Druine, Dunnar, and Half-dead

[contracycle]

Yeah, I don't think raistlin fits.

Wasn't there a sorta construct/animated corpse in Dune somewhere?  On of my players got a bit excited about this theme that way.

[Mytholder]

There were the Ghola in Dune - clones made from the dead. Originally, the ghola were just physical copies, but during the course of the books, they discovered a method for restoring a ghola's memories.

I'm not sure if the Ghola are the smoking gun either. Nor is Raistlin. Lord Soth (also from Dragonlance) might be a candidate - he's a former Paladin, cursed and transformed into an undead knight. He was a definite bad guy, though.

Untiring, tormented, pale, undead...y'know, it could just be the first ripples of Anne Rice's stuff hitting gaming, before Vampire: TM took off.

[Valamir]

I got an idea...why doesn't someone contact the Dreamstalker guys and ask them what their inspiration was for them?

[contracycle]

Hmm, what about Dream, from Neil Gaiman's Sandman?  Not-wuite-human, dark, elegant... much the same target market as Vamp.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Ralph,

That's a valid piece of data to collect (as from Black Dragon Publishing or from Basement Games), but it's not the horse's mouth one might expect. People are notoriously poor at understanding where and how they get ideas.

More generally, the smoking gun may or may not exist explicitly. Again, a good model is the Evil Paladin - a character type who was "begging to be played," and who occupied quite a lot of pages in places like Dragon and other secondary literature, and who showed up as NPCs, and eventually became an unofficial character class, functionally. Then we look at the Heartbreakers and discover "Black Paladin" or similar in the list of character classes.

Another good example would be the Lycanthrope, often a werebear (yes, I know that would be an Ursanthrope). People were playing D&D werebears when I was 13, and sure enough, a Heartbreaker or two has'em in there, with prose resembling the original monster manual text. Oh! and Minotaurs. They're all over the place in the Heartbreakers.

So my point is that there may not be a specific character or race in the "lake" that Paul mentions, although I would not be surprised to find one. If there were, Lord Soth is much more along the lines I would expect, rather than the Ghola from Dune. But on the other hand, it might just be a matter that some influential group somewhere played "zombie-like" characters and published an article in Dungeon or something. Any thoughts from that angle?

Best,
Ron

P.S. The video game idea is a good one, too. Anyone know about cool pale/wasted/cursed characters from them?

[Matt Gwinn]

I have a few thoughts on this subject.
First, I agree with Moose about Ravenloft pushing people more towards the whole "undead are cool" mode of thinking.  It wasn't long after that I saw someone play a vampire PC.

In a way, Raistlin can be considered the smoking gun, though as mentioned, he's not undead.  On a related note, I once read that in the years following the Dragonlance series, the name Raistlin became more and more popular in books of baby names.  I can't verify that, but it got in my head somehow.

Another Dragonlance character that is suspect is Lord Soth who is a death Knight from the series.  Soth's popularity eventually lead to his own novels.

I think gamers in general have always had a desire to play evil (or semi-evil) characters.   Playing an evil character feeds into a gamer's escapist nature, allowing him to play out aspects of his personality that are otherwise restrained.   I think the current trend is more due to a change in social values than a specific character.   In the past games have simply not offered the option to play such characters because it was considered inappropriate.  I remember the first GENCON I attended.  Games that were run there had a ton of restricutions along this vein: no drugs, no evil characters, no gore...hell, they even restricted the deprotagonization of law enforcement.  I'm not sure if this is still the case, but I find it unlikely.

Lately, being evil is cool.  Is it coincidence that Darth Maul, Boba Fett, and Jango Fett were the coolest characters in the last 3 star wars films?  Villains/criminals are glorified more and more in films: Pulp Fiction, The Way of the Gun, From Dusk Til Dawn, The Sopranos...hell name any mobster movie.  

While I'm looking outside the gaming industry, I should mention Ann Rice's Interview With The Vampire and  Vampire Hunter D as a significant influences to this trend.  The Demon from Legend is another quotable evil character from the 80s that exudes coolness.

,Matt G.

- "Every wolf suffers flees...it is easy enough to scratch"

[Le Joueur]

For those of you who were more attuned to D&D culture than I was in the late 80s, was there such an unofficial race/class as the Kinda Undead Guy, roaming through the games? (Again, think Evil Paladin, or Drow, or Dragon in Human Form, or any of the other non-canonical but "standard in play" types.) Or, alternately, was there a specific race or type of character that showed up in a supplement or canonical setting that would have taken hold?

How about this?

<voice class="announcer">From the distant realm of the astral plane, this former race was enslaved by the Mind Flayers until, upon developing the strengths needed, overthrew their oppressors.  Now they wage war upon the Illithid.

These hardy warrior-types frequently wield special silver swords, are dressed in ornate scale mail and mummy-like wrappings, they can be fighters, magic-users, fighter-magic-users, anti-paladins, and psionicists.  Part undead, these creatures were created in Britain and were featured on the cover of the first hardbound Advanced Dungeons & Dragons supplement following the hiatus after the first three hardbounds.

Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for your 'smoking gun' and mine...

The Githyanki!



</voice>Fang Langford

p. s. I would have thought this was obvious (even though they don't mention being undead in the texts, their queen is a lich and, well, they dress like mummies.  It seems to me a lot of 'Fantasy Heartbreakers' are based more on impression than actual translation and I never shook the idea that Githyanki were 'half undead.'  (And I'm a Yankee, oof.)

