Fantasy becoming too fantastic...?

[boredgremlin]

In my opinion, there's no such thing as "too fantastic" fantasy. Star Wars, for instance, shoved its boundaries from Sci-fi clear into fantasy; fantasy is the "upper bound" refuge of stories that are too "out there" for any other genres, so "too fantastic" is to me like saying, "too infinite."

However, there's also nothing wrong with a desire to return to the old classics. It's that desire that pushed Lucas and Spielberg for instance to attempt Indiana Jones, a return itself to the old serials that they loved in their younger days. If the classics had no appeal, they wouldn't have become popular in the first place.

The trick is in proportion. The old starwars was about regular people in crazy situations. Hell, Luke was a farmers adopted son. That was good fantasy, human seeming good and bad guys with believable motives and who posed a clear example of human vs human inside and out. Fantasy as allegory.

Too much fantasy gave us jar jar binks. One has to know where to draw the line when fantasy stops being good and starts being something from Dr Suess.

 

[Hussar]

The trick is in proportion. The old starwars was about regular people in crazy situations. Hell, Luke was a farmers adopted son. That was good fantasy, human seeming good and bad guys with believable motives and who posed a clear example of human vs human inside and out. Fantasy as allegory.

Too much fantasy gave us jar jar binks. One has to know where to draw the line when fantasy stops being good and starts being something from Dr Suess.

Regular people? Obi Wan? Han? Princess Leia? Even Luke is hardly ordinary.

Piss poor writing gave us Jar Jar Binks. The level of fantasy had little to do with it.

I would point out that too much fantasy also gives us Treebeard. King Kong. Willow.

To each his own I suppose.

 

[Psion]

I'd also add that games aren't novels. Not all players are willing to accept imbalances in contribution that exists in many books, and many gamers specifically seek empowerment. So your particular take, Boredgremin, does not reflect what all players are after. (Obviously from the popularity of D&D, many players.)

 

[ruleslawyer]

Sorry to digress here, but:

Regular people? Obi Wan? Han? Princess Leia? Even Luke is hardly ordinary.

The (human!) old sagely hermit, the rogue, the damsel in distress, and the farmboy aren't "ordinary" in the context of a space fantasy universe populated with talking robots, weird tentacled monsters, and anthropomorphic hammerhead sharks?

Piss poor writing gave us Jar Jar Binks. The level of fantasy had little to do with it.

That's only half the truth. It's pretty standard in fantasy to make the protagonists identifiable with the reader; hence the reason why the central character of the Lord of the Rings is basically a short middle-class Englishman, the central character of Star Wars is a drag-racing farmboy, and the central characters of umpteen fantasy stories are people pulled from our mundane earth into alternate universes or distant times. Even Conan, dark and savage as he is, is a lot closer to us normal folk than the alien amorphous gods, weird monsters, and immortal sorcerers that he battles.

I would point out that too much fantasy also gives us Treebeard. King Kong. Willow.

Treebeard is about the most clearly labeled "NPC/monster!" character in LotR who isn't a servant of Sauron. King Kong also isn't really a PC, and isn't really in the realm of "too much fantasy" anyway; everything other than the giant ape is actually rather mundane or belongs in the same universe as Kong (one fundamentally alien to Ann Darrow and her compatriots). Willow is like Frodo; just because he has pointy ears doesn't mean he's less identifiable to the audience than Madmartigan or Sorsha; in fact, I have a lot more in common with a guy with a pretty normal day job and family than with a semi-criminal sword-wielding mercenary, even if the guy's short.

That said, complaining that D&D is "too fantastic" really stretches the point, IMHO. It's extraordinarily easy to leave out the stuff you don't like (monstrous PCs, weird templates, funky adventure locations) and have a standard Tolkienesque fantasy game with lots of humans, a few elves, dwarves, halflings, orcs, and semi-unique monsters, and nothing else. The only elements of the fantastic that the game "enforces" (and even that characterization I'd take issue with) are class balance and, to a certain extent, magic item availability. Both of these can be tinkered with by altering the bonus structure (by, say, giving all characters nonmagical bonuses equal to those from Vow of Poverty or giving them Midnight heroic paths) or using Iron Heroes classes instead.

 

[Hussar]

The (human!) old sagely hermit, the rogue, the damsel in distress, and the farmboy aren't "ordinary" in the context of a space fantasy universe populated with talking robots, weird tentacled monsters, and anthropomorphic hammerhead sharks?

True, they are normal in the sense that they are human. Fine. But, let's see - the retired general/very powerful jedi in hiding, the leader of the Rebellion/daughter of the BBEG, the son of the BBEG/wizard in training. I have a problem with characterizing these characters as normal. Uncle Ben and Aunt Beru are normal.

The rest of what you say I mostly agree with. I don't even think you need to go as far as VoP or using other systems. If you don't use the really funky monsters, you don't really need that many magic items.

Just because something is in the book doesn't mean you HAVE to use it in your game.