variablejabberwocky:

as much as i hear people giving different versions of d&d a hard time for “making everyone a mage” or other similar “but if everyone has it then no-one is special!” complaints, im surprised i never hear the same of darkvision

like holy shit. only 3 out of the 9 core races DON’T have darkvision.

so torches are a human/halfling/dragonborn invention that basically no one else bothered to mess with. and like, why isn’t that addressed more? why isn’t that worked into more game worlds? because that would definitely change shit up if 2/3rds of the civilizations most people know of don’t bother with illuminating dark places because they don’t need to.

especially with so many settings having so much magic in them. like you…don’t really need light to even read. what’s to stop such magical people from having touch-activated self-illuminating text? and why would people who’ve never needed light to see in the dark bother with writing systems that you need light to see anyway? you honestly expect me to believe that no one figured out some fantasy equivalent of braille? that no one knew how to write until humans or halflings or dragonborn figured it out and passed it on to these races that live so effing much longer than them?

i call bullshit