D&D 5E 30/5 D&D Alumni Archives: Beyond Feudalism - Experimental Genres

[Bluenose]

Lankhmar is not Game of Thrones...and I would also see it more as pulp, but it certainly has an edge that say LotR does not. Actually, where would you put the Sanctuary series? Maybe urban fantasy more specifically then dark fantasy.

Also, I do think this is the start of a series. If dragon and dungeon do come back, supporting older settings and campaign styles would be an obvious focus...

I might describe Sanctuary as urban fantasy, but the current meaning of the term rather suggests it would confuse a lot of readers - the Dresden Files are a part of that genre in typical book descriptions. Calling it Sword and Sorcery or a Heist story/stories in a fantasy setting, would look like the best short descriptions for Lankhmar and a lot of Sanctuary stories. Dark fantasy is something I tend to associate with horror elements, which aren't really significant from what I recall of either series. And truthfully, Lankhmar is a good example of Pulp too. It's a little hard to stick anything into one basket unconditionally.


Now that I've read it again, it does look like there'll be more. It looks like a potentially interesting series. Though I wish they wouldn't use feudal in the way they do, since it's not remotely right for most D&D settings (or even historical ones).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I might describe Sanctuary as urban fantasy, but the current meaning of the term rather suggests it would confuse a lot of readers - the Dresden Files are a part of that genre in typical book descriptions. Calling it Sword and Sorcery or a Heist story/stories in a fantasy setting, would look like the best short descriptions for Lankhmar and a lot of Sanctuary stories. Dark fantasy is something I tend to associate with horror elements, which aren't really significant from what I recall of either series. And truthfully, Lankhmar is a good example of Pulp too. It's a little hard to stick anything into one basket unconditionally.

Now that I've read it again, it does look like there'll be more. It looks like a potentially interesting series. Though I wish they wouldn't use feudal in the way they do, since it's not remotely right for most D&D settings (or even historical ones).

I kind of feel like "Heist Fantasy" is almost a genre - Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser and Locke Lamora being it's primary exponents but I'm sure there's more out there. Certainly a lot of my D&D games have more in common with Leverage than any High Fantasy novel.

 

[Mercurius]

Indeed - GoT presents horror to create horror in the audience, generally, whereas SoT presents horror in a far more voyeuristic and "Isn't this thrilling?!" kind of way.

I'd be interested in hearing what you feel is the difference as they seem rather similar to me, or rather more of a difference between high-brow horror (e.g. the Shining) and low-brow horror (e.g. Friday the 13th). So I suppose it is more of a spectrum.

Of course Theon Greyjoy might feel differently.

 

[Thaumaturge]

I'd be interested in hearing what you feel is the difference as they seem rather similar to me, or rather more of a difference between high-brow horror (e.g. the Shining) and low-brow horror (e.g. Friday the 13th). So I suppose it is more of a spectrum.

Of course Theon Greyjoy might feel differently.

I would say the Theon is a good example. The things that happen to him are disturbing. George R. R. Martin's tone while he's telling you about those things is like a solemn nod of agreement to how the reader feels, "Yes, this is disturbing".

What happens to Richard in the first book (I never made it past the first book) reads much more like porn where the author's tone is more gleeful and excited.

The first validates the reader's emotions as he reads difficult things. The second juxtaposed with my emotions at least. And that juxtaposition, more than the actual acts being described, was the really disturbing part.

Also, Martin doesn't spend 100 straight pages describing the events that unfold in Greyjoy's life. Goodkin does. Though I eventually just flipped past much of it.

Thaumaturge.

 

[Scorpio616]

That soul stealing demon spawn on the protagonist's side that no one seems to have a problem with kinda eliminates my interest in the SoT stories. The pseudo- military force of dominatrixi with magical 'massagers' of pain doesn't improve much either.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'd be interested in hearing what you feel is the difference as they seem rather similar to me, or rather more of a difference between high-brow horror (e.g. the Shining) and low-brow horror (e.g. Friday the 13th). So I suppose it is more of a spectrum.

Of course Theon Greyjoy might feel differently.

Theon is an interesting example to choose - you mean what happens in the books, right, where it is entirely off-screen, where we see and hear nothing, not the show, where it's graphic and lurid and actually kind of horror-funny? Because the books are definitely not torture-porn, given we don't even know about until long, long after it's happened, for the most part. The whole point of the term "torture porn" is that it is graphic and so on, that it is supposed to thrill the audience, not just horrify them (e.g. Saw, Hostel, etc.)

SoT, as Thaum says, is excited and really "into" the torture and so on, to the point where it's barely horror, and it has extremely disturbing psycho-sexual stuff - for example, Richard is tortured (in a totally non-disfiguring, non-soul-destroying way, of course) by some sort of sexy bondage-nun, who later (IIRC), begs him to kill her, whilst she is lying on a bed, and then he uses his magic sword in it's "special mode" (I swear to god this is literally what happens not a weird euphemism except it obviously is VERY WEIRD AND CREEPY and not in a good intentional way because the author seems to be suggesting it's totally cool) to kill her. Generally we're asked to see horror and carnage as exciting - in one of the later books Richard chops his way through unarmed, not-real-threat civilians (admittedly brainwashed, but they're a human shield), and we're clearly, from the writing, meant to think it's totally rocking that he's choppin' up these commie bastards (even though they're brainwashed...), not that this is a sickening scene of violence as an armed, armoured, magic-sword-wielding unstoppable wizard kills unarmed civilians.

