Robes, apparently, and wizard school
Sep. 30th, 2021 07:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI have gone quiet again.
I have been fiddling around with Pathfinder rule books for a while
to describe characters that I then decide dont fit
so make up my own ideas instead.
The bending process in between is sometimes productive, but honestly, trying to write a whole page of dialogue tells me more anyways.
My laptop is back from the repair place.
... kind of made me realise how little I use my laptop.
... I dont do much but scroll scroll scroll the internet lately.
Today I was poking around looking for wizard robes, only then I started thinking, exactly what are we spinning off from here, and why?
Like, we could pick religious robes, or academic robes, or 1500s clothes, or 1000s clothes, or current not usually British clothes because actually a lot of places are still wearing your basic tube, or, we could draw a wizard as basically a bloke in a dress.
Funnily enough, v different statements, each and all.
And you can find wizardy stereotypes to go with all of them I think.
Clothing can be such a specific sign system that this morning I was disatisfied with the basic
looks like Gandalf in those particular illustrations
fantasy wizard default.
Like, also? Who else does a wizard look like? Or does everyone work very hard to not look like a wizard?
Is this being very basic about fashion or wearing colors ala superheroes?
Protective coloration or warning signs?
Academic robes are obviously tempting, and they have a lot of color coding going on.
A Lot.
Like I looked up the robes place that did graduation robes for me in 2013 and you can look up So Many Universities and try and buy their robes
and their hoods will be Colors
and sometimes also the robes
and you can in theory read so much from all them Colors.
I kind of want wizards to have complex color coding by speciality school and wizard level, plus some basics to show where they studied. Because then they're very fussy about distinctions outsiders dont necessarily see, and very concerned with qualifications and expertise.
But if you put them in a town with other institutions you have to decide, like, is magic a department, a school, a college, a university? Is a college of wizardry an entirely distinct thing from other education? Is it inherently prestigious or does it actually get looked down on as a bit narrow? Like over here you can study all the arts and sciences, over there you can learn spells.
... is magic a technical college?
... are they plumbers?
... with a bad temper and access to Fireball.
Maybe more like military academy but better armed.
And with their clothes you put them in and out of contexts!
And like, there's a high school in England that is very proud their uniform hasnt changed for about 500 years. They got their pupils to vote on it more than once, and they got 95% of them voting to keep it. And its stockings and breeches under a long coat. Nobody else is still wearing that. And maybe it looks distinguished, sort of, and distinctive, always, but there would have been many years it was simply unfashionable. Yet here it still is.
Another school has red dungarees for all pupils. Since the 1950s. Girls in red dungarees.
Because it is tough and easy to spot if they wander off, apparently.
So do you choose your wizard robes to look Dark and Foreboding, or do you worry that an assemblage of people with more smarts than sense and their noses permanently in books might just possibly be better off highly visible?
And then there's the hero name defense problem. Like, if a hero is called Fire and their power is Fire then you might want to turn up with Protection Against Fire? So if wizards are color coded by speciality they have immediately given you crucial information.
But you get a red robe in a video game and it is probably a Fire Thing.
... even though fire is not often red, honestly, that's just not imaginative, hasnt everyone stared at a bunsen burner by now?
... a college of fire mages with robes color coded by how hot they are...
ANYway, I know I end up thinking about clothes when I'm not thinking about plot etc, BUT, you can say so much with clothes and you do say so much even if you go with unconsidered defaults, I am just wondering now.
Like, also? I have an adventure module set at a wizard academy, and there are buildings for like Illusion and Necromancy and Administration, but, there are no buildings for Fighting or Languages, and definitely no central library, when honestly the good bit of university is the library, come on, what are they thinking?
Yet every first level wizard can also fight in melee with quarterstaff, club, and dagger or at range with a crossbow. You dont get crossbow skills by thinking about it and you dont want students practicing in the corridors... though come to think that would explain the module's three in ten death rate...
But there either need to be buildings for all the basic skills
Or
some mention that qualifying to get in requires knowing these things already.
I know saying how old students start is complicated by elf or gnome etc, but, it could at least say if they're adults according to the age table?
and there are rules for stats for children: use NPC stats and convert them up when they grow. But NPCs are proficient with too many weapons or too few, and dont have matching skills. So its clumsy.
