Jürgen Hubert
First Post
Glyfair said:
Precisely. Especially once you have a regular day job, the time you can invest to learn about new settings is limited. Using the standard tropes can help alleviate that.
Embracing the standard fantasy tropes
- Thread starter Jürgen Hubert
- Start date
Precisely. Especially once you have a regular day job, the time you can invest to learn about new settings is limited. Using the standard tropes can help alleviate that.
Dr Simon
Explorer
I'll wade into this one, since the World of Conclave *is* meant to avoid standard fantasy tropes, but there are reasons for that.
Up front, I'll say that I have no issue with 'vanilla' D&D, which is, be honest, a very, very specific type of fantasy. Thanks to the bucketloads of D&D-based novels it may seem like you need elves, dwarves and a short race that isn't hobbits at all for it to be fantasy, but the vast majority of fantasy authors *don't* have those things. Leiber, Howard, Vance, Moorcock, Eddings, LeGuin, Donaldson*, Asprin, Jordan, McCaffrey, those just off the top of my head. I make no value judgments as to the relative quality of those authors, BTW!
I asterisked Donaldson because he sort of does what other posters mention - merely change the fluff part. What are Stonedowners and Woodhelvenin if not dwarves and elves by another name? Somebody mentions Dark Sun halflings. I think DS suffers by trying to be too close to the D&D standard when it could have taken a step further. DS dwarves, for example, strike me as a pointless inclusion to the setting (except to explain the origin of the muls).
For playing a game of D&D, yes, it makes life a lot easier for everyone if you stick to the basic stuff in the PHB. There are threads aplenty on this board about the pros and cons of using even a few supplemental books, and you could, without having to invent anything yourself, play a very wierd planes-hopping adventure with goliath, warforged and githzerai PCs, none of which qualifies as 'vanilla' fantasy but would be pretty familiar to a moderately seasoned D&D player.
The reason we went for 'no standard fantasy races' with Conclave was simply because, as a web-based collaborative world building site, the standard fantasy tropes had already been done, as Fargoth. Not only that, but the gamer has Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms or Krynn as variants on the same theme (and now Eberron plus plenty more third party settings). It seemed like a saturated market.
It strikes me as silly for a hobby to rely on, and encourage, the use of imagination on the one hand but on the other for hand for so many settings to start with the unimaginative assumption 'where are we going to put the elves?'
Ultimately, though, the difference between a classic D&D fantasy setting and an esoteric one is like the difference between a Hollywood blockbuster and a European art-house film. The former allows for easy fun for all whereas the latter may have more depth and originality but is requires more effort to get into in the first place.
Up front, I'll say that I have no issue with 'vanilla' D&D, which is, be honest, a very, very specific type of fantasy. Thanks to the bucketloads of D&D-based novels it may seem like you need elves, dwarves and a short race that isn't hobbits at all for it to be fantasy, but the vast majority of fantasy authors *don't* have those things. Leiber, Howard, Vance, Moorcock, Eddings, LeGuin, Donaldson*, Asprin, Jordan, McCaffrey, those just off the top of my head. I make no value judgments as to the relative quality of those authors, BTW!
I asterisked Donaldson because he sort of does what other posters mention - merely change the fluff part. What are Stonedowners and Woodhelvenin if not dwarves and elves by another name? Somebody mentions Dark Sun halflings. I think DS suffers by trying to be too close to the D&D standard when it could have taken a step further. DS dwarves, for example, strike me as a pointless inclusion to the setting (except to explain the origin of the muls).
For playing a game of D&D, yes, it makes life a lot easier for everyone if you stick to the basic stuff in the PHB. There are threads aplenty on this board about the pros and cons of using even a few supplemental books, and you could, without having to invent anything yourself, play a very wierd planes-hopping adventure with goliath, warforged and githzerai PCs, none of which qualifies as 'vanilla' fantasy but would be pretty familiar to a moderately seasoned D&D player.
The reason we went for 'no standard fantasy races' with Conclave was simply because, as a web-based collaborative world building site, the standard fantasy tropes had already been done, as Fargoth. Not only that, but the gamer has Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms or Krynn as variants on the same theme (and now Eberron plus plenty more third party settings). It seemed like a saturated market.
It strikes me as silly for a hobby to rely on, and encourage, the use of imagination on the one hand but on the other for hand for so many settings to start with the unimaginative assumption 'where are we going to put the elves?'
Ultimately, though, the difference between a classic D&D fantasy setting and an esoteric one is like the difference between a Hollywood blockbuster and a European art-house film. The former allows for easy fun for all whereas the latter may have more depth and originality but is requires more effort to get into in the first place.
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