D&D Philosophy One-Liners:archive

Basically I saw this in the Order of the Stick Forum, and its just so brilliant that i wanted to have a place to keep these. I didn't make any of these, just to note.

Nietzsche: "Alignments are for slaves."

Socrates: "Use True Seeing to bypass the illusions of the world."

Hegel: "The Spirit of the World is my shapeshifting animal companion."

Heraklitus*: "Everything is a Fire elemental in a different form."

Parmenides: "Only with Divine Favor will you walk the Way of Truth."
Descartes: "I am the DM."

Nietzsche (as Nihilist): "Rocks fall, everybody dies."

Donatien François, Marquis de Sade: "I head to the nearest brothel!"

Descartes: I have an intelligence score higher than 3, ergo sum.
Descartes: De ominieighteen dubitandum (All-eighteen stats are to be doubted, so roll on the table!)

Hamlet: To play a monk or not to play a monk, that is the question.

Marx: Commoners of the world, unite; you have nothing to lose but your WBL.

Adam Smith: *weeps in corner crying*

Emerson: Every campaign becomes boring in the end. Play a druid instead of any other class.

Sartre: existence precedes essentia.
Socrates/DM: "So you're all in the cave..."
Bruce Lee: "Boards don't hit back unless someone cast animate objects on them."
"One death is a tragedy; one million deaths is a lot of XP."-Stalin
"2+INT skill points ought to be enough for anyone."
ear: How sharper than a serpent's tooth is the same serpent's tooth with frikin GREATER MAGIC FANG +5 CASTED ON IT AGH AGH AGH OWCH -dies-

PETA: Watch out, commoners. Cats will kill you, because they can.

Arthur C. Clarke: Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.

Descartes: I've rolled, therefore I am.

Mao: Power grows out of the pages of a spellbook.

Sun Tze: Know thyself and scry thy enemy.

Oscar Wilde: "I can resist anything except temptations with a will save over 31."

Augustine: Oh Lord, make me Lawful Good...only not just yet.

"Losing a limb is a tragedy. Falling into a pit of Gelatinous slimes is hilarious."

"It is said that if you have both the Monster Manual and the Player's Handbook, you will not be imperiled in a hundred encounters; if you do not have the Monster Manual but have the Player's Handbook, you will win one and lose one; if you do not have the Monster Manual nor the Player's Handbook, you will be imperiled in every single encounter."
-Sun Tzu

"All warfare is based on Bluff checks."
-Sun Tzu

"Be a rogue. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate."
-Sun Tzu

Aristoteles: "A party is more then the sum of its members"

Mark Twain: Dance like you have Greater Invisibility. Sing like you're Silenced. Love like you've never taken hit point damage and live like you've been Plane Shifted to Celestia.

Machiavelli "It is a sound maxim that when an act is evil, the result may excuse it, and when the result is good, always excuses it"


Nietzsche: The DM IS DEAD!
Hobbes: Life is nasty, brutish and pwned.

Locke: "This will make the BSF and the GC win the combat with little damage to themselves - and they will feel like "they" won. That's the point - you're God after all, let the mortals have their victory." -Treantmonk

Kierkegaard - If you label me you apply negative levels to me.

"When torrential water tosses boulders, it is because the DM wants it to. When the strike of a hawk breaks the body of its prey, it is because of a critical hit."
-Sun Tzu, Complete Warrior

"To play, or not to play, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The +1 slings and flaming arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of kobolds,
And by opposing end them?"
-Hamlet (William Shakespeare, the Epic Bard)

"All the world's a game,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their character sheets and their Player's Handbooks;
And one man in his time plays many characters,
His acts being seven classes. At first the monk,
Mewling and puking in the DM's arms;
And then the whining fighter, with his backpack
And shining plate armor, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to battle. And then the bard,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a barbarian,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the dragon's mouth. And then the cleric,
In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth class shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd wizard,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav'd, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful campaign,
Is second noobishness and mere oblivion;
Sans Constitution, sans Wisdom, sans Intelligence, sans everything."
-Jaques (William Shakespeare)

"There's one rule for the DM and that is: make the most exciting scenarios possible at the lowest railroading possible, paying the highest loot possible." - Henry Ford

I am the DM. I think (I am right), therefore I am (right).

