This is something I have never understood.

I understand that the dream of all gamers is to be inside a VRMMO-full immersion deep dive system. Something where, you aren't just p0laying a game, but it is you inside a game world where all of your senses are being used. This, I can understand not just playing a game in Skyrim, but being in Skyrim.

However, that being said, we come to what I can't understand. What in the Hell® are gamers thinking when they run to the Necromancer class? We are talking about a full sensory experience, and, what do they do? They want to have dead things walking around. Dead Things. Full sense of smell. Dead Things.

Years ago, when I was younger and running around a farm area, in August, in New Jersey, in heat and humidity, I rode near a slaughter pit. The farmer had a few animals they would raise for family use, and, would slaughter a few of them and dump the unusable parts into the slaughter pit.

I fully understand the concept of, a smell so strong that it hits you like a physical object. I can NOT understand the idea of wanting to have anything around me that smells like that on a 24/7 basis.

So Here's a poll, Necromancer or Smell Bad!

 

Given the choice of..No magic ability at all.. Or putting up with MAYBE a bad smell and get real magical ability? I would pick Necro every time.
Granted..If there was any other choice..Like mage, sorc, druid etc etc i would choose those. And the dead only stink if they rot. Most books/games etc where the necro class/character is talked about the dead bodies are "Fresh" or long past the decay stage. Also the decay is retarded by the magic. So it would not be too much of a stretch to think that there would be no stench.

Suggest you take a trip to a glue factory... (note..Do they even have Glue factorys anymore? You know..places where they take dead animals to..To render them down)

oh f**k......... From wikipedia..Not sure i will ever think of Marshmallows the same way again.
"Modern uses
Today, animal glues are sparsely industrialized, but still used for making and restoring objects, paintings, illuminated parchment manuscripts, and other artifacts.[6] Gelatin, a form of animal glue, is found in many contemporary products, such as gelatin desserts, marshmallows, and pharmaceutical capsules,[15] and is used to reinforce sinew wrappings, wood, leather, bark, and paper."

DAMNIT !! i so DID NOT want to know that......

 

Only animals in my VR world that take dumps are birds, and they are the nuisance animal that get people noncombat newbie quests in a city. Want to earn 5 silver? Are you unafraid of heights? Take this here bucket of water with this rag and go scrub the bird shit off the temple gables hanging by your finger tips. Though nausea is a debuff type and stat food exists... so for the sake of balance you can totally make people vomit at will with the right class and spell focus. But its not a super combat oriented class (enchanter)... so trade offs I guess.

Depending on how invasive the VR set up is, its easy to cause panic attack like symptoms with carbon monoxide + o2 mixture or injected sodium lactate (iirc): so induced emotions on top of everything else you can smell.

Need an arbitrary way to create non-player territories with borders and suggested leveling areas? Give people panic attacks when they go near the dark wood at too low of a level or give them a low key feeling of discomfort in enemy territory that's persistent. Its not the method that I use, but that's to use the same feeling of "hair raising" for a sixth sense ability that humans have that would be made hard to use with general "fear" abilities made arbitrary like a dragon roar. Full immersion VR, I don't think people will have to wait for the dragon's roar to start running if they can't handle that fight.

Alchemy, tanning, and commercial fishing are some extra smelly career opportunities as well. Blacksmith's pumping soot into the air might also run up against some city air pollution laws, and so "smokeless / flameless smithies" help with those meant to be pristine Medieval settings.

You could always arbitrarily flip the game reality on its head and have people associate good smelling things with the undead, so stinky Nobles that smell like gym socks will gag when the flowery smelling necro rolls by with a vanilla smelling cadaver magically turned nice smelling. Players seeking relief from the Pig Pen NPCs could get "hygiene" charisma/esteem/intimacy penalties...


The most powerful wizard-king in the land.

 

They probably use a preserve undead spell. Though it would be good to keep your outer guard stinky to give attackers debuffs. Just don't invite them in for tea.

 

Forget worrying about necros. Most of the books I’ve read are in a Medieval setting. Do you know what they didn’t have during medieval times? Toilet paper. Now, think about that. You know the other thing they didn’t have? Deodorant. Oh, one more just for fun. The last thing they didn’t have was a running water... so, at the very least, bathing was sporadic. Now, imagine living in a city with 5000 or 10000 other people in those conditions. And we won’t even discuss the idea of throwing sewage out the window and direcctly into the streets.

 

Ahhh History.. How soon people forget.. LMAO. People today (at least in developed nations) would flip out if they had to live like those just 100 years ago..Lets alone 150+ years ago.Edit..Or for that matter in some countries in the world today..

