Why does fantasy dominate RPGs?

TerraDave said:

3. Obviously TV and Film producers are more comfortable with light sci-fi elements. In terms of supply, you are right. I am not always seeing the demand. Again, in the last decade I am having a hard time thinking of that huge sci-fi TV show. Or a new sci-fi movie franchise. Did I miss one?

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Well, it is, as you say, hinging on definitions. Lots of things can cross genre boundaries.

TWD is a zombie show, but instead of relying on magic, it posits contagion as the source of the apocalypse. There is certainly enough handwavium to go around, but for me, that is more sci-fi/horrror than fantasy/horror.

It is too early to tell, but shows like Killjoys, the Expanse and Dark Matter are all showing pretty good legs.

Eureka, Continuum and Defiance had decent multi-year runs*. New BSG ended less than ten years ago...though, IMHO, with more of a whimper than a bang.

The relaunched Star Trek and Transformers seem to do well in the cinema. Ditto Jurassic Park movies. Alien/Prometheus is still going.




* so did Lost Girl.

TerraDave said:

Yes, we agree. D&D has dominated. And while some people here seem offended by this fact, it is bringing in more new players right now then it has in at least 15 years.

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I don't know if there are hard numbers on that - WotC seems to like to be very positive about how D&D is doing, atm. But, anecdotally, our FLGS has had remarkable growth in D&Ders showing up, including new D&Ders, ever since the Encounters organized play program started in 2010. That included a lot of new players, all the way through the playtest years, and now includes a lot of returning players, as well. It's really something, their current location is not small, and is packed every Wed!

But I think you are saying that D&D is the entry game because...

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Because it's the TTRPG with mainstream name recognition. Genuinely-new players tend to come to the hobby through D&D, because they've heard of it, and may not even know there are other TTRPGs. So they try D&D first, and that's their vision of the hobby, if they don't like it, they don't become part of the hobby.

And nothing could displace it, because...

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Nothing is likely to displace it from within the hobby - there are many TTRPGs, none have ever come close to D&D by imitating it nor by being different from nor even better than D&D - because the hobby consists overwhelmingly of those of us who started with D&D and liked it as it was when they started.
Because D&D /is/, to that extent, the hobby. Even when D&D tried to be different/better from itself, it failed, and an exact clone stepped into it's place.

I think it might have maintained that position because it works better as a relatively mainstream RPG

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There's no such thing as a mainstream RPG, even D&D merely enjoys some awareness w/in the mainstream. The mainstream doesn't play TTRPGs, and, if they ever get into the hobby (most likely through D&D), they exit the mainstream and JOIN US!

then the alternatives. If it didn't, over all these decades, something else probably would have come along to take its place.

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There have been innumerable games published that work far better than D&D by any objective measure. D&D's continued dominance has nothing to do with that. (Well, maybe with the sheer number of 'em - if there had been only one much-better game rather than dozens, it'd've had a better shot at challenging D&D from within the hobby.)

But, our little community is made up primarily of people who tried D&D and liked it enough to come back and play it - a lot. It's a relative minority who move deeper into the hobby in search of something more/different/better than what D&D offers, and they find quite the diversity of little niche games catering to very specific more/different/better things...

That's not a recipe for anything challenging D&D, from within. Except, of course, D&D with the serial numbers filed off, and that only if D&D has seriously dropped it's own ball.

Because most scifi settings and concepts are intellectual properties. Most fantasy concepts like elves, demons, wizards, fairies, and gods are public domain and universal archetypes. Most people have preconceived notions of elves and dragons. Things like the Force, Vulcans, green lanterns, Krypton, the eternals, doctor who; they are all intellectual properties.

Tony Vargas said:

I Nothing is likely to displace it from within the hobby - there are many TTRPGs, none have ever come close to D&D by imitating it nor by being different

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White Wolf came pretty close in the early 90s. Nothing last forever.

Because it's the TTRPG with mainstream name recognition.

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More than that, like Kleenex, Asprin and Xerox before it, it is a brand name that is often used synonymously with the entire market.

