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Why does fantasy dominate RPGs?
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<blockquote data-quote="dbm" data-source="post: 7091792" data-attributes="member: 8014"><p>I think the two things are separate and unrelated.</p><p></p><p>If you look at escapist fiction it either looks forward to a better time or back to a halcyonic age. For American TV, as already mentioned, looking back to simpler times gives you westerns, which were very common back in the early days of television (and film, for that matter). Looking forwards to a better time gives you sci-fi of different stripes. Neither gives you euro-centric fantasy. These media are mass market and designed for broad consumption, so they don't stretch the audience too far from their comfort zone. The rest of the English-speaking world inherits a chunk of this TV. The BBC would have historic and period dramas for mass consumption, but fantasy was probably looked down on at the time...</p><p></p><p>RPGs are a niche product from the very beginning, growing out of another niche hobby in terms of wargaming and (to a lesser extent) games like Braustein. The audience is probably exposed to a wider range of material, with the literary 500lb gorilla being Lord of the Rings, plus mass market material like Conan and Moorcock being more readily available. These things require much more imagination to appreciate; I would posit a correlation between enjoying media that needs imagination (books) with a pastime that requires imagination (RPGs), so you can assume a high level of literary exposure for most early adopters of RPGs. </p><p></p><p>There were sci-fi books, too, of course but I think the zeitgeist just tipped into fantasy rather than sci-fi like Lensman or similar. Too many hippies...</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="dbm, post: 7091792, member: 8014"] I think the two things are separate and unrelated. If you look at escapist fiction it either looks forward to a better time or back to a halcyonic age. For American TV, as already mentioned, looking back to simpler times gives you westerns, which were very common back in the early days of television (and film, for that matter). Looking forwards to a better time gives you sci-fi of different stripes. Neither gives you euro-centric fantasy. These media are mass market and designed for broad consumption, so they don't stretch the audience too far from their comfort zone. The rest of the English-speaking world inherits a chunk of this TV. The BBC would have historic and period dramas for mass consumption, but fantasy was probably looked down on at the time... RPGs are a niche product from the very beginning, growing out of another niche hobby in terms of wargaming and (to a lesser extent) games like Braustein. The audience is probably exposed to a wider range of material, with the literary 500lb gorilla being Lord of the Rings, plus mass market material like Conan and Moorcock being more readily available. These things require much more imagination to appreciate; I would posit a correlation between enjoying media that needs imagination (books) with a pastime that requires imagination (RPGs), so you can assume a high level of literary exposure for most early adopters of RPGs. There were sci-fi books, too, of course but I think the zeitgeist just tipped into fantasy rather than sci-fi like Lensman or similar. Too many hippies... [/QUOTE]
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