For a while there, both in SF and naturally in RPGs, there were quite a few authors (I remember reading some incredibly cheap, crappy paperbacks with the premise) that presented worlds that were, for all effects fantasy worlds, but it was a crucial element of the setting description that in fact this world was not a fantasy world, but an alien world populated by humans (usually by accident, and bundled up with some disaster that causes a loss of the high-tech SF knowledge that brought them here) in the far future.
Tekumel is like that, Jorune is like that. There are a few other RPG settings like that, no doubt.
What was the appeal of this concept? Particularly in those worlds where you didn't really have much if any actual high-tech happening?
Conversely, is there something about this kind of setting that turns you off, or that would make it less popular than just saying "its a fantasy world"? For one the fact that it seems needlessly complex, I suppose...
RPGPundit
I like the appeal of just breaking out of the mold a little bit. After so many games with elves, dwarves and dragons, things can start to feel a little stale. Plus, there's the added spice of the sword-and-planet type story, which you can sort of emulate in "classic" fantasy, but it's just not quite the same.
It is, in a lot of ways, just another fantasy world with some things swapped around and a different level of detail.
I have a friend who runs a straight fantasy game with a sci-fi background. All the magic is nanotechnology and all the dragons are genetic constructs, but the gameplay is mostly indistinguishable from regular fantasy. Having that as a base just amuses him.
Well, there's a lot of ground between the world of Hawkmoon, the Urth of New Sun, The Dying Earth, and Shannara right?
Most fantasy worlds are built on the wreckage an ruins of past ages. It's a nice easy explanation for dungeons and monsters. It's not much different with the original Gamma World.
I think it's partially the visual and contextual contrast, the cool smooth steel walls of the ancient installation and the rough hides and furs of the savages who live in it. The barbarian princess in her standard issue fur bikini who has a laser pistol.
Really Warhammer 40000 and Rifts both fit into the broader context of this mix.
Maybe we find the notion that all this progress and science will inevitably be lost to barbarism comforting.
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?
Most fantasy worlds are built on the wreckage an ruins of past ages. It's a nice easy explanation for dungeons and monsters. It's not much different with the original Gamma World.
I think it's partially the visual and contextual contrast, the cool smooth steel walls of the ancient installation and the rough hides and furs of the savages who live in it. The barbarian princess in her standard issue fur bikini who has a laser pistol.
Really Warhammer 40000 and Rifts both fit into the broader context of this mix.
Maybe we find the notion that all this progress and science will inevitably be lost to barbarism comforting.
Nice reply here...:)
I think it's an invocation of Clarke's "sufficiently advanced technology" law, or some corollary thereof, to protect suspension of disbelief in those cases where the author's personal fantasy is too modernistic, or too deviant, to be read as traditional myth/fantasy. Or, maybe it is just scraping the barrel trying to be different.
Pundit, how essential is the "lost planet" part of your definition of this genre? Are all the far-future Earths disqualified?
So far, we've got Tekumel and Jorune. Let's have some more examples to help differentiate the "far future alien world" from the Urths and Shannaras.
Quote from: RPGPundit;462244For a while there, both in SF and naturally in RPGs, there were quite a few authors (I remember reading some incredibly cheap, crappy paperbacks with the premise) that presented worlds that were, for all effects fantasy worlds, but it was a crucial element of the setting description that in fact this world was not a fantasy world, but an alien world populated by humans (usually by accident, and bundled up with some disaster that causes a loss of the high-tech SF knowledge that brought them here) in the far future.
This sounds like the premise of the television shows Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis.
Powerful aliens visited earth for thousands of years and masqueraded themselves as "gods" to various ancient human civilizations. Over many thousands of years, large numbers of humans were kidnapped by these powerful aliens and brought to other parts of the universe for all kinds of nasty purposes.
These kidnapped humans (in other parts of the universe) ended up creating civilizations which resembled various earth ones from history (ie. ancient egypt, etc ...).
For the most part, the Stargate setting is very much like a kitchen sink of numerous science fiction and fantasy tropes, all simultaneous with being in the present day (ie. during the 2000's).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Mythology
Quote from: RPGPundit;462244...worlds that were, for all effects fantasy worlds, but it was a crucial element of the setting description that in fact this world was not a fantasy world, but an alien world populated by humans... in the far future.
That is all yours, Pundit. It is no attitude I recall ever encountering from the authors, publishers or fans of, e.g., Burroughs's or Brackett's or Lewis's planetary romances; or Bradley's Darkover, or Silverberg's Majipoor; or the future Earths of C.A. Smith, Hodgson, Lanier, Moorcock, Vance, Wolfe, etc..
