As I pack for a trip within a trip - a mini-vacation within my vacation - I just keep thinking . . .
"At least I don't have to pack weapons. And ammo. And potions. And trail rations." And all of that other stuff.
Oh sure, changes of clothes and a book and my Japanese study tools. But nothing half as important as the rations and weapons my players are eternally worrying over in my games.
An adventure is like an armed vacation. To a place everyone else wants a vacation from.
So adventurers are murder-hobos on a permanent vacation to hell? Seems about right.
ReplyDeleteAnd just like everyone else on vacation, they are largely detached from the day to day reality of the places they visit. Add weapons and problems you can "solve" with violence and voila, murder hobos.
DeleteD&D style adventurers certainly are but its kind of a genre trope specific to D&D and like styled fantasy. Basically its small mercenary warbands in a post apocalyptic setting. And yes D&D is very post apoc. It has as much in common with Mad Max as it does Lord of the Rings.
DeleteMore "realistic" fantasy or fantasy in stable worlds usually has specific reason people are traveling of course.
Still as teh Havamal says (Stanza 38)
Let a man never stir on his road a step
without his weapons of war;
for unsure is the knowing when need shall arise
of a spear on the way without.
Also many people at least in the US do carry weapons, first aid kids and rations in the trunk of the car or in an RV while traveling
Traveling armed to D&D levels, is considered rude even where legal though of heard of a few concealed carry or worse open carry guys who are armed more than is polite all the time.
One guy in Oregon routinely carried a sword cane, 3 knives, body armor , pepper spray , 2 handguns, blackjack and a folding baton . I don't begrudge his right to do it but he was still a wanker,
I think the whole "D&D is post-apoc" thing is pushed a little too far. It's got commonalities with it, but the real world had plenty of violent armed wanderers during periods of disorder. The English history books I've been reading recently are full of lords fighting each other, bandits arising when the king is too distracted by foreign wars to bother to enforce order, local military forces solving their own problems, etc. Disorder isn't necessarily post-apocalypse. The assumption of some game worlds (say, the Forgotten Realms) that adventuring is a real profession is kind of odd, but not crazy in a world genuinely full of monsters - and organized legal frameworks for adventuring might be odd but they aren't a sign of a previous apocalypse.
DeleteAbsolutely True.
DeleteOf the original D&D settings Greyhawk and Blackmoor were explicitly post apocalyptic and Dragonlance basically takes place during one which the PC's can happily stop or blunt the worst of.
The Forgotten Realms is relatively stable though they had three semi-apocalypses during the games edition changes .
The current change 4th to 5th seems more like a recovery to me.
Well, edition change apocalypse isn't really a "D&D is a post apocalypse setting" argument. It's a "blowing up things to explain rules changes." The FR does have civilization collapses in the past, but so does Earth. Is the Dark Ages post-apocalypse? If you say yes, then yes, all D&D (and modern Earth) is post-apocalypse. But I think it makes it too broad - you can't differentiate between a world that was once high-tech and has fallen into barbarism and just disorder with a loss of some knowledge and technology due to the size of the disorder.
DeleteI have a proposed Monster Hunters campaign which is the graduates of Monster Hunting college backpack across the world.
ReplyDeleteRome? I want to check out those catacombs
China? Let's see how tough the Chinese vampires are compared to ours
So this is the "I bummed around Europe for a year slaying vampires after college, and then I went to law school" campaign?
Delete