What Is It About the Fantasy Genre Anyway?

[Mallus]

I can relate to the squalor of an 11th century peasant village more easily than to an underhive or a holo chamber or what have you in the 25th century. I can relate better to messenger pigeons than to hyperspace communication relays.

I grew up watching Star Trek reruns in a middle-class household. I can relate to the b*llshit science of the future better than I can to actual medieval living conditions.

And as for phones... you can't really call for help timely in a fantasy setting, at least not at low level.

You can't call for help, or have help reach you in a reasonable amount of time in many places around our world, even with access to helpful devices.

As for the question: why fantasy? I'm think a large part of it has to do with the popularity of D&D itself, the fact it became a legitimate cultural phenomenon. I'm not sure you're going to find many causative reasons in the genre itself, though I have to think on that some more.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Let me put it another way then. There's no reason to use standard military units in a BS:G setting.

I don't see why you made your first reply to my post. I wasn't saying I was bothered by the characters being military, but by them being very competent and being very tech-reliant.

That bit was not obvious to me.

B:SG is closer to how a real military works than most shows. Every one is within a pretty tight chain of command. This limits player freedom of action and there are consquences for screwing up. That is what occured to me when you brought up BSG and military sci-fi.

On the competence issue, that depends on how much handwaving you are prepared to do. I would have little problems with it given a good enough skills/talent system.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Before I toss my hat into the ring, I'd like to say that there are already some really top-notch answers in this thread already.

I like sf, but I do find sf gaming a lot harder to prep that sf gaming. Some of the reasons are:

1. I know, or can easily discover, what a grain mill looks like, and how it works. So, if I want to run an adventure within that space, it is easy to devise floorplans and understand the operation of the simple machine that is a water wheel. Not so for space stations, starships, etc. Heck, even running a modern game, what do I do when the players go through the restricted areas of the mall? How many of us have been in the spaces behind the stores, and know what they are like enough to describe them?

(This made the original Gamma World, which I enjoyed, hard for me to run. Running fight down a ruined subway system? Cool idea! Knowing what the non-public parts of a subway station or even a subway line should look like? No idea......Except that I do know that there are doors and side tunnels down there, 'cause I've seen 'em through the window!)

2. Fantasy is forgiving. If I take Tolkein's orcs, and toss them into the mix with Lovecraftian monsters and Gygaxian dragons, no one blinks. Lump Vulcans, Daleks, and Wookies into the same universe, though, and you can have pretty dramatic breakdown of suspension of disbelief.

3. Travel Prep. In a fantasy game, to begin I need to sketch out a village or town, the local wilderness within 5 days' travel, and a few local adventure sites. I know how far the PCs can get in their first few forays, so I need plan no farther. In the Star Wars universe, say, they can ignore my plot hook and go........anywhere. How the heck do I prep the whole bleeding galaxy?!?!!? Jump into the TARDIS, and you have to potentially prep the universe, as well as alternates, at all potential time periods. SF has a much larger "stage" than fantasy.

4. Survivability. Most sf systems are a lot less forgiving of PC missteps than D&D is. The players need not only to be able to explore the star systems they encounter; they need to be able to survive that exploration. If one phaser blast is all it takes to remove a wall, how do you design a system that both allows the wall to be removed and the PC (but not the red shirt) to survive? I have some real hope for the upcoming Doctor Who RPG in this regard, but it is difficult to have energy weapons that both seem deadly and yet the PCs can survive. There is no doubt that a lightsaber, a phaser, or a Dalek gun is more deadly than a sword. IMHO, at least.

(Same problem with radium guns in ERG's Mars series as a setting. If you can shoot someone from miles away, how does John Carter survive except by authorial fiat? And, assuming that you prefer a game where getting into a deadly situation can be....well, deadly.....how do you both give John Carter a chance to survive and make radium guns the threat they should be in that setting?)

5. Economics. I don't know about you, but a lot of my early Traveller experiences (mostly as a player) ended up revolving around economics. We traded, we gambled, we bought more and got larger starships. My PC ended up owning a luxury liner. We did very little actual adventuring, and a lot more speculation in markets. It was fun, in a way, but I'd enjoy a sf game that had a bit more of a hands-on approach to things.