I think Pundit's distinction is accurate and useful on a variety of points from a meta-genre perspective (the way it sets up expectations, particularly when you contrast "distant future science fantasy" with so-called "high-fantasy"), a cultural perspective ("high fantasy" and other fantasies--but not S&S--have strong roots in tradition, even if they've been bastardized), and in-setting perspective ("magic" isn't "psionics" isn't "high tech").
The distinction is less strongly recognized in books, true, than in RPGs, but "high fantasy" has increasingly dominated in both forms over the last few decades as far as I can tell, while earlier pop fantasy/SF (pre-1979, say) was less canonized and the two genres overlapped more. Also, in books the author has a great deal more control and doesn't have nearly as much to contend with in terms of getting the reader to go along.
Quote from: Insufficient Metal;462254I like the appeal of just breaking out of the mold a little bit. After so many games with elves, dwarves and dragons, things can start to feel a little stale.
I agree with this above all. It's a way of stating definitively & clearly that the tropes of neither "traditional" nor "high fantasy" apply, nor should elements of pseudo-medievalism be taken for granted, etc.
As for other examples in games, aside from Dying Earth where it's really not clear if the magic is resurgent magic after the decadence of Reason, there's also GURPS
Planet of Adventure and the recent
Chronicles of Future Earth for BRP.
To clarify, I'm not talking about Gonzo settings that clearly mix sci-fi and fantasy. I'm talking about those settings where there's a very high-to-absolute chance that it will NEVER actually come up in the game that "this is an alien planet and not a fantasy world" or "this is actually earth in the distant distant future so distant that there's no actual way to tell its earth".
I 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?!
Likewise, if you say "700 000 years ago this was a colony world of a human spacefaring civilization in our own future; but now its de-evolved to where no memory survives of that, there's no actual tech left lying around, no one knows this is the case, and it will never come up in actual play, but there it is", what's the fucking point?!
RPGPundit
Quote from: RPGPundit...it was a crucial element of the setting description that in fact this world was... an alien world populated by humans (usually by accident, and bundled up with some disaster that causes a loss of the high-tech SF knowledge that brought them here) in the far future.
Tekumel is like that, Jorune is like that.
Quote from: RPGPundit;462289To clarify... I'm talking about those settings where there's a very high-to-absolute chance that it will NEVER actually come up in the game that "this is an alien planet and not a fantasy world" or "this is actually earth in the distant distant future so distant that there's no actual way to tell its earth".
What will you 'clarify' next? You have just established that
you have no idea what you are talking about! I mean, is it Tekumel and Jorune, or not? If not, then
what?
Put down the pipe and give those gray cells some oxygen, man, then get back to us.
"Not a fantasy world"? What is that even supposed to mean? Do you believe that the sorceries of Tekumel and flying islands of Jorune are
real?
Quote from: Insufficient Metal;462254I have a friend who runs a straight fantasy game with a sci-fi background. All the magic is nanotechnology and all the dragons are genetic constructs, but the gameplay is mostly indistinguishable from regular fantasy. Having that as a base just amuses him.
That's very similar to the setup for my Chronicles of Amherth setting. You can play it as straight fantasy or play up some of the scifi elements. The appeal for me is a blend of science and magic opens up a lot of possibilities. Are the constructs in my setting golems or robots? Are the strange "places of power" reservoirs of untapped magic or giant generators. I leave that up to the GM (or LL in this case) to decide.
My home game has a distinct scifi feel to it mainly because I have a rough backstory in my head of how things came to be. On the surface though, it plays out as straight fantasy pretty much.
Pete
Quote from: RPGPundit;462289Likewise, if you say "700 000 years ago this was a colony world of a human spacefaring civilization in our own future; but now its de-evolved to where no memory survives of that, there's no actual tech left lying around, no one knows this is the case, and it will never come up in actual play, but there it is", what's the fucking point?!
RPGPundit
I'm assuming here that you are talking about Tekumel in specific, so its worth pointing out a few things:
1: Ancient tech is lying about and is common enough that if you live in a large city you might have witnessed its use by someone. Its also possible that if you belong to a powerful enough clan you might have even used some of it yourself. Most of the temples have access to the 'aircars' of ancient times, most of them know how to call the subterranean tubeway cars that can take you all over the planet. Most of the empires also have access to ancient weaponry and transportation. They can't repair it, and for the most part the don't understand it, but it is there. There have also been robots, space ships (the plain of towers is an old ruined starport) and at least one atomic device that has been detonated on Tekumel in the recent past.
