Summary: A clan of pelagers lives here in a small lake that ultimately feed the Grey River. Imperial presence has only recently made itself known here, and the pelagers have begun preying on the townspeople who live in the fishing village along the tributary and the river itself as vengeance for their failure to resist the coming of the Imperials.
The Alien Atmosphere
Summary: A clan of mutants who can’t breathe normal air are holed up in an underground compound filled with air breathable to themselves, and very much not to anyone else. They’re reclusive and xenophobic, and will kill anyone who doesn’t have their same mutations.
The Living House
Summary: A large manor lies secluded in the jungle. Only after entering and exploring its depths does it become clear that the entire building is alive and looking to digest everyone inside it.
The Chaos Vampire
Summary: A Chaos sorcerer from the Age of Strife has sealed himself, his three brides, and several mutant minions into an ancient castle. Sustaining themselves on the blood of mortals, without they have entered into torpor. His mutant minions, able to live on through nothing but the pure energies of the Warp, have waited in seclusion for civilization to return, waiting for someone to happen across their fortress and become food for the master.
Ruling Towns in Vestitas
Every town in the Vestitas hexcrawl is, in theory, a place you can take over and either own directly or give to a friendly and grateful ally. Several towns are ruled over by secretly (or, as you get further outside the Imperium’s sphere of influence, openly) heretical rulers, so an Inquisition party may find themselves toppling them and selecting replacements as part of their job. A Chaos Cult party might find themselves toppling governments and taking over to drive the Imperium out, to consolidate control over disparate Chaos cults, or just for the lulz.
The Lord Mayor’s Son
Summary: The Lord Mayor of a town on the Grey River has become obsessed with reanimating his son, a captain in the PDF expected to go into politics once he was out of the prime of his youth. He was killed when he personally led a platoon of his men to crack down on a riot in the slums, and it turned out to be an ambush. His order to the rest of his company for backup was overridden by the PDF colonel stationed there, who feared that the rest of the company would be lost along with the captain and his platoon. Now the Lord Mayor desires only two things: To have his son returned to him, and revenge on the colonel, and he’s willing to turn to Chaos to get it. His son’s body has rotted away to a few bone fragments and dust, but the mayor has preserved his son’s brain and heart and believes he can use them to reanimate his son into a body assembled from corpses pulled from the cemeteries of the town he rules.
Dungeons and Dragons and Philosophy: “Others Play at Dice…”
The title quote (“others play at dice”) comes from Aristotle, and the essay is dedicated entirely to explaining Aristotle’s categorization of friendship through the lens of D&D groups and fantasy stories. So, essay author Jeffery L Nicholas intersperses the essay with examples from fantasy stories like Lord of the Rings and also from his own gaming group. Hearing about other people’s gaming stories is eye-glazing by default and Jeffery doesn’t have the talent to climb that hill, but he doesn’t lean on it too strong so it doesn’t hurt the essay that much.
Continue reading “Dungeons and Dragons and Philosophy: “Others Play at Dice…””
Dungeons and Dragons and Philosophy: Berserker in a Skirt
Today we’re talking about sex and gender in Dungeons and Dragons, so this oughta be a hoot. I’ll go ahead and get things started with this quote, not directly from the essay, but instead from Shelly Mazzanoble and which appears in the essay:
One of the coolest things about D&D is gender equality. As in real life, whichever gender you choose to play is a matter of personal preference but unlike the real world, female and male characters are equals.
So trans people willingly choose to experience discrimination and dysmorphia for, I guess, the street cred? We’re not off to a good start, here.
Continue reading “Dungeons and Dragons and Philosophy: Berserker in a Skirt”
Dungeons and Dragons and Philosophy: “Kill her, kill her! Oh God, I’m sorry!”
D&D didn’t used to be on podcasts, but now it is. If this is a YouTube video this is where I’d do the fake roll credits gag. That’s only slightly oversimplified. This essay spends almost its entirety talking about how D&D was the basis for some reality TV shows, kind of, and there was a cartoon, then later on popular video games like World of Warcraft gave mainstream gamers a few points of reference that made learning D&D easier, and then D&D podcasting took off and became a big deal. It’s worth noting that this history of D&D in other media doesn’t seem to be aware that the Gold Box and Infinity Engine games were a thing. This kind of “history of a hobby” thing can be interesting (although I didn’t find the text here particularly engaging), but it’s not philosophy. There’s no philosophical argument being made here, no real idea being played with. It’s just a brief history of D&D as portrayed in other media, and how that affected how easy it was for people who didn’t yet play D&D to get started. That’s not philosophy. That’s history. They’re different.
Having one of those trendy double last names, essay author Esther MacCallum-Stewart is pretty easy to track down…I assume. I’ve found staff pages for her at Staffordshire University and the University of West England, but not for the Digital Cultures Research Centre or the University of Surrey, the two places where the contributors page says she actually works. Maybe the last three years she’s taken a swerve a bit?
As abbreviated as this post is (it’s not even long enough to justify a page break), that’s kind of it? There’s no philosophy to discuss, it’s just an uninspired history of D&D in popular media.
Dungeons and Dragons and Philosophy: By Friendship or Force
This essay is by Samantha Noll, a doctoral candidate over at Michigan State University, where she is getting a PhD in animal ethics. This essay is about the ethics of summoning furry friends to do your bidding. In it, she examines a couple of different situations in which D&D makes use of animals as a game mechanic and whether or not such uses are ethical (from the perspective of in-game casters, she thankfully does not start a tedious conversation about whether or not D&D’s authors are evil for including the options in the game). In order to determine if they are ethical or not, she uses moral yardsticks provided by various other animal ethicists. Of course, none of these animal philosophers agree with each other on what constitutes an unethical action with regards to animals at all, so the ultimate conclusion is that every spell and class feature examined either is or is not ethical depending on who you ask, because that is how philosophy do.
Continue reading “Dungeons and Dragons and Philosophy: By Friendship or Force”
Chamomile Has A Blog 