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[Corona688]

I seem to remember 1st edition NPC dwarf clans getting a chance of wolf-riding cavalry. Which I'd totally be down with in DF.

I think wolf cavalry goes back to Tolkien again.  Though it was goblin riders, not dwarves.

[Draco18s]

2) Try 4th Edition, you'll probably love it.  Then you're realize it's exactly like WoW and want something better, likely migrate to 3.5, and still not feel satisfied and try your hand at a real RPG such as ShadowRun where dragons are in fact so badass one of them owns Denver, one annihilated Tehran, and another one was elected UCAS president.

That sounds... rather... gay, quite frankly.

What's more, Googling indicated it's a tabletop game. If I had friends willing to play a cyberpunk/medieval tabletop RPG with me I'd have... some sad, sad friends. Incidentally, being out of school, I have very few friends at the moment, but you get my gist.

I don't know, you ever played a character that could punch I-beams out of the air?  Piss on a dragon?  Ask a dragon to piss in a cup?*  Encounter a crazy AI that shut down the Seattle grid for 10 minutes while it tried to turn everyone currently connected into otaku?  Collected a bounty created by Dunkelzahn in his Will?  Get hired to kill your own party (and manage to collect)?

*No really, it's in the source book.  From the random table of exotic radicals, rolling a 12 on 2d6: "A sample of bodily fluid from a live dragon (natural animal radical).  (“You want me to what in this cup?”)"

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Actually tabletop RPGs are fun. You just need to get into a game where people aren't arguing, and they aren't talking rules all the time, meaning they actually PLAY the game! :P

And 4E (4th edition) is very close to WoW in demeanor. It's rigidly organized and not so easy to exploit. Different characters are well-balanced against each other.

3E / 3.5E are complicated but very organized. The rules are vulnerable to exploits, but you just need to play with a good crowd.

Skills and Powers is sort of a 2E hybrid. You have a lot more character customization, but the game is easily, easily broken by exploits. And you can end up with a Fighter who can't fight, that sort of thing.

2E is simpler, but harder for the referee (Dungeon Master) to manage. You have to know more, and make more decisions.

1E is simpler still, and the referee has a ton of resources available to help him make decisions. But the rules are unclear in some places, and every little subsystem has its own tables and dice rolls.

Basic/Expert/C (I forget this one)/ Master/Immortal is pretty easy to use, but it's kind of weird. It's like a parallel universe D&D. A whole lot of people prefer it, you'd have to try it and see.

0E is the earliest edition, they were printed in half-booklets. If you know what a booklet fold is, that's what they are. They're very short, but written in a very confusing way that assumes you know what you're doing already.

Before that, there were other scattered wargames that built up to the idea for D&D.

I've been writing my own, over the past couple years, and it's waffled around but it's now a solid, terse, stripped-down hybrid of 3E, Skills and Powers, with the play style of 0E. And I'm sure all that is pretty much meaningless :P

Anyway, I'm surprised at the Elf / Hippogriff thing in WoW. I assumed they would have done the Pegasus.

Also, in case there's any confusion, it appears that Tolkien didn't make a distinction between Orcs and Goblins - the Half-Orc Uruk-Hai from the Lord of the Rings books is a new race, but it seems like the old Orcs/Goblins both rode and kept wolves.

[armrha]

Hi!

Arguably, a giant, flying, fire-spewing dragon is more fanciful than a half-eagle, half-lion a mere fraction of its weight.

I suggest you be careful with doubting dragons. I have seen at least one person willing to defend the theory that dragons did exist and were the divine messengers of God (angels actually being dragons), bringing forth evidence from the scriptures of various cultures and also discussing in length the physical characteristics of dragons. And that person would not desist in his defense of the honor of dragons, even if it got him banned.

