All genre discussions are messy and silly.

The thing about 'low fantasy' is it's not really a genre, it's a reaction to a genre -- to high fantasy.

So different stuff is determined as low fantasy mainly based on what element of high fantasy is being reacted to. High fantasy is usually epic, highly magical, has elves and dwarves, etc.

So stories that explicitly don't... hey, low fantasy.

This is apart from, say, sword and sorcery, which is more of a positively defined genre than a reactive one.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;785518Correct according to the RPG definition. According to the literature definition both are high fantasy.

I'm not sure that's so. I for one have never seen your definitions of high and low fantasy applied to fantasy literature any more than I have gaming.

Quote from: Haffrung;785515Exactly so. D&D went from a low-fantasy game to a high-fantasy game not because of ubiquitous magic or high-powered PCs, but because the default game mode (as presented by the publishers) went from the exploits of treasure-seeking tomb robbers to the world-saving sagas of heroes. Looting the tomb of Egoran the Red to find a fabled crown worth a fortune? Low fantasy. Heading the call of the high cleric of Pelor to save the kingdom from the ravages of the Necromancer King? High fantasy.

Thats what I meant.

That and for me low fantasy is closer to real world, fewer monster and fewer fantastical elements. More emphasis on man-to-man conflict. Mid fantasy mixes it up in various ways. Conan stories ranged in the mid fantasy level. Magic and monsters are present. But oft in the background or as the final conflict.

Obviously others have different ideas what is low or high, etc.

Over time most of the TSR settings have escalated gradually from low to mid and then ramped up to high. Forgotten Realms being the posterchild for that in feel. Course nothing stopping any DM from toning it down to levels they prefer. You even see that in the novels.

And this is hilarious. Another setting I totally forgot about which is ironic as I use the hardback as my work-folder.

Council of Wyrms: You play dragons in a dracocentric world. Pretty much high fantasy across the board for obvious reasons. Neet idea and well thought out. But a faction of rabid fans I had to deal with eventually turned me off the setting.

Quote from: LibraryLass;785541I'm not sure that's so. I for one have never seen your definitions of high and low fantasy applied to fantasy literature any more than I have gaming.

Got it from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_fantasy

Maybe this is better for another topic.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;785514Is Sword and Sorcery a form of low fantasy?

I think there's a bit of wriggle room when answering that question, because some of these terms are relatively loosely defined (relative to well-established literary thematic notions such as "Western" or "Hard Science Fiction"). But having said that, it certainly is much closer to Low Fantasy, yes. Whether it's an actual subset or just a different theme that happens to overlap in many areas is a different quesion.

QuoteOh I see. In gaming terms high and low fantasy tell you about the scope of the game. In other words how epic it is. HF is very epic and LF isn't.

That's part of the thing. An equally important part is the question of morality. HF has black-and-white morals with clear heroes and villains, and an objective sense of Good and Evil - and the epic conflict revolves around this moral opposition. LF has morally amgibuous characters and the conflict is usually not a mainly moral one.

QuoteLiterature uses a different definition. HF has a lot of fantasy elements like magic and fantasy races. LF hasn't. So Conan is HF in literature and LF in gaming. Supernatural is the other way around. Thanks Wikipedia.

Personally, I have some reservations about the relevant Wikipedia articles. I think it's not unfair to say that the exploration of various themes (NOT "genres", tecnically!) within Fantasy literature has been so far largely neglected by academia, and consequently the Wiki articles are suspect because their authors tried to build them on academic foundations that just don't really exist.

Really, at this point a large swath of this terminology is poorly defined, if at all.

Quote from: Premier;785622Personally, I have some reservations about the relevant Wikipedia articles. I think it's not unfair to say that the exploration of various themes (NOT "genres", tecnically!) within Fantasy literature has been so far largely neglected by academia, and consequently the Wiki articles are suspect because their authors tried to build them on academic foundations that just don't really exist.

The Wikipedia definitions of high and low fantasy align pretty much with the subgenre definitions I learned in university English lit several years before Wikipedia existed. And it's pretty damned obvious just from context and the basic rules of English that "high fantasy" and "low fantasy" refer to the amount of fantasy in a setting, not whether the storyline is epic. (That would be "epic fantasy".  See how words have meanings?)

Gamers have a multi-decade history of thinking they know a lot more about literature (and history and science and probability and demographics...) than they actually do, and then insisting that their corrupted definitions are the correct universal ones. Fans are Slans, indeed.

