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General Tabletop Discussion
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Genre Conventions: What is fantasy?
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<blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 2264830" data-attributes="member: 2205"><p>I think that in terms of the mainstream public, there may not be any difference at all. And yes, the mainstream public is completely concerned with the trappings, and to them, sci-fi is the trappings. It's not like a movie or a T.V. show has much time to spell out the scientific basis of the premise without losing their audience anyway.</p><p></p><p>But, like The_Gneech, I'm a bit of a genre nerd, and I like to take my hobby a bit more seriously. After all, the general public also doesn't see much different between Beowulf and the Iliad, but just because they don't see it doesn't mean that differences aren't there. I'm also a bit of a splitter; I like to have lots of categories to put stuff in, rather than more generic buckets. So, I prefer to split even further than simply "sci fi" or "fantasy" and recognize that there's a very broad range of works that share many features with each other and differ in other respects, that <em>can</em> be described better with various sub-genres; sword & sorcery vs. high fantasy vs. planetary romance vs. hard SF vs. space opera, etc., etc., ad nauseum. Even then, you don't have a perfect picture, as some works end up both defining and being the single work in an extremely specialized little compartment.</p><p></p><p>What sparked the conversation in the first place was the idea that psionics didn't belong in a fantasy campaign, because they were a sci-fi element. That struck two nerves with me, the first being that since there's no scientific basis for psychic powers, they actually are, by definition, a fantasy element, and the second being that I don't accept such a limited definition of "fantasy" that only includes a narrow subset of all that's out there.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Desdichado, post: 2264830, member: 2205"] I think that in terms of the mainstream public, there may not be any difference at all. And yes, the mainstream public is completely concerned with the trappings, and to them, sci-fi is the trappings. It's not like a movie or a T.V. show has much time to spell out the scientific basis of the premise without losing their audience anyway. But, like The_Gneech, I'm a bit of a genre nerd, and I like to take my hobby a bit more seriously. After all, the general public also doesn't see much different between Beowulf and the Iliad, but just because they don't see it doesn't mean that differences aren't there. I'm also a bit of a splitter; I like to have lots of categories to put stuff in, rather than more generic buckets. So, I prefer to split even further than simply "sci fi" or "fantasy" and recognize that there's a very broad range of works that share many features with each other and differ in other respects, that [i]can[/i] be described better with various sub-genres; sword & sorcery vs. high fantasy vs. planetary romance vs. hard SF vs. space opera, etc., etc., ad nauseum. Even then, you don't have a perfect picture, as some works end up both defining and being the single work in an extremely specialized little compartment. What sparked the conversation in the first place was the idea that psionics didn't belong in a fantasy campaign, because they were a sci-fi element. That struck two nerves with me, the first being that since there's no scientific basis for psychic powers, they actually are, by definition, a fantasy element, and the second being that I don't accept such a limited definition of "fantasy" that only includes a narrow subset of all that's out there. [/QUOTE]
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