2. Most magicians/priests of Tekumel are well aware that Tekumel is one planet in a solar system. The readily available magic of 'dimensional gates' has allowed them to visit at least one of Tekumel's moons, which has a breathable atmosphere. Also, because of theses gates/nexus points magicians are well aware that there is a large multi-dimensional cosmos out there and Tekumel is just one part of it. They may not be aware that they first came from planet earth, but really does that make a difference? Many of the Native American myth structures could be read as dimly remembered interplanetary migration (traveling from the First World to the Second World, etc.).
This is not the first time you have singled out Tekumel for a rant. It's a pretty minor bywater in the gaming universe and I do kind of wonder why it makes you roll your eyes and gnash your teeth so much? If it bothers you just pretend it never existed. I can't imagine there are legions of Empire of the Petal Throne fans who are hunting you down and forcing you to play this game.
The overall theme of space colonies which have sunk into barbarism is pretty common is Sci-fi. I'm not going to re-list authors already mentioned in the thread, but I'll add a few more. Ursula K. LeGuin's commonality novels deal with it as does Cloud Cry by Sydney J. Van Scyoc, Larry Niven's Ringworld deals with it (I'm pretty sure many of the people on the Ringworld didn't understand that all worlds weren't like the one they lived on). Also I'm surprised no one has mentioned Thundar the Barbarian yet. You could also look at the Planet of the Apes movies as being similar. The evolved apes couldn't believe there was ever a time when humans were the dominant species.
I think most people realize that civilization is a tenuous thing. There are tons of examples in history of great civilizations collapsing and barbarism taking hold again. So its only natural that when we create alternate settings for games and novels this trope pops up in some way.
My homebrew fantasy setting is basically in that classification... disastrous collapse of wormhole networks leads to collapse of oppressive alien empire... stranded survivors on a 'world that is not their own' have to make do and generally revert to lower tech... and the 'magic' of the past is suspect to many.
Lots of Jorune and Tribe 8 in the mix... but it's basically an extension of my ancient Gamma World campaigns from High School.
It comes off as vaguely Asian-influenced fantasy... but if you go digging you can find yourself on other worlds or in pocket universes or on space ships (it links up to several other homebrew settings).
Phillip'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.
Quote from: RPGPundit;462289To clarify, I'm not talking about Gonzo settings that clearly mix sci-fi and fantasy. I'm talking about those settings where there's a very high-to-absolute chance that it will NEVER actually come up in the game that "this is an alien planet and not a fantasy world" or "this is actually earth in the distant distant future so distant that there's no actual way to tell its earth".
I suppose its done in the hope of adding to the exotic, alien feel - in the hope the players feel that it is 'barbarism in the far future' ?
A couple of other RPG examples I can think of no one's mentioned yet would be Synnibarr (Mars 50,000 years on, though its geography and local star system are completely different - two suns). There were also a series of gamebooks called Skyfall which were set on a generic fantasy planet complete with druids etc, though apparently its a lost colony of earth.
From a science-y perspective having an alien world be settled from Earth actually makes there being humans there much more plausible, though really this is something that honestly no one really thinks about much. We usually take that we're there pretty much for granted, though the chance of humans arising may actually be quite small, statistically. There are alot of other possibly pathways for evolution to take, if you believe (say) Stephen Jay Gould.
My Book of Jalan (http://www.flyingmice.com/jalan.html) is set within the StarCluster 2 universe - StarCluster 3 doesn't have an explicit setting - and there are explicit links to the SF aspect, though one could also play it completely as a type of fantasy. I list it as a SF game though. The reason? I'm crap with fantasy. the only way I could get any handle on it at all was to treat it as SF.
-clash
See "Time Abyss" in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, ed. John Clute & John Grant. New York: St. Martin's Griffin: 1999. (pp 946-47)
I'm a little rusty as I've not read a lot of fantasy in a while so bear with me. But here is how I see it.
A lot of modern fantasy from the likes of David Gemmell, David Eddings of George R R Martin have no interest explaining where their fictional worlds fit in relation to our real world. These fictional are worlds might be populated with humans, feature a mix of Earth fauna and flora and some characters might even common have English names like "Robert", but crucially they are not Earth. They are not even an alternate version of Earth. They are just spaces for stories to happen outside of any continuity beyond the author's own.
A lot of older fantasy did try to relate the fictional world to the real world. They would either set the adventures in a mythical past like Hyboria or Tolkien's Middle Earth (I think), have Earth characters cross over into an alternate reality (Narnia, Thomas Covenant) or set the fantasy world on a distant planet technically somewhere in our universe, possibly someplace humans have colonised like Dragonriders of Pern.
