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You could also draw from pre-Tolkien fantasy, fairytales, and mythology. Tolkien may overshadow the fantasy genre, but that's mostly because people refuse to just ignore his contributions.

There's also a scifi version, but it doesn't have a tvtropes article.

Or you could play Mazes & Minotaurs. EDIT: The expansions of minotaurs are way cooler than the repetitive D&D version. Some of them breath fire, have multiple heads, or psychic powers!

And the story of Ortnit. His father was Alberich, the dwarf who forged the ring. I've been thinking of writing my own telling of the cursed ring cycle. Here Ortnit acquires the magic ring, the ring his father Alberich/Oberon forged from the cursed Rhine-gold, and becomes king of...

Found this interesting article on mythology/folklore that you guys might find useful: The Uses of Dragon Parts in Mythology and Folklore I found the implication that the immortal eastern dragons shed their brains every so often to be surreal, but if the immortal hydra can regrow its heads...

Middle Earth isn't especially Nordic or Celtic. It certainly draws from it, but it lacks a lot of other trappings from Indo-European mythology. The elves and dwarves are archetypal figures in pre-Tolkien European folklore. Their original versions are lot scarier and surreal. Nobody argues that...

If the puppets are able to visit the "real world" (or people from the real world visit Puppetland), then it stops being warped storybook fantasy and turns into urban fantasy horror. I preferred the "Christopher Robin-style imaginary world" as the review puts it. Ironically, several of the...

So I discovered Puppetland a few years ago and immediately fell in love with it. I wasn't able to back the kickstarter but I bought the 2016 edition when it became available. I bought a copy of the 1999 edition through the used books market too. I read the 1995 edition on John Tynes' website. I...

In general I consider video games to have low storytelling standards. Most of the time, story is an entirely optional thing, like it is in pornos. I just want stories that aren’t blatantly stupid when they do appear. Starcraft is about how a swarm of alien bugs go on a wild goose chase for an...

Tvtropes says that it's fiction which tries to teach the reader logic, not simply all fiction where characters act in a "rational" fashion. The way it uses "rational" describes what I would consider any good fiction period. It overlaps with what the showrunner of nuBSG called "naturalistic...

I shudder to think of it. Would every expansion be about some new evil Xel’Naga coming out of the woodwork that the three races have to team up against, or would the three races be in perpetual war for absurd reasons? Rationalist? I’m describing the military science fiction genre (e.g. Starship...

Also, I'm sorry for being abrasive. I am an analytical thinker by nature and I can all too easily become dogmatic. For that I appologize. If anybody is enjoying a game the wrong way, then it is clearly myself.

Yeah, I can totally agree with that. I often come across as abrasive because of my analytical and sometimes dogmatic way of thinking, and for that I apologize. I think the plot of Episode 1 would have worked fine if it was self-contained and didn't redraw the political map of the entire...

I don't see how Blizzard could have done that when they bulldozed the civilizations in the first game and setup bug girl and her ex-boyfriends as the main characters of the entire universe. The game script was an interpersonal drama/space opera first and the war story part played second fiddle...

I don’t need the plot to be good. I just wish it was about bugs invading humanity, not the personal vendettas of space cowboy and his psychotic bug girlfriend. I despised the interpersonal drama because it distracted from the war part. There’s no other fiction in the entire universe that...

The stories are well below passable. They get a free pass due to nostalgia. The youtube playlist by Pr0nogo is the only critical review that seems to have been made in the last twenty years, and it is not kind. I'm not expecting a great story. I just expect one that doesn't aggravate me so much...

I envy you so much. I'm an analytical person. I play RTS for the single player campaigns because esports aren't my thing. It's pretty easy for me to notice the flaws in Blizzard storytelling when I put my mind to it. The problem is that Blizzard fans who invest in the story are somehow able to...

Sure, but I wasn’t criticizing fan service. “See that sexy bug girl on the cover? Her design is sexist as hell. She has high-heeled feet for goodness’ sake!” That’s criticizing fan service. Yes, indeed they do. Guess why you don’t hear about them?

To be entirely fair to SC2, SC1 didn’t set a high bar nor a solid foundation. The playlist I plugged earlier goes into detail about that. Here’s another very brief comparison: https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=20150 Blizzard didn’t write a military science fiction story in the...

I know that SST sets a high bar, but I don't think that's a good excuse. There's this let's play that goes through the game's campaigns and analyzes everything from presentations to gameplay to storytelling, etc. Lots of fans think SC2's story is a betrayal of everything SC1's story was...