Why Fantasy?

[Fenris-77]

When it comes to training time


Crossbow training maybe, but training in the musket was not easy and quite often expensive and the danger of utilizing poorly trained musketeers was significant.

Musketeers Were Not Easier to Train than Archers

Myth 2: Muskets replaced bows because musketeers are easy to train For the sake of clarifying my position and including new supporting research, this post was updated June 20th, 2020. Or, as intern…

bowvsmusket.com

That dude did his own research. Excellent. I'm not sure what that adds to the overall discussion, but sure. His personal experiences with bows and muskets are neither her nor there. He raises some interesting points, but it doesn't change anything in a meaningful way.

 

[bsss]

In a vain attempt to drag this thread back on its actual topic(s):

Who prefers a genre other than fantasy for TTRPGs? What games do you prefer? What would it take for that preferred genre, do you think, to better compete with fantasy in the TTRPG mindspace?

Not other than, but I like a good space game, but in the Expanse-to-Firefly range, so not strictly divorced from fantasy or anything like that.

I think as others have said in the thread, fantasy is extremely easy to do, so I don't really mind the genre ratio.

 

[Fenris-77]

I am going to abandon the whole technical discussion. It's interesting, but neither useful nor cromulent.

If someone wants to start as thread about bows vs crossbows vs handguns I'm there.

 

[Minion X]

Crossbow training maybe, but training in the musket was not easy and quite often expensive and the danger of utilizing poorly trained musketeers was significant. Muskets were used despite the risks and expense of gun powder (plus the level of training required for professional musketeers).

Talking about training time is rather misleading when it is a question of whether you can implement an effective training program at all for archery, or if you need an organic culture of archery to build on, as was the case in England and Wales, but nowhere else on the same scale in Christian Europe. Firearms, on the other hand, lend themselves exceedingly well to large-scale production, deployment and training. Perhaps the main bottleneck was gunpowder, which, perhaps ironically, the British Empire had a premier supply of thanks to its far-flung colonies that supplied it with all the naughty word it needed.

 

[Minion X]

sure, archery is more training, but.... with same training my rifle has some words to say on this subject.

Firearms for military use weren't rifled back then. They did figure rifling out early on, but it wasn't considered suitable for battlefield use.

 

[Umbran]

In all respect, I think you read into a post that has nothing to do with what you think it does.

Perhaps.

I am not sure how hunting elk says anything about how and why firearms overtook longbows in the battlefield. If it does, please explain how...

If it doesn't, maybe the post was off-topic, and not relevant to the conversation. And folks should not make others apologize for misreading when they go off on tangents, hm?

 

[Minion X]

I am not sure how hunting elk says anything about how and why firearms overtook longbows in the battlefield. If it does, please explain how...

It is not irrelevant as it might seem if considered as a commentary on the underlying social dynamics that originally spurred the widespread adoption of the longbow in Britain in the form of widespread hunting. The increase in population and industry that also enabled the mass production of firearms also led to increased deforestation, further reducing the incentives to master the bow.

 

[Laurefindel]

In a vain attempt to drag this thread back on its actual topic(s):

Who prefers a genre other than fantasy for TTRPGs? What games do you prefer? What would it take for that preferred genre, do you think, to better compete with fantasy in the TTRPG mindspace?

I don’t prefer (medieval-ish) fantasy over sci-fi in RPG: I like them both equally. In a RPG, I tend to look for elements that makes us experience something different from “reality”. This can take many forms but I prefer RPGs that bring up the supernatural (1920s Cthulhu, Weird West, Vampires, etc), the romanticized elements of high fantasy (elves and swords and magic), or advanced technology opening possibilities beyond our world (sci-fi).

I’m not a big fan of the very weird and gunzo, or science-fantasy à la He-Man etc.

And then there’s Star Wars, which I love. SW is fantasy at heart but closer to sci-fi when it comes to codify the setting as game engine. It’s “rules” are closer to those of sci-fi, and RPGs tend to bring out the technical stuff in Star Wars (for the better of for the worse). Then again, I build my last Star Wars RPG hacking the game engine of a Lord of the Ring RPG, so even that works…

[edit] rereading my post, I notice it doesn’t answer the question.

I think the RPG offer is actually quite wide; I don’t think there much to be done to improve the place of other genres in the RPG mindscape other than somehow convincing more people to play these games. More visibility could help, as well a production value that can rival with D&D. But the products are there. If we ignore the demographics of who is playing what and the number of copies sold by game, I’m not certain fantasy RPGs are that much superior in number of games.

 

[Autumnal]

I prefer horror, science fiction, and general weirdness to most fantasy, and also prefer greatly simpler rules than D&D. If I had any clue how they might grab a bigger chunk of gamer attention, I’d be doing it. as with other media, I’m happier when I focus on what I love and people who share the fondness.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

TBH, between fantasy, sci-fi, supers & horror, supers is probably my favorite by a nose. Part of that is because the genre is so broad it can touch on any other.

But if you look at my gaming shelves, fantasy- and D&D in particular- get the most shelf space.