What's the appeal? I guess if your fictional world is going to be draw a lot on things which exist (or existed) in the real world, at least you have an explanation for it. But it now seems like an unnecessary overhead as I think most people are happy enough to just accept the genre conventions without over-thinking things.
How about Gramarye, world of Christopher Stasheff's The Warlock In Spite of Himself (1969)? It was colonized by devotees of Creative Anachronism, because Role-Play Gamers had not yet been invented. Eventually, the new Galactic polity sent an agent to make the medieval world safe for (what else?) Democracy.
Quote from: flyingmice;462307My Book of Jalan (http://www.flyingmice.com/jalan.html) is set within the StarCluster 2 universe - StarCluster 3 doesn't have an explicit setting - and there are explicit links to the SF aspect, though one could also play it completely as a type of fantasy. I list it as a SF game though. The reason? I'm crap with fantasy. the only way I could get any handle on it at all was to treat it as SF.
-clash
Well, 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?"
Incidentally I got a spam with your name on it the other day. The name's unique and specific enough that I can't help but think you've been hacked somewhere.
Quote from: Soylent GreenBut it now seems like an unnecessary overhead as I think most people are happy enough to just accept the genre conventions without over-thinking things.
So, 4000 pages of the Wheel of Time with all its background details -- including that the time between occurrences of one of the Seven Ages is enough to wipe out all records of the last one -- is not "over-thinking things", but using a planet-girdling subway system as a vehicle for a travelogue (in M.A. R. Barker's
Flamesong) is?
Detailing a descent through the Circles of Hell guided by Virgil is fine and dandy, but when Tumithak of the Corridors finds his way through subterranean passages to the surface and confronts alien conquerors it is somehow improper that he is a man of Earth and they are from another planet?
The history of Dark Sun or Talislanta or Eberron or New Crobuzon is legitimate, but not that of Jorune or the Dying Earth, Krishna or Tschai? The cosmology of Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms or Planescape or Glorantha, but not that of Tekumel or Urth?
What an unnecessary overhead of a double standard!
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?"
Perhaps. I obviously don't understand fantasy, so I couldn't say yea or nay, David. fantasy used to make sense to me, but it's gone now. Totally burned out. I have great trouble even reading it anymore.
QuoteIncidentally I got a spam with your name on it the other day. The name's unique and specific enough that I can't help but think you've been hacked somewhere.
Oh, my yahoo account was hacked. As far as I can see it is fixed now. Sorry about that!
-clash
I am happy to forget (as Eddison himself quickly seems to) that Mercury is the supposed stage upon which play out the events of The Worm Ouroboros (and yet Lessingham's appearance in the beginning seems to resonate a little with the Mezentian trilogy).
William Hope Hodgson's choice of narrator in The Night Land is an anachronism that can make it a bit hard to get into the main story. That the latter is set in the distant future of our world, however, seems to me quite appropriate.
I really like the proto-earth concept of Exalted. The idea that the world is still being created from magic and that's why things are so crazy...
I also love the super far future earth, like from the Panzer Dragoon games, where human society is based around reclaiming ancient, magic-like technology, but runaway biotech has filled the world up with fantasy creatures.
It's all good by me man.
The only time I don't like it is when the author is trying to drive home some idea about politics like, "what if all the survivors were christian or communist or democratic or scientists or whatever."
Quote from: flyingmice;462324Perhaps. I obviously don't understand fantasy, so I couldn't say yea or nay, David. fantasy used to make sense to me, but it's gone now. Totally burned out. I have great trouble even reading it anymore.
-clash
I can still read Patricia McKillop and Lawrence Watt Evans but have a terrible time with any Dragon Lance or Warhammer stuff.
I wonder sometimes when I look at fantasy whether the problem is trying to put a fresh coat of paint on elves or whether the real problem is the stories people try to tell.
The introduction of the first volume of Kurt Buisek's Astro City where he talks about telling other stories with the superhero genre was very eye openning for me. The idea being that most superhero stories are stories of adolescent fantasies. Busiek expands the story's scope while using the same language of super heroes and battles the form has always used. We start with the story of a man who works from dawn to dusk and is only free to be happy when he lays down to sleep. From there there's the story of a sheltered little girl running away from her family so she can learn to play hopscotch. A woman who crosses into another world and decides to go home when she sees it for what it is. A brash young man makes a fool of himself. A father in a dangerous job faces his fears for his child's future. A convict tries to go straight against all odds. An old man facing retirement drags a friend into a bad situation while trying to prove they're not too old.
Publishers mainly want fantasy trilogies about little guys going on a quest to face down an ultimate evil with the guidance of a kindly wizard. There's authors who offer more.
Thinking over it some more...