It's not a high-brow/low-brow thing, either - GoT and SoT are entirely different genres. GoT is extreme multi-pov epic fantasy focusing on intrigue and politics and the nasty consequences thereof, with a bit of an apocalyptic magic threat in the background. It's certainly Dark Fantasy. Whereas SoT is simple "Man gets ever more powerful" High Fantasy, the only real flair to which is that it was creepy psuedo-BDSM psycho-sexual stuff (which real BDSM lifestylers are not at all keen on, I understand), and that it is explicitly (as the author has explained) political propaganda in service of Objectivism, a philosophy which is to Libertarianism as Maoism is to, say, basic Marxist Communism - which is to say a weird cult-ish offshoot which doesn't make much sense and is basically a religion/cult-of-personality. That's beside the point here, though, which is that SoT is very keen to get off on how awesome ultra-violence is, and uses torture for cheap thrills.

I can't really comment on The Shining vs Friday the 13th, except to say they are perhaps poor comparisons, because whilst Friday the 13th is lower-brow in the sense of having less to say (but not a lot less - The Shining has little to say either), I think it's quite a lot more successful as a film and rather more impressive as a piece of film-making (I love The Shining, but it's a flawed flawed thing) than the former.

 

[Savage Wombat]

Forget published materials - I want to know what weird genres and combos the ENWorlders have come up with for their own use. I've always wanted to be responsible for something as creative as, say, Deadlands.

 

[Evenglare]

I find it extremely annoying that oriental/Far east/whatever you call it, is always an aside or an expansion. Of course we have Legend of the 5 Rings which is one of my favorite games ever. But in almost every medium it's just so far off to the side, it rarely gets the center stage. For instance, world of warcraft is a sort of classic fantasy and then Mists of Pandaria comes out- an expansion. Magic the gathering had a couple of blocks of eastern inspired stuff. Guild wars expansion was oriental themed. Pathfinder has the Jade(something or other) adventure path, and ninja and samurai are in an expansion book. Final fantasy, despite being from Japan usually has a samurai or ninja themed character thrown in but never the focus of the story. There are extremely few eastern fantasy novels that I'm aware of, while there are thousands of Knightly European Magic stuff.

It's really sad because there's SO MUCH history and fantasy elements out there but everything focuses on western stuff. Like I said earlier there's Legend of the 5 Rings roleplaying game. If you want that kind of setting at the forefront, that is basically your only mainstream option. No other RPG (that I'm aware of) is build from the ground up to support that specific kind of setting. Same with video games, there's..... uh... Jade Empire and the "Warriors" series of games that focus on eastern stuff. We get more of it in anime sure, Dragonball, Avatar/Korra, Naruto etc, which is expected but still.... not really as much as you would think compared to western stuff.

There's no real point to this post, I just find it interesting that everyone complains that XXX is so generic same traditional fantasy stuff when there's a completely untapped pool in eastern inspired mythology/fantasies etc. It just kind of sucks that it's RARELY the focus of things. If you feel this way as well and haven't checked it out, GO LOOK AT LEGEND OF THE 5 RINGS!!!

 

[DM Howard]

There's no real point to this post, I just find it interesting that everyone complains that XXX is so generic same traditional fantasy stuff when there's a completely untapped pool in eastern inspired mythology/fantasies etc.

As a group, we've never been able to do an Eastern inspired campaign for very long. I have no idea why, but I suspect that it might be that we just aren't as "into it" when talking about Samurai and Ninja as we are when we talk about Knights and Thieves. I can't really put my finger on it. It's strange because there are several of us that really enjoy Anime, Final Fantasy, and such and one of us is half-japanese. Longest campagin we have done with main eastern elements was maybe ten or so sessions long and then stopped.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I find it extremely annoying that oriental/Far east/whatever you call it, is always an aside or an expansion. Of course we have Legend of the 5 Rings which is one of my favorite games ever. But in almost every medium it's just so far off to the side, it rarely gets the center stage. For instance, world of warcraft is a sort of classic fantasy and then Mists of Pandaria comes out- an expansion. Magic the gathering had a couple of blocks of eastern inspired stuff. Guild wars expansion was oriental themed. Pathfinder has the Jade(something or other) adventure path, and ninja and samurai are in an expansion book. Final fantasy, despite being from Japan usually has a samurai or ninja themed character thrown in but never the focus of the story. There are extremely few eastern fantasy novels that I'm aware of, while there are thousands of Knightly European Magic stuff.

There are exceptions - Exalted is the most obvious one in the RPG world - they very actively mixed East and West, Homer and Manga, and so on. There are some fantasy novel series which also seem to be mixtures of East and West, but I am blanking on which ones right now, to be honest. Brandon Sanderson's new one is one example - the whole thing is a pretty extreme fantasy, but the central culture of the first novel, the Alethi, are neither clearly Eastern nor Western, having sort of elements of 17th-century Europe and 19th-century China and all sorts of things going on - ooooh and that's the other one, the Acacia series - which are kind of not that great, imo, but very definitely aren't just WOO WESTERN EUROPE 4EVAR. I think there are others - probably mostly published post-1995. I remember reading a fantasy novel involving giants (they were like nine or twelve feet tall) in the '90s or very early '00s which involved an empire that very much blended Eastern and Western elements.

So it's out there, and becoming increasingly common, I think. It would be interesting to see a new setting attempt it for D&D.