Mundane vs. Fantastical

[Mallus]

Crystalborn Shockmice

If they're born from crystal, shouldn't they be Brightmice, and shoot lasers from their eyes? (this is what I know of verisimilitude...).

Also, thank you. I'm so infesting the PC's headquarters with Shockmice in our new 4e campaign...

 

[Raven Crowking]

I'd like to see that. Not because I doubt your assertion. I just think it would be cool to see.

I do too; I might just produce such a list.

Conan, IMHO, faces about the perfect mix of weird vs. mundane for a role-playing game.


RC

 

[Mallus]

If you have too much fantasy, the fantastic becomes mundane and loses its appeal.

If this were true, lifelong fantasy readers, who've gorged themselves on the fantastic, would have given up on fantasy in favor of Jane Austen. For fantasy fans, the fantastic is unavoidably a bit mundane; chances are they've seen it before. This is an inherent problem with genre fiction, in a very real way the readership wants the work to be derivative (they want in to meet their expectations w/r/t genre conventions).

Again, if you have too much fantasy, but do it well, it's like triple-chocolate bread pudding (an actual desert at my favorite local restaurant). If you stick to more mundane material and do it poorly, it's like lunch at Applebee's.

 

[The_Gneech]

If they're born from crystal, shouldn't they be Brightmice, and shoot lasers from their eyes? (this is what I know of verisimilitude...).

Also, thank you. I'm so infesting the PC's headquarters with Shockmice in our new 4e campaign...

You're welcome. For the record, they should be yellow with black stripes and make a noise like "Pika! Pika!"

-The Gneech

 

[Shades of Green]

If this were true, lifelong fantasy readers, who've gorged themselves on the fantastic, would have given up on fantasy in favor of Jane Austen. For fantasy fans, the fantastic is unavoidably a bit mundane; chances are they've seen it before.

That's not what I meant. what I meant was not that reading too much fantasy or thinking too much about fantasy would make anything fantastical seem mundane to you, but that a setting where everything and everyone is fantastic runs the risk of reducing the readers'/viewers'/players' awe and sense of wonder when they encounter new fantastic plots, items, locations, characters and so on.

 

[Mallus]

For the record, they should be yellow with black stripes and make a noise like "Pika! Pika!"

Naturally...

 

[Mallus]

... runs the risk of reducing the readers'/viewers'/players' awe and sense of wonder when they encounter new fantastic plots, items, locations, characters and so on.

My point was that it's fantasy fandom itself that reduces a players 'awe and sense of wonder'. What does it matter if the players encounter a steady diet of the fantastic in-game when they're all but guaranteed to have ingested a steady diet out of it? If they're the type to get jaded by that exposure it doesn't matter where it occurred; the harms already done, before they even begin playing. The risk is unavoidable.

Which is I think the focus should be on execution, not the general level of 'fantasticality'. We should be discussing exactly how to make the portrayal of men with swords fighting large apes thrilling.

 

[GrumpyOldMan]

I wonder if it's an attention span issue. I know I'd be a lot more interested if I had to fight weird creatures more often then I fought regular people probably because my brain would shut down quickly with the same old thing. Of course, if the people were weird somehow that might mitigate it somewhat, but then that would be equivalent to unleashing another weird thing.

More gaming style than attention span IMO. I’ve never been a monster lover, hated gelatinous cubes, piercers and lots of others right from the start.

But then my brain starts asking questions like, what do those orcs eat? Or, what sort of hunting range does a dragon have? Or, how can that city survive without any surrounding farmland? (WFRP – I’m thinking of you on that last one!) My campaigns are more political ‘we’re in trouble again’ messes than let’s slay the BBEG. My players don’t complain. But we used to play traveller back in the day, and that was done in a fairly similar way.

 

[Fifth Element]

Conan, IMHO, faces about the perfect mix of weird vs. mundane for a role-playing game.

I agree. I generally send mostly human/humanoid opponents against my PCs, with a few weird beasties for good measure.

 

[Gothmog]

I agree that the Conan and Mouser/Fafhrd stories have about the right mix of mundane vs. fantastic elements. The games I run typically involve more mundane opponents (classed NPCs, normal animals, and basic races like goblins, orcs, etc) than out there monsters like fire-spitting beetles, elemental archons, or bears that crap lightning. I tend to be pretty firmly in the simulationist camp when it comes to populating my world and internal consistency. Too much wahoo makes it hard to take the setting seriously, and makes you wonder why there are ANY mundane animals/creatures if they are far outclassed by the wahoo stuff that is apparently common (I'm noticing a lot of drakes in the 4e published stuff for example).

However, I also love 4e and the way it treats monsters and NPCs. 4e really supports my playing and DMing style in a way no other version of D&D has. I can whip up a "classed" NPC in a couple minutes now, rather than 20-30 min as in 3e. Also, monsters do more interesting things now, and are MUCH easier to run. And the occasional wahoo monster from the MM I use REALLY stands out as being something weird and dangerous. I look at the MM not as a be-all-end-all collection of monsters, but as a reference to give me ideas and draw inspiration from. In that regard, the 4e MM is a huge success- I've come up with more really interesting critters since reading the 4e MM than I have in the previous eight years, especially in regards to unusual things 4e critters can do in combat (their "schtick" if you will).