Why does every fantasy plotline involving "the bad guy, if not stopped, will do bad thing on a global scale in an instant" invariably involve some kind of magical ritual?
Are there really no other ways to affect things on a global scale in an instant?
>fantasy plotline
>why is magic involved
If you had friends to play RPGs with, you'd understand.
Repeat your second question out loud.
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plot convenience, because a ritual entails whatever the author needs for his story.
>Are there really no other ways to affect things on a global scale in an instant?
crash the stock market?
There are multiple stock markets.
OP's question is system agnostic, you moron.
Crashing all of them, at the same time.
Global plot for a Global Enemy.
The problem with the "have you tried not playing D&D" is that people use it more often than not when playing a different system wouldn't solve anything.
Few problems discussed on this board can be solved just by switching systems, largely because at the end of the day, the system is actually only a small component to the game that's being run, and that switching systems just leads to a new veneer on the same old problems.
"Try X system" is not always bad advice, but it's not particularly helpful in a thread about problem players, or about story issues, or even alignment arguments, because even in the last case it's just a name (or a different name) for things you'll find in find in almost every other game. Even games "without" alignments still have degrees of morality to them or factions with codes of conduct, and most alignment arguments typically revolve around these two features of alignment.
Does D&D have flaws? Certainly, but most of these are remedied in far less time than it takes to learn a new system, and the idea that you should abandon a system just because something didn't work out is why we find a lot of people hopping through multiple systems hoping that a change of game will solve their problems.
Most of the whole problem with system discussion is that it's actually political in nature. Play X game or play Y game is a tactic to try to garner support for one game or dissuade people from playing another, and is largely dishonest in its lack of transparency. D&D becomes a target not because it's a bad game by any measure, but because it's popularity means people are less inclined to play other games.
As a person who has played his share of everything under the sun and now plays homebrews almost exclusively, I've really gotten tired of people claiming system superiority or inferiority when they're all just talking about the same inferior games just under different disguises.
If only they knew how amazing Duck in the Circle was.
If said bad guy was able to do his big bad thing without some kind of elaborate magic ritual then he would just fucking do it and that would be that and you would have much less of a story.
The plot of Baldur's Gate involved this to a degree. Greedy assholes where trying to manipulate the price of iron by causing chaos and using fake news to rile up the populous and state in two regions for war. It just so happens that at the same time one assholes adopted son was doing his I'm a demi-god take over the world bullshit at the same time. If only ironthrone man hadn't of been a cuck his plan would have succeeded.
Any way, controlling markets is a great use of sinister plot hooks.
It's pretty much as describes. Rituals can do anything and support as much contrivance as the DM requires.
Also, changing the world in an instant some other way requires the DM to have a really good understanding of how the various things in their world interact, and then also impressing how those things work on their players and then from that creating a sense of urgency that these things are super fragile. Magic ritual circumvents all that.
I don't think Sarevok had any interest in actually taking over the world. His goal was to become a god, it just so happened that the Iron Throne's plan to take Amn and the Gate to the BRINK of war (without actually crossing it) served nicely for that plan.
>Are there really no other ways to affect things on a global scale in an instant?
The discovery of nuclear armaments, I guess? Even then, if magic exists in this fantasy setting, it would be foolish to not look for some way to use it to augment an already-powerful device.
On one hand, it can be lazy, but on the other hand there is a reason why it still works. Because we know, at some level, that it doesn't take that many people to just break EVERYTHING in a catastrophic way, if they can get to a 'place of power.' What is meant by a place of power varies, but in the real world it can be politics, which of course involves a lot words, some of which almost seem magic. Lenin is a great example. He "completed his ritual" so to speak, and it didn't take long for everything to become absolutely horrible.
I'm fairly sure that some fantasy plotlines involve the assassination of prominent individuals instead.
> Are there really no other ways to affect things on a global scale in an instant?
Not in an instant, no. Maybe something like a celestial event, but that's basically magic anyway?
If it is doesn't need to be instant, global events can be done with trade, war, exploration, colonization, and probably a few other tropes I'm missing. You could build a substantial campaign just on averting (or surviving) a major conflict with little to no magic involved. Tons of chances to introduce skirmishes, politics, mercantile manipulation, and so on.
>Are there really no other ways to affect things on a global scale in an instant?
I got you senpai.
>Are there really no other ways to affect things on a global scale in an instant?
