The Medieval World, Clerics, & Disabilities

Рет қаралды 864

Ай бұрын

Fantasy worlds have clerics with fantastical powers; however, just because these agents of the divine have the power to cure impairments it doesn't mean their gods will let them. Follow me down a rabbit hole where we examine D(d)inability in the "Medieval World," it's role, and how saints such as Cuthbert, struggled with their own disabilities.
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Пікірлер: 23

@deetlebee Ай бұрын

It is funny to me that people who would argue the loudest that magic healing would wipe out all disabilities are the ones who would probably get upset that their Badass Fighter wouldn’t have that badass scar on his face by his own logic.

@ZarHakkar Ай бұрын

This is another one of those cases where I firmly believe both sides are digging for things to whine about. Speaking from the fantasy (in all senses) aspect of TTRPGs like D&D, anything is possible _provided you're willing to strive hard enough for it._ Magical healing doesn't completely negate the existence of disabilities, but it also wouldn't not be a factor in their prevalence. It should be typically understood that the more powerful a magic is, the rarer and more costly it is. Magic able to stitch wounds and stop bleeding is far lower of a level than magic able to cure blindness, paralysis, or regenerate entire body parts. Therefore, mundane disabilities should be very common among the common folk and low-level adventurers who have neither the magic nor the resources to treat them, while wealthy folk and high-level adventurers suffering from disability would need it to be supernatural in origin, like a curse. As for a badass scar, who says low level healing magic meant to save your life cares about cosmetics? It likely does not, and a scar isn't debilitating. Perhaps a warrior character takes pride in their scars, while another character is ashamed and hides them. I dunno, all these strawmanned arguments being thrown around with D&D and disability are kinda silly when to me there's a perfectly good "have your cake and eat it too" solution provided just from thinking things through a bit

@nicholaswallen8147 Ай бұрын

Cure light wounds says it removes the scar where it healed the damage lol

@peterwindhorst5775 Ай бұрын

Then there is the economic argument. You might have the cleric available, but you might not have the 5 gp diamond available - the only source of diamonds is a single mountain controlled by a dragon...thus, you have a quest for your PC or NPC to defeat the dragon so you can have medical care.

@petersmythe6462 Ай бұрын

Eh.. if it's really 5 GP then just about anyone can afford it. I think the suggested costs for magic material components should probably be either: 1. Ignored entirely. 2. Taken to be representative of when trade flows freely and the economy is doing well.

@peterwindhorst5775 Ай бұрын

@@petersmythe6462 not really - depending on setting 1 GP = a month's salary - therefore, 5 GP would be 5 months salary for the common man. Depending on setting material components are required, so - guess what you are going to either have to deal with the dragon or wheelchair about.

@theshadowling1 Ай бұрын

@@peterwindhorst5775 I don't know, your average peasant would quite happily pay half a year's salary to not have to deal with not having to get a wheeled chair over mud along terrible streets. And they have families, who can earn as well, save up. And lords/employers who can trade off a far more physically capable worker (In most medieval settings, low income employment is manual to some capacity) for a one time expense.

@douglasphillips5870 Ай бұрын

I had a character with a limp who used it to bost about his courage. He said that it was proof that he would never run from battle

@adarkerstormishere Ай бұрын

Disability is sort of a weird concept in DnD though, isn't it? Like, in a world where psychics, deities, ghosts and curses exist, hearing voices in your head is... pretty commonplace? And clerics regrowing amputated limbs is so common (what with the all-surrounding peril) that being born without an arm is merely a temporary inconvenience. Your parents can scrabble together a gold piece and the spell components for the local paladin to go "Alakazoo, alakazan, give this kid another hand!" and what would've been a life-long disability no longer is.

@Rodrigo_Vega Ай бұрын

You are thinking of the high-fantasy life of adventurers and the strange wonderous circumstances that surround them. Most commoners don't fight ghosts and casters on the daily. Regeneration is a 7th level spell. That's a 13th level cleric! It's listed at 490 g.p. For reference; It's the cost of 9 draft horses or 2 _ELEPHANTS_ A commoner's economy is usually measured in just a few copper or silver pieces. The price of a bag of millet or the ocassional new goat. So no, your parents probably _can't_ scrabble together a gold piece(S) and the spell components for the local paladin to do it as part of even a particularly arduous years of savings. It's a type of money they'll probably never see in their life. The is even assuming all disabilities can be "cured" by regrowing a chopped off limb.

