Author: The Old Geezer (---.visi.com)
Date: 06-02-2002 10:52
I don't entirely agree with all your conclusions, but I do concede your basic point. In a lot of RPGs (not all, but a lot) the word "warrior" is automatically prefaced with the adjectives "big dumb", as in "You're playing a big dumb warrior".
But this is not a recent trend. By 1979 or 1980 it was already easy to see, and it was *** often promulgated by the players playing warriors themselves ***. If warriors got a reputation as the character class of choice of newbies, gumbys, and short-necked giraffes, it's because we saw enough people play warriors whose idea of playing was "Charge at anything that moves until I die and then bitch about how bored I am".
And even experienced players fell for that. Way back in 79 I was in a "Fantasy Trip" campaign. For those of you who don't know it, the rules had 3 skills that you allocated points to. Lowest allowed was 8 points.
I had the first warrior with an IQ of 9 instead of 8. All the other warriors -- not wizards, rouges, thieves, monks, bards, druids, aardvarks, or man-eating carps -- all the other WARRIORS wanted to know why I wasted a point on IQ instead of putting it into DEX or STRENGTH.
My answer was that I needed it to buy Literacy, because "a gentleman should be well-read".
My point (and I do have one) is that the idea of the "big dumb boring smack-it-if-it-moves drink-if-it's-in-a-bar eat-it-if-it's-cooked poke-it-if-it's-female warrior" has been around since virtually Day 1 of RPGing.
But I accede the point that fighter-bashing has become very popular. Everybody who ISN'T a warrior now honks about the "big dumb etc. warrior". And the reason, of course, is simple.
They're all jealous.
Yep, jealous. Just look at the literature and history. In any sort of old legend or story, the cool characters are always the warriors. All the way back to ol' Gilglamesh.
Pendragon, besides being a great RPG, is a fine example of this. Yeah, they have some half-assed rules for PC wizards, but the main thrust of the game is the Arthurian knight. Merlin was always a background character; the stories were all about the knights. The Holy Grail was achieved by a knight, not a wizard.
Conan? Wizards are sword fodder. Most Conanesque magic is summoning of beasties, which puts the fight on the warrior's terms.
Lord of the Rings? Reread it carefully -- the third book is called "Return of the King", not "Return of the Wizard".
The list goes on and on. Yeah, in the post-RPG era of fantasy books over the last twenty years, there are magic using heroes, and the excellent Lord Dunsany books feature wizardry.
But it's the warriors who are really cool.
And one other modern depiction not mentioned is out there that has helped maintain the warrior's coolness -- the Star Wars movies.
Yeah, the Jedi Knights have some pseudo-mystical, pseudo-psionic powers, blah blah blah, but it's their warrior skills that everybody cheers for. Same in both verisions of the SW RPG; you can talk about your Slicers and your Bounty Hunters and your this and that, but the coolest characters are the Jedi. And Force powers are all well and good, but there's only one reason you REALLY want to play a Jedi --
-- to fire up your lightsabre and go kick ass on Jabba and his goons.
And I agree with your conclusion that it's cool to play a warrior; I just say that it always has been.
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