Adding in a link to Earth actually does explain humans being there a little better when the world is genuinely and completely unlike our own. In Raymond Feist's world of Kelewan for instance (related to Tekumel ?), all the creatures worked off a 6-legged design, so humans clearly don't fit in. In a more generic fantasy cosmos where plants and animals are clearly Earthlike with deer and oak trees and whatever, there's less reason to have any link to Earth.
Others 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.
Quote from: Phillip;462320So, 4000 pages of the Wheel of Time with all its background details -- including that the time between occurrences of one of the Seven Ages is enough to wipe out all records of the last one -- is not "over-thinking things", but using a planet-girdling subway system as a vehicle for a travelogue (in M.A. R. Barker's Flamesong) is?
Detailing a descent through the Circles of Hell guided by Virgil is fine and dandy, but when Tumithak of the Corridors finds his way through subterranean passages to the surface and confronts alien conquerors it is somehow improper that he is a man of Earth and they are from another planet?
The history of Dark Sun or Talislanta or Eberron or New Crobuzon is legitimate, but not that of Jorune or the Dying Earth, Krishna or Tschai? The cosmology of Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms or Planescape or Glorantha, but not that of Tekumel or Urth?
What an unnecessary overhead of a double standard!
Sorry, other than Dante (which I did at school) I've not read any of the other works you mention so I can't comment on the specifics. My point was not about trying to make a value judgement saying that one approach is better than the other. I was just suggesting that in was the fashion in older fantasy to explain to the reader where the fantasy world exists in relation to the real world, more recent fantasy does not.
The overthinking comment was related to the fact that just just because, say, Game of Thrones has human character called John or Robert does not mean that in the distant past Earthmen somehow made contact with that world. They are just names the author felt worked within the context.
With very specific cultural reference like "House Atreides" from Dune, the author is signalling that there probably is a link between the real world and the fantasy world.
Quote from: Soylent GreenI was just suggesting that in was the fashion in older fantasy to explain to the reader where the fantasy world exists in relation to the real world, more recent fantasy does not.
I think you may be using too small a sample for such a claim to be really meaningful. Confirmation bias can accomplish marvelous things!
I do not think that really was all you were suggesting, but I will take you at your word to the extent of leaving it at that.
A detail is often included in a story because it is in some way
part of the story. Symbolism, plot, philosophical argument, internal consistency, atmosphere, evocation of other stories -- there are many aspects that a story teller weaves together, even if some are not consciously considered but "just feel right".
Darkover, for example, is what it is because Bradley originally considered interaction between the Darkovans and the Terrans central to her stories. For some time she resisted the appeals of fans for stories set in the ages before recontact.
Quote from: David Johansen;462333I wonder sometimes when I look at fantasy whether the problem is trying to put a fresh coat of paint on elves or whether the real problem is the stories people try to tell.
... Publishers mainly want fantasy trilogies about little guys going on a quest to face down an ultimate evil with the guidance of a kindly wizard. There's authors who offer more.
I think John Clute nailed it with his distinction of Fantasy from "genre fantasy", the latter indicating the not-really-Fantasy stuff that predominates.
"Slick fantasy" is I think in that context the term for your "Astro City" kind of story. It used to feature a lot in magazines with slick (i.e., not 'pulp') paper. Ray Bradbury is widely regarded as the grand master.
As Fantasy is related to Myth, there is the sort of repetition and recycling that folks such as Sir James Frazer, Carl Jung, Robert Graves and Joseph Campbell have pointed out.
There is a difference, though, between work that a writer brings up from his or her own archetypal depths of the Ocean of Story, informed by real engagement with stories that truly moved him or her, and work that merely imitates some superficial elements of one or another real Fantasy. The latter process has become very incestuous and recursive.
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.
Quote from: Phillip;462550Exalted 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.
You're a very funny little man. Every post you've made on this thread so far has been a pointless and meaningless contradiction, and not even of my central argument but always trying to side-step it by trying to question some secondary detail. If it was starting to frustrate you that I wasn't biting at your little goads, its because they were so pointless that I just chose to ignore them, as I probably will continue to do so if you go on in this way in the future. And the longer this thread gets, the more silly your claims become as it becomes blatantly obvious that enough people can get what I'm talking about and discuss it (in agreement with me or not) that anyone claiming "this is not a real thing" just looks more and more like an idiot.