But it could mean that Commoners cant aquire the skills to qualify to study, or that they'd have to go to ordinary university before they'd get in to magic academy, while Aristocrat kids might have been tutored specifically since birth. I know the module for 13th level PCs doesnt need that kind of detail but now I'm thinking about it.
The module does say that the first three years of wizard academy are just doing what olders tell them to do, not useful lessons. Clean, fetch, carry, and do menial tasks. And possibly die. One in five of them dont survive the first three years.
Which seems a very silly way to run a school, and not entirely plausible.
I mean how much menial work does a wizard need? Cast unseen servant like a grown up!
They're 4th years when they get to choose a speciality and study? Does that mean they learn all the cantrips first? No, cantrips still have schools and when you specialise you get opposition schools that are harder. So they're fourth years before they cantrip?
I realise this is a single paragraph in a 32 page adventure module mostly about a single building, but, this does not seem entirely thought through.
If they mean that, because of being shut inside defensive walls, they need people to do all the non wizardry work and new students are it, they should probably have said so.
As it is they basically imply students are left in dorms to their own devices for three years, and the survivors get to study.
Also also, I dont expect rpgs to mention what isnt relevant to the players, but this modlue says
nobody leaves before graduation
they are there for ten years
inside the walls
no exceptions
they would actually have to pay to get out for burial, no matter what state they are in, nobody leaves early
and then it mentions nothing at all about
babies
and educational provision for minors
or if an infant would be considered part of the acadamae
or if they're allowed out without graduating.
it's very clear on the necromancy and says nothing at all about midwifery.
which could be its own level of creepy
but seems like garden variety sexist blinkers really.
So. Anyway.
That's what I've been thinking.
Also, the wizard academy module with the three in ten death rate seems implausible, but then I look at the challenge rating for random encounters around the city, and I am unsure what the ten year survival rate is outside the Academy either.
At least inside they're going to learn a few spells.
... you kind of have to figure that Adventures happen to Adventurers though, otherwise the whole ecosystem just... is way too lethal to work.
... I should probably go and have breakfast now.
I have been fiddling around with Pathfinder rule books for a while
to describe characters that I then decide dont fit
so make up my own ideas instead.
The bending process in between is sometimes productive, but honestly, trying to write a whole page of dialogue tells me more anyways.
My laptop is back from the repair place.
... kind of made me realise how little I use my laptop.
... I dont do much but scroll scroll scroll the internet lately.
Today I was poking around looking for wizard robes, only then I started thinking, exactly what are we spinning off from here, and why?
Like, we could pick religious robes, or academic robes, or 1500s clothes, or 1000s clothes, or current not usually British clothes because actually a lot of places are still wearing your basic tube, or, we could draw a wizard as basically a bloke in a dress.
Funnily enough, v different statements, each and all.
And you can find wizardy stereotypes to go with all of them I think.
Clothing can be such a specific sign system that this morning I was disatisfied with the basic
looks like Gandalf in those particular illustrations
fantasy wizard default.
Like, also? Who else does a wizard look like? Or does everyone work very hard to not look like a wizard?
Is this being very basic about fashion or wearing colors ala superheroes?
Protective coloration or warning signs?
Academic robes are obviously tempting, and they have a lot of color coding going on.
A Lot.
Like I looked up the robes place that did graduation robes for me in 2013 and you can look up So Many Universities and try and buy their robes
and their hoods will be Colors
and sometimes also the robes
and you can in theory read so much from all them Colors.
I kind of want wizards to have complex color coding by speciality school and wizard level, plus some basics to show where they studied. Because then they're very fussy about distinctions outsiders dont necessarily see, and very concerned with qualifications and expertise.
But if you put them in a town with other institutions you have to decide, like, is magic a department, a school, a college, a university? Is a college of wizardry an entirely distinct thing from other education? Is it inherently prestigious or does it actually get looked down on as a bit narrow? Like over here you can study all the arts and sciences, over there you can learn spells.
... is magic a technical college?
... are they plumbers?
... with a bad temper and access to Fireball.
Maybe more like military academy but better armed.
And with their clothes you put them in and out of contexts!
