Stereotyped Storm Bulls

From: Simon Hibbs <simonh_at_msi-uk.com>
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 13:41:17 +0100


 Brian Tickler :

>> ......... When you are playing a
>> a member of a group that tries to spend it's time fighting chaos, looking
>> for chaos to fight, getting drunk, looking for a fight, looking for a
>> place to get drunk, trying to pick up women, fighting women's relatives,

>You're relating a completely sterotyped version of what it is that Stormbulls
>do all day...seriously, how many people play Stormbulls like this? They
>must be same people who speak in a gruff voice when they play Trolls and
>do absolutely nothing but talk about eating everything that the GM
>describes to them...playing this way shows a lack of imagination. Depth
>can be applied to pretty much any character, no matter what cult they're in.

The Storm Bull cult is a culturaly acceptable home for pathologicaly violent thugs. Praxian and Sartarite society have a place for such people in the wider scheme of things. It's like saying that 'well saying that all members of the lanbril cult steal things is just completely stereotypical, seriously how many members of this thieves cult steal things?'

As for trolls, hunger is the central motivating drive in troll psychology. This is a simple fact. Playing troll this way is not just stereotypical, it happens to be accurate.

I'm not against depth, but that's not the same thing as variety. There is variety among Storm Bulls and there is variety among trolls, but trolls and storm bulls do not vary within their populations in the same ways.

>You can have incredible depth while playing in a village with a dozen
>huts, or have absolutely no depth playing in Glamour...this depends on
>the GM and players, not on inside-the-game factors (to a significant
>degree).

Of course you can, but that's not the point that's beign made. To recap the quote you're replying to here :

>> When you have hundreds of thousands (or milions) of worshipers in a region
>> you get a rather different dynamic than a small band of young male (or
>> female) warriors. So the motivations of the players are likely to be much
>> more diverse.

Your reply to this above is true, but does not even try to address this point.

>Storytold combat is utterly worthless. I think others have been through
>this before...I don't want to get everybody into that issue again...

And there was I thinking that the Amber games I've played were a lot of fun. It turns out they were worthless. Thank's for setting me streight.

Simon Hibbs


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