I guess the budget logic might be right on why Sci-Fi is more prevalent in TV shows and movies, but I suspect a different culprit for why fantasy is such a dominant factor in TTRPG: The ability to participate equally.

I can only speak of my own experience, but when it comes to sci-fi, the science part of the genre can play a pretty big role in the game. And not every player has the same scientific knowledge and background. When I was playing sci-fi for the first time (after playing about a decade or more of fantasy games), I quickly realized how difficult it was to let go of the logic of science, even in such a "magical" setting like Rifts. We were a group of 5 with 3 players who had a STEM background (physics/chemistry, 2x IT) and 2 who didn't (including the GM). And it was so utterly frustrating for both sides to see that three people were happily discussing "quasi-realistic" and "logical" ways to build a ship's computer system or analyzing the properties of a star (including taking "realistic" conclusions from what the GM described in rough outlines), while the other two were totally overwhelmed by all the techno-babble.

Nothing like this ever happened in any fantasy game I played. We were all accepting that magic > physics without a question. We didn't need realism. In fact, we really enjoyed and still enjoy the escapist experience of travelling to a whole different world and being able to live up to our childhood fantasies. If we want to. No, really. Fantasy *was* a big part of my imaginary childhood experience and maybe that's another factor.

By the way, does anyone have statistics on the distribution of SF to F when it comes to literature? Is it even?

Lylandra said:

By the way, does anyone have statistics on the distribution of SF to F when it comes to literature? Is it even?

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A search threw up this: link

Apparently romance fiction is by far the biggest category of books, with SF a distant second and F a close third after that. Genre definitions aren't precise, of coarse, but it gives a view on the topic.

So, bring on Blue Rose!

TwoSix said:

Probably because fantasy is cheap to write but expensive to produce. You can make smart sci-fi even on a relatively tight budget. The defining aspect of fantasy (that isn't modern-day fantasy, which is actually fairly prevalent) is magic and medievalism, and if you don't spend at least a decent budget on those aspects, it comes across as chintzy.

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I think this is an important piece of the puzzle, but not the whole reason.

I think that the cost constraints you mention means that people who wanted fantasy typically had one major outlet....reading. And I think that people who read were more inclined to be open to using their imagination in the way that RPGs require.

And RPGs were typically found in book stores....very often near the fantasy section. So the mutual interest in reading and gaming was then reinforced through marketing and business related reasons. Advertising for D&D was mostly in comic books, a different form of fantasy, but again, there was probably a good deal of overlap in these audiences.

I think there were just a lot of areas of such overlap in the different demo groups....both internal factors and external ones. This made D&D the cultural phenomenon that it was back then, before there were many other games of its kind. As the hobby grew, D&D's presence has always loomed, influencing things in both direct and subtle ways. Now, as far into the hobby's life as we are, we have new generations of game designers....and many of them grew up playing or working on D&D. So that influences things as well.

I don't think there's one easy answer to this. I think it's a lot of interrelated reasons.

Lylandra said:

By the way, does anyone have statistics on the distribution of SF to F when it comes to literature? Is it even?

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We'll get stuck in genera definitions but in general fantasy vastly outstrips Sci-Fi as a portion of the market, especially since the mid-90's. In my opinion, Sci-Fi is an increasingly dead genera with very few authors writing in it. About the only portion of the genera that is healthy is dystopian young adult fiction, but quite arguably the science plays very little role in the stories and the stories tend to be more character driven (love triangles) than idea driven. Mostly, it seems an excuse for creating 'star crossed lovers' given that a modern setting makes such a thing largely implausible.

Probably the last and biggest splash I've seen in actual honest science fiction recently is 'The Martian'.

Where people tend to get confused IMO is when they associate fantasy merely with superficial trappings like 'set in the past' and science fiction with 'set in the future'. Those are very poor guides to what is fantasy or science fiction - even when the story in question, such as 'Star Wars', calls out a big hint like starting its story with, "A long, long time ago..."