And like, there's a high school in England that is very proud their uniform hasnt changed for about 500 years. They got their pupils to vote on it more than once, and they got 95% of them voting to keep it. And its stockings and breeches under a long coat. Nobody else is still wearing that. And maybe it looks distinguished, sort of, and distinctive, always, but there would have been many years it was simply unfashionable. Yet here it still is.
Another school has red dungarees for all pupils. Since the 1950s. Girls in red dungarees.
Because it is tough and easy to spot if they wander off, apparently.
So do you choose your wizard robes to look Dark and Foreboding, or do you worry that an assemblage of people with more smarts than sense and their noses permanently in books might just possibly be better off highly visible?
And then there's the hero name defense problem. Like, if a hero is called Fire and their power is Fire then you might want to turn up with Protection Against Fire? So if wizards are color coded by speciality they have immediately given you crucial information.
But you get a red robe in a video game and it is probably a Fire Thing.
... even though fire is not often red, honestly, that's just not imaginative, hasnt everyone stared at a bunsen burner by now?
... a college of fire mages with robes color coded by how hot they are...
ANYway, I know I end up thinking about clothes when I'm not thinking about plot etc, BUT, you can say so much with clothes and you do say so much even if you go with unconsidered defaults, I am just wondering now.
Like, also? I have an adventure module set at a wizard academy, and there are buildings for like Illusion and Necromancy and Administration, but, there are no buildings for Fighting or Languages, and definitely no central library, when honestly the good bit of university is the library, come on, what are they thinking?
Yet every first level wizard can also fight in melee with quarterstaff, club, and dagger or at range with a crossbow. You dont get crossbow skills by thinking about it and you dont want students practicing in the corridors... though come to think that would explain the module's three in ten death rate...
But there either need to be buildings for all the basic skills
Or
some mention that qualifying to get in requires knowing these things already.
I know saying how old students start is complicated by elf or gnome etc, but, it could at least say if they're adults according to the age table?
and there are rules for stats for children: use NPC stats and convert them up when they grow. But NPCs are proficient with too many weapons or too few, and dont have matching skills. So its clumsy.
But it could mean that Commoners cant aquire the skills to qualify to study, or that they'd have to go to ordinary university before they'd get in to magic academy, while Aristocrat kids might have been tutored specifically since birth. I know the module for 13th level PCs doesnt need that kind of detail but now I'm thinking about it.
The module does say that the first three years of wizard academy are just doing what olders tell them to do, not useful lessons. Clean, fetch, carry, and do menial tasks. And possibly die. One in five of them dont survive the first three years.
Which seems a very silly way to run a school, and not entirely plausible.
I mean how much menial work does a wizard need? Cast unseen servant like a grown up!
They're 4th years when they get to choose a speciality and study? Does that mean they learn all the cantrips first? No, cantrips still have schools and when you specialise you get opposition schools that are harder. So they're fourth years before they cantrip?
I realise this is a single paragraph in a 32 page adventure module mostly about a single building, but, this does not seem entirely thought through.
If they mean that, because of being shut inside defensive walls, they need people to do all the non wizardry work and new students are it, they should probably have said so.
As it is they basically imply students are left in dorms to their own devices for three years, and the survivors get to study.
Also also, I dont expect rpgs to mention what isnt relevant to the players, but this modlue says
nobody leaves before graduation
they are there for ten years
inside the walls
no exceptions
they would actually have to pay to get out for burial, no matter what state they are in, nobody leaves early
and then it mentions nothing at all about
babies
and educational provision for minors
or if an infant would be considered part of the acadamae
or if they're allowed out without graduating.
it's very clear on the necromancy and says nothing at all about midwifery.
which could be its own level of creepy
but seems like garden variety sexist blinkers really.
So. Anyway.
That's what I've been thinking.
Also, the wizard academy module with the three in ten death rate seems implausible, but then I look at the challenge rating for random encounters around the city, and I am unsure what the ten year survival rate is outside the Academy either.
At least inside they're going to learn a few spells.
... you kind of have to figure that Adventures happen to Adventurers though, otherwise the whole ecosystem just... is way too lethal to work.
... I should probably go and have breakfast now.
no subject
Date: 2021-09-30 06:33 pm (UTC)