tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post3811589246553107471..comments2023-10-14T03:58:59.333-06:00Comments on The Tao of D&D: The Forgotten SaturnaliaAlexis Smolenskhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10539170107563075967noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-2557388412197782412013-03-17T14:47:36.464-06:002013-03-17T14:47:36.464-06:00Jermwar, you can take comfort in this:
http://tvt...Jermwar, you can take comfort in this:<br /><br />http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ItsAlwaysSpringAlexis Smolenskhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10539170107563075967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-79620294874905406902013-03-17T13:48:06.035-06:002013-03-17T13:48:06.035-06:00I believe the lack of many holiday themed adventur...I believe the lack of many holiday themed adventures is due to a combination of the players celebrating the holidays for real, with the game most likely on hiatus, and the lack of the DM keeping track of time passing, and adjusting the weather for seasonal changes. Most campaigns seem to take place in an everlasting month of May/June. Coincidentally, perhaps, that is when summer vacation begins. Winter typically happens through travel to polar climes. Holidays are markers of the passage of time, and if time doesn't pass beyond refreshing your Vancian spell recollection, Holidays remain in that realm of campaign background that the players never bother reading. To everyone's loss, I might add.jermwarhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10265053644315317839noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-10835865047118193392011-12-26T01:45:29.215-07:002011-12-26T01:45:29.215-07:00While I strongly agree with the broad strokes of y...While I strongly agree with the broad strokes of your post, I must disagree with the common (one could almost say ubiquitous) assumption that Christmas as a celebration was co-opted from older practices. I have been involved in primary-source research with a very respected historian on the history of Christmas. That his project will shortly be published as a book prevents me from giving specifics, though I can say that, according to the sources, the reasons for the placement of Christmas at this time of the year were considered ~despite~ concurrent celebrations, not as a ploy to usurp them. It was never intended as a means of making Christianity more palatable to non-Christian folks. There is also a tumultuous bit of theological debate at the heart of things, but in the end, the decision to adopt local Feasts of the Nativity into a phenomenon across all of Christendom seems to have been ultimately, and perhaps unsurprisingly, motivated by politics in an era of war. <br /><br />I truly appreciate your work on this blog. It is good to see intellectual treatments on the pastime we love so much. Thank you!Xaos_Bobhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06805075284711476827noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-58571386524247527282011-12-24T22:43:24.252-07:002011-12-24T22:43:24.252-07:00I whole-heartedly agree that holidays make perfect...I whole-heartedly agree that holidays make perfect sense in a D&D game. Especially a sort of "yule" or "Saturnalia" or "Mithra's/Sol Invictus' Birthday" feast of some sort.<br /><br />I get a lot of my inspiration from ancient religions and their holidays, as well as some still-existing ones. Even in a polytheistic D&D setting, I try to come up with short lists of saints for certain gods, a few holy days, etc. Since I'm currently running a Forgotten Realms campaign, some of the work is done for me in the numerous books on each deity. I pull from medieval feastdays as well, changing saints for gods, and doing some other adaptation.<br /><br />One example is, since spring just started in my campaign, the PCs are going to see priests and priestesses of Chauntea blessing fields before, during, and after planting.<br /><br />In game, Christmas would be repackaged as a generic "yule" holiday, probably sacred to Lathander, celebrating the long journey the sun will take as it begins to rise further and further north every morning after the winter solstice.Dave Cesaranohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01454928720043301400noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-88718290171445191802011-12-22T17:33:07.963-07:002011-12-22T17:33:07.963-07:00This is a great idea! In spite of the various narr...This is a great idea! In spite of the various narratives attached to holidays, they do seem to derive more from our relationship to the seasons. <br /><br />In the fantasy fiction I write, I always try to take this "anthropological" approach to culture, and thus the question becomes, "Would there be a "Christmas-like" holiday culture considering its ecological situation? <br /><br />I remember reading--I think it was in the introduction to a copy of the Arabian Nights I have--about the ecological underpinnings to a lot of Arabic mysticism, i.e. a lot of the fantastic elements of that culture's folk stories, so the argument went, are related to the hallucinations caused by heat exhaustion (i.e. genies, mirages, etc.). I'm not completely read to buy this, but the implications are intriguing.<br /><br />The larger point that your post makes, I think, is that cultural "edifices" often derive from more primal, ecological causes. That's something really interesting for anyone who creates "secondary worlds" to keep in mind, whether they be Dungeon Masters or fantasy fiction writers like myself. <br /><br />Let's consider an example: Dark Elves. If there were such a culture, what sort of holidays would they celebrate? Considering there are no seasons in the Underdark (I'm assuming this), then this means there would be no harvest holidays, or winter holidays, or celebrations for spring. Hmm... maybe I have just figured out why, in AD&D at least, they are consistently Chaotic Evil.<br /><br />Anyhow: thanks for the thought provoking post!Jason Carneyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17279418997850991996noreply@blogger.com