What Is It About the Fantasy Genre Anyway?

[Darrin Drader]

Why is fantasy the single most played genre out there? I love me some good scifi gaming, including space opera, post apocalyptic, near future, and various others, but fantasy owns gaming. I've met a number of people who won't even consider playing a non-fantasy RPG, and that doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Don't get me wrong, I love fantasy myself. My fantasy RPG books outnumber my scifi gaming books two to one. Not only that, but while I like to read a good helping of scifi, I always seem to come back to fantasy sooner or later (I recently decided to start reading Terry Goodkind's Wizard's First Rule). Is it the fact that fantasy is so easily customized? Is it that fantasy speaks to some primal part of ourselves that still wants to believe in magic, fairies, and monsters? Or is it simply that fantasy was the first genre introduced as an RPG, and it therefore became default?

Do you prefer fantasy gaming? If so, why?

 

[Ed_Laprade]

A good chunk of it, at least, is that it was first. (Which is why D&D is still the industry leader, IMO.) Also, it's easier to start small and keep the characters from running off where you don't want them to go. At least with regards to sci-fi with space ships anyway. (Much non-space ship sci-fi games seem to be closer to fantasy, particularily those of the Gamma World sort.)

I'll play just about any kind of RPG. And usually like it.

 

[The Shaman]

Do you prefer fantasy gaming?

Not at all. The only thing I enjoy less than fantasy is superheroes.

I prefer modern and historical gaming (early modern era to present day) first and foremost, and sci fi second. Fantasy just doesn't float my boat.

Makes it tough to find other gamers.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Why is fantasy the single most played genre out there? I love me some good scifi gaming, including space opera, post apocalyptic, near future, and various others, but fantasy owns gaming. I've met a number of people who won't even consider playing a non-fantasy RPG, and that doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Don't get me wrong, I love fantasy myself. My fantasy RPG books outnumber my scifi gaming books two to one. Not only that, but while I like to read a good helping of scifi, I always seem to come back to fantasy sooner or later (I recently decided to start reading Terry Goodkind's Wizard's First Rule). Is it the fact that fantasy is so easily customized? Is it that fantasy speaks to some primal part of ourselves that still wants to believe in magic, fairies, and monsters? Or is it simply that fantasy was the first genre introduced as an RPG, and it therefore became default?

Do you prefer fantasy gaming? If so, why?

I prefer fantasy gaming.

I usually prefer sci-fi settings, but most such settings aren't designed for gaming. It's rather difficult to twist something like Battlestar Galactica (most character are highly-competent military officers who act like a cross between marines and fighter pilots and are dependent on high technology) into something appropriate for gaming.

Honestly, the only setting I've seen that wasn't designed for gaming but could be easily made into a sci-fi RPG is Firefly/Serenity. (Of course, someone did make an RPG for it, but you could turn any good ruleset into Firefly/Serenity). The very low technology (the main characters fly in an unarmed spaceship until the movie!) makes this a lot easier to pull off.

Fantasy is just easier. I figure most of us probably know little about caring about a horse, but we all understand the concept of a horse. And armor. And swordfighting. Playing a knight-type hero is therefore quite easy.

Now try this in sci-fi, where every little thing and every big thing is quite different. Even modern-day games (and movies!) run into problems with things like cell phones, so naturally sci-fi games run into this problem too.

IME, it's extraordinarily difficult playing a skills-based character in a modern setting. Unless you know the skill in questio in real-life, any description (whether you're the player or GM) will come off as "boring" or "just a bunch of dice rolls). At least thinking about using a skill is pretty easy in a modern setting though. Also, it's rather difficult for GMs to make many skills useful in an RPG, to the point where a scientist-type player might keep asking the GM "is Craft (pharmaceutical) going to be useful at all in this adventure? Do I get to roll it more than twice?" Doing the same thing in a sci-fi setting is much harder since the same problems exist and no one really knows what the future will hold. Things that would be obvious to characters that live in the future will often simply not occur to players born in modern times.

