I'm spinning this intriguing statement into a poll:

Quote from: Settembrini;848809Curiously, I think Vanilla Middle-European plus Elves Dwarfs and Orcs Fantasy is very rare!

Almost anything is a twist to that. At least most GMs seem to want desperately to "stay away from Cormyr" and instead "go to the North and the Savage Frontier!".
The closest Gygax ever came was on the COVER of the Greyhawk boxed set. The interiour is genius, but more or less post-apoc.

Boom-Chikka-Boom Middle European Fantasy is elusive in ACTUAL PLAY.

Does this match your experience?

Middle-European?

Assuming that what is meant by this is Cental European Middle-Ages, what sets this apart from Northern or Western European in fantasy terms? Elves were a common belief in all the Germanic speaking areas, and orcs are a Tolkien invention based on goblins.

I think this can't be answered without a definition of what "Vanilla Middle-European plus Elves Dwarfs and Orcs Fantasy" means for fantasy.

Specifically: If going north to the Savage Frontier in Greyhawk makes a game not Middle-European, does that mean going north to the Lonely Mountain makes The Hobbit not Middle-European?

I also want to include BedrockBrendan's interesting response from the original thread.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;848821I think "with a twist" has become the expectation these days. It wouldn't surprise me.

I do recall back when Paizo was doing dungeon, one of my frustrations at the time was not enough vanilla-fantasy adventures, because their policy at the time requested people avoid cliches, encouraged inverting tropes, etc. None of these guidelines are bad, but what I found as a GM at the time, was I often needed cliche filler adventures. I was basically looking for solid old standbys like go kill the dragon and take its gold and anything that was unusual or out of the box I would just make myself anyways.

QuoteOriginally Posted by Settembrini View Post
Curiously, I think Vanilla Middle-European plus Elves Dwarfs and Orcs Fantasy is very rare!

Almost anything is a twist to that. At least most GMs seem to want desperately to "stay away from Cormyr" and instead "go to the North and the Savage Frontier!".
The closest Gygax ever came was on the COVER of the Greyhawk boxed set. The interiour is genius, but more or less post-apoc.

Boom-Chikka-Boom Middle European Fantasy is elusive in ACTUAL PLAY.

I have no idea what he means... :confused:

I am pretty sure that actual medieval European settings with Elves and Dwarves and so on are actually rare, but mostly because the average gamemaster or setting author knows little about actual medieval societies (even though they often think they do) and what they know is so strongly influenced by hollywoodized myth and common knowledge (i.e. other's people fiction and topoi) that there is only a superficial resemblance to the period or places the campaign material is supposed to represent.
However, this scarcity is mostly unintentional; the idea of an intentional avoidance of an at least hollywoodized pseudo-European lowes common denominator  fantasy setting doesn't seem to have any substance.

Quote from: Trond;849418Middle-European?

Quote from: jhkim;849426I think this can't be answered without a definition of what "Vanilla Middle-European plus Elves Dwarfs and Orcs Fantasy" means for fantasy.

Try vanilla Medieval European and see if it makes sense now. Maybe autocorrect on a phone or tablet?

Quote from: apparition13;849438Try vanilla Medieval European and see if it makes sense now. Maybe autocorrect on a phone or tablet?

More likely a translation mistake based on an incorrect language transfer from German "Mitteleuropa" = Central Europe. I understood it immediately.

Are Tolkien-based games European and Medieval enough? They surely have all the races mentioned (Tolkien basically invented that combo). So this would include MERP, LotR, TOR plus a few more. Then you have the strongly Tolkien-influenced Burning Wheel etc.

The poll needs boxes for "I don't understand the quote" and "I'm not sure I fully understand the quote".

I guess I can assume "Middle-European" means something like "generic medieval European - not many Basques or southern types or moors" or something.