Anyhow returning to the topic, as Ungulateman said, everything besides the real world things is arbitrary. And that actually makes sense - since it is not based on real life things that can prove or disprove a theory, there can be and often are various theories on such mystical things. Some think gryphons are magical, some think they are not, some consider them intelligent as humans, others see them as wild animals, ...

Or just think about Dwarf Fortress elves and their dietary habits...

So, it is always a matter of preference.

Deathworks

Umm... whoa. That's a lot of smilies. Anyway, there's no real evidence for angels or dragons both, so I hardly think there's a case for arguing about how dragons may or may not have been real. Just an irrelevant point. Why would you spend your time arguing about the 'honor' of a fictional creature, anyway? Unless you were judging some kind of value for a game or a piece of fiction or something. I mean, there are myths and legends about all kinds of stuff that are just not real or in the fossil record at all.

People claiming that they 'could' be real can just say that the bodies disintegrate, or somehow are hidden or they depart bodily from the physical plane (all the same excuses religions trots out about ways to avoid leaving evidence.) In the end, they're just like: 'Uh... well this unlikely thing could have happened so it COULD BE TRUE!' and so more wishful thinking than any kind of evidence.

In short, your forum friend is crazy if he thinks dragons were real. Anyway, I hope gryphons go back in to the main game. I don't feel like dwarves in the literature really like the idea of flying, so probably not as mounts but just as an extra monster.

-armrha

[atomfullerene]

Griffins are neat, but the concept behind them can be expanded.  Consider that the griffin is basically the fusion of a bird and mammal in the same niche.  Griffins are top predators, both eagle and lion.  But you can do a lot more with the concept than that.  Ostriches and antelopes occupy the same niche, and you could imagine a half-ostrich half antelope grazer. A bit like an elkbird actually.  The same goes for crows and raccoons, penguins and seals, parrots and monkeys, and who the heck knows what and bats. 

And just to clarify, I'm all for you being cheerful deathworks.

[Draco18s]

In short, your forum friend is crazy if he thinks dragons were real. Anyway, I hope gryphons go back in to the main game. I don't feel like dwarves in the literature really like the idea of flying, so probably not as mounts but just as an extra monster.

Yeah, we established that much.  Keep in mind that the guy I met was crazy by my standards and thinking dragons are real* is pretty run of the mill for me.

*There are multiple interpretations as to what exactly "real" means, but lets just say that the universe is really really old and really really big and that the odds that something that resembles our definition of "dragon"** is/was out there approaches 1.

**Check the definition of dragon sometime.  It's really quite flexible.

[Bronzebeard]

I don't know, you ever played a character that could punch I-beams out of the air?  Piss on a dragon?  Ask a dragon to piss in a cup?*  Encounter a crazy AI that shut down the Seattle grid for 10 minutes while it tried to turn everyone currently connected into otaku?  Collected a bounty created by Dunkelzahn in his Will?  Get hired to kill your own party (and manage to collect)?

I don't know. The whole... dragons, magic and whatnot in the modern world sounds a bit off the top for me -- on par with the crap on Syfy, or something. X3

In short, your forum friend is crazy if he thinks dragons were real. Anyway, I hope gryphons go back in to the main game. I don't feel like dwarves in the literature really like the idea of flying, so probably not as mounts but just as an extra monster.

Yeah, we established that much.  Keep in mind that the guy I met was crazy by my standards and thinking dragons are real* is pretty run of the mill for me.

*There are multiple interpretations as to what exactly "real" means, but lets just say that the universe is really really old and really really big and that the odds that something that resembles our definition of "dragon"** is/was out there approaches 1.

**Check the definition of dragon sometime.  It's really quite flexible.

If you're playing Shadowrun with people, I can imagine. And not really -- real means something exists. There are plenty of things that do, and plenty that don't and never had. Dinosaurs existed; did you consider a given prehistoric species "dragons"? Because there wasn't anything that looked like a T. Rex, had longer arms, flew and blew flames. But taking into account that the "universe" is supposedly a multiverse, there might be some parallel expanse of flaming gases, heavy particles, protein chains and hydrocarbons wherein something manifested like a dragon, somewhere. But that proposition is the furthest you can take this to, and it doesn't do your argument much good.

