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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5678720" data-attributes="member: 2067">There's a genre tension here, and its kind of a divide between "Mundane" and "Mythic" modes of storytelling.A "mundane" mode of storytelling is filled with technology. That technology might be inexplicable and hyberbolically fantastic, but it fills the world, is ubiquitous, and everyone can use it, even without specialized training. This is the world we live in, with guns and computers and airplanes and medicine. We all do six inexplicable things before breakfast, as if its normal, because it is to us. Dark Sun in this respect is a "mundane" mode of storytelling -- the fantastic element of global apocalypse are hard-coded into the everyday reality of the characters. This is also the mode of the pagasi calvalry and Planescape with its teleporting doorways. The Iliad is also kind of in this vein. Gods are poppin' up all over the place. A "mythic" mode of storytelling sprinkles the fantastic into the mundane. It is an intercession of something otherworldly from an outside source that remains secret and esoteric to anyone not well versed in it. Those with contact with this otherworldly force are changed and altered and become something different and new in the world. Or if not new, at least damned unusual. It is not about things we normally experience, it is about the ineffable experiences beyond us. LotR falls more into this camp -- as much as hobbits are inherently fantastical, the story isn't about "just any hobbit," it's a story about a great hero who confronted an unstoppable menace and survived. FR and Dragonlance hit this mode, too, since their central characters and conflicts are about larger-than-life people, heroes and villains, all engaged in world-shaping activities.Your preferences are more in a "mundane" vein, which works. You would appreciate stories about "everyday folk in a magical world" more than you would appreciate LotR-inspired stories about unique, world-saving heroics. My preferences embrace both, though not at the same time. You might even make a ham-handed videogame analogy: "mundane" = MMORPG, where everyone's an adventurer, and "mythic" = JRPG, where each game is a precocious group of teenagers who save the world, but they are the only precocious group of teenagers who can save THAT world. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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