"Build a man a fire, he's warm for a day. Cast continual flame for a man, he's warm for the rest of his life."

"Know your enemy but don't let them know you."
Sun Tzu, devoted Lich Cleric of Vecna.

Camus: D&D is inherently absurd


"Many who live deserve death, and many who die deserve life. Can you give it to them?"
Cleric: "...Yeah, pretty much."
Nietzsche: "Chapter Three: Why my stats are so high"

It is better to cast Cause Fear than Charm Person, if you cannot cast both.
- Niccolo Machiavelli

God does not play D&D. - Albert Einstein

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst. - Aristotle, starting history's first alignment debate

For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.
- Sun Tzu, explaining the concept of the Batman wizard.



The skilful employer of men will employ the wise man, the brave man, the covetous man, and the stupid man. - Sun Tzu

Modern translation: LFG need healer, tank and rogue. Noobs welcome. Gogogo!

"gaze not into the abyss, for It gazes also into you. That, and theres's at least 666 layers of the thing."
-Nietzsche

Berkeley: Only one being rolls perception checks, and he is called DM. / Either you roll a perception check, or you are perceived by one.

J.S. Mill: Your actions determine your alignment, not your intentions.

Hume: Just because your sword struck me, doesn't mean that your sword is the cause of the damage I took.

Locke: That purple Deva possesses no inherent purple-ness.

Hursthouse: You're lawful good not because you act that way, but because those are your character traits.

Karl Marx: The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
(not altered)

Richard Bach: Perspective- Use it or lose it. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a prestige class.
FDR: The only thing we have to fear, is cause fear....and the DM

Socrates: I only know that I have no ranks in Knowledge

Theodore Roosevelt: Speak softly and carry a staff of the magi.

"When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the others and assume the powers of Earth... Wait, with some editing, this could work for the Congress too!"

Thomas Jefferson, preparing an adventure for his weekend D&D session.

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Craft a create food and water trap, and you feed him for life"

Or..

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will fail survival checks constantly, because he didn't level up and invest ranks in the skill yet."

The prophet of Delphi: Why Socrates, you rolled the highest wisdom score.

Neitzsche: Stare into the abyss and a Baalor stares back at you.

Will Rogers: When Wizards makes a joke, it's a rule. And when they make a rule, it's a joke!

William of Ockham: In general, entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity. But if you have power attack, go nuts.

If a paladin falls in the outlands, and no one's around to see it, does he need an atonement?
(yes)
"You can choose any path, as long as it's the only one I prepared."
Henry Ford as the DM

"I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice."
Albert Einstein
"Stop telling DM what to do with his dice."
Niels Bohr

Some unchanged quotes:
"Friends share all things."
Pythagoras (probably while disputing loot division)

"Number is the ruler of forms and ideas, and the cause of gods and daemons."
Pythagoras spoke as a true powergamer.

Light a man a fire, keep him warm for a day. Cast Empowered Maximized Twinned Energy Admixtured Sanctum Orb of Fire on him, and keep him warm for the rest of his (short) life.

If an NPC is in the forest, and no one is aware of it's existence, it doesn't exist. Until they find him dead. Then he was created dead.

If an NPC is in the city, and the party doesn't plan to fight it, does it have stats? No.

As flies to wanton boys are NPCs to DMs. They kill us for their sport.

"Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the DM amongst his books for to you your characters and their equipment are mighty and enduring, but to him they are but toys of the moment to be overturned by the flicking of a finger."
Locke: We all start with a blank character sheet.

Kant: I ought never to make a house rule except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become RAW.

The bigger they are, the larger their grapple bonus is.
Confucius: "Do not be ashamed of fumbles and thus make them crimes"

Gandhi: "Hate the sin, love the succubus"

Kurt Vonnegut: "Those who believe in telekinesis, raise my hand."

Julius Ceasar: "I came. I saw. I critically hit."

