The Possibility of "Too Fantastic" Fantasy

[Zamkaizer]

Look...basic human psychology here - the very point of tieflings and many other exotic races is that they seem cool [LOL] when not everyone's a tiefling. Now they're everywhere, people will go looking for the next "more magical magic". Whatever is more rare will become the new cool [LOL]. It's magic and psionics all over again (i.e. magic is too common and so psionics becomes "the new magic").

Look, this is basic human psychology. The very point of Tieflings and other exotic races is that they seem positively groovy because they've reached a state of self-actualization, as their alien cultures and mannerisms leave little room for development of feelings of belongingness and self-esteem. Furthermore, they are also subject to resurgent genital-obsession amongst players, due to their phallus-surrogate tails and horns. The attention given to those who play them serves to further positively reinforce the desire to do so.

Now that's basic human psychology.

 

[Minicol]

If W&M is any way to judge, 4E will be constantly reminding us DM's to remember the fantasy part of the FRPG. And I agree. But we can't forget the mundane, everyday aspects either, lest we lose the "fantasy".

Nice post. I wouldn't necessarily mind high fantasy, it all depends how it is done.

I can't help having the feeling that 4e is looking somewhat like Heroes of Might and Magic. Except without the graphics.

I like HMM, but this is not my cup of tea.

 

[S'mon]

Of course you need setting. However, what I don't have to do anymore is spend hundreds of hours mentally masturbating and creating a world, just to play D&D.

*yech*
Surely masturbating and creating are mutually exclusive? I could call world-creation 'mental childbirth' like Athena from the head of Zeus, and at least it'd make some sense. WoW seems a lot more masturbatory to me. Unless you do it in a group.
*/yech*

 

[kennew142]

What really bugs me, I think, is that in all the good fantasy settings I've seen where non-humans are not completely marginalized, the attitude of "the more bizarre it is, the better!" doesn't seem to be present, and humans ARE still the majority race, generally speaking. Things like the Malazan books and Planescape use their fantasy elements carefully, rather than splashing them everywhere.

I don't think this attitude is present in D&D 4e either. The designers mention fantastic locations and terrain, but that's likely because it was never called out in earlier editions of the game, which seemed to focus entirely on the mundane in world building.

Humans still seem to be the majority in the implied setting, or at least dominant. W&M makes the point that most of the points of light are old strongholds of Nerath (the last human empire) and that the humans and other races live there pretty much as they did before the fall.

The point to demarginalizing non-humans is to give them some room in the design space. When multiple human ethnicities abound, and the map is filled with different human nations and cultures, there is little room for non-humans.

The major effect of this new design conceit for my upcoming campaign is that the races are more integrated into each other's territory. Much like in Eberron, the last human empire in my campaign world had large numbers of non-humans living in it as part of the culture, not as oddities. Now that civilization seems to have collapsed/be collapsing, the same is true. The nation that the campaign is centered in is a human nation, but there are large minorities of non-humans present.

BTW, I still think that the overall presence of fantastic terrain and bizarre magical effects in the FR will smaller than the previews would tend to indicate. In published scenarios, these elements may be more prevalent, just because the opportunities for adventure may be greater near these elements.

 

[Kesh]

Anorexic catgirls with tentacles might be taking things a bit too far. There are certain things that are just indecent.

How in the world do you get from "displacer-beast people" to "indecent"?

 

[The Ubbergeek]

It's all much because Fantasy is reinventing the wheel based on the same old material since decades.

Tolkienesque fantasy, as fun a sit is, IS overdone.

So, you have to do things otherwise, and it sounds at times 'too fantastic'.

 

[Spatula]

Warcraft is a big move from Earth mythology,

Not any more than traditional D&D, which it draws from, heavily (Warhammer being another big influence on WoW, and one that also comfortably fits in the D&D-LotR fantasy subgenre).

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

The thoughts on mixing in the mundane and familiar with the fantastic in order to provide an understandable baseline with which players and DMs can work echo quite a few things I have been trying to do with Urbis.

Urbis has a lot of rather fantastical elements - mass production of magic items, plants more than a mile high, magical travel to other planets, and so forth. Yet I've introduced a lot of deliberate parallels to the real world - starting with the basic geography and then plundering history for any ideas I found useful. This way, players and DMs can say:

- "Ah, this city is sort of similar to Victorian London. I now can imagine what it is like!"
- "So this Evil Empire has vicious and fractured politics between various government organizations like the post-Stalin Soviet Union. I can work with that!"
- "Ah, there are plans for something similar to the First Zionist World Congress later in this campaign year, only it's dragonborn organizing it. That could provide all sorts of plot ideas..."


All those parallels to the real world allow the GM to better visualize the setting and furthermore get plenty of new ideas merely by researching the original inspiration. Setting elements that are wholly fantastical, on the other hand, are harder to grasp and research.

And I think there's a reason why Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play is so popular while Tekumel is not.

 

[DandD]

And I think there's a reason why Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play is so popular while Tekumel is not.

One has one of the most famous miniature skirmish battlegame-lines, whereas the other doesn't, I guess, which is also the reason why so many people know it in the first place.

Also, according to Wikipedia, that Tekumel-setting reads like some kind of scifi-stuff set to become a medieval fantasy-world. Well, you shouldn't mix scifi and fantasy too much, I'd say, and Games Workshop realized that, which is why they officially separated the Warhammer Fantasy World from the Warhammer 40.000-Universe and let both franchise stand on its own.

Of course, Wikipedia does list that another factor contributing to the decline of popularity of Tekumel lies with TSR's lacking support.

Well, as always, I guess that there's more than meets the eyes.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

All those parallels to the real world allow the GM to better visualize the setting and furthermore get plenty of new ideas merely by researching the original inspiration. Setting elements that are wholly fantastical, on the other hand, are harder to grasp and research.

And I think there's a reason why Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play is so popular while Tekumel is not.

And I think this may hit the Al-Quadim - Maztica split in historical parallelism.

Al-Quadim is a beautiful analogue - good vocabulary, great art, cool subsystems for status and divine intervention. Plus the adventures were among the most literary I've ever seen.

But it's also really fantastic - there are elven bedine tribes, alliances with genies nations, commoners get basic cantrips to keep food cool, everyone is integrated under one loose religious empire.

Maztica is a faithful analogue - they put a lot of effort into figuring out how stone works as weapons in a DnD context and they keep the class powers fairly close to historical vs. literary elements. Heck they even have conquistadors show up.

And it's not really fantastic. Sure there is magic and wars among the gods but these are almost downplayed compared to the actual fables of the people much less what we commonly imagine today.

Now, I really really really want a pre-Columbian RPG setting - but even I don't play Maztica, and I'd say that that's because it errs too much on faithfullness without hitting the fantasy.

So I say Yay to Wizards downplaying the analoques because of Maztica, but I really hope that doesn't mean no more Al-Quadims.

Though, truth be told, I think Al-Quadim could deal with a little more fantasy to it too.