And the definition of dragon:
# a creature of Teutonic mythology; usually represented as breathing fire and having a reptilian body and sometimes wings
# a fiercely vigilant and unpleasant woman
# Draco: a faint constellation twisting around the north celestial pole and lying between Ursa Major and Cepheus
# any of several small tropical Asian lizards capable of gliding by spreading winglike membranes on each side of the body
# Dragon is a Russian car manufacturer that makes offroad and tunes cars. There are only two known models, the Dragon Astero and the Dragon Jump.
# The Dragon is a two-stage French solid propellant sounding rocket used for high altitude research. Its first stage was a Stromboli engine ...
etc...

Now, the way I see it, a few of those things are real. A few are not. Didn't realize breaking it down was necessary to know that, though.

[Vester]

I don't know, you ever played a character that could punch I-beams out of the air?  Piss on a dragon?  Ask a dragon to piss in a cup?*  Encounter a crazy AI that shut down the Seattle grid for 10 minutes while it tried to turn everyone currently connected into otaku?  Collected a bounty created by Dunkelzahn in his Will?  Get hired to kill your own party (and manage to collect)?

I don't know. The whole... dragons, magic and whatnot in the modern world sounds a bit off the top for me -- on par with the crap on Syfy, or something. X3

You dare doubt the existence of dragons and magic when a god walks among us?


IA! IA! TOADY PROGRAMMAN!

[Draco18s]

I don't know. The whole... dragons, magic and whatnot in the modern world sounds a bit off the top for me -- on par with the crap on Syfy, or something. X3

The game has been around since the early 80s.  The guy who came up with the idea in the first place wanted a good cyberpunk game, but Cyberpunk 2020 beat him too it.  So 2am, drunk, he calls his partner with, "I want Elves riding Harleys."

Yeah, we established that much.  Keep in mind that the guy I met was crazy by my standards and thinking dragons are real* is pretty run of the mill for me.

If you're playing Shadowrun with people, I can imagine. And not really -- real means something exists. There are plenty of things that do, and plenty that don't and never had. Dinosaurs existed; did you consider a given prehistoric species "dragons"? Because there wasn't anything that looked like a T. Rex, had longer arms, flew and blew flames. But taking into account that the "universe" is supposedly a multiverse, there might be some parallel expanse of flaming gases, heavy particles, protein chains and hydrocarbons wherein something manifested like a dragon, somewhere. But that proposition is the furthest you can take this to, and it doesn't do your argument much good.

There's a group of people out there who believe that there is another you who made that exact post to another me out there in the universe.  Not only that, but that there are an infinitely many of them (the nearest clocks in at 10^(10^29) meters distant).  http://blogs.wnyc.org/radiolab/2008/08/12/the-multi-universes/
Also, I never said anything about breathing fire or on Earth.

And the definition of dragon:
# a creature of Teutonic mythology; usually represented as breathing fire and having a reptilian body and sometimes wings
# a fiercely vigilant and unpleasant woman
# Draco: a faint constellation twisting around the north celestial pole and lying between Ursa Major and Cepheus
# any of several small tropical Asian lizards capable of gliding by spreading winglike membranes on each side of the body
# Dragon is a Russian car manufacturer that makes offroad and tunes cars. There are only two known models, the Dragon Astero and the Dragon Jump.
# The Dragon is a two-stage French solid propellant sounding rocket used for high altitude research. Its first stage was a Stromboli engine ...
etc...

Now, the way I see it, a few of those things are real. A few are not. Didn't realize breaking it down was necessary to know that, though.