Little more history for you
In 1596, a flush toilet was invented and built for Queen Elizabeth I by her Godson, Sir John Harrington. The first patent for the flushing toilet was issued to Alexander Cummings in 1775. Thats right..It took more than 175 years for the first patent to come out. LMAO Then Another 150+ years (1930's) before most major citys had indoor crappers. It still took many many years before rural area's got them. Some area's in the US still don't have indoor plumbing. (Alaska) (certain area's in the deep south and other remote area's)

 

I live in sub-Saharan Africa with many people around that live in mud brick housing or other types of housing with no electric and no water. I find it amazing how if they want to they can preserve their aesthetic appeal by bucket bathing and having pristine hand washed white clothes even during Harmattan (time of year when dust from the Sahara washes over us like a cloud...see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmattan).

That said, anyone doing manual labor like digging ditches can stink like there's no tomorrow.

One other educational note. My son is Korean and is one of the lucky members of the human gene pool that have odorless sweat...me not so much. http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/world/2016/05/182_205177.html

 

I don't have to imagine medieval settings, the informal settlements here are in pretty much the same situation re: sanitation, lack of running water, etc. it's a terrible situation for people to live in, and you can smell them from kilometers away if the wind is blowing.

There are conditions that knock out you sense of smell (lack of nickel in the diet, I think is one of them) so I assume any competent Necromancer would have a low level spell that would do the same thing. Some thoughts: what about the swarms of flies and disease-spreading organisms a zombie army is sure to attract? A living Necromancer as opposed to a lich or something would have to know some spells concerning hygiene and purification or risk dying just from being in such a toxic environment. In a fantasy setting it would be rather amusing if the heros are aided by a ghoul army that just can't resist snacking on the undead, too.

 

I read a book by a woman who researched chimps with Jane Goodall, and apparently chimps smell just about how you'd expect little hairy people who live in a humid jungle to smell - she said one time she spent three days tracking what she thought was a chimp group by their scent, only to find out it was another group of researchers.

But yeah, pigs are the WORST. My uncle raises them, too. It's because their digestive system is much like a person's, what comes out smells pretty much the same.

 

There is always another option though that works for both portal worlds and games. Have the offensive smells toned down, it can work easily. With games you can have the smell range down by how close it is, vomit inducing smells might need to be within 3 feet to really bother you, why, because game logic. As for portal worlds maybe the scent just isn't as strong, which would give the MC unique character problems if his wasn't as scent light.

 

HAHAHAHA !!

Having been raised on a farm I have experienced this myself LOL. Was my mom though..Not a live in uncle.
Its amazing how stinky a person can get after working around a ranch all day.

 

@Matthew James - the yankee corpse company instead of the yankee candle company, eh?

But yeah, I would imagine it wouldn't break immersion if the "bad" smells were toned down even in full immersion games. You'd honestly be pretty surprised at how quickly and completely you can go noseblind to persistent odors, too.

Y'all think farms are bad? I used to live downwind of a slaughterhouse. That sucked pretty hard, for the first couple of days. Then I went noseblind to the smell and it wasn't all that bad. What was worse was when I was living in an apartment right next to a ourina dog food factory. All of the different horrible smells, and none of them ever lasted long enough to get used to.

Also, try living inside of an Abrams tank with three other guys for a month or so. Keep in mind that the three guys inside the turret are stuck in a space roughly the size of an old VW Bug. The gunner sits with his head right by the shins and feet of the tank commander too, so not only do they get living-in-a-car funk, but they also get the worst bit of the foot funk leaking out of the tops of the TCs boots. And they don't get their own hatch, like the TC, loader, or driver.

As the driver, I was pretty damn lucky. I not only got my own coffin sized area to sit in, the drivers seat is basically a reclined lazy boy chair AND I could pop my hatch and sit up if we weren't buttoned up.

The absolute worst thing that contributed to the funk though, was that all of the crew wears nomex jumpsuits that don't breathe worth a damn, and the M1A1 version of the Abrams doesn't have any air conditioning at all. The A2 is climate controlled, but I wasn't lucky enough to be on one of those. It's the equivalent of being in a tiny sauna made of metal with three other dudes while you're all wearing trash bag onesies, as far as a BO producing environment.

 

Ive heard some great quotes talking about people who want to travel back in time to the middle ages think it will be all sunshine and rainbows.
sadly I couldn't find any but in the searching I found some funny quotes
like this freud quote
What progress we are making.
In the Middle Ages they would have burned me.
Now they are content with burning my books.

And a bunch of quotes that show how much people seem to think the world is ending
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/dark_ages.html

 

I actually wrote a post on this phenomenon: The Pre-Singularity Period is Exciting In Its Own Way