I'm not acquainted with the notion of low vs, high fantasy. To the best of my knowledge, Fritz Leiber coined the term "sword and sorcery" as a category distinguishing tales like his and R.E. Howard's from tales like Tolkien's. What he said on the subject might be enlightening, but so might what Alan Kay had to say about object-oriented programming; and in practice, oop seems to be defined more as "like C++" than "like Smalltalk."

Quote from: daniel_ream;785629The Wikipedia definitions of high and low fantasy align pretty much with the subgenre definitions I learned in university English lit several years before Wikipedia existed. And it's pretty damned obvious just from context and the basic rules of English that "high fantasy" and "low fantasy" refer to the amount of fantasy in a setting, not whether the storyline is epic. (That would be "epic fantasy".  See how words have meanings?)

Gamers have a multi-decade history of thinking they know a lot more about literature (and history and science and probability and demographics...) than they actually do, and then insisting that their corrupted definitions are the correct universal ones. Fans are Slans, indeed.

Of course wikipedia can be wrong, but I think most of the times it's pretty accurate. It uses footnotes to source material and it's consensus based. You can see the discussions for reaching a consensus on wikipedia if you click the talk tab.

That being said the gaming definition isn't wrong. It's just different. Because gaming is all about playing at a certain scale. And books like Game of Thrones also influenced the new definition of "low fantasy" because they are gritty.

If you ported the literary definitions over to our little hobby, not only Tékumel, Talislanta and Glorantha would be high fantasy, but the whole damn World of Darkness, old and new, would be low fantasy. Which amuses me to no end.

Quote from: The Butcher;785648If you ported the literary definitions over to our little hobby, not only Tékumel, Talislanta and Glorantha would be high fantasy, but the whole damn World of Darkness, old and new, would be low fantasy. Which amuses me to no end.

That's correct. Can we now stop this discussion?

Quote from: jan paparazzi;785650That's correct. Can we now stop this discussion?

Jeez, who pissed on your cereal today, cupcake?

Quote from: The Butcher;785648If you ported the literary definitions over to our little hobby, not only Tékumel, Talislanta and Glorantha would be high fantasy, but the whole damn World of Darkness, old and new, would be low fantasy. Which amuses me to no end.

Maybe in game circles it corresponds to the old jargon (in APA zines, anyhow) of "high entropy" -- lots of powerful magic or sufficiently advanced technology whizzing around,  effecting great changes in the state of the world as the campaign goes on?

Aaaaand, more D&D settings.

Oriental Adventures: Some hate it. Personally I liked it alot. Very fun expression of Chinese and Japanese martial arts and sorcery movies of the era. Kara-tur was interesting if a bit hap-hazard in feel. Needed a little more regional distinction and flavour. But what is there is enough to build off of. The modules are very hit and miss though. This one sits around the mid to high fantasy scale. Usually alot going on out in the open and in the shadows.

Hollow World: A Mystara setting expansion mostly. But it feels like it should have been its own thing really. A very unusual setting idea with the locked down mostly forever unchanging cultures and races as a sort of titanic museum of what was. Need idea but jeebus the book is so utterly bland and devoid of life and to say it is sparsely illustrated is an understatement. Walls and walls of text page after page. But then the setting itself is in a way devoid of vitality.

A couple of modules are essentially mini-settings too. TSR looooved to experiment.

Quote from: Omega;785702Aaaaand, more D&D settings.

Oriental Adventures: Some hate it. Personally I liked it alot. Very fun expression of Chinese and Japanese martial arts and sorcery movies of the era. Kara-tur was interesting if a bit hap-hazard in feel. Needed a little more regional distinction and flavour. But what is there is enough to build off of. The modules are very hit and miss though. This one sits around the mid to high fantasy scale. Usually alot going on out in the open and in the shadows.

Hollow World: A Mystara setting expansion mostly. But it feels like it should have been its own thing really. A very unusual setting idea with the locked down mostly forever unchanging cultures and races as a sort of titanic museum of what was. Need idea but jeebus the book is so utterly bland and devoid of life and to say it is sparsely illustrated is an understatement. Walls and walls of text page after page. But then the setting itself is in a way devoid of vitality.

A couple of modules are essentially mini-settings too. TSR looooved to experiment.

The Smoking Mirror scenario was a trip. As an ERB fan, I was initially cool both to this pseudo-Pellucidar and to the colonized semi-Barsoom of  GDW's Space: 1889 (and also thought "steam punk" a silly term); but they grew on me.