Try:
>abducting the beloved daughter of the goddess of the harvest
>killing the Great Khan, forcing the recall of the lesser Khans from their conquests
>proving that the Child-Empress is a bastard, sparking a civil war that will draw in the known world
Thank you for putting it into words. I've never been one for corporate loyalty, and I rarely defend D&D, but the insufferable smugness and regularity of those posters was starting to annoy me.
Not that your tl;dr post will stop them, but it made me feel good, at least.
LotR had it the other way around, Sauron's big goal was to crack Gondor like an egg and simply play clean up with all the lesser kingdoms after that. To some extent he didn't even need the ring and just had to knock the Rohan and Minas Tirith off his checklist.
On the other hand the good guys had to buy time for their "ritual", and melting the ring destroyed the realm of Sauron in an instant.
Well, you could make a planet-sized hammer in a ritual, and then crush the planet with that. Technically, not magic.
>Are there really no other ways to affect things on a global scale in an instant?
Yes, but they're generally not as stoppable as a magic ritual, which makes them less useful for "stop the bad thing" plotlines.
Generally, fantasy stories are ones where the protagonists are involved in major events; stories where they just happen with no chance of stopping do exist, but they tend to go in rather different directions.
Which are all, or almost, interconnected and one completely crashing would cause huge issues if not a crash in others leading to a domino effect. It's why it wasn't just the EU worrying about Greece going under, the whole world was watching and it sent ripples through out the stock markets everywhere.
They're used because they're easy to stop all in one go by a small group of people.
Because John Tolkien wanted to get the war out of his system and Terry Brooks wanted to make a quick buck.
Brooks is still alive, if you feel like egging someone's house.
Mostly because the ritual gives the players a single specific point in the enemy plan that they can, usually with full certainty, screw up to ruin everything. It gives the villain's victory a face and ties all the villain's plans together so the players know what to focus on. I'm sure you could do something else if you thought it through, though.
Because magic based doomsday plans are:
-easy to conceal
-cheap to enact
-don't require logical explanations on how they work
-can't usually be thwarted by removing one tiny piece
-faster to enact
The list goes on.
I have kicked around the idea of a doomsday plot focused on a madman alchemist destroying the world as a side effect of harvesting the planets "life" to use as an ingredient for some miracle potion. The difficulty is trying to make a good plot, that can be explained with some sembelance of logic about how he got as far as he did with no one noticing, and how can I write it without it sounding like some corporate greed killing planet save environment screeching
Evil magic is just easier to work with
I mean, if there was a way of making such impact in an instant, it would be redundant trying to stop a big bad because there would be no buildup and nothing that COULD be stopped
>Duck in a Circle
Does someone have the rules/story?
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>Are there really no other ways to affect things on a global scale in an instant?
No. Without magic (and FTL is magic, basically), the speed of light is a hard limit on how fast anything can affect anything else.
>fantasy plotline
>invariably involve some kind of magical ritual?
Global scale was impossible for us before the atomic age.
I guess you could have some dorfs mining to the center of the world, but for a global effect you need magic.
20 minutes
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Because fantasy plots are normally restricted by the "time period" and/or a lack of imagination where magic just becomes the be all and end all.
At least in modern settings, you can have things involving modern concepts, like virtual currency, WMDs, computer viruses, and false flags without any need for magic to explain it.
That girl has a nice hat.
Char was so close only a literal deus ex machina stopped him
It is easy to see how the Heroes might save the world by disrupting some kind of magic ritual. It is much harder to see how the heroes could disrupt in a timely manner more realistic world altering events, such as collisions with celestial bodies, major wars or globalization.
spbp
>It is much harder to see how the heroes could disrupt in a timely manner more realistic world altering events, such as collisions with celestial bodies, major wars or globalization.
I like to use this to challenge my players.
Setup: The BBEG devised or found a ritual which will seriously fuck up a rather large area if cast at max level - like burning down a whole city, Smaug-style. The ritual takes time to unfold (about a week or so) and has a point of no return a few days after completing it, after which even the caster can't abort it.
Hook: To test it out, the BBEG casts a limited version of it on a small village where the PCs are currently residing, by accident. The PCs can't save the village itself, all they can do is save themselves and maybe some villagers.
The quest: A day or two later, the BBEG delivers an ultimatum to the next big, rich city: Pay me off, or you will be all dead. You have 72 hours. Saw what happened with that village? Yeah. The city council hires whoever they can (like the PCs) to try and stop it.
The trick here is that the BBEG has already cast the ritual and the city is doomed unless he stops it - which he can only do within the next 72 hours. The standard murderhobo approach will destroy the city. Trying to interrupt the ritual will fail because there's nothing to interrupt.