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Why does fantasy dominate RPGs?
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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7092946" data-attributes="member: 996"><p>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.</p><p></p><p> 'Hard' sci-fi can certainly get that way, sure. Not so much in, say, Star Wars.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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. </p><p></p><p>A science-fiction RPG, OTOH, has to pick a sub-genre, if not licence a specific property. </p><p></p><p> I envy you the latter experience. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /></p><p></p><p> 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. </p><p></p><p>You could view RPGs as avante-garde, that way, I suppose. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 7092946, member: 996"] 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. '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. I envy you the latter experience. ;) 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. ;) [/QUOTE]
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