Urban fantasy? (that isn't WoD)

[MGibster]

I tend to think that genres are mostly used by publishers to market their books. In most stores, you'll find Richard Bachman's The Running Man in the literature or horror section even though it's science fiction. I'm not one to get into great debates over whether something is part of a genre or not. I roll my eyes when someone argues that Alien is horror and not science fiction and vice versa. Urban fantasy seems like such a broad genre that just about any game with fantastical elements set in an urban environment qualifies. I wouldn't have thought of Call of Cthulhu or Vampire the Masquerade as urban fantasy in a million years, but, like I said, arguing about whether something belongs in a particular category isn't a hill I'm going to die on.

From what I can tell, just about any game set in an urban environment in the modern world that includes supernatural elements qualifies as urban fantasy.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This kind of reminds me of Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber series. Sliders style travel between different words is typically within the realm of science fiction, but it works perfectly well for fantasy too.

Though its well over onto the side of dark fantasy, Max Gladstone's Last Exit lands in this, too.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Being Human is quite yoinkable.

 

[Blue Orange]

I tend to think that genres are mostly used by publishers to market their books. In most stores, you'll find Richard Bachman's The Running Man in the literature or horror section even though it's science fiction. I'm not one to get into great debates over whether something is part of a genre or not. I roll my eyes when someone argues that Alien is horror and not science fiction and vice versa. Urban fantasy seems like such a broad genre that just about any game with fantastical elements set in an urban environment qualifies. I wouldn't have thought of Call of Cthulhu or Vampire the Masquerade as urban fantasy in a million years, but, like I said, arguing about whether something belongs in a particular category isn't a hill I'm going to die on.

I always thought one of the things that made Lovecraftian stuff so catchy is that it straddles sci-fi and horror, allowing it to appeal to fans of both genres.

Interestingly, you can find romance novels set in just about any setting you want.

 

[MGibster]

I always thought one of the things that made Lovecraftian stuff so catchy is that it straddles sci-fi and horror, allowing it to appeal to fans of both genres.

You're right about Lovecraft, his work can't always be cleanly placed in horror or in science fiction. In the latest version of Delta Green, the government types tend to look at magic through the lense of technology referring to it as hyper-geometry.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Well, its not a big secret that genres can crossover. I do think that monster-hunter stories tend to be more in the horror genre usually (often the part that is action-horror) than urban fantasy, but its not like the line there is particularly bright.

 

[Wicht]

I always thought one of the things that made Lovecraftian stuff so catchy is that it straddles sci-fi and horror, allowing it to appeal to fans of both genres.

Sci-fi, horror and pulp action...

Robert E. Howard's mythos contributions in particular should not be overlooked, but ramming a boat into a giant monster-demon certainly qualifies as action and adventure, or the flight from Innsmouth scene...

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

There’s a bazillion urban fantasy novels that we could use as inspiration, couldn’t we? It’s a very diverse genre. There’s Vampire Chronicles, Anita Blake, Dresden Files, Harry Potter, A Discovery of Witches, etc. I’m bursting at the seams with ideas.

Dresden Files has it's own rpg using the FATE rules.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I always wonder why we never got anything using The Librarian movies/Librarians TV show as a basis.

 

[VelvetViolet]

@Dannyalcatraz I hear what you're saying. It would be nice if there was a unified UF game system with all of those as campaign settings for exploring more specific takes on the genre.

I'd also suggest that while there's obviously some overlap, there's some big differences in tone between "Humans hunting supernatural monsters" and "People playing supernatural beings, dealing with problems originating in the supernatural community" in tone. Its relatively easy to find or adapt extent games that handle the former; as I've learned when looking around, the latter is trickier.

Indeed. I suspect that's because "paranormal investigators and/or monster hunters" is just easier to grok and is more or less a modern-ish take on the D&D formula of dungeoneering. There's Chill, Call of Cthulhu, Tabloid!, Dark•Matter, Monster of the Week, Buffy, retroclones, etc. And it has a firm basis in pop culture in the form of X-Files, Hammer Horror, Buffy, Supernatural, etc that groups can draw upon for inspiration and understanding.

Meanwhile, the latter... is really only a thing in obscure/also-ran tabletop games. The only representation in pop culture that normies would have heard of are the paranormal romances and supernatural soap operas. These get pretty silly after a while. For example, "werewolf male pregnancy" is so popular that it is now its own trope that gets academic papers written about it. (Obviously, none of this is reflected in the tabletop games.) Both the oversaturated fiction scene and the floundering ttrpg scene have gone in completely different conceptual directions.

Shows like True Blood, From Dusk Till Dawn, Being Human, and Lost Girl are the closest I can think of to approximating what ttrpgs try to do (they're not really all that close btw) and they all fizzled out eventually. The longest running urban fantasy tv show franchise is Vampire Diaries spinoffs, which is heavy on the romance and soap opera.