Seems like mass culture has been marinating in warrior-rogue-wizard-human-elf-dwarf fantasy for a while now and geek culture for way longer. When I went to PAX in 2012 I was stunned by the glutted repetitiveness of basic fantasy tropes in many of the video games and board games they were offering.

Does/will a significant portion of the audience ever get tired of this stuff or is it truly evergreen?

Are we due for a backlash against basic fantasy tropes?

It's played out for us. We've never really played Tolkeinesque even in D&D, and our upcoming fantasy game has none of those tired races (elves, dwarves, halflings, orcs) in it.

They have been around for 30+ years, so I would say that they are evergreen - for the majority. There may be a small percentage who do tire of the standard tropes (but it is also those tropes that actually define the basic genre to begin with).

Nevarrrh! :cheerleader:

I strongly feel that this thing we're talking about - while definitely very real and unlikely to go away anytime soon - should not be called "Tolkienesque", because it isn't. If anything, it's "DandDesque", because THAT is where these sensibilities are rooted, not in Tolkien's works; and if you look beyond "oh, there are elves and dwarves", you'll see that they contain numerous notions strongly incongruous with the worldview and notions expressed in Tolkien's writings.

Quote from: Premier;719602I strongly feel that this thing we're talking about - while definitely very real and unlikely to go away anytime soon - should not be called "Tolkienesque", because it isn't. If anything, it's "DandDesque", because THAT is where these sensibilities are rooted, not in Tolkien's works; and if you look beyond "oh, there are elves and dwarves", you'll see that they contain numerous notions strongly incongruous with the worldview and notions expressed in Tolkien's writings.

DING! (fries are done)

D&D has been its own genre since the game was created. Alongside Tolkien style fantasy you have inspiration from Hammer horror films, science fiction, plastic dinosaur toys, and pulp stories, aside from other (non-Tolkien) fantasy fiction.

A person can be burned out on it. The thing itself cannot be, it has not emotions or interests of its own.

There a whole bunch of people who are just getting introduced to this via the Hobbit movies. Evergreen.

Tolkienesque = evergreen imo as well.

I sometimes run other games, but dwarves and dragons always pull me back to fantasy. Evergreen.

Hands down, my favorite genre is Tolkien-like fantasy.  It will remain Evergreen for me.

IMO - Evergreen

But I'm not sure we have hit a saturation point yet, so it'd hard to be confident with that prediction.

I do think that if it ever got to be absolutely everywhere that people might well get sick of it.  But there's still a lot of ground to make up on that front, and lots of genre silos for variety.

Imagine, though, that it became as popular as zombies in this decade or vampires in the last.  Imagine a sparkly-skinned love story set in a fantasy world.  As I said, less confident...

Quote from: Premier;719602I strongly feel that this thing we're talking about - while definitely very real and unlikely to go away anytime soon - should not be called "Tolkienesque", because it isn't. If anything, it's "DandDesque", because THAT is where these sensibilities are rooted, not in Tolkien's works; and if you look beyond "oh, there are elves and dwarves", you'll see that they contain numerous notions strongly incongruous with the worldview and notions expressed in Tolkien's writings.

Do you mind exploring that thought a little deeper?  The Hobbit seems like an archetypical DnD adventure at first blush.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;719607DING! (fries are done)

D&D has been its own genre since the game was created. Alongside Tolkien style fantasy you have inspiration from Hammer horror films, science fiction, plastic dinosaur toys, and pulp stories, aside from other (non-Tolkien) fantasy fiction.

Ding!  Winner!

Early D&D had a very NON Tolkien feel.  Yeah, the Tolkien critters were there, but it was more like "Bilbo Baggins visits Lankhmar."

As I've said before, D&D is about as pure as a backalley whore; it pursues other genres down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new tropes.

This also means that it never gets old, because you cannot POSSIBLY explore every root of D&D simultaneously.  Hell, I've NEVER done "Sword and Planet" with D&D, and after seeing the John Carter movie and rereading the first half dozen Barsoom books, I may have to change that!

Plus, new tropes are always coming along; my D&D world now MUST include "Captain Shakespeare and his Lightning Pirates" from the movie "Stardust."  (Robert de Niro having WAAAAAY too much fun!)

So D&D will never be "played out."

On the other hand, for ME PERSONALLY, the trope of "Band of adventuring brothers tried and true who SAVE THE WORLD" is as stale as a ten year old bagel.  Give me ten different players with ten different agendas any day.

I'm sick of stories about saving the world too.