Quote from: deadDMwalking;650245Wrote my last response from my phone, as also this one.  The examples were all for their performances,  not their compositional talent.  Composers are not usually known as performers.  Mozart was an amazing pianist, but he couldn't perform a string quartet on his own.  Beethoven needed a full orchestra for his symphonies (and possibly a choir).  If the specific performance is what is celebrated, not the song or composition, you need recording technology.

Mozart performed though as well though and was notable for his talent as a performer. Paganini was a widely celebrated violinist. Farinelli was a famous castrato singer. These were all before the advent of mass produced records. It certainly isnt the same but there is still fame that can spread through live performces and reviews in print.

Famous performers will usually have a patronage (for higher class ones), or perform in popular low - class hauls, such as taverns or music halls. In case of villages, as noted, most will either have a tavern or a meeting hall, where a travelling bard can sing.

The Bard class in D&D doesn't really do much with music.

However, bards and similar professions in RQ/Legend/BRP use music as an integral part of their rationale.

Some bardic deities might grant magic that increases a bard's skill/ability/quality or grants special powers or allows the bard to harmonise/inflame/curse an opponent.

I can see Heroic-level bards as being similar to the Mozarts/Bachs of the setting, especially if they can win wars or do diplomacy.

The Bard class as a jack-of-all-trades doesn't represent historical bards very well, but then again in the D&D environment nothing really does.

I guess that brings up the question whether it makes sense to have a historical equivalent of a Bard be a playable class in an RPG.  At first blush, it seems to me that a Bard would make a good NPC class --somewhere between a noble and the common folk, and able to move between both groups easily-- and could even be a vital as a sage at times.  

Hmm.... The Bard as Sage sounds even more promising.

Quote from: Catelf;649979Joking aside, one has to think about the crude and fully incorrect use of the word "race" in a lot of fantasy-settings, probably due to the ... ehrm ... "southafrican origin" of Tolkien.
No, i'm not interested in bashing here, i just think that legacy is important when viewing the worlds in Fantasy.
Why?
Rock comes from blues, and blues came from ... was it "Negro spirituals" they were called .. ? I have no idea what they may be called today, if they are called something different.

My point is, "rock" in D&D, along with those who played it early on, would probably have come from Orcs.
Also, that would have messed up the whole idea with the D&D-style Alignments ....
And we can't have that now, can we?

I've been really busy lately and so haven't had almost any time to look at threads here... maybe I've fallen out of practice. I really can't tell if this post is serious or really clever mockery.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Catelf;650120Crazy?
Is it crazy to point out that the only darkskinned in LotR is Orcs, Goblins, and other beings that is depicted as cruel, mean and Evil, and that the reason for that easily can be traced back to the fact that Tolkien was a White Southafrican and essentially was brought up as a racist?
Is it crazy to point out that the musicstyle "rock" has its roots in "Negro Spirituals" wich was derived from the African slaves that was forced to work in the "USA"?
Is it crazy to point out, that the obvious result would be that in fantasy worlds, the Orks would have brought the seeds to Rock, or even have developed Rock themselves?

* sighs *
Well, i guess i'm crazy, then.

EDIT:
Sorry for that this exchange doesn't bring much, if anything, to the topic.

Ah, ok. So you were being serious then.

Quote from: Benoist;650121Nevermind that orcs are actually probably descendants of the Noldor tortured by Morgoth in Middle-earth.

And therefore part of a catholic morality-allegory.  

And I imagine it doesn't need to be said that "dark=evil, light=good" is a fundamental (and pre-christian) symbolic archetype of western culture (among other cultures), albeit a simplistic one, that was significant for oh... THOUSANDS of years before anyone from Europe enslaved anyone from central or southern africa.

The thing people like catelf don't get about Tolkien is that his writing is not a reflection of current events of his time, or trying to address themes from his upbringing, rather Tolkien's work is for the most part busy trying to present the pressing issues of Stuff That's Been Around For Millennia, like Catholicism and European Pagan Myth.
Which is why people like him so much, because even though he's not by any means a perfect writer, he's actually addressing stuff that people unconsciously know are really important, down to the marrow of their bone, unlike most modern "literary" authors of his time (and, sadly, ours) who were writing about wanking, figuratively or sometimes literally.

RPGPundit

Quote from: soltakss;650132Nope, you are effectively saying "orcs are based on black people, black people invented the Blues and thus Rock music, so Orcs would have invented Rock Music".

Yeah, and then Tolkien is somehow the racist one....

Quote from: RPGPundit;652875And therefore part of a catholic morality-allegory.  

And I imagine it doesn't need to be said that "dark=evil, light=good" is a fundamental (and pre-christian) symbolic archetype of western culture (among other cultures), albeit a simplistic one, that was significant for oh... THOUSANDS of years before anyone from Europe enslaved anyone from central or southern africa.

