What traditional fantasy conventions are you tired of?

[Desdichado]

There's an old thread at RPG.net with pretty much this same topic that has recently been revived that got me thinking about this again. I also pulled up a similar thread we had here at one point, but it's probably been long enough we can have this discussion again.

What traditional fantasy conventions have you simply gotten tired of and removed from your homebrew worlds? Here's a few that I tossed from my current homebrew:

• No demihuman races; at least not ones that in any way resemble elves, dwarves, halflings, orcs, etc. Everybody on my setting is human. Or, at most, they're a breed of human that's gone through many generations of selective breeding by former slave-owning non-humans, so they're genetically human, but may be fairly divergent physically from a standard human; much like a chihuahua is quite a bit different from a St. Bernard or a Great Dane.
• What's up with the New Age, egalitarian quasi-medieval social structures and technologies all the time? My setting features a totalitarian city-state as the main arena for the campaign so far, and the PCs are freelancers on the payroll of the local "Gestapo" outfit. The setting features a number of clockwork and steampowered gadgets, ala Iron Kingdoms and firearms aren't exactly common, but they're hardly unknown. Most of the "peasants" work in iron mines, coal mines or factories rather than the fields.
• Magic is a wondrous and useful tool. Eh, sorta. In my campaign setting, we use the d20 Call of Cthulhu magic, including Sanity. Magic can save your life in a pinch, but unless you're already insane, you tend to avoid it for the most part.
• There's no legendary golden age of heroes in my setting. In the past, humanity was in the thrall of back-breaking slavery. Before that is pretty much legendary; no one has any hard and fast knowledge of that time, but it's still darker and grimmer than the Golden Age of Heroes myth. Some prehistoric cataclysm literally broke the world, and legend has it that it was the use of foul magics and humanity's hubris that led to that disaster, the following centuries of slavery.
• The setting as a whole is relatively agnostic. In fact, the gods that the church preaches are a fairly amoral lot, and the people are generally distrustful of them anyway. Kinda like Conan and the Cimmerian gods, which he claims have little use for mortals. No "Chosen of Mystra" or, prophecied Golden Child, or anything of the kind on my world.
• In fact, in general, I'd say my world looks a lot more towards Sword & Sorcery and Weird Tales conventions rather than Tolkien-esque fantasy conventions anyway. Kinda a horror/fantasy blend, with a fair dollop of steampunk thrown in as well.

So, what conventions are you tired of?

 

[Wraith Form]

[*]In fact, in general, I'd say my world looks a lot more towards Sword & Sorcery and Weird Tales conventions rather than Tolkien-esque fantasy conventions anyway. Kinda a horror/fantasy blend, with a fair dollop of steampunk thrown in as well.

So, when can I join your group?

 

[ledded]

Very much the same for me. Our still-in-building-stage return to a D&D-like world has quite a few Steampunk elements and a completely different socio-economic structure to accomodate a wider variety of genres, from medieval fantasy all the way up to pulp.

But I'm also a bit weary of the old stand-by trademarks of D&D like the rigid class system, the magic system, and the get-treasure-or-die feel. Admittedly, playing d20 Modern has changed our perceptions of how a game should be run, and we are translating the things we like about it back into a D&D-like game.

Not that there's anything wrong with old fashioned straight-up D&D, but it is just too much of some things and not enough of others to interest us anymore.

 

[diaglo]

i tired of d02. have been since its inception.

 

[Carpe DM]

This is an interesting question. On the one hand, tropes are repetitive. On the other, they represent the form and function of the gameworld -- that is, the reason we keep coming back to play D&D is because it is structured enough that it allows us to be truly creative. Kind of like a sonnet.

The usual answers to questions like this are (1) "I hate elves;" (i.e., I'm tired of D&D tropes); or (2) "If you don't like it, go play something else" (i.e., I enjoy the sense of structure that tropes give).

I think both answers are wrong. A truly useful setting will play on tropes. Rather than discarding metahuman races, they become interesting and new societies that play off of the expectations of the prior trope. A good example would be halflings in Dark Sun: not your momma's hobbit.

An example from my own gameworld is centaurs: not at all your tree-hugging, nymph-chasing woodland dwellers. When is the last time you saw a horse wild in the woods?

Rather, centaurs are my analog to the Huns: a massive, nomadic horde that covers the eastern Steppes, and has a religious creed that cities must be destroyed (their central religious tenet: "No stone may stand on stone.").

