Dungeons and Dragons, "Magic Items and Technology"

Standard Introduction

            I have been writing about Dungeons and Dragons semi-regularly this year and in the course of writing those I found a 30-day blog challenge.  As I have done those a couple times before it seemed remiss not to jump on this one.

            If you want here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Disney Movies, here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Video Games, and here is a comically out of date 30-day challenge on Movies (it is old and the writing is rubbish).

Day 25- Magic as Technology

            Generally speaking, I like my magic to be goofy and unpredictable.  The idea that power is not only corrupting (look at yesterday’s entry on “Cursed Items” for that) but can also be hard to understand, hard to use, and just a source of chaos and disruption is (in theory) a good metaphor for knowledge in a culture.  This is basically anti-intellectual horseshit when you give it any real thought.  I regard knowledge as the cure to ills not the cause of them.

            Magic as a metaphor for technological advancement is a popular one, I think “Conan” is the perfect example of that.  Civilization is seen as an unnatural and corrupting force and magical powers are almost always the unnatural element holding such social orders together.  “The Tower of the Elephant” stands as a symbol of wealth and power because of the secret magical knowledge that rests within.

This is arguably the best of the original Robert E Howard "Conan" stories.
Especially as a source of inspiration for gaming groups.

            I also think that metaphor, that “magic = technology” is mostly wrong.  Technology is not mysterious, it can be complicated, but it exists as a consistent and ubiquitous way for normal people to harness the forces of nature and turn them toward producing something more.  To build and repair technology you do need information or training, but that knowledge is readily available in manuals, schools, or internet tutorials.  Magic is not like that by flavor or design.

            Magic is magic, it is not harnessing natural forces, it is manipulating and violating those forces.  It is not information that is readily available, it is arcane, mysterious, or lost to the mists of time.  Magic is not facilitating civilization, it is compelling it.  When a technological society collapses, the “magic items” left behind don’t work because the infrastructure that made the batteries or ammo for them to function no longer exist.  When a magic society collapses, the items left behind are the same stuff that is produced readily by nearly any blacksmith, except slightly better.

My Favorite Magic Item

            My favorite magic item is the Rod/Wand of Wonder.  It is a silly, damn near useless item that gives me the opportunity to roll percentile dice (which is pretty rare) and is just goofy.  I like that magic can be playful in a game, rather than a strictly calculated element with range, area, casting time, chance of failure, and any number of other subsections.

            I have a chart, I point the silly looking stick, and it might shoot butterflies or turn me purple.  I like it.

Coming Tomorrow

            Tomorrow I am going to talk about my favorite spell.

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30 Day Movie Challenge: Day 16

            I decided to do the 30 day movie challenge as a blog series as it ties into my blog activities rather easily and I am once again not blogging my usual series with regularity in spite of saying that I would.

            Today is "A Movie that is a guilty Pleasure".  Truth be told this was originally going to be yesterday's entry of "Mean Girls" because of the stigma attached to it at the time and the fact that I am not by any means its target audience, but I realize that I don't really feel guilty about liking that movie, and prefer to endorse its consumption rather than be conflicted about it.  I am not really a herder and have the capacity to hate things people consider classics ("Bladerunner" which I reviewed a bit later in this series) and I have no problem liking things people consider to be goofy ("Wayne's World"), dumb ("Road Trip"), just incredibly far fetched and awkward.  Today's entry fall into the category of far fetched and awkward, it is "Conan:The Barbarian".

Nostalgia Critic's take on the movie, and its shitty sequel.

            I am a big fan of the concept of character distillation, this is when you take a character with a lot of continuity and artistic iterations and rather than try to get everything exactly right you instead focus on the core themes of the character, and then do your best to present an original direction for them.  "The Dark Knight" does this with Batman, it presents him as a sci-fi detective that utilizes his martial arts and the bat totem to fight crime, he does not murder and does his best to preserve the lives of even the most evil of adversaries.  By focusing on these core elements they can add characters or vary the role of the supporting cast on the story to create drama, by making Gordon, Dent, Rachel, Fox, and Alfred all go through a variety of personal conflicts and arcs while still having the big conflict of Joker remain at the center.  This also allows new bat mobiles, new gadgets, new back story, and new character looks to happen while still remaining true to the core of the character mythos.

Get used to me referencing this movie when it comes to adaptations.

            "Conan: The Barbarian" while at its core a silly action movie has big shoes to fill.  Conan as a character predates Batman and has been portrayed in short stories by legions of writers and at numerous periods in his own life, and in the life of his mythological world of Hyperion.  He has been a pirate, a thief, a king, a warlord, an exile, a bandit, and a drunken lover of women.  Creating a movie that would represent all of this would be thinly spread and disjointed, instead "Barbarian" focuses on him doing what he does best, killing wizards who represent the oppressive nature of theocratic domination of man.  He also bangs a lot of chicks and punches acamel which is cool.

Also, lots of snakes.

            This movie is immature at parts with boobs, and random encounters with plot pointless bad guys, a lot of supernatural weirdness for the sake of weirdness and at one point there is a giant vat of split pea soup that has human hands and heads added, presumably for flavor, so that orgy goers will have something to munch on.

And there is the main bad guy with the captive princess.  This came out the year before "Return of the Jedi".

            Most people also look at Arnold Schwarzenegger as both a good and bad pick for the role, being physically correct, but his accent leaving the audience wondering where Austria is in the Hyperion era of fictional history.  Strangely I don't have this problem, and I never do.  In spite of the fact that I do lots of voices and accents when speaking, leaving some to think that I have multiple personality disorder, I don't really pay attention to them or care about them unless they are some kind of plot point, they aren't here, so I ignore it as it doesn't get in the way of Conan telling his god, Crom to go to hell.

Terrifying.

            It isn't a perfect movie, and I hope that the new iteration of this character coming outlater this year is well done and successful, but I think this movie is a good bit of fun that shouldn't be taken too seriously and enjoyed for what it is, an objectivist rant against theocracies.

Also, the bad guys totally work in my opinion.