RPGPundit
Meanwhile, I think this thread has finally helped me to formulate what it is that bothers me about this kind of thing. Its that its clearly information meant for the READER. Its interesting to the dilettante who is reading the book, and nothing more. It serves no meaningful purpose for the GM as it has no bearing to the game he will run in that world (you could argue that he could MAKE it relevant by directly breaking the concept of this knowledge being "lost forever", introducing some remnant from ancient times, whatever; but that's beside the point; the GM could do that by himself with ANY fantasy world), and it certainly is of no relevance or use to the PCs playing in the game.
So its something that is there for the non-gamer, essentially.
RPGPundit
I think this is a matter of taste. Some of my favorite fantasy worlds for gaming include Harn and Middle Earth - and both of these have tons of details that are not directly relevant to the PCs. I don't think that this background necessarily detracts from adventuring - and could help give a sense of depth to the world.
Quote from: RPGPundit;462708Every post you've made on this thread so far has been a pointless and meaningless contradiction, and not even of my central argument but always trying to side-step it by trying to question some secondary detail.
You have yet to demonstrate that you have any such thing as a central argument. You contradict yourself at every turn!
Assuming you are correct about Exalted, you nonetheless remain incorrect about Tekumel and Jorune. Furthermore, Exalted apparently is not what you referred to in the first place.
If the question about Exalted is why Creation is supposed to be in our own past, then I think an obvious answer is that it is supposed in some way to be a commentary on our present. That is the reason for such placement in mythologies all over the world, and at the very least it evokes those mythologies and their meanings for us. I would expect that reading Exalted materials might illuminate one as to the uses of the theme that the designers had in mind.
The bottom line is that a game is for the players.
AD&D players may enjoy finding a Sherman tank in Baba Yaga's Hut even if the characters cannot recognize it. Players in Mystara may likewise enjoy learning the connections between (IIRC) a nuclear power plant and an immortal and certain far-reaching factors in the world.
The enjoyment, for me, with such settings is that I like there to be some sort of rational coherence to the setting... a logic behind it. Having a science background I try to give a bit of thought to how things might work in line with actual physics... are there 'dragons'? How are there 'dragons'? Do they fly? How?... how did the culture would evolve in the face of some of the creatures/powers available? Where is this place and how did it get this way?
Going through that (enjoyable) thought process generates a LOT more detail than just saying, "It's a world of MAGIC!" and leaving it at that... and, for me at least, ends up with something closer to the science fiction end of the continuum.
To my mind it makes the whole affair easier to run adventures in... answer off the cuff questions in a consistent way... and also generates all sorts of odd stuff I might not have dreamed up from a purely fantastical approach.
There are a lot of details that won't come into actual play... but they're there, behind the scenes... giving color and support to actual play.
I run a setting better when I can suspend my disbelief.
Quote from: Simlasa;462740The enjoyment, for me, with such settings is that I like there to be some sort of rational coherence to the setting... a logic behind it. Having a science background I try to give a bit of thought to how things might work in line with actual physics... are there 'dragons'? How are there 'dragons'? Do they fly? How?
...
I run a setting better when I can suspend my disbelief.
Whenever I've tried to think of fantasy/sci-fi stuff in a scientific context (ie. known physics, chemistry, etc ...), I frequently have a hard time suspending disbelief.
Whenever I played or DM an rpg game, I ended up discarding away any pretense of scientific explanations. It largely becomes an exercise in futility in coming up with plausible scientific explanations.
Quote from: Phillip;462674"I could have told you that at Poughkeepsie." Wasn't that a Le Guin criticism of the diction of Katherine Kurtz?
Now, none of this has I think very much to do with RPGs.
She was specifically discussing the language of fantasy, it wasn't the diction it was the statement itself. A major point of the essay in question "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" was that such recriminations and fault finding are particularly glaring in fantasy. She wasn't ragging on Kurtz at all, but it had been the comment that made a concept click for her that led to the essay. Essentially: heroes don't say "I told you so."
What does any discussion of the literary structure of the fantasy genre have to do with rpgs? Seriously?
Quote from: ggroy;462745Whenever I played or DM an rpg game, I ended up discarding away any pretense of scientific explanations. It largely becomes an exercise in futility in coming up with plausible scientific explanations.
It would if I was determined to keep the outer trappings of the standard fantasy setting... castles and orcs and dragons... but if I want to keep... say, the idea of dragons... big critters that can fly and belch flame and are ancient and horde gold... but otherwise don't mind changing them to make them more plausible... then I end up with some wild new critter who lives in that niche instead. Then I set about thinking how castles would evolved to deal with them...
I'm not saying my results are scientifically rigorous... just that, in the end, they end up weird/interesting... a bit more complex... and closer to science fiction than 'pure' fantasy... and bypass my handicap of HATING the, "Because it's MAGIC!" explanation for why stupid things exist in fantasy settings (or at least the way that explanation is often put to use).
