Ditching traditional fantasy conventions?

[Desdichado]

Reading (and responding) to mouseferatu's thread on campaign inspirations, I'm struck by quite a few folks who have made a conscious effort to ditch traditional "Tolkienian" fantasy tropes and do something completely different with their settings.

Myself, for instance, am trying to get a campaign off the ground in the next few weeks that features none of the races typically found in D&D -- it features a number of "breeds" of humans that have been bred by alien lifeforms the way we breed dogs, or cattle for specific purposes. Of course, the humans now run the world the way they want, but the different breeds still exist. The setting itself resembles a habitable version of Mars, and the main conflict is a WHFRPG-esque array of demons and fiends that are trying to encroach as much as possible on the mortal world.

Anyone else doing things completely different from normal? If so, pipe up and share!

 

[heimdall]

When I started DMing and creating worlds, the author who was the biggest influence on my "fantasy" concept was Robert E. Howard. Thus my worlds have always had very strong elements based on his creativity. So I think it would be safe to say while many started with Tolkien-esque worldviews and have transitioned from them over time, there is also a group who started from another point of influence.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Well, I'm not sure how well Shadow Branch qualifies, since it still has most of the traditional fantasy elements--it just approaches/uses them in a very different fashion than the D&D norm.

Beyond that, I've got a whole mess of setting/campaign ideas in my head. Some are very traditional, some include some of the tropes but not all, and a few are completely out there.

I've found, interestingly enough, that I'm more likely to avoid some of the standards in my fiction than in my gaming. For instance, of the various fantasy novels I've written, fewer than half involve elves, dwarves, etc. as we usually picture them. The others are either human only, or involve other races that have (I like to think) a more traditional, mythic, "out-there" fae type feel, as opposed to "Oh, look, a short human with furry feet."

I think the main reason I haven't tried to play with a setting that's too far beyond the norm is that most players (at least among those I'm familiar with) like the various options. I did start one campaign a few months ago, where all the players were human, magic was more mysterious, and the inhuman races were truly inhuman, but unforunately it died because a player had to drop, and we didn't have enough to continue. And it still involved many of the other "standard tropes," just not the races.

 

[Mouseferatu]

And hey, I think this is the first thread "inspired by" one of my threads. Nifty.

 

[fusangite]

Generally, when I ditch the classic fantasy tropes, I ditch the D&D system along with it. It isn't just the races and classes of D&D that cause it to tell Tolkienesque stories. It's also the way the rules are structured.

These days, I'm rediscovering a lot of the traditional fantasy stuff -- hence my renewed interest in D&D. That stated, one of my world is a humans-only world, set in an ice age which destroyed the civilization. Thus, I'm doing a fantasy-style post-apocalyptic game. Not exactly Scarred Lands (the apocalypse is more about renewal than permanent destruction) but not entirely dissimilar.

 

[Mouseferatu]

You know, it might be useful for purposes of this discussion to point out that a lot of the tropes D&D uses are "traditional fantasy," but a lot of others are "traditional D&D," with no basis in any other source.

For instance, the presence of a brutal race like orcs or goblins is traditional fantasy. The presence of orcs and goblins and hobgoblins and bugbears and gnolls and kobolds and grimlocks and ogres and... Well, you get the idea. That, to my knowledge, is specifically a D&D-ism.

I don't want to hijack the discussionso maybe we should break this aspect out into a seperate thread? I just think it's possible (and perhaps even more common than we realize) for people to ditch the D&D tropes without ditching the "traditional fantasy" tropes, even though a lot of people today tend to confuse the two.

 

[Desdichado]

Yes, but how do you seperate out D&Disms from other traditional fantasy elements? The D&D magic system is completely a D&Dism, as far as I'm concerned, but the presence of magicians of various stripes who behave more or less like standard D&D wizards and the like is not. I'm speaking more generically.

And, fusangite, I've also ditched D&D specifically, but not d20 -- my game is primarily d20 Modern rules with custom races and some d20 Call of Cthulhu for sanity and magic.

 

[Agback]

G'day

My least divergent setting is 'the Great Vale', which retains a lot of D&Disms because I designed it for D&D. The main changes from what everybody might expect are monotheism and the ditching of alignmment.

Next most divergent have been a couple of campaigns set in semi-historical Europe. The first (set in 1122-1123) had dwarves living in the various mountains, elves in place of the Scots, Cornish, Bretons, and Basques, orcs in place of the Hungarians, Finns, and Turks, and giants in Norway, sub-Saharan Africa, Russia, and Ireland. Run under DragonQuest, it made the Church identical with the College of Naming Enchantments. Most of the themes had to do with the issues of the Investitures Controversy and the Hildebrandtine Reforms. The second was set in Cyprus and parts East after the Fall of Acre in 1291, with the PCs being members and associates of the Order of St John. Played under C&S, it was dominated by a quest to find Prester John, and included role-playing-heavy incidents such as meetings with Death, the Devil, incarnations of the Seven Deadly Sins, etc.

My most divergent fantasy setting is The World of Isles, featuring Gehennum <http://users.cyberone.com.au/evill/gehennum/index.html> and the five less-well-detailed cultures I posted in Plots & Places yesterday. A deliberate attempt to escape from the defaults of vanilla fantasy, Gehennum is oceanic where default fantasy settings are continental, tropical where they are cool-temperate, inspired by classical models rather than mediaeval ones. And the dominant racial type is based on Malays rather than North-Western Europeans. The fantasy races are novel: leshy, divers, flyers, sprites, and giants; no dwarves, elves, or orcs. Monsters are a rare treat, and when they do appear, often very dangerous. There is no great struggle going on, no manifest evil. Enmities are political rather than racial, and people are people rather than agents either of good or of evil. Most adventures are driven by social, political, and personal struggles between people (even if some of them aren't human). The concept of religion has been split into three parts: moral philosophy, propitiation of powerful supernatural beings, and psychological archetypes with real power. There is no calling or career of priesthood: priesthood is a public office for retired politicians. Not even clothing conforms to vanilla convention. I run Gehennum adventures using modified HindSight.

Regards,


Agback

 

[dave_o]

Joshua - whatever happened to your Bloodlines campaign setting? I dug it profusely.

I, admittedly, have a lot of fantasy tropes in my homebrew of Eldram (dwarves live in mountains and are isolationist, for example), but I also deviate from the norm a considerable amount.

In Eldram, halflings are feral, tribal beings who live in a set of jungle islands. The halflings living deeper in the jungles are Ghostwise, while the others are usual halflings.

Elves are not all powerful. They were, perhaps, long, long ago, but their arrogance has caused their eventual ruin. They've now retreated to one island, a glimmering star of their former power. And - they're a race of sailors, though do hold a general appreciation of nature. (Okay, so that's sort of Tolkienian.)

There's more, but I'm just saying - getting away is good!

 

[Gnarlo]

Getting away from the standards is one of the reasons I've always loved gnomes. They don't really have a place in any of the movies and books I've read, so they can pretty much take on any role that you want them to have.