Reinventing fantasy cliches

[DrunkonDuty]

Brimshack wrote:
If your players are trying to plan on a battle to come, taking the time to tell them the color of the carpet on the floor is going to be irritating to them at best. If they are prepped to investigate of a crime, then that same information along with a few dozen other comparable bits - a couple of which prove significant in time - will be just the thing.

Good point.

Brimshack wrote:
If you can plant information in one game that will become important 3-5 games on down the road, and if the players are still busy enough thinking about other things, then you can create that moment when they kick themselves and realize they should have put 2 and 2 together all along.

A masterful trick to pull of and oh so worth it when it works!!!

 

[Afrodyte]

I remember coming across this interview that discusses the problem with Eurocentric fantasy as well as introduces some authors and works who go against that. Interestingly enough, they also bring up how fantasy authors usually portray religion, which is very intriguing.

I also found this blog that talks about some common fantasy tropes. While I don't agree with his assessment about fantasy as a genre, I do think there's a lot here that can help with putting a fresh spin on things.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Great interview. I guess I have a couple of new authors to go check out.
Ta.

 

[Desdichado]

So a question to be asked is: how much detail is right? I'd say it depends on how much detail your players want.

You answered your own question there; some players really enjoy that kind of thing and will ask for more, others get bored and ask when they get to the part where they can roll initiative. You've gotta know your group.

 

[Desdichado]

I remember coming across this interview that discusses the problem with Eurocentric fantasy as well as introduces some authors and works who go against that. Interestingly enough, they also bring up how fantasy authors usually portray religion, which is very intriguing.

I thought this was an interesting comment:

There are thousands of cultures in Africa, and most Africans would consider a novel about several different African tribes to be very multi-cultural, though they’d all be “black.”

Wouldn't that be just as true if I said, however, "There are thousands of cultures in Europe, and most Europeans would consider a novel about several different European peoples to be very multi-cultural, though they’d all be “white.”

Really interesting discussion about turning a few genre conventions on their head and what that means for publishers and audience, though.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

BTW, everybody who does Greyhawk does stuff like this. It has ideas imbedded, but it doesn't beat you over the head with references to the real world.

With Urbis, I do beat up readers with references to the real world. Hey, it worked for Warhammer Fantasy!

But seriously, I figure that the overall setting assumptions of Urbis are weird enough for people used to pseudo-medieval settings, so I might as well compensate by blatantly stealing lots of stuff from real world history. Besides, the real world has so much cool stuff to steal from that you sometimes get some really cool synergies - like the "Dragonborn Zionists" I came up with recently, complete with an impending World Congress in the local equivalent of Switzerland...

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I think Jurgen has hinted at a good answer to this with his Eladrin/Drow rituals. Knowing where elf babies come from (I paraphrase loosely ) might be unnecessary detail, unless it leads to plots for the players. ANd a group of here-to-fore benevolent Eladrin desperate for children at any cost has certainly got plot potential.

Other people have problems with "updating" their favorite settings to 4E, but I must say that so far it actually improved on Urbis. I mean, the elven nation of [urlhttp://eruvian.com/locale.asp?localeID=486]Tuvareen[/url] used to have as its sole shtick that they had declining birth rates and kidnapped human children to breed with them when they have become grown up and brainwashed. But that wasn't terribly novel - so when the eladrins were introduced for 4E and I had to think about how they fit into the setting and how they related to elves, it all started to fit together...

And from there, it was a natural next step that the drow are created through a similar ritual. Which has all sorts of interesting political repercussions and the possibility of "drow cults" among normal elves who aren't part of the eladrin noble houses but want their children to be "special" anyway...

 

[Afrodyte]

*pokes thread with a cattle prod*

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Here's a Chosen One inversion.

Introduce a capable person to the party. Have the Powers That Be attach the Chosen One to the party, and the party must protect the Chosen One as he goes on his pilgrimage. He's the one that will save the world, the prophecies say. Oh, he only has a fraction of his eventual power now, but in the end, he will rival the gods. Have the Chosen One outshine the party in an early encounter, make the Chosen One seem like a Mary Sue DMPC.

Then, halfway through the adventure session, far from civilization, kill him.

Maybe he's done in by a lucky arrow. Maybe he falls overboard. Maybe he catches a cold. But he dies. Guess he's not the world's savior, after all.

Now what?

I like that. It also helps if the Powers That Be are suddenly not available for further instructions for an unknown but probably ominous reason. In the meantime, the Big Bad Guy is marshaling his forces and all hell breaks loose.

So it's up to the PCs to save the world. But how can they win against a broken prophecy?

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Hobo wrote:
You answered your own question there

Yeah, just indulging in some rhetoric. What can I say, I'm a bit of a wanker.

Agreed, you have to know your group. This takes time of course but is one of the benefits of having a good solid group of friends to play with.

More on the topic: real world stuff is a great way to get detail. I also steal shamelessly from history/cross cultural stuff and then slap it together with other bits and see what I get.

I have a book of fairy tales compiled from all over the world. Rich in ideas to pilfer. And not just the window dressing but the content and style which can vary a great deal from main stream western ways of telling fairy tales.