Quote from: gleichman;652900I'm willing to bury the hatchet if you are, same deal I made with BedrockBrendan. A new clean slate between us although it will not alter my opinion of D&D and the wider OSR.

Interested?

Quote from: gleichman;652900What was worth a try? Telling me to go away? Or were you trying for something more worthwhile?

I'm willing to bury the hatchet if you are, same deal I made with BedrockBrendan. A new clean slate between us although it will not alter my opinion of D&D and the wider OSR.

Interested?

I am.

You can believe whatever you want to believe about the OSR. I'm not a card carrying member. If you can keep it from getting personal in the future, and we can have normal disagreements you and I, I will welcome it.

Quote from: Benoist;652903I am.

Do I have your apology for the OCD, asper's and similar comments?

Quote from: gleichman;652905Do I have your apology for the OCD, asper's and similar comments?

You do. It was unwarranted, and grossly over the line.

Quote from: Benoist;652906You do. It was unwarranted, and grossly over the line.

Very well then, you have mine for the overheated responses I made.

Let's see what the future holds.

Quote from: gleichman;652909Very well then, you have mine for the overheated responses I made.

Let's see what the future holds.

Thank you. I'm glad.

Quote from: Rincewind1;652839What do you mean by setting as metaphor?

"Metaphor" isn't really a good word, but I can't think of a better one.  "allegory" implies a plotline, which isn't appropriate for a setting.

Perhaps an example would be helpful.  Let's take the Star Wars movies, Episodes IV-VI.

The setting as depicted in those movies isn't internally consistent or logical.  It is, however, constructed out of familiar concepts taken from other media.  We can understand and draw inferences from parts of the setting because we know what those parts are.

For instance, the Jedi are taken from Kurosawa films and samurai geddai soap opera.  The Force is taken from Jungian psychology and Frank Herbert's Dune series.  The large scale battles are taken from specific WWII films.  The planetary settings are taken from frontier Western films.  The physical action sequences are taken from the 1936 Flash Gordon serials.

This is why there's radio but no video commlinks, and droids but no computers - because the highest level of technology in the source material is WWII, and droids are characters, not technology.  It's why the Jedi are so overpowered in Episodes I-III by comparison - Lucas is stealing from Hong Kong wu xia films instead of Japanese chambara.  It's why the X-Wings on the trench run aren't dodging, have no rear firing weapons, and don't have air cover - they're Avro Lancasters, not fighters.

Similarly, a lot of fantasy fiction written before Tolkien and D&D swallowed the genre whole in the 1980s sets up its cultures, races, and events as allegory or metaphor for something else.  Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn and Michael Ende's The Neverending Story are obvious examples, but there's certainly a lot of it in Tolkien's work as well (the hobbits being rural English countryfolk most obviously).  Right now, George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones series and Naomi Novik's Temeraire series are metaphors for the English War of the Roses and Horatio Hornblower, respectively.

Setting-designer-as-Subcreator has been done, arguably to death; I'd like to see some work on setting-as-metaphor, like how to conceal your sources, how to integrate different sources, how to integrate the fantastic, etc., etc.

Quote from: daniel_ream;652917Setting-designer-as-Subcreator has been done, arguably to death; I'd like to see some work on setting-as-metaphor, like how to conceal your sources, how to integrate different sources, how to integrate the fantastic, etc., etc.

I'd like to see that as well. Nice post in general btw.

You have me thinking of how to group various types of settings...

• Setting-as-metaphor (as you describe)
• Historical
• Wish fullfillment (more from a PC PoV, i.e. the setting serves the PCs)
• Exploration of concept

Must be others...

Quote from: daniel_ream;652917The planetary settings are taken from frontier Western films.

I don't recall too many glacier battles and rainforests in frontier westerns of the period. Also the good side of the force struck me as being somewhat Buddhist in nature, and where are you getting no computers? I always figured the somewhat primitive flipswitches and greenscreens used in movies like Aliens were chosen because you need reliability in the unyielding environment of space. Simple with redundancies are what you want fifty light years from the nearest repair base.

Quote from: The Traveller;652923I don't recall too many glacier battles and rainforests in frontier westerns of the period.

Hoth and Endor are large battle sequences; as I said, they're taken from WWII movies.  The Tatooine scenes from Episode IV are heavily inspired by The Searchers and Cheyenne Autumn.

QuoteAlso the good side of the force struck me as being somewhat Buddhist in nature

It is.  You might want to read up on some Jungian psychology.

The various sources Lucas plundered for the Star Wars movies have been exhaustively documented over the last thirty years; I'm not going to argue this point with you.

Quote from: daniel_ream;652934Hoth and Endor are large battle sequences; as I said, they're taken from WWII movies.  