6. The Law. When I kill an orc, I am fairly certain in most settings that the Law isn't going to ride up on hoverbikes and send me to the Mars Penal Colony. When I kill the slimy slug monster in a sf game, I am never really sure.


RC

 

[garyh]

I like sf, but I do find sf gaming a lot harder to prep that sf gaming. Some of the reasons are:

1. I know, or can easily discover, what a grain mill looks like, and how it works. So, if I want to run an adventure within that space, it is easy to devise floorplans and understand the operation of the simple machine that is a water wheel. Not so for space stations, starships, etc. Heck, even running a modern game, what do I do when the players go through the restricted areas of the mall? How many of us have been in the spaces behind the stores, and know what they are like enough to describe them?

This also becomes a problem when you get maps for something you know in the modern world and they're silly. I remember a Dungeon that had modern maps, including a bowling alley. Great idea, but as my dad is a bowling alley mechanic and I grew up around them, including seeing the back mechanical non-public stuff, I could see where things were just totally off. The map had virtually no space for the pinsetter machines or maintenance support, the lanes pretty much went all the way to the back wall. Which is a shame, because a chase over the whirling, dangerous pinsetters could be a lot of fun (in a game, of course).

In any case, seeing this sort of obvious cluelessness not only made that map something I'd never want to use in a game, it also made me doubt the accuracy (and "fun stuff"-inclusion) of other similar material produced for the game. And that was a bummer.

On the other hand, I'll look at tons of castle maps and not notice there's no space for the privy. And I won't be able to tell that there are too many / few blacksmiths for a village the size that's depicted in a map.

 

[Toben the Many]

I disagree with several of these points. Such as...

Yeah, I can't agree more.

Bottom line...its a lot of work. But for the life of me I can't figure out why it isn't better represented in the gaming market. As discussed on another thread a while back, if Star Frontiers had been three hardcover books with character classes, high tech artifacts to find and an entire volume of space creatures, we'd all be arguing over whether its 4th edition was true to the majesty of the original.

Right. People keep talking about how Sci-Fi is not more dominant in the RPG market because it's more work. I'll agree that Sci-Fi is more work, because whatever you come up with has to be justified with science somehow. Whereas in Fantasy, you can just say, "It's magic!"

Science-Fiction will often skip over things as well. For example, according to Roddenberry, Warp Speed was always "the speed of plot". Nor did it come up with how "Warp Speed" worked when he was doing the show. But you cannot hand waive everything. That alone creates more work.

However, I don't think that alone is enough to explain why there isn't more of a Sci-Fi market in RPGs.

I think that has to do with a variety of factors. Chief among them is that Fantasy literature nowadays is heavily grounded in the Tolkien/Arthurian mythology. It has its their roots there. Whereas Sci-Fi has multiples roots from multiple trees. When you say Sci-Fi, what do you mean?

• Jules Verne's vision of the future?
• Isaac Asimov's vision of the future?
• The Star Trek utopian view?
• The Star Wars space opera view?
• The Traveller hardcore view?
• The Cyberpunk view?
• The Transhuman view?

There are so many genres of Sci-Fi, there are so many branches...that's it's very hard to pin Sci-Fi down to one thing. Thus, there is no one Sci-Fi game that dominates the market. Instead, there are a number of small but fanatical followings of various systems.

For exampe, there is a very solid Star Wars RPG fanbase out there. There is a solid RIFTs fanbase out there. Battletech has a dedicated following. So does Traveller. ShadowRun. Etc. And each of these settings, while all falling under the umbrella of Sci-Fi are radically different from each other.

So there's a big Sci-Fi following out there, but they're just blocked off into different corners.

 

[Felon]

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.

This thread seems to bear a great deal of overanalysis IMHO. At the risk of sounding immodest, I find the matter's pretty straightforward.