@DandDisability 26 күн бұрын

D(d)isability always exists.

@harpernerys7345 Күн бұрын

I shouldn't think it's weird. Fiction, good fiction, is about real-world struggles and experiences. Evangelion is not about the Eva mechs, it's about the desire to connect with people and the feelings that can make that seem impossible. Jurassic Park is not about dinosaurs, it's about allowing secretive private enterprises to conduct genetic experiments. The Divine Comedy isn't about the afterlife, it's about talking shit on your haters. Before they were game mechanics, psychics, deities, ghosts, and curses were representative of real-life experiences. The rules of a fictional universe exist to give fantastical elements the grounding necessary to tell stories, not erase the need to tell them. The existence of gods, goblins, and gastroliths will never remove elements of being, only grant a concrete source of man's problems instead of the implacableness of man's destiny to struggle endlessly. Begin at the story and see how the world bends around the narrative, instead of thinking the world will drown out the creative possibly. A "schizophrenic" D&D character IS hearing a real voice, but my story will be about the real struggles. "Who is this? Can I trust them?" The character will struggle with antisocial behaviors, they will struggle to differentiate what is and isn't real but through a fantastic lens. You don't not have birth defects because of magic, after all what else is a Sorcerer supposed to represent but the strange & burdensome child. Can you regenerate a limb you never had? Maybe magic can't do that. You can tell a story of overcoming and explore the qualities and limitations of magic. Perhaps anything can be corrected with magic. Now you can tell a story about class and explore the corruption of missionaries and their "good works." (F*** Mother Teresa) All the while these are stories, and the stories we tell are just as much about the traditions of storytelling as anything else. Thanks to the fantastic setting with real haunts and malign entities characters are able to face off against the cause of their grief, catharsis is a boss fight. Sometimes it should be like real life, where there isn't a grand cinematic ending; it's going to be...

@carp5444 Ай бұрын

A unique perspective that adds to solid worldbuilding! Thanks for making this

@DandDisability 26 күн бұрын

You're Welcome!

@Rodrigo_Vega Ай бұрын

Although I appreciate the world-builing rationalizations, I also feel that sometimes a rationale is not needed. The conclussion I've reached is that sometimes the most rational feature of a fictional world, would not serve the storytelling or it's consumers. Bare with me. Take Star Trek for example. Star Trek is about a future society in which humanity has solved all of it's internal issues and reached a new era of enlightenment that allows it to chase the furthest stars! What do they find among the stars? ... more humanity. New alien races that basically face the same struggles humanity did in the old days. It does this because those are the struggles and questions the _audience_ struggles with. Star Trek is not about aliens, it's about humans. And meant for a _human_ audience. That's why it has human-like aliens, with human-like issues. Does it make sense that the Vulcans have the same Earth races we do here on Earth? No. That they are humanoid at all? no. Would Star Trek be in any way better if its alien races were "realistic" spec-evo project races with alien starfish bodies and unfanthomable alien minds? No! Even though in-world consistency is a possitive thing, people want to see themselves and their issues in these stories. The story is for them, not for the sake of it's own fictional world. Sometimes that's reason enough and you just need to leave your suspencion of disbelief hanging at the door.

@Paranoia806 Ай бұрын

Genuine criticism; I appreciate research, but most of it is irrelevant to the topic. I feel like my time was wasted. The thesis/title is too narrow in scope. There's no need to focus on clerics. Nor on dnd alone. Only at the end did you show uses for disability in a narrative. You should've split the video into sections; 1 Why so this? 2 historical examples (don't waste too much time here.). 3-Recommended "do's and do not's" of disability in a narrative. 4- disability at play. Giving multiple examples of character achitipes for views to get inspired.

@DandDisability Ай бұрын

I respect your opinion. I changed the title to better reflect the topic. With that said, if you feel like your time is wasted and you didn't learn something, then I can't help you. As for your backseat driving, you are welcome to edit the videos for me. My contact info. is in the description. Not every video is a winner. I produce weekly content while working.

@Paranoia806 Ай бұрын

@@DandDisability With that title correction things feel much better. The next guy to click this will have leant what they sought for. Since I searched for what the previous title was, I learnt nothing. A simple change like that already changes loads. I feel like you took this the wrong way. I am not wanting to backseat drive. Only suggesting ways to refine the readability of the content via constructive criticism. On that note, the problem isn't the editing, just the script. Again, I'm not trying to be a jerk.