Quote from: Simlasa;462750"Because it's MAGIC!" explanation for why stupid things exist in fantasy settings (or at least the way that explanation is often put to use).
Whenever I was DMing a D&D game in recent times (ie. 3.5E, 4E, 4E Essentials, etc ...), I ended up falling into this default "because it's magic" explanation.
I didn't see any point anymore in coming up with scientific explanations, when the players just took everything written in the D&D books at face value (for purposes of the game).
It would be different if I was designing my own rpg game and/or original setting.
Quote from: Phillip;462734AD&D players may enjoy finding a Sherman tank in Baba Yaga's Hut even if the characters cannot recognize it. Players in Mystara may likewise enjoy learning the connections between (IIRC) a nuclear power plant and an immortal and certain far-reaching factors in the world.
Yes, and if it happens in-game, great, then its something practical.
But I'm talking about those settings where it doesn't.
RPGPundit
Quote from: RPGPundit;462709Meanwhile, I think this thread has finally helped me to formulate what it is that bothers me about this kind of thing. Its that its clearly information meant for the READER. Its interesting to the dilettante who is reading the book, and nothing more. It serves no meaningful purpose for the GM as it has no bearing to the game he will run in that world (you could argue that he could MAKE it relevant by directly breaking the concept of this knowledge being "lost forever", introducing some remnant from ancient times, whatever; but that's beside the point; the GM could do that by himself with ANY fantasy world), and it certainly is of no relevance or use to the PCs playing in the game.
So its something that is there for the non-gamer, essentially.
RPGPundit
I think you have that right. However:
Quote from: RPGPundit;462927Yes, and if it happens in-game, great, then its something practical.
But I'm talking about those settings where it doesn't.
RPGPundit
I'm still not clear on what actual settings you mean. I can't speak to Jorune, but as has already been stated, it isn't true for Tekumel.
(Not trying to be snarky, here -- I honestly can't think of a setting like the one you're describing.)
It seems like most detailed settings have information that is not likely to come up in-game, secrets and histories ... unless it's purposefully focused on by the folks playing it and the GM chooses to go there.
What difference if those unused bits are magical or scifi elements... except to inform the general themes of the game and give a clue to developing the blank spaces?
Or am I missing something, as usual...?
Mr. Pundit's gripe is not clear to me.
Quote from: Simlasa;462930It seems like most detailed settings have information that is not likely to come up in-game, secrets and histories ... unless it's purposefully focused on by the folks playing it and the GM chooses to go there.
What difference if those unused bits are magical or scifi elements... except to inform the general themes of the game and give a clue to developing the blank spaces?
Or am I missing something, as usual...?
Mr. Pundit's gripe is not clear to me.
Well, I
think it's similar to the complaint I have about the Big Secret at the core of
SLA Industries: if the secret (supposedly) has no impact on the setting, and the players can't ever discover it, why have the secret?
(Of course, in the case of SLA, the Big Secret's even kept from the
GM, making it even dumber.)
I just can't think of a game that keeps the sci-fi origin of a fantasy world totally secret and completely irrelevant.
Quote from: RPGPunditBut I'm talking about those settings where it doesn't.
Try talking about one, with a name and other particulars.
Quote from: Dan DavenportI just can't think of a game that keeps the sci-fi origin of a fantasy world totally secret and completely irrelevant.
Clearly, you are not alone.
Quote from: Dan Davenport;462931I just can't think of a game that keeps the sci-fi origin of a fantasy world totally secret and completely irrelevant.
Neither can I.
I can see it not coming up, not being known/discovered by PCs... but remaining relevant to what happens... the way you can't see a man's bones but they still define much of his form.
The 'SLA' form of 'truth' seems to be more like design notes... where the author mentions that the inspiration for his new King Arthur game came to him during a daydream about Mr. Potato Head.
The reason Exalted seems to work is that it has the reverse of the chronology that Pundit actually proposed. If our Earth lies in the future, then obviously nobody in Creation can find out about it...
...except with some way to see the future, which is pretty far out. I guess Pundit has ascertained that Exalted prohibits anything so far out.
It's not quite so far out to collect information about the past. In a fantasy/sci-fi milieu, in which extraordinary things by the measure of our world are already the new normal, it is likely to be only the more difficult to make it impossible to discover something.
If the something actually has produced no evident effects, then one wonders how many sentences about it our hypothetical game designer writes. If it really has no bearing on the present, then to what lengths will the designer go to rig the physics and metaphysics of the universe to prevent discovery?
Has the game designer in fact expressed the assumption that no character shall learn the secret, or is that really just an expression of someone's lack of imagination?
