Monster Manual

“what single popular work of imaginative fantasy contained all the following fabulous creatures:”

I tought the good old “four boxes” D&D edition…
:(

http://www.trumpdonald.org

Only 425 Google results for “Trump and Trumper”, probably because he didn’t pick a VP yet.

Imagine that the “grand turk” would show up to support a Pegida demonstration in – say – Dresden, wearing a kind of white burka and all.

“people are crazier than you believe”. Should we call that Haldane’s Law?

“D&D is obviously inspired by Tolkien”

It’s an obvious influence, but there are other major influences that are more than “whatever else they could get their hands on” but aren’t as well known as Tolkien. For instance the D&D magic system is heavily influenced by Jack Vance.

I am with Rich and Charles: Tolkien is an influence, but Howard, Leiber, Vance and the countless fantasy pulps of the time were arguably a significantly larger one. In fact, in many crucial aspects, Tolkien’s world and D&D do not mesh well at all.

@John Holbo (2)

That’s actually a fun idea; re-brand all parties according to where they fit on the alignment system. For the UK I’d have Labour as Chaotic Good, Conservatives as Lawful Evil and the Liberal Democrats as Chaotic Disappointment

Puts the Apparatus of Kwalish in a new light.

“Whereas if you take your influence from Michael Moorcock, you get Warhammer”

I vaguely remember a Michael Moorcock setting RPG, one in which you were supposed to play one of the random soldiers who goes along with Elric and gets slaughtered. It had the worst jacket copy ever. Paraphrased “Will Elric beat the bad guy? Watch in terror and find out!” It could have been good if it had rules like Paranoia> or Call of Cthulhu but I doubt that it did.

That’s actually a fun idea; re-brand all parties according to where they fit on the alignment system.

Sure. And then we could use the appropriate hamburger alignment iconography to represent them on the ballot: http://www.neatorama.com/neatogeek/2016/02/29/Hamburger-Dungeons-Dragons-Alignment-Chart/. The Chaotic Neutral hamburger does have a cocked hat vaguely reminiscent of Trump’s hairpiece.

Rich:

That would be ‘Stormbringer’.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormbringer_%28role-playing_game%29

Gabriel, you’re probably right. Although I’d guess that there has been more than one Elric-based RPG, a little bit of Googling found this box copy:

“But this? What can you do against an Elemental Lord like Grome (pictured at right), who can toss huge ships, even magical ships, about like bath toys? What about Elric, the one who hired you? He’s a brooding sort, and no mean sorcerer either. He’d have your head before you could turn to face him. And his sword, Stormbringer, is supposed to hold the fate of the Young Kingdoms within its eldritch blade. Maybe they can do something about this Grome. . .”

I think this is either what I dimly remembered or something enough like it to make no real difference. What’s great about it — OK, what’s sort of memorable about it — is the element of futility. Maybe the NPC can do something about this Grome! And (given that it happens 100% of the time in the books) maybe you somehow won’t get killed in the process. Not by any of your actions, since there’s basically nothing you can do, but by blind luck maybe you won’t be crushed like a bug but will instead manage to hide and survive until the end when everyone human is destroyed by Chaos anyways.

You probably see why I thought a rule set that goes with and plays up this element might actually be a way to handle the material. But that’s been done.

Ah, “Paranoia”.

(From the wikipedia summary, to give people a hint about how it works:

The player characters frequently receive mission instructions from the Computer that are incomprehensible, self-contradictory, or obviously fatal if adhered to, and side-missions (such as Mandatory Bonus Duties) that conflict with the main mission. They are issued equipment that is uniformly dangerous, faulty or “experimental” (i.e., almost certainly dangerous and faulty). Additionally, each player character is generally an unregistered mutant and a secret society member, and has a hidden agenda separate from the group’s goals, often involving stealing from or killing teammates. Thus, missions often turn into a comedy of errors, as everyone on the team seeks to double-cross everyone else while keeping their own secrets. The game’s manual encourages suspicion between players, offering several tips on how to make the gameplay as paranoid as possible.

GOP Presidential nomination 2016 = Paranoia LARP.

Debates about influences on D&D are solved by reference to Appendix N (?) which lists them all. I don’t know if the Ku Klux Klan was one of them … but Lovecraft was a big fan, wasn’t he?

The list reminds me that The Face in the Frost is just a damn fine book, with a couple of the creepiest scenes I’ve ever read, plus much Bellairs charm.

Several centuries (or so) ago, in a country whose name doesn’t matter, there was a tall, skinny, straggly-bearded old wizard named Prospero, and not the one you are thinking of, either.

Snarki @ 3 AM — I speak without fear of contradiction, Chrisite is clearly an IntSec drone