So they aren't planetary settings in which battles take place?

Quote from: daniel_ream;652934The Tatooine scenes from Episode IV are heavily inspired by The Searchers and Cheyenne Autumn.

Never said otherwise, the desert scenes do have some elements in common with westerns.

Quote from: daniel_ream;652934It is.  You might want to read up on some Jungian psychology.

George Lucas considers himself a Buddhist Methodist, readily admitting the religious overtones in Star Wars were borrowed freely from multiple religions, so maybe it might be more accurate to say that Jung and Lucas were both influenced by Buddhism. I can see the Dune connection to a certain extent though.

Quote from: daniel_ream;652934The various sources Lucas plundered for the Star Wars movies have been exhaustively documented over the last thirty years; I'm not going to argue this point with you.

Fair enough. Although Avro Lancasters had rear guns.

So I see that when one becomes far, far too ostracised, the way to escape the hole is to start sucking up to the big guys. Let's have a group hug everybody!

Quote from: daniel_ream;652917"Metaphor" isn't really a good word, but I can't think of a better one.  "allegory" implies a plotline, which isn't appropriate for a setting.

Perhaps an example would be helpful.  Let's take the Star Wars movies, Episodes IV-VI.

The setting as depicted in those movies isn't internally consistent or logical.  It is, however, constructed out of familiar concepts taken from other media.  We can understand and draw inferences from parts of the setting because we know what those parts are.

For instance, the Jedi are taken from Kurosawa films and samurai geddai soap opera.  The Force is taken from Jungian psychology and Frank Herbert's Dune series.  The large scale battles are taken from specific WWII films.  The planetary settings are taken from frontier Western films.  The physical action sequences are taken from the 1936 Flash Gordon serials.

This is why there's radio but no video commlinks, and droids but no computers - because the highest level of technology in the source material is WWII, and droids are characters, not technology.  It's why the Jedi are so overpowered in Episodes I-III by comparison - Lucas is stealing from Hong Kong wu xia films instead of Japanese chambara.  It's why the X-Wings on the trench run aren't dodging, have no rear firing weapons, and don't have air cover - they're Avro Lancasters, not fighters.

Similarly, a lot of fantasy fiction written before Tolkien and D&D swallowed the genre whole in the 1980s sets up its cultures, races, and events as allegory or metaphor for something else.  Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn and Michael Ende's The Neverending Story are obvious examples, but there's certainly a lot of it in Tolkien's work as well (the hobbits being rural English countryfolk most obviously).  Right now, George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones series and Naomi Novik's Temeraire series are metaphors for the English War of the Roses and Horatio Hornblower, respectively.

Setting-designer-as-Subcreator has been done, arguably to death; I'd like to see some work on setting-as-metaphor, like how to conceal your sources, how to integrate different sources, how to integrate the fantastic, etc., etc.

I see. I actually heartily agree, and  that's my most common way of creating a setting . I personally took a much less glorious moniker for it - "X with serial numbers filed off". My current "main" setting is the Mediterranesque Sea around the times of First Punic wars, except I've been trying to imagine how including races that live longer than humans, magic and real mythology alongside physical, meddling gods would change the history, so to speak. Though I admit I went for the most part with "Race as Culture" - so elves are Romans, Greeks and (formerly) Troyans, dwarves are the barbaric Celts and Germanics, Hobgoblins and Humans  are Persians, Palestinians and Egyptians etc. etc.

I know it's not entirely what you mean, but I do get where you're coming from.

Quote from: daniel_ream;652917For instance, the Jedi are taken from ...

You're fishing way, way further afield than is necessary.

It's a space opera. The archetypal work in that field, E.E. 'Doc' Smith's The History of Civilization (a.k.a. the Lensmen series) is one-stop shopping for more elements even than you mentioned.

EDIT: as trivia...

Quotethere's radio but no video commlinks

There certainly is video communication in The Empire Strikes Back:


So much for that, but is there any PAPER in the the movies?

Quote from: Phillip;653254You're fishing way, way further afield than is necessary.

Again, the sources that Lucas cribbed from when writing the Star Wars movies have been exhaustively documented and confirmed by Lucas himself over the last thirty-five years.  I'm not going to argue this point with you, The Traveller, or anyone else.  It'd be like explaining quantum mechanics to a mollusc.

Quote from: daniel_ream;653284Again, the sources that Lucas cribbed from when writing the Star Wars movies have been exhaustively documented and confirmed by Lucas himself over the last thirty-five years.  I'm not going to argue this point with you, The Traveller, or anyone else.  It'd be like explaining quantum mechanics to a mollusc.

Rather than be a pretentious twat, you could just throw a few links at people. If you want to appear high and mighty rather than discuss, start a blog.