Fantasy becoming too fantastic...?

[Aus_Snow]

What Shemeska said.

It's the amount of thought and care that goes into campaigns, characters, concepts et al that really determines whether *any* type of fantasy is fresh and intriguing or stale and boring.

 

[Thomas Percy]

A quote from old movie:
- What songs people do like?
- People like the songs which they know already.

I,m one of these people.

 

[haakon1]

A quote from old movie:
- What songs people do like?
- People like the songs which they know already.

I,m one of these people.

Nod. And as someone complained in "Amadeus": "too many notes" can be a problem. "Half" should only go with elf, orc, and -ling, IMHO. Actually tieflings make sense to me. Half-dragons though, I just don't get.

Basically, something makes "sense" to me if it's in "real" mythology -- anybody's real mythology, centaurs to rakashka -- or it's standard Tolkienesque, or it's "reasonable" in a fantasy ecology (purple worms, owlbears). The overly weird stuff reminds me too much that it's just some guy's latest product.

 

[Numion]

I dunno. Piratecats story hour, for example, featured half-troll illithid as one big evil dude, and it worked out real fantastic.

But if you just list templates out of context in a gripe-thread, then no, of course it's not going to sound good :\

 

[Sejs]

But in another way, you are alone.



So very, very alone.

 

[Hussar]

Heaven forbid that we break from the lockstep of Howard, Leiber and Tolkein. Who would ever want to play/use anything new when all that ever needs to be done in fantasy has been done by these three. ((Wow, do I really want a rolley eyes smiley))

 

[Wanderlust]

But in another way, you are alone.

So very, very alone.

So, before I go wallow in solipsist debauchery, I just want to say that I'm glad to hear that I'm not so terribly alone in my longing for ye olde classic fantasy.

I just guess that for me over the top isn't really all that fantastic.

 

[Numion]

Although "template stacking" and "over-the-top fantasy" are in no way synonymous.

True, but nonsensical lists of templates make for nice soundbites.

D&D has always had a over the top side to it. Even before 3E. We had Wondrous Inventions for basic D&D, those wonderland modules by Gygax, etc.. All kinds of crazy stuff has been going on for since D&D was born.

But when it's time to gripe, it's the half-vampire gelatinous cube ninja of legend :\

 

[Hussar]

I like atypical fantasy: Mieville rather than Howard, etc.

Mieville. Now there's a name I haven't heard before. Must check this out. I'm so bloody tired of the same old crap being churned out year after year. The only way a genre stays fresh is with fresh ideas. Regurgitating the same old stories time and time again is NOT what I want to read.

 

[ViciousPenguin]

. . . give me githzerai anarchs who can reshape the raw chaos of limbo with force of will, half-fiend mercenaries of the Blood War, and genasi clerics plumbing the inner planes in search of a deeper connection with the element that forms part of their body and soul.
. . .
Ultimately though it's just a preferance for style, and different people will have difference preferences on the topic.

A problem occurs when there exists an abundance of these atypical, fantastic things in any given world - after so many of them they're no longer fantastic. When a half-this and a touched-that exist around every corner there's nothing special about them any more. This overabundance of the fantastic seems to be a trend in many supplements which influences and becomes a trend in many campaigns.

The cure for this, for those who want a 'cure', does not lie in limiting what's presented in rules supplements, but rather in the hands of good GM's; limit the characters in reasonable ways and present a world that appears mostly mundane on the surface. Then when the 'fantastic' creature rears it's head, whether it be a goblin shaman or a dire-fiendish-half-dragon-githyanki, it's still fantastic.