I think for these reasons, sci-fi will always do better in fiction rather than RPGs. There, the author can take as much time as they want to explain things. (Even then, sci-fi mystery novels tend to suck, as what are the chances the author will have explained future technology enough for readers to have any chance to solve the mystery for themselves?)

Sci-fi games also tend to have scaling problems. I'll use Battlestar Galactica as an example. (Note that I'm not discussing the actual BS:G game, as I've never even seen the system.) Writing a set of rules for characters as people, and another for characters as space pilots just makes the game more complicated. And good luck if only some of the PCs are pilots.

Even in modern games, a character who wants to be a good driver will continually impose a different subsystem (that would be driving rules) on the game. And of course, probably no one else will be any good at it, either. This is before taking into account some rules systems having terrible driving rules (d20 Modern made running people over way too good!).

I once went through a bag d20 Future game where the GM allowed almost everything. We had aliens, mutants, people owning robots (those rules were busted, by the way), people owning mecha, people owning spaceships... guess how the mecha-operator felt when they realized spaceships were umpteen times better than mecha in every way that counted?

 

[pawsplay]

I think part of it is the societal structure. Swords-and-sorcery worlds tend to be rather stratified, yet a character can become someone else just by going down the road... or change their standing by slaying an ogre. Most people are as stable as dirt, but your characters stand out precisely because they are willing to take extreme risks in order to do things outside society. I think that is why the cunning rogue and the wandering sellsword are two of the major archetypes, along with the wizard willing to pay nearly any price for power. Religion cuts across social lines, although medieval society is mirrored in the hierarchy of friars, bishops, and so forth. But even the king is not immune to the portents and doctrines lain out by divine guidance and enshrined in tradition.

Another part is the magical, the dreamlike. Some people get this kick in other ways, whether it's alt-history or post-human sci-fi, but fantasy is an easy gateway to elsewherewhen. Spy thrillers tend to be fantasies about danger and extreme competence, but in fantasy, the fantasy encompasses not only the great but the small. Pig farmers, tiny dragonets, villages of mushroom people are themselves adventures because they are outside the ordinary, in much the same way Morocco or WWII-era Germany are outside the ordinary for most gamers.

Finally, and this is just a supposition, I get the sense that many gamers, moreso than the general public, view violence and strife as something that can be channeled, but never excised, from the human. The paladin is an embodiment of force used for good, while the thief embodies force turned toward simple survival. The enemies are the truly inimical and ignoble... petty thieves, inhuman monsters, empty-hearted tyrants. The really great villains of fantasy are often, in a sense, heroes... Saurson's betrayal is impressive and hence admirable, although we simultaneously depise his evil and pity his sickened soul. Fellow rogues and zealots, who initially seem foes, become friends as soon as they see how to turn their alliance against common foes. Thus Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, two individuals with no previous loyalty to each other, become partners in crime, and then enemies of the Thieves' Guild, side by side. Even games of courtly intrigue and romance center around the idea of less sympathetic figures who endanger the interests of the PCs. The fantasy world tends to be a stark place of literal violence, metaphorical challenge, and continuous struggle between rival powers.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I prefer fantasy, as to why, I believe we could scribe tomes on that question alone. I suspect that a lot of the attraction is the 'simplicity' of fantasy societies. I am sure that they are more excpetions to the sweeping statements I am about to make here in EN World than in most other places because of the nature of the people here and their interests and experience.
Most settings I have come across are pseudo medevial/renaissance/dark ages or some combination of the three with a bit of the American west (as portrayed in old movies) thrown in. Simpler times, when personal relationships and loyalty were paramount and wrongs could be righted by taking up arms against the wrong dooer.

Modern society is incredibly complex, inderdependant and all pervasive. There is no getting away from it. There is no frontier, where you can walk the endless horizon without meeting anybody, no Tortuga where only the stong survive. Now, I know that the reality of those places were more complicated than that and only the really lucky lasted long in the winderness alone. The myth is different and in fantasy we are operating as if the myth is true.
There is also the problem that modern armed conflict is largely impersonal. You hunker down in cover and fire at distant muzzle flashes, not the (perceived as more heroic and honorable) face to face conflict of sword fighting.