But the elaboration in the quote makes it harder than that, for me:

QuoteAlmost anything is a twist to that. At least most GMs seem to want desperately to "stay away from Cormyr" and instead "go to the North and the Savage Frontier!".
The closest Gygax ever came was on the COVER of the Greyhawk boxed set. The interiour is genius, but more or less post-apoc.

Mainly because I almost never play D&D, and if I did play it in a published world, I don't know which one it was unless you count a few Computer RPGs which I don't think count for this question.

So I have no idea what "Cormyr" is or what it's like except inferring from this question, nor do I know what the North or the Savage Frontier are, nor really what Greyhawk is like except I assume it's a mix of all the D&D stuff.

My answer would be that almost every fantasy tabletop RPG I've played or run has not been D&D, and although I would consider most of the worlds to be fairly close to typical fantasy settings, maybe roughly half have orcs, elves and dwarves, and most or all of them MIGHT qualify as "a twist" if some parts of a published D&D world are considered "a twist" (though I don't really know what the difference is between Cormyr and anywhere else but Skyrim or wherever Neverwinter Nights or Morrowind was set). Has he heard of Cidri, the setting for The Fantasy Trip campaigns described in In The Labyrinth? I get the feeling that from the OP's POV, all campaigns I've played in would have "a twist", even though many of them seem fairly generic to me.

So my guess is he would think I'd agree with him about most games having "a twist", even though I might not say so myself.

A setting like (for those of you who have read the books) like the Witcher's or Tolkien's Middle Earth?

A vaguely European, between the 13th and 14th (1200-1399) Centuries in terms of technology, with Kingdoms and Castles, where Dragons and Magic are so rare that no one thinks about creating some sort anti-air.  Where Wizards tend to be a lone being of mysterious power, even when there's one in an adventuring group of mercenaries.  Where guilds don't exist as a power yet.  Where the society is still peasant/freeman and noble.

Has anyone actually run a game with any of those tropes?

I've not done so, that I can remember.

Isn't Central European medieval fantasy with Elves, Dwarves & Orcs exactly what Warhammer Fantasy (and, possibly, Das Schwartze Auge) is?

Speaking as Settembrini's fellow continental European, I think what he means is that the widespread "Medieval European-style fantasy" established and popularised by D&D has practically nothing in it that's medieval or European. What it is is the 19th century American Wild West with the moral and social foundations of 20th century American libertarianism, given a thin layer of medieval and renaissance European visuals - but even that very often with a distinctly English, rather than European, slant.

Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with that, of course. I mean, if Gamma World has a valid niche in gaming, then so does Libertarian Wild West With Swords. But when it gets consistently and ubiquitously mislabelled as "Medieval European Fantasy" to the point where people hear the phrase "medieval European fantasy" and this is what they inevitably think of, it is perhaps no wonder that some people who actually have cultural ties to medieval Europe - such as, say, EUROPEANS - will eventually get a bit rankled.

Perhaps by way of clarification....

In the other post the claim was that whereas we all seems to think that the vast majority of Fantasy is some sort of reskinned tolkienesque medieval European setting in fact GMs have grown so tired of that cliche that in fact the opposite is true and no one ever plays in that setting any more.

I would say no this is entirely wrong and the majority of games take place in that setting simply because that is the D&D default setting and most groups just pick up the book and play the assumed setting. Not to mention the ones playing Warhammer, the One Ring, MERP, etc etc

Now if you asked "amongst a bunch of obsessed gamer geeks that waste hours of their lives posting on web forums about RPGs and have typically been playing RPGs for 30 + years are vanilla fantasy setting with faux medieval trappings and elves and dwarves common" then the answer might well have been no.

We are the outliers.

Like Premier mentions, most all the fantasy games I've played in seem default to something a whole lot more like the 'wild west' than anything European or medieval. There's usually a thin Ren Fair veener but even that gets tossed aside any time it gets in the way of comfort and familiarity.
I'd assume games being run in the UK and Europe have a bit more of the ye olde authenticity.