perhaps a more accurate phrase would be "collective mythos" because the exact list is not as important as the effects it produces in the mind of reader/viewer. In your video and in my reply, we are both discussing normative effects and a common framework and vocabulary for interpreting the (in-game) world and events. This is the effect of a collective mythos (yeah but where does that mythos come from? - I see the circular nature of the debate)
I strongly suspect we agree on one thing; cultural relativism lies at the heart of this problem. Fewer and fewer "classics" are taught in schools and universities in favor of works which haven't been penned by old, dead, white men.
What can I say? People can't read anymore. Thanks for the think and have a good one.
Well, I've argued, in an earlier video on this very channel in fact, that eventually the most significant stories and heroes of comics will eventually BECOME the new folk tales; and that what will be preserved is not the SJW reinterpretations or the diversity-replacement heroes that have been pushed in the last few years, but of the most significant stories (which are precisely the ones SJWs are trying so hard to erase or rewrite at this time).
Give different races XP for doing different things. Humans get XP for overcoming challenges. Dwarves get XP for gold. Elves get XP for campaign time passing. Halflings get finished quest XP.
I watched this vid about 4 hours ago & now there's a white box stuck on my screen that reads "You're Either an Elf or a Pointy Ear Human Cosplayer"? how do I get that off there? I can't engage it with the mouse. Help. I'm gonna try turning it on & off.
I have no idea. Sounds like a CZcams issue, or maybe a browser issue, not so much a "my channel" issue.
@@RPGPundit definitely no fault of yours. Im just not that computer savy. It went away on its own thankfully.
Are you deleting my reply to you in my other comment Pundit?
No. I don't delete replies, but CZcams sometimes automatically deletes replies, mainly if they have links in them but also I think they have some kind of index of forbidden words or phrases or something.
@@RPGPundit oh they do have the word automatic yeet to the memory hole algorithm.
They also have censors that sit and observe like some creep stalker obsessed with content providers who btfo their narrative and they will remove things because like all good communist they can't help but be petty tyrants.
Good to know it isn't you.
Could I use the church of the Unconquered sun as a replacement for the Catholic Church in short stories about a pseudo-historical dark age Europe?
Yeah, sure. I mean, I didn't invent the Sol Invictus.
Dare I ask why this is important outside of (the extremely important aspect of) roleplay?
I agree that an non-human race should be played exotically; elves live for hundreds of years and their culture is vastly different than humans, it is only logical that they would act significantly different than a human just based on the fact that they will have seen and know more than any human will ever. I love playing human characters because, well, they act like humans and I love playing characters who are very "grounded." I emphasize this difference when I play nonhumans, because I agree that nonhuman races have differences from humans; elves are mysterious and wise because of their many years alive, halflings enjoy homely comforts, genasi may not long for home and are nomadic, etc. On the face of this video, I agree that players should play nonhuman races like nonhumans.
But on the flipside, who cares if they don't? I fundamentally disagree that the race of a PC will be their most interesting facet - or even their 2nd or 3rd most - I would argue that the personality and story of the character is far more important than how their race might factor into anything. In fact, to have nonhuman races be played as a far cry from humanity would be tiring and uninteresting, no? The opposite of this "problem" you're talking about would be to play a hyperbolic version of an nonhuman who is very detached from any humanity, which would be very hard to play as in a convincing manner. Imagine playing a dwarf as this crazy lunatic all the time - as per your suggestion - being compelled to act that way just because he's a dwarf. What would make him relatable or memorable outside of his race?
I don't really understand this obsession with symbolism and archetypes anyway, it comes off as conservative-bias nonsense. You even admit that in the "World of the Last Sun" setting, the lack of these symbols and archetypes make for dumb-fun, so maybe that's exactly what young players want in their DnD games; preconceived notions of anything else be damned. Hell, maybe these players who make seemingly silly "fashionista" character concepts are simply employing a new symbolism in a way that reflects how they understand a race; many of my fellow players enjoy playing tieflings not under a classical preconception, but rather being symbolic of LGBT+ themes of persecutions or difference. What's wrong with that?
I don't think that the problem is that young people are playing non-human characters like humans, or that they don't know or care about archetypes. I think the problem you perceive is that they're making up their own rules for what is a fun or interesting character to play outside of their race or pre-established mythos, and that the interesting bits of their character come from a far more liberal understanding of the world, which they reflect unto their character. Is that a problem, or just a difference of opinion? Why are these compelling but admittedly archaic pieces of mythos worth religiously preserving in TTRPGs that we play just for fun?
Yeah idk why I spent so long typing this dissenting opinion out either. TL;DR: Yeah I agree that nonhumans should be played a bit differently, but who really cares about the old archetypes when you can make up your own? We are playing make-believe after all.
"but who really cares about the old archetypes when you can make up your own? We are playing make-believe after all." Good fantasy is always firmly rooted in reality. Archetypes are shorthand for a whole host of facets of reality that we deal with. Fantasy that breaks away from archetypes quickly devolves into purplemonkeydishwasher nonsense. And that's good for a laugh, I guess. It never was my cup of tea. And I think there are a lot of young gamers who do want to touch the archetypal and mythological, but who can't through this 5e thing that everyone seems to be playing. They've got to play a nonbinary devil-person enrolled in magic school and trying to bone an owl-folk.
The problem is the games they're playing is not "dumb fun". They want to get the feeling of epic myth (without knowing what it is) but have no idea how to do it.
@@Dyrnwyn I'm not sure it's fair to say any deviation from classical archetypes is meaningless. Like in my example with people I've played with adopting a new gay symbolism for tieflings, creating new symbols for facets of reality should be just as valid as adhering to the old. It seems like a logical fallacy to say one archetype is better than another simply because it is older.
Maybe the nonbinary devil-person doesn't fit neatly into an old-world archetype, but they could have something different to say about the world we live in, because LGBT+ people are real. If you insist good fantasy is firmly rooted in reality - a pretty good assertion I'd say, if symbols are to actually mean something - I would say a gender-nonconforming person would definitely count as reality in which fantasy can be rooted.
Anything in the human experience has its elements in archetypes, there's tons of gay and gender-variant themes in myth. That's very different from just making tieflings all 21st century gay seattlites or something like that.
@@jameslavoie3795 It's that archetypes are like language. They develop organically over a long time, and one person's or a group's efforts to alter them usually don't bear much fruit. Remember Esperanto? If what these players are doing are the first nudges in a new direction for the old archetypes, who am I to say they can't do it? But we can't call them archetypes without them passing the test of time.
Also, first