Then there is the world building aspect. It is easier to take away from our world or worlds of the past and create a fantasy land that it is to create the entire technological and social basis of a society that is operating on scientific principles that we do not currently understand.

If you take typical scifi scenarios, some allow the same type of stories that you can get in a typical D&D game, just with added blasters. Star Wars allows such stories. Investigative stories can take place anywhere. A lot of science fiction however, the science is a character. So unless the the players and DM are up to speed in that science the result will have little to make it Sci-Fi

 

[el-remmen]

For me, it is about randomness, technology and death. . .

That is, randomness, the level of tech and the handling of death in a fantasy setting makes it particularly appropriate for long term fun play.

My "simulationist" tendencies have something to do with this as well. . . But basically, for me my love of games where "bad stuff happens" and the particular fragility of modern (or near-modern/post-modern) life don't mix well.

Example. the whole team of PCs is on a spacecraft going from Planet A to Planet B during an interplanetary war and come under attack. If their ships gets blown up they are more than likely all dead and most of them don't even get a die roll! Assuming some of them were flying it and others were manning guns, that might mitigate it a bit - but the chance is still there.

The same goes for flying in planes - now it could be everyone could have a parachute or a rocketpack, I guess. . . But that is about accessibility of equipment. . .

Basically, I find other genres of RPing focus more on narrative approaches - which is all well and fine, but not my preferred style - we know that the Millennium Falcon is not going to take a hit from a tie-fighter killing Han, Leia, Chewie and Threepio. . . They are not going to get eaten by a space worm. .. But in D&D, the "main" characters, just might get killed by a giant worm and at least they all have a chance to fight against it - or don't have to necessarily rely on one piece of equipment (the spaceship) and a couple of characters (pilots) to escape.

Also, modern technology can be as bad as buff-scry-teleport - that is why when I ran an M&M game I set in the late 70s - close enough to our time period to allow easy immersion, but no internet, cellphones, etc. . . You want instantaneous communication? Use a power. Pay for it.

I am not saying I won't play in other genres, but in my experience - no game I have ever run or played in that wasn't D&D (or some FRPG) lasted longer than a few sessions - it just didn't feel the same.

EDIT: I forgot the "Death" part - in fantasy (even in gritty settings like I like to run) death can be overcome - you can't really do that in spycraft, for example - I guess a sci-fi setting could have something similar (clones and the like), but the further you go in that direction the more the setting becomes fantasy with the word "science" as fill-in for "magic".

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Sci-fi games also tend to have scaling problems. I'll use Battlestar Galactica as an example. (Note that I'm not discussing the actual BS:G game, as I've never even seen the system.) Writing a set of rules for characters as people, and another for characters as space pilots just makes the game more complicated. And good luck if only some of the PCs are pilots.

I am not convinced that military characters really work in any rpg where the characters are part of the mainstream military and in the chain of command.

Undercover and special ops work ok, (or at least do not stretch incredulidty too far) but regular grunts are too confined by the chain of command for most groups.

The subsystems issue is more a world building issue than anything else.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I am not convinced that military characters really work in any rpg where the characters are part of the mainstream military and in the chain of command.

Undercover and special ops work ok, (or at least do not stretch incredulidty too far) but regular grunts are too confined by the chain of command for most groups.

The subsystems issue is more a world building issue than anything else.

I disagree. I've seen some SG-1 games run fairly well. You just use a non-standard unit ... like SG-random number

As for subsystems, that issue comes up in any sci-fi game that has armed spaceships. Players seem to expect that, and often demand that, not surprising because so many sci-fi settings do have these armed spaceships.

 

[GSHamster]

My theory is that the central conceit of RPGs is that "as you do more stuff, you become harder to kill."

Fantasy is the genre that directly correlates to this in a way that none of the other genres do. Technology is designed to make the less skilled more deadly.

"God made all men, but Sam Colt made them equal."

Second, I think fantasy is one of the few genres that's willing to be explicit about Good vs Evil. Pretty much every other genre likes to get bogged down in murky shades of grey, and I think that's a big turn-off for a lot of people.