D&D 5E I hope 5th edition makes room for "Adventurers" and "Heroes".

[dream66_]

For you. People play D&D for all sorts of reasons. Exploring, finding cool stuff, and powering-up is a pretty standard fare, not just in D&D, but in fantasy CRPGs. If the only way to play Skyrim was to go around selflessly saving villages from dragons, it would have a much smaller audience.

I acknowledge that it's my play-style, I had that peppered with "I" and "for me" you said that greed was genuinly appealing for players, and I wanted to point out I'm at least and exception to that.

 

[Haffrung]

I acknowledge that it's my play-style, I had that peppered with "I" and "for me" you said that greed was genuinly appealing for players, and I wanted to point out I'm at least and exception to that.

Sure. And I haven't suggested writers never use altriusm as a hook for adventures. I just don't want it to be the only option, or the default. An adventure that consists of a bunch of encounters that have to happen in a specific order, where the motivation is saving the kingdom, is usually a pain in the ass to convert to another motivation. Whereas a setting-based adventure can easily be re-purposed for varying motivations.

 

[Emerikol]

Ah, so the 'when the world is at stake' it allows one to utilise the word "High"
That is the common denominator in each instance.

Well I am hardly the one to be an offical on the meaning as I was educated myself just a few posts previously. As I understand it, they said high fantasy was about the PCs being central to the world and the stakes being enormous from a world perspective. An example was a save the world plot like LotR. Of course that would not be the only possibility.

Whereas I was primarily thinking about high magic when I said high fantasy originally. To me LotR's is not high magic. Eberron is high magic compared to Greyhawk though Greyhawk is not low magic by any means.

 

[aramis erak]

For me to clarify your perspective, when 'the literal world is at stake', like in most James Bond movies, you are equating those movies as High Fantasy?

High adventure, sure. But they're not fantasy in the first place, so not high fantasy, no.

James Bond in the movies is VERY much fantasy... lots of superscience, much of which is essentially technology as magic. Not to mention some of the villains being borderline superheroes.

Then again, the issue of high magic vs high fantasy... from a technical point of view, fantasy is any unrealistic genre. High fantasy tends to imply non-human intelligences and the presence of magic. Even science fiction is technically a subset of fantasy most of the time. (Especially within the Space Opera genre... Star Wars is just as out there as LOTR in terms of magic and violations of known physics... perhaps worse.)

 

[Iosue]

James Bond in the movies is VERY much fantasy... lots of superscience, much of which is essentially technology as magic. Not to mention some of the villains being borderline superheroes.

Yeah, I knew someone was going to say that. But listen, we're talking about fantasy as a genre. And James Bond is not in the fantasy genre. In any bookstore with enough fiction to categorize it by genre, you will not see the James Bond books next to Lord of the Rings. You won't see the James Bond movies next to Lord of the Rings, unless they are both categorized into something super broad like "Action/Adventure". James Bond movies don't make the top 10 lists of "Best Fantasy Movies". In general, no one thinks to group James Bond with the Chronicles of Narnia.

Given the infinite variety of fiction, genres can be dicey to define in a way that satisfies everyone, and their borders are fuzzy, not clearly demarcated. Nonetheless, if we want to have a discussion here about "high fantasy" vs "low fantasy" or "dark fantasy", or the like, I think we have to narrow down the scope of our terms. If someone was to say that Guardians of the Galaxy was high fantasy, I'd probably nod and say, "Okay...I can see that." But no matter how fantastic the action, nor the degree of male power fantasy that goes into a James Bond film, they are simply not part of the fantasy genre, and describing them as "high fantasy" in particular tells us nothing about the James Bond movies nor the high fantasy genre.

 

[Hussar]

Ah, so the 'when the world is at stake' it allows one to utilise the word "High"
That is the common denominator in each instance.

High fantasy, also known as epic fantasy, uses the same tropes as any epic story - cast of thousands, and the protagonists are moving and shaking the entire setting. The actions of the protagonists affect wide swaths of the setting. The events of LotR is the end of an age. Game of Thrones is a complete upheaval of of the setting. Dragonlance is a complete reversal of the setting with the return of the gods, invasions of huge armies, etc.

Compare to Low Fantasy, like Conan, who does become a king eventually, but, really has no lasting impact on the setting beyond Conan himself. Tarzan has little impact on beyond his jungle and all of the stories feature a small number of characters that have no real impact beyond the events of that particular story. Even something like Harry Potter is closer to Low Fantasy - you have a very local plot with characters that are not leading armies or massive numbers of characters. Although, to be fair, Harry Potter is closer to Urban Fantasy.

Magic level isn't really part of the definitions.

 

[Lanefan]

Wow, greed is litterally the least appealing hook to me. My life is full of instances where I'm forced to think in greedy ways simply in order to pay my bills...

I play the game to be someone I can't be in real life - the stinking-rich guy to whom day-to-day bills are an irrelevancy.

Lan-"if you're not going to take that treasure share, I will"-efan