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Reinventing fantasy cliches
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<blockquote data-quote="Ydars" data-source="post: 4150790" data-attributes="member: 62992"><p>One interesting way of using cliches is to take one from a genre where it IS completely mined out and put it into a different genre where it is much less familiar.</p><p></p><p>Take for instance Serenity/Firefly; this is basically the western cliche recast as Sci-Fi. Or the Chronicles of Brother Cadfael, which are murder mysteries set in medieval England, and which have spawned a whole new genre of historical detective fiction that now has more than fifty active writers.</p><p></p><p>The same can profitably be done with Fantasy. Simply take principals/cliches from Sci-Fi (or other genres) and apply them to sword and sorcery. </p><p></p><p>For example, I once ran a campaign where the whole world was immensely dangerous because of monsters and humans had to spend their whole lives shut up in huge cities that were controlled by a magical intelligence; in effect, the city was alive and organic. The twist was that humans created all these beasts and the city during their wars with one another in the past and then had degenerated. This is a classic Sci-Fi cliche but it is not so familiar when re-clothed.</p><p></p><p>It is almost "Logun's run" or a serious version of "Paranoia". The important thing is that although the background story is stolen, the atmosphere HAS to be completely consistent with Fantasy and so you play down anything technological and play up the mysterious and mystical to make it fit.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ydars, post: 4150790, member: 62992"] One interesting way of using cliches is to take one from a genre where it IS completely mined out and put it into a different genre where it is much less familiar. Take for instance Serenity/Firefly; this is basically the western cliche recast as Sci-Fi. Or the Chronicles of Brother Cadfael, which are murder mysteries set in medieval England, and which have spawned a whole new genre of historical detective fiction that now has more than fifty active writers. The same can profitably be done with Fantasy. Simply take principals/cliches from Sci-Fi (or other genres) and apply them to sword and sorcery. For example, I once ran a campaign where the whole world was immensely dangerous because of monsters and humans had to spend their whole lives shut up in huge cities that were controlled by a magical intelligence; in effect, the city was alive and organic. The twist was that humans created all these beasts and the city during their wars with one another in the past and then had degenerated. This is a classic Sci-Fi cliche but it is not so familiar when re-clothed. It is almost "Logun's run" or a serious version of "Paranoia". The important thing is that although the background story is stolen, the atmosphere HAS to be completely consistent with Fantasy and so you play down anything technological and play up the mysterious and mystical to make it fit. [/QUOTE]
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