Charles Darwin: "Owlbears? Well, err..."
Subtle is the DM, but malicious he is not...
...I have second thoughts. Maybe he is malicious...
...I, at any rate, am convinced that he does not throw dice. -Albert Einstein

To punish me for my contempt of authority, Fate has made me an authority myself. (After becoming the DM)

As a child, I received instruction both in the Players handbook and in the DMG. I am a player, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the DM.

Oscar Wilde: "Nothing worth learning can be taught. Only learned through the indiscriminate slaughter of unrelated monsters."

Plato: "He who neglects his education wastes his first level on a low-education class, and his build walks lame for the rest of his progression."

Mark Twain: "I see no problem between us that cannot be solved by your departure. *PLANE SHIFT!*"

Nietzsche: "A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum proves that it takes more than faith to take Cleric levels."

Nicola Abbagnano: "Reason itself is fallible, for logic must account for all the crazy **** wizards keep doing."

Anaxagoras: "The descent to Hades is the same with every Plane Shift."

Anaxagoras: "Everything has a natural explanation. The moon is not a god but ammo for cheesy Hulking Hurler builds, and the sun ammo for Half-Red Dragon Hulking Hurlers."

Anaxagoras: "Men would live exceedingly quiet if these five words, talking is a free action, were taken away."

Anaxafriggin'goras: "Appearances are a glimpse of the illusory."

Neil Gaiman: "Sod this. Fireball."

Marcus Aurelius:

- Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else. Besides, you might get better stats on the reroll.

- A great pile of GP is a great disadvantage to those who do not know how to use it, for nothing is more common than to see PCs blow half their loot on a single easily-sundered, easily-stolen item; riches do them no service in order to virtue and happiness; therefore 'tis precept and principle, not WBL, that makes a character good for something.

Schrodinger: "Quick! My familiar MAY need healing!"

Schrodinger: "I'm gonna roll up a wizard."

Foucault: "The soul is the prison of a black sapphire of at least 1,000 gp value for every Hit Die"

Marx: "The DMs have only interpreted the pre-built settings, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it."
The die is cast."
-Julius Caesar


Also, completely unaltered (except for the translation):

"I do not care to play the part of Monk; I will not play it myself, and I do not choose that others shall do so. "
-Napoleon Bonaparte


A campaign is the sidequests that come up while you're busy trying to achieve the main plot.
John Lennon

Lawful Good- If liberty means anything at all, it meas the right to say what others don't want to hear
Lawful Neutral
People sleep peaceable in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf
Lawful Evil
Big Brother is watching you
Neutral Evil
Powers is not a means, it as an end. one does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution, one makes a revolution in order to establish the dictatorship
Neutral-
On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time
Neutral Good
All the war propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariable from people who are not fighting

Chaotic Good
In a time of universal deceit-telling the truth is a revolutionary act
Chaotic Neutral
Enlightened people seldom or never possess a sense of responsiblity
Chaotic Evil
If you want a vision of the future...
imagine a boot stamping on a human face
Forever

Kirkegard: "I reached 20th level, what do I do now?"

Obi-Wan: "Use the d20."

Genesis 1: "I cast Genesis"

Otto von Bismarck: "If there is ever another war in Khorvaire, it will come out of some damned silly thing in the Lhazaar Principalities"

"I have an Intelligence score, therefore I am."
Rawls: Always write your character sheet as if you had to give it to someone else to play, and you had to accept and use the character sheet written by a different anonymous player.

Foucault: The only dungeons are the ones constructed in your mind by society. But first, let me explain the last 100 years of back story...

Derrida: What does an attack of opportunity really mean anyway? What does it mean to attack? Is it really an opportunity? And who wrote these rules anyway?

"The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of six is a TPK."
- Joseph Stalin

"A Set of House Rules is what the people are entitled to against every game system, and what no just game system should refuse, or rest on inference."
- Thomas Jefferson
I'd give my right arm to dual wield.
-Yogi Berra

Locke: DnD is a social contract between the players and the DM.
Machiavelli: It is better to rule through fear than through love...... at least until some adventurers come along.
Hobbes: Life is like a Dwarf. Nasty, Brutish and Short.