'Star Wars' has filled the genera with a lot of Science Fantasy, where the science serves only to give a new perhaps more plausible setting for the magic. Fantasy in turn has expanded very heavily into Modern Fantasy, where the magic occurs in the present day - whether Superhero stories or Urban Fantasy or various forms of Modern Horror from vampires to zombies. Technology exists in these settings, but its secondary to esoteric super-science that is functionally magic like Iron Man's armor or 'The Walking Dead' or things that are outright magic like Thor and mutant superpowers, and most notably it's not science fiction themes that are chiefly being explored. If you are seeing lots of themes that are some variation of 'good vs. evil', chances are you are in a fantasy regardless of the settings superficial trappings.

Of course, there are genera benders. Rod Sterling's 'Twilight Zone' series is a very good example of a show that would go back and forth between science fiction and fantasy themes depending on the week's story, and 'Star Trek' likewise would go back and forth between fantasy and science fiction from episode to episode. 'Battlestar Galactica' in both its original and reboot, start out with some science fiction themed episodes and eventually become more and more full blown science fantasy complete with gods, magic, angels, devils, and an epic struggle between good and evil. Although it hews more to believable science than some others, 'Babylon 5' is much the same sort of story. Much of Robert Silverburg's work is 'soft science fiction' that blurs the line between science fiction and fantasy, and Gene Wolfe blurs the line so much and plays so many mind games with the reader it becomes almost impossible to decide whether it's fantasy or science fiction (I'd lean to calling it fantasy personally, albeit a fantasy heavily informed by science).

Morrus said:

White Wolf came pretty close in the early 90s. Nothing last forever.

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Seemed more like the second half of the 90s, especially when TSR started to go under, but yeah, WWGS was arguably a headspace leader in the industry there, for a while, even if it never 'won' in a $$$ sense, and didn't break into the mainstream. I wonder whether it'll be D&D (and thus fantasy's) dominance that "won't last forever" - or whether TTRPGs that'll fade away, without anything else ever successfully challenging that dominance, though.

Lylandra said:

I suspect a different culprit for why fantasy is such a dominant factor in TTRPG: The ability to participate equally.

I can only speak of my own experience, but when it comes to sci-fi, the science part of the genre can play a pretty big role in the game. And not every player has the same scientific knowledge and background.

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'Hard' sci-fi can certainly get that way, sure. Not so much in, say, Star Wars.

But that brings up another issue: science-fiction is a more diverse genre than fantasy. Most fantasy, falls, in descending order of prevalence, into High Fantasy, Swords & Sorcerery (or, in contrast 'low' fantasy), fairy tales (and the folklore/myth/legends from which they were taken and bowdlerized), and arguably, magical realism. Science fiction, OTOH, has widely divergent sub-genres, Space Opera and Planetary Romance roughly correspond to High and 'low' Fantasy, Hard science-fiction is a major sub-genre contrasting with those two, then there apocalyptic, utopian, dystopian, and cautionary sci-fi. Science fiction can entirely appropriate the trappings of fantasy, too - Darkover and the Dying Earth are two long-standing examples.

What's more, for whatever reason, FRPGs rarely seem to be held to tightly to the conventions of the genre, and typically present a muddled High-Fantasy/S&S impression, with monsters & magic taken from myth/legend, as well. Fantasy doesn't cover as much ground, so an FRPG can prettymuch /be/ an FRPG, and represent the genre.

A science-fiction RPG, OTOH, has to pick a sub-genre, if not licence a specific property.

When I was playing sci-fi for the first time (after playing about a decade or more of fantasy games), I quickly realized how difficult it was to let go of the logic of science, even in such a "magical" setting like Rifts. ...

Nothing like this ever happened in any fantasy game I played. We were all accepting that magic > physics without a question. We didn't need realism.

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I envy you the latter experience.

By the way, does anyone have statistics on the distribution of SF to F when it comes to literature? Is it even?

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Sci-fi is way ahead, though not as much as it used to be in decades past, when fantasy carried an outright stigma. They're usually lumped together, today, and fantasy has been slowly on the rise for a long time.

You could view RPGs as avante-garde, that way, I suppose.