Let's start with re-examining the OP's most basic premise: fantasy isn't the dominant genre. D&D is the dominant game. There's a big distinction there. When you look at the runner-up games, those with sword-and-sorcery fantasy settings don't outnumber the rest. That's because most folks choose D&D when they want to play fantasy.

Now, with a new premise we have a new question: why is D&D the dominant game? One word: loot. There's a reward system that dispenses tangible, quantifiable, and modular power-ups at regular intervals that you just don't have in other games. Even other fantasy setting games don't make a big deal out of loot; some of them actually take a disdainful look towards it. Rather, other games have you playing just for the less-palpable reward of experience points and, well..fun.

Next question: is the fantasy setting relevant to D&D's popularity? Well, it facilitates the dispensation of loot, since it's in this setting where wealth and power is largely decentralized and hidden away in ancient, forgotten caches. And those caches just happen to also contain monsters and hazards. And you get to kill the monsters and tackle the hazards without any authority telling you trespassing, theft, and mass homocide is wrong--or at least bears some degree of oversight and regulation. Come to think of it, maybe I should have said two words: loot + freedom. In this respect, D&D is very much the GTA of RPG's.

Fie upon all talk of subtle nuances. Kill things and take their stuff. What game is even trying to serve that up besides D&D? Thread over.

 

[Spatula]

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

That's a central conceit of D&D (and many RPGs have copied D&D there), but it's not at all intrinsic to RPGs and there are quite a few games where that isn't the case.

For me, any system where you get mystically tougher to kill as a function of time has serious problems being used for modern-day or future-tech games. With heroic fantasy, it's easy to hand-wave away injuries as nicks, bruises, etc. I personally have a harder time applying that to settings where everyone is carrying around laser guns ("another grazing shot! what are the odds!"). But at the same time I don't think that many people want to play games where the character they've played for months can just randomly die.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Do you prefer fantasy gaming? If so, why?

I'm in your boat. SciFi is nice, but just doesn't have the same appeal that fantasy has. Even Star Wars, which is really just a fantasy epic with a scifi veneer, is only 'meh' for me. I played a few sessions of a Star Wars game and a single session of V:tM but neither really did anything for me, though I suspect that if they hadn't been so rp-heavy and/or diceless I would have enjoyed them more.

I'm not sure why I like fantasy so much. Maybe it's that deep-seated desire that we all have to some degree to go back to the good old times, when life was simple.

TS

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

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.

I read loads and loads of fantasy/mythology, sci-fi, horror, and used to read TONS of superhero comics- all of which have at least some kind of RPG presence in the market.

But when it comes to gaming, I wind up playing D&D almost exclusively. Not FRPGs...D&D.

That's not by choice.

IME, its because of 2 things:

1) more gamers seem to be into fantasy & mythology more than any other genres,

and

2) D&D is the 800lb gorilla in the RPG market.

The second one is somewhat key- D&D is likely to be the first RPG that someone hears of and plays. Depending on where you are, you might not even hear of another RPG until you've been in the hobby a while.

 

[Jack7]

A lot of people have mentioned very good and very valid reasons for the phenomenon. One extremely important one however is the idea and ideal of personal heroism (as played out through the imaginary character). When fantasy games first started heroism was immediately and innately understood to be part of the fundamental basis/nature of fantasy gaming and was intimately and intrinsically considered central to it.

This remained the case for a very long time and even after the ideal of heroism was lost in most modern games (that is recently, not as in related to genre) heroism still reminded a central issue, even if only as a shadow of its former self. It is simply stimulating to the mind and soul of most people, the idea of playing the hero. Even when heroism is lost, confused, diluted, and dispersed in modern game construction, like a mostly forgotten, long buried artifact, it still remains central in the background, like some quested after, unbroken, universal monument, gilding the idea of adventure with meaning. Though heroism becomes hidden beneath an artificial facade of mechanical and technical and diversionary game issues, it still remains a living, if unrecognized force, and an impetus of purpose.

And even though one can be heroic, and should be, in sci-fi, modern, and other such genre-based games, there remains a sort of immediate and intimate connection, a sort of basic, intuitive ideal of a peculiar and particular kind of heroism associated with the fantasy genre.