Rather than hating tropes, use them, play off of them, and transform them.

best,

Carpe

 

[Psion]

"Traditional fantasy" conventions, or "traditional D&D" conventions?

The D&D conventions I don't adhere to or find problematic:
- All deities have a specific church with their own heirarchy. This seems a bit of an anachronism to me, and sort of stuffs pantheistic faiths into a monotheistic suit. I prefer to think that many commoners and many priest revere multiple figures.
- All members of vastly diverse cultures of a given race speak the same language. Even if they are from different planes of reality. AKA, the Star Trek assumption. This buggers with reality yet is easily dealt with with more self-consistency and beleivability with magic.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

• a breed of human that's gone through many generations of selective breeding by former slave-owning non-humans
• My setting features a totalitarian city-state as the main arena for the campaign so far
• In my campaign setting, we use the d20 Call of Cthulhu magic, including Sanity.
• There's no legendary golden age of heroes in my setting. In the past, humanity was in the thrall of back-breaking slavery.
• the gods that the church preaches are a fairly amoral lot, and the people are generally distrustful of them anyway. Kinda like Conan and the Cimmerian gods, which he claims have little use for mortals.

Also, Joshua doesn't let his players drink soda at the game; he forces them to guzzle radioactive acid.

So, what conventions are you tired of?

I'm still stuck in 1982 when people were just starting to wonder how a 40' long dragon could fit in a 10'*10' room. However ...

* I'm not a fan of subraces. I've long observed that in the Forgotten Realms a bunch of elves could go off to an extended family reunion and come back as a new subrace.

* I like nations to resemble their neighboring nations. I'll always be a fan of oD&D Mystara, but a plethora of radically divergent cultures all within a limited radius just doesn't make sense to me. I'm talking magic-guys next to barbarian-guys next to knightly-guys here.

* While in the "real world" many people spoke many lauguages, very few spoke more than a couple of them. I really don't like having a long list of languages that everyone seems to know. Why not just stick with Common? Also, with one skill point every one seems to be able to master a language. In other words, its easier for a fighter to learn three languages than it is for him to decently be able to play a lute. That's more of a game gripe, but the point is that entire fantasy worlds seem to hinge on everyone mastering multiple languages. It's like saying everyone in Grayhawk, the Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, and Eberron are all Dutch or something.

* Finally: could we please stop seeing a whole bunch of half-insert-monster-here races that are products of rape? It's a little gross when you think about it. Besides, them orc women need lovin' too, you know.

 

[jester47]

- The language assumption. The idea that everyone speaks the same language from sea to shining sea. Now, that does not mean that there are not common widespread languages. Best example is common in the Forgotten Realms. There is no common, but rather a version of Chondothan/Illuskan that most have had some contact with. Essentially its broken chondothan - you are not going to be composing poetry with it. But in the Realms this is fixed for me.

- Heros are supposed to be better than everyone else. Yeah whatever. It takes all kinds in my campaigns. No golden child, or supposed savior. You are not special. Your position as a hero is a result of complete chance.

Everything else derives from these two things pretty much. I find that Fantasy needs to have some reflection of the reality we live in to be truely valid.

Aaron.

 

[Henry]

1) Magic is this lost and rare thing, except when it's not. Gimme Jack Vance or Aspirin's Myth-cycle, or even Eberron's "Low-level Magic as a societal convenience" as a shake-up to this convention. Alternately, Give me a no-magic world instead, even lower than Conan, one where the PC's live breathe and heal by their wits and a flashing sword instead of by magical intervention. All or nothing, says I.

2) The Heroes are the only ones who can save the day. One thing I used to stress in my Forgotten Realms games was that other characters were travelling around and doing other things. I even had (though they never ran into them) another group running around after them, cleaning up their messes, and taking the credit for what they started.

 

[jester47]

The Heroes are the only ones who can save the day. One thing I used to stress in my Forgotten Realms games was that other characters were travelling around and doing other things. I even had (though they never ran into them) another group running around after them, cleaning up their messes, and taking the credit for what they started.

I am stealing this as it jives with my view of the hero.

But isn't that really the reason that "adventureing party" was on the wilderness encounter tables? It was there to say, "If you don't somebody else will." and "All the other heros have other fish to fry."

Aaron.