Or should that last one be Kobold?

And I know everyone has done this one, but I want to as well.
Einstien: GodThe DM does not play dice with the universe. He lets his PCs do all the rolling.

modified:

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they roll; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they role.
Buddha

The mind is everything. What you make them think they become.
Buddha

unmodified:

However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act on upon them?
Buddha

If war isn't your last resort, you didn't resort to enough of it.

Lao Tzu: "From Gygax came the original box set D&D; from the box set came AD&D Player's Handbook and DMG; from the Player's Handbook and DMG, came the 10,000 splatbooks and accessories."

We see, therefore, that combat is not merely a complex BAB check, but also a real complex skill check, a continuation of a Diplomacy check, a carrying out of the same by other means.

- Carl von Clausewitz

"Players should not be afraid of their DMs. DMs should be afraid of their players."

"The players are condemned to be free."
- Satre, on sandbox games

"When system elitism returns it will be in the guise of opposition to system elitism."

"Strange game. It seems the only winning move is not to play." (Could be said of D&D itself, and most certainly the Blood War.)

"How smart is Vecna, really? Smart enough not to let you know how smart he is."

"What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?"

"I'm gonna pray. Know any good religions?"

The die is cast. Fortunately, the DM didn't see it.
-Julius Caesar

An adventuring party is no more a team than a heap of building materials is a house.
-Sun Tzu

A collision at sea can ruin one's entire day, so fly.
-Thucydides

To lead 1st level PCs to war is to throw them away.
-Sun Tzu

Tier Sixes of the world, unite!
-Marx

on Barbarians:

Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.
Einstein

Get mad, then get over it.
Colin Powell

The world needs anger. The world often continues to allow evil because it isn't angry enough.
Bede Jarrett

on Paladins:

A man of courage is also full of faith.
Marcus Tullius Cicero

on Wizards:

Intelligence is not a science.
Frank Carlucci

We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
Albert Einstein

What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.
Henry David Thoreau


on Experience:

Experience is the teacher of all things.
Julius Caesar

Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.
Oscar Wilde

I think we are a product of all our experiences.
Sanford I. Weill

War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man.
Napoleon Hill

on dungeons:

Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

on teamwork:

When a friend is in trouble, don't annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it.
Edward W. Howe

on summons:

The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Hobbes: "Life is nasty, brutish, and short."

Elan: "Life is Belkar?"

"A consistency proof for RAW … can be carried out only by RAI." - Kurt Gödel

- "A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short. " - Bertrand Russell (unmodified)

- "Anything you're good at contributes to happiness." - Russell (As a Batman Wizard, trying to cheer up the Glass Cannon and the Big Stupid Fighter)

- "There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge. " - Russell, this time after taking Knowledge Devotion! :)

Hunter S Thompson: If you're going to be Chaotic Evil, you have to get paid for it or else you're going to be locked up.
Oscar Wilde: "The only thing worse than being talked about is having your abilities talked about by a rules lawyer while combat grinds to a halt."

C.S. Lewis: "I believe in Zeus as I believe that the foes are smited: not only because I see the lightning bolt, but because by it I see everything else."

Blaise Pascal: In the decision to believe or not believe in Zeus, it's the better wager to believe -- because, well, his avatar will come stick a lightning bolt up your nose if you don't.

DM Samuel Taylor Coleridge, setting the scene: "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran through caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea."

DM Lewis Carroll, setting the scene: "'Twas brilling, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe ..

Nietzsche: "You must be of the Chaotic subtype to give birth to a dancing star"
H.P Lovecraft - That is not dead which has a 9th level Cleric and a diamond handy. And with Craft Wondrous Item and a Phylactery even death may die

Liebniz: "The DM is an optimizer, and this is the best of all possible campaign settings."

Another Liebniz: "Newton stole my commoner railgun idea!"

Oh, right, this one goes with the first one:

Voltaire: *recounts Lanky Bugger's crazy DM story, but adds in a fellow player who keeps praising the DM's style, throughout all the incidents past the session*
Leibniz: Every character is as a world apart, independent of everything else except the DM.