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Fang,

You've confirmed a suspicion. The githyanki were actually my first guess, based on the visuals, and the consistent text across the three Heartbreakers that this "race" isn't, you know, really undead. And the Ravenloft + Lord Soth combo also seems strong as a secondary influence.

That's enough material for me. I'm interested in other suggestions or thoughts, but the composite "gun" seems pretty solid.

Best,
Ron

[joshua neff]

Fang, you may be on to something there. I remember seeing the Githyanki in the Fiend Folio when I was in junior high. I've never really been into the evil undead PC, but I thought the Githyanki were cool & wanted to play one.

So, if they're not the actual smoking gun, I suspect they're part of the equation at the very least.

[Ron Edwards]

Hey guys,

I must have miscommunicated somehow. "Evil" is not part of the picture. These are sympathetic characters, usually misunderstood. "Cursed" is part of it, so is "scary." They look undead, but they aren't.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

The problem with pointing to any single character is that they are just that, and not a race. I find that an unlikely influence.

Let's not forget the Githzeri (sp?) from Feind Folio 2. Weren't they like the Githyanki, but without the "bandaged" look? BTW, the githyanki are resusitated (appearance wise) in the computer game Myth as the Myrmidons. IIRC, a cursed race of nigh-undead warriors wrapped in bandages. And you see similar creatures in another later day product, GURPS Fantasy II. Still, the Githyanki were a rare reference before their prominence in Spell-Jammer, IIRC. Which might have been too late to be an influence on some of the games in question.

The drow, come to mind as a pale cursed race (speaking of Drizzt), but they are already repeated in most hearbreakers. Dark elves are a staple, in fact, almost as common as the ubiquitous cat and bird people. So I think they are actually unlikely as well. I don't think this comes directly from a D&D race, at all.

It seems far more likely that these things just accreted out of the Anne Rice sort of influences that someone mentioned. Essentially, they are simply Goth races. Pale, not quite undead, angstie, though not necessarily bad, and often misunderstood. Fits the bill for me.

Mike

[jburneko]

Whoa, I seem to be coming in a bit late in this discussion but Ron asked me a direct question about Ravenloft, so I'll answer.  First off, as much as I like the Ravenloft setting as an *idea* I've never really pursued that idea until recently.  I've always picked up and browsed Ravenloft products and websites but it wasn't until this White Wolf published 3rd Edition version that I have actually purchased and read through it.  However, there are two possible candiates that come to mind.

1) There is a race option whose name I can't remember off the top of my head.  It begins with a C. They use the same racial modifiers as Half-Orcs and they are described as being somewhat Quasimodo-ish.  Cursed at birth, born deformed and are often huge hunchback hulking monsters.  But nothing to suggest and undeadness.

2) There's a lich king in Ravenloft named Azalin.  He is a VERY popular figure from Ravenloft and is central to several published adventures and the metaplot/history of Ravenloft.  Even the support forum on the official 3rd Edition Ravenloft website is called Ask Azalin in which the moderator answers rules/setting questions, 'in character' as Azalin.

Finally, if Fang's description is the original Githyanki prensentation then when the hell did they become extraplaner creatures from the plane of Limbo who are capable of shaping 'chaos' with their minds?  My only experience with the Githyanki is from the CRPG Planescape: Torment and there isn't any mention of lich kings, or mummy like beings in that.

Jesse

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Jesse and everyone,

Since we might be dealing with a composite, a certain amount of looseness has to be accepted.

The Githyanki are not undead. But especially in their pre-Planescape presentation, they looked kinda undead and were illustrated in a more wasted, emaciated, wrapped, lurching-around kind of way. (Now, post-3rd edition, they just look like guys with no noses, but they used to be scarier and freakier looking.)

The Ravenloft material is looking more and more influential, the more I hear about it. No surprise that a more "zombie-like" appearance and style might have come from this direction. And Jesse's description of the "starts with a C" race is nigh-on an exact match for the text in Forge: Out of Chaos.

Best,
Ron

[Paganini]

I must have miscommunicated somehow. "Evil" is not part of the picture. These are sympathetic characters, usually misunderstood. "Cursed" is part of it, so is "scary." They look undead, but they aren't.

"Characters for Goths."

I'm wondering, Ron, are you sure the whole thing isn't just an obligatory nod to the undead trend of the 80s? In a non-RPG sense, the undead were a big pop cultural deal with movies about vampires, Anne Rice, White Wolf, etc.

I'm thinking that the heartbreakers have undead because percieve some kind of undead as being required... but they aren't *really* undead, because real undead PCs doesn't fit with the D&D "genre." IOW, they know that someone is going to want to play an undead, but in a high fantasy game really undead PCs isn't kosher. So they make races that *look* undead, but actually aren't.

[Ron Edwards]

Quick note to JB:

The transparent-skinned, visible-bone characters are a direct steal from Fritz Leiber's "ghouls" from the later-written Fafhrd & Mouser stories. They were included and illustrated in the Deities & Demigods writeup of that setting. I'm not sure whether you're remembering them from there or from Tunnels & Trolls, although the specific reference from the latter isn't springing to my mind.

Best,
Ron