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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8450137" data-attributes="member: 6790260">"High fantasy" pretty clearly means different things to different people, because some classify LotR as high fantasy, and others classify it as low fantasy. That is, with the incredibly ultra-broad definition above ("fantasy typically with magic") then essentially any fantasy ever that's set in a differetn world is high fantasy, even if there's no magic in it at all. But for a lot of people LotR is low fantasy because:A) there's only a small handful of people who practice outright magic and only one of them is anything like a main character (Gandalf), B) actual magical objects are quite rare, e.g. there's only seven Palantiri, we only see like four magical weapons in total, and there's a precise and exact accounting of the magic rings that exist, namely 20: 9 for humans, 7 for dwarves, 3 for elves, 1 made by Sauron,C) Beings that exhibit other overt supernatural characteristics are very rare. The trolls in the Hobbit, the Ringwraiths, maybe kinda-sorta Shadowfax, Smaug, the souls of the dead people in the mountain, the ents, Sauron. Pretty much everything else is "human, but cooler or a different size," "non-human, but an animal (possibly enlarged) of humanlike intelligence" (e.g. the eagles), or "not actually all that fantastical."For these folks (which I am generally more sympathetic to than the above alleged definition), a "high fantasy" setting is one where magic is woven into the fabric of things. D&D has powerful spellcasters, but society doesn't really change because of this. Eberron, despite actually being comparatively "low" magic (because magewrights can't replicate high-level spells), is emphatically "high" magic because magic is EVERYWHERE and people use it extremely casually. Harry Potter would be a "high fantasy" setting to them, even though in principle it's literally set on our actual Earth, because literal actual magic is everywhere and literal actual magic-users are by far the most common beings interacted with, whether or not they're human.</blockquote>

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