Leinbniz: I do not believe that a world without evil, preferable in order to ours, is possible; otherwise there would be no XP

Caesar: Alea iacta est - unless you have a Luck reroll.

Caesar: Veni, vidi, vesperugoviri

The Devils Dictionari: Lawful good(n): A willingness to find excuses to beat people up.

Hobbes: Homo homini Tarrasquus

William James: The art of being wise is the art of knowing which spells to overlook.

Think of how underpowered the average class is, and realize half of them are more underpowered than that.

"La campagne, c'est moi."
- Louis XIV

"As a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich spiele RPGs."
- John F. Kennedy

"A player should be upright, not kept upright. "
- Marcus Aurelius

"If it won't give you XP, don't start an encounter"

"There are appropriate times for burning things with fire"
-Sun Tzu (adapted)

"Those who do not learn from previous encounters are doomed to repeat them."- George Santayana.
"Optimize, after you have first learned to submit to rule."
- Solon

"Then our battle shall be in deeper darkness!"
- Leonidas I

"Character creation is the most important part of the work."
"Party members have all things in common."
- Plato

"When you close your doors, and make darkness within, remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone; nay, the DM is within, and your genius is within. And what need have they of light to see what you are doing?"
- Epictetus

Spinoza: Fear cannot be without saving throw nor saving throw can be done without fear.

-If all movement must take place in five-foot intervals, then how can any movement ever be completed, because to move five feet you must move two and a half?

-Pun-Pun has an infinite number of abilities on his character sheet. If you erase the first and write in a new one, then erase the second and write in the first, and so on, you will never finish; therefore, you can not grant abilities to Pun-Pun.

-If a rogue uses UMD to perfectly simulate being a Batman wizard, clearly that does not make the Rogue a Batman Wizard, but instead just emulating Batman wizardry without understanding.

"Level 20 is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at."
- Bruce Lee

"Those who do not learn from previous TPK's are doomed to repeat them."- George Santayana.

Alistair Crowley: If you're a wizard, do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

Nietzsche's works:
Dwarfen, all to Dwarfen
Gay Elven Science
Thus spoke Gary Gygax
Beyond Alignments
Ecce Commoner
The Will to Power and Psions

Einstein: I believe two things to be infinite: the player's ingenuity, and the DM's malignity. But I'm not sure on the last one.

Adorno: What use is a high level if apart from that you're a fighter

Ambrose Pierce: RULEBOOK, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a game and making it hard and inelastic.

Richard Feynman: Character optimization is like sex; sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it.

Julien Green: Wizards fly and fighters go on foot. Therein lies all the drama of a melee-er.

Abraham Lincoln: if you want to test a man's character, give him a candle of invocation.

Ronald Reagan: How do you tell a fighter? Well, it’s someone who plays Dungeons & Dragons. And how do you tell a wizard? It’s someone who understands Dungeons and Dragons.

Ronald Reagan: Mr. Gorbatschwow, open this gate.

and washed their sheets clean with their tears,
did he smile, his work to see?
Did he who statted lambs stat thee?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright,
in the forests of the night,
what dungeon master's hand or eye
dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

*****

A dead body, revenges not injuries.
The rogue condemns the trap, not himself.
As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the paladin lays his curse on the fairest joys.
The sorceror wish'd every thing was magical, the fighter, that every thing was not.

--William Blake, writing on the back of his deceased character's sheet as the TPK unfurled

"Victorious warriors choose their feats first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to choose their feats."
- Sun Tsu

"In a final encounter there is no substitute for victory."
- Douglas MacArthur

Kilgore: "I love the smell of guano bat in the morning. Smells like victory."

Willard: "Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute Tucker's kobolds squats in the bush, they gets stronger"

My best friend is the man who in wishing me well casts wishes for my sake. -Aristotle

"Against stupidity the very DMs
Themselves contend in vain."
- Friedrich Schiller

"All the lawful good are friends of one another."
- Zeno

"Balancing is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy. You at WotC will see that some day."
- Benito Mussolini

Richard Dawkins: In order to Craft: Apple Pie, one must first create D&D.
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