WotC Why WotC SHOULD Make A New Setting

[Remathilis]

It has fast food joints, why would the specific brand matter? There are lots of of places in the real world that also don’t have McDonalds!
It has banks and credit, it has mass entertainment.

It has self-propelled air and ground transportation.

It has those.

If you understand how the magic works, it is technology.

There you go arguing semantics rather than addressing the point.

Star Wars had fast food. It has credit and banks. It has self propelled air and ground transportation. It has vending machines. And it has magic (The Force). It even has a planet-wide city.

Ergo, Star Wars is Urban Fantasy.

...

The presence or absence of an analog to the modern world doesn't count it HAS to be the same as the modern world's version. The point is that the world outside the your door is magical, and it's the blending of familiar with fantasy that makes the genre work. It has to, on first glance, look like our world. Ravnica doesn't. Eberron doesn't.

 

[Parmandur]

Though I might give a pass to Guardians. That feels like the comic book elements are incidental and has more DNA with Star Wars than the Avengers

If you r ad Jim Starlin'e Marvel comics from the 70s-90s, the comic book DNA is actually extremely strong. Heck, Star Wars is rooted in 70s "Cosmic" Marvel books as much as Flash Gordon etc. That is why Lucas begged Marvel to make a comic series.

 

[Parmandur]

No. Ravnica doesn't have McDonald's and television and credit cards. Sharn doesn't have combustion engines and vending machines. They have magic replacing technology, while urban fantasy has both simultaneously.

Is Pwrdido Street Station Urban Fantasy...?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Ergo, Star Wars is Urban Fantasy.

You could certainly relocate a Dresden Files story to Coruscant and not notice the join.

the blending of familiar with fantasy

Chicago is not familiar to me. Just because the location is based on a real world location does not make it not alien to people from different places and cultures.

 

[Parmandur]

There you go arguing semantics rather than addressing the point.

Genre is pretty much just semantics. And based on the definition of Urban Fantasy in the Wiki page, I don't see any basis not to count Ravnica as an Urban Fantasy.

What genre is Ravnica?

 

[Remathilis]

You could certainly relocate a Dresden Files story to Coruscant and not notice the join.

I mean, you would when Harry whips out a lightsaber and attacks some stormtroopers...

Chicago is not familiar to me. Just because the location is based on a real world location does not make it not alien to people from different places and cultures.

Chicago itself might not be, but the hallmarks of a major 20th century city are. Most "classical" fantasy is set in some version of the past, urban fantasy is set in the present. You know what a car is, what a skyscraper is, what a television is. They aren't using magical equivalents, they are using actual stuff you could go see and use. That's the charm. It's fantasy that trades the medieval aesthetic for modern aesthetic.

 

[Remathilis]

Genre is pretty much just semantics..

Which if true then proves my point that Star Wars is Urban Fantasy and Dragonlance is gothic horror because you can always manipulate the genre tags to make it fit. Star Wars is a work of fiction. It is a drama set in a war. It's first words are "a long time ago..." That doesn't make it historical fiction to be placed with Gone With the Wind.

What genre is Ravnica?

Fantasy. I would say it takes inspiration from noir, political intrigue, and action-adventure. It's setting is mostly urban, but it's lack of 20th century technology precludes it from the urban fantasy genre.

 

[Corinnguard]

The movie Bright springs to mind.

Bright tried too hard to be an Urban Fantasy.

 

[Reynard]

Bright tried too hard to be an Urban Fantasy.

I have a "Bright-like" setting that I have run at multiple cons and game days, with rules ranging from Monster of the Week to Savage Worlds, that I plan to use for my own RPG system when I put that together this summer. There is a lot of potential in bright, almost none of it realized, and so I decided to "fix" it with my own sort-of UF setting.

 

[Parmandur]

Which if true then proves my point that Star Wars is Urban Fantasy and Dragonlance is gothic horror because you can always manipulate the genre tags to make it fit. Star Wars is a work of fiction. It is a drama set in a war. It's first words are "a long time ago..." That doesn't make it historical fiction to be placed with Gone With the Wind.

I would say that trying to argue that Ravnica is not Urban Fantasy is more analogous to trying to argue thst Dragonlance is really Gothic Horror, to be honest.

Fantasy. I would say it takes inspiration from noir, political intrigue, and action-adventure. It's setting is mostly urban, but it's lack of 20th century technology precludes it from the urban fantasy genre.

What kind of fantasy, specifically...?

Rsvnica, as a city, is full of modern amenities and structures (physical and social).