Why Fantasy?

[Parmandur]

I feel like you are answering something that I didn't say. I was specifically talking about fantasy movies that also contain romance between some of the characters. There are more fantasy first movies that simply have a few characters romantically involved, than there are romance first, fantasy second movies like The Princess Bride. At least that's my experience and recollection.

That said, I am curious about the size of the fantasy section at the Barnes and Noble stores I go to. The fantasy/sci-fi section is like 4 rows or more. A romance section that's 8-12 rows would be insane. I'll have to check it out.

The number of Romance novels that sell compared to Sci-fi/Fantasy is pretty large, if you check out the numbers. Mystery and combined Sci-fi combined are about similar.

Fantasy out sells Sci-fi 2 to 1, pretty consistently for decades, and currently Sci-fi sales are declining while Fantasy has been growing rapidly. And that is whit Sci-fi being dominated by stuff like Star Wars, which is full of wizards and knights errant.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

For whatever reason I think "generic vaguely medieval European fantasy" is a genre where everyone feels like they know the default setting rules (which have almost no relationship to anything actually medieval, but that's a different conversation for a different day) and have fairly similar expectations.

The biggest reason is that- in all probability- most of the people in the hobby are part of a culture that has descended from or has otherwise been heavily shaped by European cultures. It’s familiar, even if poorly understood.

I mean, while they’re out there, it’s not like FRPGs or settings based on African or Polynesian cultures are exactly racking up impressive sales numbers, regardless of the actual quality of the products.

 

[zarionofarabel]

Yeah. I was talking about people seeing the movies. They understand quests, dwarves, elves, halflings, wizards, etc., which help them understand what D&D is. As for the bolded portion, how is that different from Game of Thrones? I doubt the vast majority of those who watched Game of Thrones read the books.

Oh probably not, and being a newer IP means that it's fresher in everyone's memory. I'm sure in ten years the normies knowledge of GoT will be just as thin as their knowledge of LotR.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

The biggest reason is that- in all probability- most of the people in the hobby are part of a culture that has descended from or has otherwise been heavily shaped by European cultures. It’s familiar, even if poorly understood.

I mean, while they’re out there, it’s not like FRPGs or settings based on African or Polynesian cultures are exactly racking up impressive sales numbers, regardless of the actual quality of the products.

Yeah that seems like the obvious reason it is usually a vaguely European fantasy that most people in the hobby are most readily comfortable with (and even as players diversify, its now a tradition).

As for why it's a vaguely Medieval setting people tend to gravitate to I think it's because it is less coherently organized (at least in people's minds) than the Classical or Early Modern eras, which both makes it both an easier era to inject fantasy into and also makes it feel more like an era ripe for adventure.

Also the High Middle Ages themselves loved to write heroic fantasy set in the Early Middle Ages (and also applied the exact same style and tropes to the contemporary crusades), so the era (taken broadly) did some self promoting on this front.

 

[Retros_x]

Much less the case now than 20 years ago.

True, but its still very homogeneous and far from representive of the diverse cultures and mythologies.

 

[Parmandur]

True, but its still very homogeneous and far from representive of the diverse cultures and mythologies.

It's a trajectory, but the shelves in bookstores have been rapidly diversifying, the offerings form Indie authors even more rapidly.

 

[Reynard]

ETA: I forgot to mention, this is filtering DriveThru RPG offerings.

This is obviously non-scientific but it is interesting: Filtering for all-in-one core rulebooks, and then filtering by genre gives you:
3900-ish Fantasy RPGs
2800-ish Sci-Fi RPGs
2000-ish Horror RPGs
and 400-ish Superhero RPGs.
For those first three at least, you can further refine to sub-genres, but I don't think it much matters whether there is more space opera than cyberpunk.

 

[Parmandur]

This is obviously non-scientific but it is interesting: Filtering for all-in-one core rulebooks, and then filtering by genre gives you:
3900-ish Fantasy RPGs
2800-ish Sci-Fi RPGs
2000-ish Horror RPGs
and 400-ish Superhero RPGs.
For those first three at least, you can further refine to sub-genres, but I don't think it much matters whether there is more space opera than cyberpunk.

I mean, you break out like that, Sci-fi seems extremely well represented? But then, what do people actually play, I suppose.

 

[payn]

I mean, you break out like that, Sci-fi seems extremely well represented? But then, what do people actually play, I suppose.

It would be interesting to poll just on those genre buckets to see what folks who play them like.

 

[Parmandur]

It would be interesting to poll just on those genre buckets to see what folks who play them like.

I think it would be interesting to review those Sci-fi games and see how many focus on wizards and knights errant. It a whole lot of Asimov/Clarke pure Sci-fi, I frankly imagine (which us why I appreciate Traveller).