What would a "fairy-tale" setting be like?

[Starman]

I was thinking the other day about influences in fantasy and one that came to mind was fairy-tales. Of course, while they seem to be a definite influence I could not think of a setting that could be described as fairy-tale-like. Then I tried to think of how I would define fairy-tale and I had trouble nailing it down.

So, what would you say are the elements that make a fairy-tale what it is and what kind of setting would that lead to?

Starman

 

[Tonguez]

Fairytales are about a mundane 'world' and the marvelous things that happen in it due primarily to the influence of another 'world' that lies hidden beneath/behind that Mundanity (is that a word?).

Magic is rare but profound when it does manifest itself.
A few 'mundane' people exist with a single magical talent (a gift) and a few people who appear normal might infact be something entirely different - eg the old woman who lives alone in the forest may just be a mean old woman or a hag or the personfied form of Winter Storms - or quite possibly all three at the same time.

PCs need to keep discovering that the Mundane world is not what it seems and that they are players in a hidden game.

Some Fairytale Archetypes

- The Jack: A Mundane Champion able to fight the Hidden Powers with wits and luck
- The Wit: A Mundane with some magical talent/ability (often a Gift from the Fey)
-The Clod: A Mundane stumbling about in the Hidden World often confused but somehow protected by that confusion

-The Good Mother: A Fey who helps Mundanes when things get rough
-The Good Fellow: A Fey who likes to dabble in Mundane lives sometimes for good sometimes for ill but always through mischief.

ummm

 

[WayneLigon]

Most of Charles de Lint's work has that fairy-tale feel, with situations and archtypical characters drawn from folklore.

Manly Wade Wellman wrote several stories and books about Silver John, all based off various Southern and mountain-folk stories.

All of those were modern era tales.

 

[Sanackranib]

you must have a definate BBEG that the PC hero's can defeat to save the day and live happily ever after . . . er that is until you have the next BBEG raise his ugly head.

make it mostly balck and white with not a lot of shades of grey.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

make it mostly balck and white with not a lot of shades of grey.

I disagree completely. Only in modernized "for children" fairy tales is morality always black and white. The original tales were often dark, and the heroes did morally questionable things as a matter of course. The villians just did much worse. Earlier versions of what have become "nursery tales" were loaded with sex, murder, and revenge. Of course, there were usually consequences for evil acts, for pride, and the usual, so I guess they can be called morally straightforward in that way.

On a completely different note... Suggested reading: "The King of Elfland's Daughter" by Lord Dunsany. Wonderful tale of crossing the border between the mundane world and the fey realm of Elfland, and many things that come of it.

 

[tetsujin28]

What would it be like? A BESM campaign.

 

[kenjib]

I've always thought a campaign that capture the essence of Ridley Scott's movie Legend would be fantastic.

 

[Starman]

I've always thought a campaign that capture the essence of Ridley Scott's movie Legend would be fantastic.

I totally agree. I watched it again the other day and that is what got me thinking about this.

Starman

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I highly recommend Sean Stewart for very interesting takes on the idea of Fairy Tale adventure and settings.

A similar project to DeLint but a very different set of results.

An interesting component of both, more present in the Sean Stewart I've read but I've only read a little bit of the De Lint, is that fairy tales integrate very differently into the many societies and time periods that use them.

From those books and Fairy Tales themselves I'd say that a primary component of any fairy tale setting would be that magic is very close to the mundane, just below the surface or over the river, and that while it isn't very well integrated into the mundane it is available to anyone who wants to travel away from the mundane for a while.

To provide an illustration, in one of my favorite Stewart books, Nightwatch, there are two different cities who have been radically rebuilt in response to the return of fairy tale magic and entities.

In the first city the people give up half of their city to the magic as a result of a bargain made by their most powerful angel, a more or less wizardlike individual, with his own magical self and the magic of the culture. People occasionally give their children to the magic, but overall have little to do with the magic except for occasional scavenging and various rituals and relationships regarding death and birth. Except for the fact that their leader is now the wizard who saved them from the magic.

In the second city, the people dealt with the magic by developing very strong relationships with three entities, Double Monkey, the Dragon, and The Lady, who live among them and developing people and systems that could expel all others. The three entities live among them, but move rather mysteriously. So that you don't just become a student of Double Monkey, he has to have some compelling reason to come to you or you to go to him. The local council has representatives who meet or deal with them and it is very clear that the relationships between the people and the entities can be pretty tense and fraught no matter how important they are to each other.

The overall point is that both settings are very different but in both cases you have to deal with the magic on its own terms, and you could easily go through life without confronting any of it except its effects.

I mean a lot of fairy tales feature a forest that eats people, and that's a pretty direct effect but not if you avoid the forest.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

That and I'd have to say that a fairy tale setting would be brutal. Very very brutal. Lots of mindtrips, hidden costs, and nastiness from both the mundane and the magical.

Heroism is almost the least element of most of the fairy tales I know.

I think of it as Terry Gilliam with Stephen King as a script consultant.