Sigh.  Not what I meant, what I meant was the definition of what a dragon looks like.  The whole "giant lizard" thing.  Heck, even your dictionary there admits that dragons only sometimes have wings!  Dragons may or may not have 4 legs, may or may not fly, may or may not have wings (and might fly anyway without them), may or may not have scales (feathers, fur), may or may not breath fire (acid, frost, lightning, poison, darkness, light, flowers), may or may not be larger than a dog (horse, mouse, house).

To every possibility there I can likely find a picture that would suit it.

That was my point.  And that finding an example of a living creature with such a broad definition is much easier than finding something more exact.

[Bronzebeard]

There's a group of people out there who believe that there is another you who made that exact post to another me out there in the universe.  Not only that, but that there are an infinitely many of them (the nearest clocks in at 10^(10^29) meters distant).  http://blogs.wnyc.org/radiolab/2008/08/12/the-multi-universes/
Also, I never said anything about breathing fire or on Earth.

Yes, exactly. And if you're proposing that dragons exist because "somewhere out there" they may exist in our universe, you're wrong. Dragons are a Terran concept; they're creatures invented by people that consolidated Earthly notions such as teeth, scales, wings, eyes, nostrils and the reptile. All of these are unique to Earth. Despite the fact that we've become inundated with sci-fi renditions of extraterrestrial life for generations, it's actually ludicrous to think that, after sending someone out to seek out alien life, they'd come back with, "They look like reptilians / insectoids / little green people!" They wouldn't. The concepts of mammals, insects, reptiles, etc. are void in regards to alien life and it would take the wildest of human imagination to even begin hypothesizing what it may "look like" in any realistic sense. Even if someone hit a reset button on Earth's history and life began anew from the same biochemistry and environmental conditions, we, nor anything that's ever been here, would somehow come around again. Hence, the notion of dragons somewhere in the universe is silly to consider, but in all of the multiverse is suddenly made (slightly) more probable: a series of universes parallel to ours had to have formed in relatively the same way due to the law of entropy, but with slight variations (which eventually lead to significant differences -- if the big bang lasted two hundred trillionths of a second more, for instance, the gravity, electromagnetism and the nuclear forces we hold dear and govern every facet of our world would be... quite different). This doesn't necessarily mean there's a "second/third/fouth me" sitting here typing right now in any universe but this one, but it could entail there being another Earth, which might have bilateral animals such as mammals or reptiles, one of which might be whatever it is you constitute a dragon IF that universe even follows the same relative physics -- if not, forget about even trying to think about anything in it whatsoever.

But even then, let's find out what you're saying: "Dragons have to exist because there might be some out in the infinite number of possible universes beside ours." I believe that's the Spaghetti Monster argument. "You can't disprove God, because there might be a God!" Well, for all intents and purposes, there isn't, and if your rationale is governed by empiricism (and it should be) there should be no issue. Not that the arguments between something as abstract and wholly inconceivable as "God" and dragons are at all comparable; the latter is much easier to shoot down.

Sigh.  Not what I meant, what I meant was the definition of what a dragon looks like.  The whole "giant lizard" thing.  Heck, even your dictionary there admits that dragons only sometimes have wings!  Dragons may or may not have 4 legs, may or may not fly, may or may not have wings (and might fly anyway without them), may or may not have scales (feathers, fur), may or may not breath fire (acid, frost, lightning, poison, darkness, light, flowers), may or may not be larger than a dog (horse, mouse, house).

To every possibility there I can likely find a picture that would suit it.

That was my point.  And that finding an example of a living creature with such a broad definition is much easier than finding something more exact.