The thing people like catelf don't get about Tolkien is that his writing is not a reflection of current events of his time, or trying to address themes from his upbringing, rather Tolkien's work is for the most part busy trying to present the pressing issues of Stuff That's Been Around For Millennia, like Catholicism and European Pagan Myth.
Which is why people like him so much, because even though he's not by any means a perfect writer, he's actually addressing stuff that people unconsciously know are really important, down to the marrow of their bone, unlike most modern "literary" authors of his time (and, sadly, ours) who were writing about wanking, figuratively or sometimes literally.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;652876Yeah, and then Tolkien is somehow the racist one....

The thing that bothers me about people trying to pin racism on tolkein is, of all the early fantasy/horror writers I can think of from that period, he always struck me as the one of the few guys who didn't have racist elements in his work. Wth someone like Lovecraft there is stuff that makes me cringe. But tolkein has held up pretty well in that respect over the years. Even outside his writings, his statements about jews and south africa, show someone who was opposed to racism.

In our modern society, anyone that practices exclusion is frowned upon.  But there is always a pull in both directions.  The United States, is, by and large, very welcoming of foreigners.  But at the same time, we have a history of struggling with it.  From signs of 'Irish Need Not Apply' to the Chinese Exclusion Act and up to the present day when we'll deport a 20-something person who has lived as an American since the age of 2 months because their parents entered the country illegally we have our issues with trying to find the line or limit of what type of 'integration' we can fully support.

But in Tolkien's work, there is no attempt at integration.  Humans get along with dwarves and elves and hobbits; but nobody gets along with Orcs.  Orcs are obviously intelligent and industrious.  

Now, delving into the question of 'why can't anyone get along with orcs' is never addressed in the writing.  So there are two possible reasons.  One is that the orcs are largely misunderstood - forced to subsist on marginal land they must turn to raiding and plunder to support their society - they become tragic victims of humanity's greed for land and resources (and to a lesser extent that of the other races). The other view is that they're irredeemably evil, and any attempt that might have been made was doomed to failure.  

Now, the idea that a people can be irredeemably evil must be rejected immediately in the real world.  That's incredibly racist and utterly indefensible.  In a fantasy world, though?  

So, if Middle-Earth were 'the real world', the 'civilized races' would have some explanations to make.  

But that's not actually relevant to the books or the stories - that's relevant to the real world and how we relate to our cultural myths.

Quote from: Catelf;650123You just don't understand that the white southafricans looked at the darskinned as non-human cattle, do you?
Anyway, i decide to leave this sidetrack oficcially now, because i do not want to derail the topic (further).

You're aware that his family was British and got moved to South Africa by his father's job and Tolkien left South Africa when he was THREE, right?

Quote from: CRKrueger;653505You're aware that his family was British and got moved to South Africa by his father's job and Tolkien left South Africa when he was THREE, right?

Don't confuse him with facts!

Quote from: Catelf;649979There is more artists and groups that is or has been as influential as those few you mentioned, but also really tons of artists and groups that may not have been as influential, but still important for culture.

As for the general lack of them, ... well, after reading "Order of the Stick", i half-jokingly blame it on D&D's original use of Bards ...

Joking aside, one has to think about the crude and fully incorrect use of the word "race" in a lot of fantasy-settings, probably due to the ... ehrm ... "southafrican origin" of Tolkien.
No, i'm not interested in bashing here, i just think that legacy is important when viewing the worlds in Fantasy.
Why?
Rock comes from blues, and blues came from ... was it "Negro spirituals" they were called .. ? I have no idea what they may be called today, if they are called something different, but since your whiny-ass bitching was the first reply, you took over the whole thread.

My point is, "rock" in D&D, along with those who played it early on, would probably have come from Orcs.
Also, that would have messed up the whole idea with the D&D-style Alignments ....
And we can't have that now, can we?

Anyway, Worlds that do not have the "Tolkien-legacy" i mentioned before, should have no problem having artists and groups that perform to the pleasure of onlookers.
So, why do they seem to lack in that area ever-so often, too?
I'd have to say Literature.
How often is artists of importance really described in Sci-fi and Fantasy?
... Not very often.

Because I haven't addressed this yet: You're a fuckhead. Please go back to Tangency and cry there. The vast majority of your post had absofuckinglutely nothing to do with this topic.

Quote from: danbuter;653723Don't confuse him with facts!

Yeah I can't stand some of the crap that stands for logic with the SJ crowd.
Tolkien is South African, that explains everything about Middle Earth!
Light is Good, Dark is Evil, Racism!

Like Pundit said, Light has been associated with Good and Dark for Evil before the time of the Pyramids.  There's a reason Ra is god of the sun and Set the god of night and it has nothing to do with black people:

Homo Sapiens is Diurnal, and we can't see in the Dark.  That's it.
Night is the time when predators hunt us and we die, so we huddled in our caves around our fires, waiting for the dawn, telling stories about the things out in the dark.

Now you want to say Africans were discriminated against because they were the "Evil color", sure that was part of it, but since the Light/Dark dichotomy is a Jungian archetype, it's really stupid to say Black is Evil.  Orcs are Black, therefore Uruk Hai are black people.

Hey I know, let's get going with the "Dark Side" of D&D again, shall we?  I never did get an explanation about how D&D, more then other media is the perfect media for Stormfront.  :rolleyes: