While I enjoy Ray Bradbury that's not quite what I'm getting at.  I think that the tropes that underly the elves and dwarves are what has gotten trite.  So, it's not the trappings but the structures if that makes sense.  I'm saying Tolkien works because he gets off track talking about hobbit customs and Tom Bombadil's day planner.

I guess I'm in the camp that believes that the trivial and banal realities of daily life generally make a better story than another march across the waste land to confront the dark lord in the name of all that is right and good and crumpets.  Howard and Lieber get a pass because they never really rise to the scope of saving the world.

Again, Buisek's Astro City treats saving the world as a foregone conclusion while the young man coming to understand and accept his father's noble choices becomes the story.  I'm not talking about making fantasy grow up, I'm talking about telling a wider range of stories within the context of fantasy, not having end of level bosses and guaranteed kills against minions because the minions should be every bit as interesting as their masters.

Quote from: The_Shadow;462304Phillip's got it here. Pundit's premise serves to highlight the rigid divide between "science fiction" and "fantasy" that entered the minds of fans sometime post-1985, rather than shedding light on any particular aspect of setting creation.

Really? Even when I explicitly stated that's not what I'm talking about?  I have no problem whatsoever with having laser guns in my D&D or magic in my sci-fi.  

What I'm talking about is really about establishing some kind of ancient-history background element that has zero relevance or significance in the actual playing of the game setting.  The whole "this fantasy world is really an alien world but your player characters will never know" or "this magic is really super-science but no one in the setting knows or thinks of it that way and it will never be a relevant distinction in any way" is just a specific case-study in that kind of thing.

There are inverse versions of the same deal, Exalted for example, with its "Exalted is actually Earth in the very distant past but it doesn't look like Earth, have any relevance to the modern world, nor is the setting in even the slightest way affected by that useless bit of trivia".

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;462289I mean, what's the point of that?  If I decide in a game that there's one character who's not an actual person but an automaton, but he is absolutely biologically indistinguishable from a person, and has all the same personality and characteristics of a person, and has no personal knowledge of being anything but a person, and there's no conceivable way the PCs are ever going to find out he's not a person, and it doesn't actually change anything at all in actual play, what is the point of saying "he's an automaton" in the first place?!

RPGPundit

Except it becomes obvious when the automaton dies and downloads into their new automaton body which comes back.

Quote from: David Johansen;462318Well, the first thing is that Fantasy is about symbolism and Science Fiction is about speculation.  Something I've been trying to manage in a magic system for a couple of years now.  With magic you don't ask "What is the volume and mean temperature of a fireball?" you ask "What does fire symbolize and what does it do in that context?"

I generally agree, though there are fantasy novels that might be built around some sort of social speculation question. And 'soft' SF can have more-or-less no science in it, too (Star Wars, I'm looking at you).

Quote from: David Johansen;462346Others probably know more about it but supposedly Kelewan is a direct and deliberate rip off of Tekumel that has caused a fair bit of bad blood between the authors.

Interesting - hope someone does know more. Pretty sure MA Barker died but it wouldn't surprise me if there had been some friction.


Unrelatedly...Earthdawn is an 'inverse' case (past Earth) as well, since its theoretically linked to Shadowrun.

Quote from: RPGPundit;462424Really? Even when I explicitly stated that's not what I'm talking about?  I have no problem whatsoever with having laser guns in my D&D or magic in my sci-fi.  

What I'm talking about is really about establishing some kind of ancient-history background element that has zero relevance or significance in the actual playing of the game setting.  The whole "this fantasy world is really an alien world but your player characters will never know" or "this magic is really super-science but no one in the setting knows or thinks of it that way and it will never be a relevant distinction in any way" is just a specific case-study in that kind of thing.

There are inverse versions of the same deal, Exalted for example, with its "Exalted is actually Earth in the very distant past but it doesn't look like Earth, have any relevance to the modern world, nor is the setting in even the slightest way affected by that useless bit of trivia".

RPGPundit

I guess the only appeal would be to the GM who finds such a thing an interesting twist. The thing is, I have a hard time thinking of a fantasy-like sci-fi setting in which there's no impact whatsoever. Unless the setting includes actual fantasy elements alongside the sci-fi stuff, it's unlikely that you're going to have "real" undead, for example.

Quote from: RPGPundit;462424What I'm talking about is really about establishing some kind of ancient-history background element that has zero relevance or significance in the actual playing of the game setting.  The whole "this fantasy world is really an alien world but your player characters will never know" or "this magic is really super-science but no one in the setting knows or thinks of it that way and it will never be a relevant distinction in any way" is just a specific case-study in that kind of thing.
RPGPundit

So, knowing the creation myth of a world's dominant pantheon is useless?  Knowing whether that myth is true or not is useless?  Understanding the nature of the setting is useless?  I really don't see it that way.  Sure we all doodle in the margins but supose you were in a kick ass Middle Earth campaign being run by someone who really got the setting and could make it fantasticly fun and exciting in spite of the limitations of the setting.  Ivultar would never matter a bit, he simply wouldn't come into it, nor Morgoth, Ungoliant, or even Gothmog in all likely hood.  Well, first age campaigns not withstanding but somehow I don't see that having the same broad appeal as a third age game.

If nothing else it gives the GM a sense of appropriate material for the game.  That laser pistol and fur barbarian princess works great on Barsoom but it's glaringly off in Middle Earth.  But it can set up long term campaign issues.  For instance the campaign could focus on the slow realization that there was a technologically advanced world in the past.  You could have the cryonically frozen astronaut discovery.  Most of these would seem to fit in Tekumel or Jorune.

Now as to the Pundit's feelings, unless I miss my guess it comes down to the Swine.  (oh them again)  See, in a very real sense Empire of the Petal throne is the very first "look at me I'm better than you" Swine game.  It was a cleaner ruleset, it was more professional, it had a unique and vibrant setting that was ever so above all those dungeon crawling Middle Earth wannabes.

But it wasn't really in Tolkien's league.  A detailed secondary creation with a well understood foundation in anthropology to be sure but by a third rate writer who never quite had the capacity to realize his creation.  Indeed his creation's very nature made it inaccessible to the masses and it languished in obscurity as a result, only with only Raymond E Feist's second rate writing to popularize it under the wrong name.

When discussing classics it's easy to forget that Shakespear was writing the blood and thunder summer blockbusters of his day as was Wagner's Ring of the Neiblung.

It's the deliberate creation of exclusivity in the name of exclusion that makes one creator swine and another beloved by the masses.  There may be no quantifiable definition of 'bad art' but 'unprofitable and soon forgotten?' yeah, that we can measure.

Pundit's thesis reminded me of a fellow who was playing a D&D-ruleset based Dying Earth game with us once...the DM had explained the entire concept to everyone, and I though we all (including the exception) grokked that it was Earth but it was millions upon millions upon millions of years in the future.  No, you weren't going to go digging for New York City, you weren't going to find the ruins of London, etc.

At this juncture the guy asked, frustrated with the whole thing, "Well what's the point then?  Why even say we're on earth?"

Quote from: David Johansen;462435Now as to the Pundit's feelings, unless I miss my guess it comes down to the Swine.  (oh them again)  See, in a very real sense Empire of the Petal throne is the very first "look at me I'm better than you" Swine game.  It was a cleaner ruleset, it was more professional, it had a unique and vibrant setting that was ever so above all those dungeon crawling Middle Earth wannabes.

EPT was OD&D's rules.  I know; I had a copy of the original TSR boxed set for a while (I purchased it to mine for OD&D material).

Quote from: Dan Davenport;462431I guess the only appeal would be to the GM who finds such a thing an interesting twist. The thing is, I have a hard time thinking of a fantasy-like sci-fi setting in which there's no impact whatsoever. Unless the setting includes actual fantasy elements alongside the sci-fi stuff, it's unlikely that you're going to have "real" undead, for example.

It's where I'm struggling slightly with the thread.

The only games I can think of where there's that kind of backstory with no impact it's just a throwaway item. Ok, the game is set on an ancient colony world millennia from now. It gives a tiny amount of context, and has whatever value people place on that context.

In most published settings though, almost all really, it actually can impact play. There are technological devices in the setting. There maybe aren't any gods. The non-human races are more alien, if there's magic it's trappings are more like psychic stuff than sorcerous stuff and so on.

It's just about setting expectations and flavour surely? Pundy's argument seems to me against a straw man. Which are the games that do this?

Quote from: thedungeondelver;462449Pundit's thesis reminded me of a fellow who was playing a D&D-ruleset based Dying Earth game with us once...the DM had explained the entire concept to everyone, and I though we all (including the exception) grokked that it was Earth but it was millions upon millions upon millions of years in the future.  No, you weren't going to go digging for New York City, you weren't going to find the ruins of London, etc.

At this juncture the guy asked, frustrated with the whole thing, "Well what's the point then?  Why even say we're on earth?"

Having it on Earth underlines the futility of the setting. This is it. This is our future. Swindling each other while we wait for the sun to go out.

It doesn't impact the setting meaningfully, but it is thematically important. If it were some colony world or fantasy world that wouldn't have the same level of bleak comedy value.

Quote from: David Johansen;462256Well, there's a lot of ground between the world of Hawkmoon, the Urth of New Sun, The Dying Earth, and Shannara right?

And really, when we talk about Dying Earth, were talking about a major influence on early D&D. So, clearly, there's some appeal to be had in such things.

Seanchai

Quote from: David Johansen;462389I guess I'm in the camp that believes that the trivial and banal realities of daily life generally make a better story than another march across the waste land to confront the dark lord in the name of all that is right and good and crumpets.

Bradbury sometimes goes a little beyond the homely comfort zone, but that perhaps is part of what makes him the grand master.

What you are talking about in Busiek's case appears to be the Well Crafted Tale. Rip out the meaning that to the Victorian mind would make "a good story" and you get the Slice of Life favored by some ultra-modern or post-modern people (at least in their cocktail party talk, for who knows what they really read?).

I think that either of these tends to be rather a retreat from Fantasy as epitomized in myths and fairy tales.

The WCT has for a long time been the mainstay of short fiction. It is in essence a parable, that is, a story built around "the moral of the story", which is a telling yet again of a received wisdom so conventional that the reader (if old enough indeed to read at all) may typically be assumed to take it for granted.

This is most effective when the conventional wisdom often seems contrary to the actual factual trivial and banal realities of daily life. The artist thereby ennobles the life we live in our minds by bringing it into a realm closer to the ideal.

The story that confounds a conventional expectation with a surprise ending is harder to pull off to satisfaction. Naturally, it tends to fall flat if the reader actually is not surprised by the sleight of hand. This is pretty common when a remove of years has left behind cultural assumptions about, e.g., gender roles that were taken for granted in the author's society. Besides that, the last-minute switch must be to a so much more conventional moral as there is so much less foreshadowing of, and so argument for, it in what comes before.

Fantasy, at least of the Capital F variety, is somewhat less tidy. Its concern is not the superficials of daily life but the depths of age-old life. The Fantastic is by definition not what we see in external reality today. It must be about internal realities, timeless truths, or it is basically about nothing at all of substance and gravity. Moreover, it speaks to us beneath the rational level, in the language of dream, in voices of our more primitive selves from the parts of the eons-old brain Where Be Dragons.

As a work retreats from that plane, it partakes less and less of the true magic. It slips to "logical" or "rationalized" fantasy, to science fiction, to "sci-fi" without the speculative heart of real SF, to parody and satire and allegory, to mere costumes and props and set design.

Throw a dragon and a witch into a Saturday Evening Post story, and its basic nature remains the same, just as a Norman Rockwell painting of the scene would retain the essence of Norman Rockwell. The trappings do not make Fantasy, and the assumption that they do is I think what mainly ails "genre fantasy".

Yet here, perhaps, is the source of the uneasiness in some quarters about such things as M.A.R. Barker's Little House of Tranquil Dwelling.

From the start in D&D, the role-playing hobby has been less interested in Fantasy than in "genre fantasy". Barker's Empire of the Petal Throne was very much in the tradition of pulp magazines and dime novels that predated the runaway success of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.

Barker, another linguist, produced a secondary world to rival Tolkien's in detail. This "world-building" emphasis carried over to D&D, and then was commercialized (in a big way from the late 1980s on). D&D and other games in turn spun off many gamers' introductions to "fantasy literature", in books based on the product lines of Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Warhammer and so on.

Robert E. Howard and others were mainly interested in writing adventure stories. The trappings of mythology or legend, of gothic romance or supernatural horror, of the lost world tale or the interplanetary saga, were primarily stylistic elements "painted on" over the basic skeleton of the "adventure genre".

The consistently detailed secondary world in general, and the quantified and rule-bound game setting in particular, already somewhat more resembles the "real" world of "mainstream" literature about housewives and businessmen and school children and their trivialities and banalities than it resembles Elfland.

The "fantasy genre", most often really just the sub-genre called "heroic fantasy", teetering on the brink of mere Muggledom, finds its footing not in the slippery substance of real Fantasy but on the neatly rolled lawn of its narrowly defined genre.

Those who have little taste for Fantasy might not even recognize it in, say, Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun. People to whom Star Wars is "obviously science fiction" because it has space ships might not understand why others of us like it much better as fantasy (which is partly because there's not a drop of science actually integral to it).

Quote from: RPGPundit;462424What I'm talking about is really about establishing some kind of ancient-history background element that has zero relevance or significance in the actual playing of the game setting.  The whole "this fantasy world is really an alien world but your player characters will never know" or "this magic is really super-science but no one in the setting knows or thinks of it that way and it will never be a relevant distinction in any way" is just a specific case-study in that kind of thing.

There are inverse versions of the same deal, Exalted for example, with its "Exalted is actually Earth in the very distant past but it doesn't look like Earth, have any relevance to the modern world, nor is the setting in even the slightest way affected by that useless bit of trivia".

Exalted is so far the only actual example you have presented, so it is a wonder how you managed to get your presentation so 'inverted'. For that matter, you are so unreliable that I see no reason to take your word as to Exalted.

Phillip, when you said "elfland" I became quite convinced that you too have read Ursula K LeGuin's essays.  Actually your post in general smacks of her thinking.

Don't think that I'm saying I could have told you that at Poughkipse.  No, I'm just leaning more to her discussion on Frodo in Lord of the Rings.

Admittedly there's a fine line in there somewhere.  But the over use of magic and monsters is, in my opinion as off putting as the polysylabic giberish so thick that you might as well be reading Klingon.

I suppose my thesis might be summed up as a good story is a good story regardless of genre and a poor one remains poor.

Also, wasn't Earthdawn also a prehistoric world and precursor to Shadowrun?

"I could have told you that at Poughkeepsie." Wasn't that a Le Guin criticism of the diction of Katherine Kurtz? The Deryni books were fundamentally a family saga, a "soap opera" if you will. Setting-wise, it was a case of it being pretty darned evident what serial numbers had been (barely, if at all) filed off. It was 'fantasy' the way Brother Cadfael would have been 'fantasy' if there were people using ESP on occasion.

Kurtz was not really concerned with the concerns of Fantasy. It was like Star Wars, which was not really concerned with the concerns of Science Fiction. That Lucas was concerned with a lot of 'archetypal' stuff and pulled it off well gave his movie the extra zing of tapping the yearnings and fulfillments we find in Fantasy.

If the Muppet-like creatures of The Dark Crystal had been up to the same sorts of everyday intrigues, mouthing the same sorts of guys-next-door dialog, as Kurtz's characters, then at the very least it would have been a very different kind of thing. It might well have been "a good story", in terms of the desires of people who desired that particular kind of story.

By Elfland, though, perhaps it is enough to mean Elfland, as in Lord Dunsany. The King of Elfland's Daughter and The Charwoman's Shadow have plenty of the Earthly to distinguish them, the former being largely concerned with what happens after the hero brings home the fairy princess. Yet the fey and uncanny have a properly numinous aspect, not reduced to mere men with pointy ears and a fine technology of 'magic'. Yes, there are magicians -- but there is also deeper magic.

"I suppose my thesis might be summed up as a good story is a good story regardless of genre and a poor one remains poor," you write. My thesis is that a story is handicapped by being in the first place pegged as 'generic'.

This is especially true if what is sought is a great story of Fantasy, for both greatness and Fantasy depend to some extent on going beyond painting by numbers, filling in outlines someone else has drawn.

Now, none of this has I think very much to do with RPGs.