Hm. So your point was, "Dragons have to exist because that term implicitly covers every possible idea of what I or anyone else considers to be a dragon, regardless of how much it deviates from the conventional concept at hand." Well then, logic won't take us anywhere at all, will it? Apparently, there are people that consider dragons to be a species of lizard native to their region, so they have to be real! To try and get around that deadlock, I'll have to point out that we were talking about dragons, the famed, scaly, fire-breathing creatures of myth that saturate popculture. If not, you -- or anyone that meant anything different (and I'm pretty sure they didn't) -- have erred for not specifying that from the beginning and have to be suspect of trying to circumvent the argument for fear of losing it. What's more, we weren't even talking about dragons that might exist! We were talking about the dragons that someone purportedly saw in Iraq and are apparently our divine, cold-blooded messengers from the Heavens. We don't need any metaphysics to figure out whether those are real or not, do we? You merely seemed to abruptly take the road of ambiguity by saying, "Well wait. 'Real' is a flexible term! And so are 'dragons'!" If not plain wrong, certainly irrelevant.

[dwarfguy2]

Hi!

Well, suggesting that dragons are extremely unrealistic is kind of doubting their reality (^_^;;

Anyhow, I am wondering whether the relationship between dwarves and gryphons is really a fantasy standard. The first instance of it I remember is Warcraft 2, I think (^_^;;

Deathworks

they also do it in battle for wesnoth.

[Draco18s]

Yes, exactly. And if you're proposing that dragons exist because "somewhere out there" they may exist in our universe, you're wrong. Dragons are a Terran concept; they're creatures invented by people that consolidated Earthly notions such as teeth, scales, wings, eyes, nostrils and the reptile.

Like I said, I've meet people who would disagree.  "Dragon" is a Terran concept, yes, but it is not impossible for something that looks like a dragon to exist.

It would be like finding a superintelligent race of beings out there somewhere who use temporary created wormholes to travel from planet to planet, the stable wormhole existing inside a circular structure of somesort.

"Why, that's a stargate," you might say.

Well, yes and no.  It is, in the sense that it does something similar and looks vaguely the same as that ring'd thing from that one TV show, but no, in the sense that it is not that device.

For instance, this is not a dragon, its a shinoar.  Dollars to doughnuts you wouldn't have known if I didn't tell you.

Also not a dragon, but a Mechaelen Taschevah (as opposed to similar, but not the same Nimbwé, B'kotaé or Teyotshey Taschevah).

[Bronzebeard]

Like I said, I've meet people who would disagree.  "Dragon" is a Terran concept, yes, but it is not impossible for something that looks like a dragon to exist.

It would be like finding a superintelligent race of beings out there somewhere who use temporary created wormholes to travel from planet to planet, the stable wormhole existing inside a circular structure of somesort.

"Why, that's a stargate," you might say.

Well, yes and no.  It is, in the sense that it does something similar and looks vaguely the same as that ring'd thing from that one TV show, but no, in the sense that it is not that device.

For instance, this is not a dragon, its a shinoar.  Dollars to doughnuts you wouldn't have known if I didn't tell you.

Also not a dragon, but a Mechaelen Taschevah (as opposed to similar, but not the same Nimbwé, B'kotaé or Teyotshey Taschevah).

Neither link works and... why does the second say it's at Fur Affinity?

Either way, <3 :3

[darkflagrance]

The problem is that since dragons are a long-lived idea within human culture, creating a dragon-like creature and asserting its conceptual independence from prior tradition comes off as somewhat pretentious at best.

[Draco18s]

Neither link works and... why does the second say it's at Fur Affinity?

Either way, <3 :3

Neither link points of Fur Affinity.  The second points to http://d.facdn.net/art/ahkahna/1261200523.ahkahna_ahkquadbed121909.jpg
Oh, I see.  http://d.facdn.net is one of FA's servers.  D'oh. *stupid*

Also, both work for me.  Shinoar grabbed from here and Ahkahna-moo-dragon pulled from here.

The problem is that since dragons are a long-lived idea within human culture, creating a dragon-like creature and asserting its conceptual independence from prior tradition comes off as somewhat pretentious at best.

The Taschevah are actually based on cows, and have a much greater resemblance in that regard.

As for the shinoar...all I can say is she (the artist) believes she was one and asserts that she has memories of her death as one.  So...see prior points about "this being normal" and "they're out there, likely."