It would be nice if we had an actual example to talk about!
Quote from: Simlasa;462740The enjoyment, for me, with such settings is that I like there to be some sort of rational coherence to the setting... a logic behind it.
I suspect many of the paperbacks from the seventies with such premises, such as Witch World and Darkover sprang directly from the Campbellian science fiction authors trying to respond to the sudden surge in the popularity of fantasy. It resulted in their tryining to construct something they could live with within the constraints of the literary ethic they subscribed to.
In a sense it created a new sub-genre of rigorous science fantasy. Anyone can give a barbarian princess a Buck Rogers surplus ray gun but building a coherent primitive world with humans on it who came from earth raised it to the standard they were trying to meet.
Quote from: Dan Davenport;462929I'm still not clear on what actual settings you mean. I can't speak to Jorune, but as has already been stated, it isn't true for Tekumel.
(Not trying to be snarky, here -- I honestly can't think of a setting like the one you're describing.)
Several of these have been named: Tekumel, which a lot of people seem to think this thread is a veiled-attack on is in fact not one of these settings per se; it very much DOES have high-tech remnants. Though in fact, from what I've seen of a lot of how people run Tekumel (basically as weird-culture-porn), they don't bother to use them; but that's not the setting's fault.
Jorune is one I was thinking of, yes, and Synnabar, and a few other lesser fantasy worlds out there, and (as I already mentioned) exalted has a turned-on-its-head variation of this. It was, like I said, a common convention of cheap sci-fantasy books in the late 70s/early 80s.
RPGPundit
Why Jorune? It has high-tech weapons and armor PCs can get their hands on so the scifi elements seem to be out in the open and in use... if not particularly common. The magic system isn't all that farther out than the PSI stuff in Traveller.
Is it that huge of a secret that Durlig, Crugar, Woffen, etc. are the results of tampering by the original settlers?
Maybe I need to go read Jorune again but I always took it as Planetary Romance/Scifi... similar to Tekumel and Barsoom. Maybe the average Joe doesn't know the whole history but it certainly seemed like it was discoverable and useful once learned.
Quote from: RPGPundit;462951Several of these have been named: Tekumel, which a lot of people seem to think this thread is a veiled-attack on is in fact not one of these settings per se; it very much DOES have high-tech remnants. Though in fact, from what I've seen of a lot of how people run Tekumel (basically as weird-culture-porn), they don't bother to use them; but that's not the setting's fault.
Jorune is one I was thinking of, yes, and Synnabar, and a few other lesser fantasy worlds out there, and (as I already mentioned) exalted has a turned-on-its-head variation of this. It was, like I said, a common convention of cheap sci-fantasy books in the late 70s/early 80s.
RPGPundit
Well, Synnibarr has high tech out the wazoo, and it's entirely possible for the PCs to find out the truth about the setting. Sounds like Jorune has plenty of high-tech goodies, too.
But!
If these games are run as you describe, or if there are other games with the setting premise you describe, then I agree that the background becomes pointless. Fair enough?
Quote from: Simlasa;462960Why Jorune? It has high-tech weapons and armor PCs can get their hands on so the scifi elements seem to be out in the open and in use... if not particularly common. The magic system isn't all that farther out than the PSI stuff in Traveller.
Is it that huge of a secret that Durlig, Crugar, Woffen, etc. are the results of tampering by the original settlers?
Maybe I need to go read Jorune again but I always took it as Planetary Romance/Scifi... similar to Tekumel and Barsoom. Maybe the average Joe doesn't know the whole history but it certainly seemed like it was discoverable and useful once learned.
Quote from: Dan Davenport;462965Well, Synnibarr has high tech out the wazoo, and it's entirely possible for the PCs to find out the truth about the setting. Sounds like Jorune has plenty of high-tech goodies, too.
The antiquity of Jorune is not that mysterious. Characters in the default "questing for citizenship" scenario are likely to understand that they aren't proper natives. There are particulars of the history that are better known by some than others, but then there are the Thriddle, who are the archivists and scholars of the setting. They've got a good handle on the past, and they've also got some technological research happening.
Some of the species, like the uplifted furries, are characterized by their ignorance of their own origins, but more than anything else, Earth and ancient history doesn't matter to Jorunis because it's
gone. A degree in ancient history and summers spent attempting to dig up the wreck of another old starship isn't going to make the Durlig grow.
The Jorune setting has a theme of renaissance.
Synnibarr is ridiculous. It has a few pages at the front blathering about how time traveling vampires tried to implode the sun two million years ago, or some such, but what do you expect? It includes details that would be impossible to recover, too, but with the rest of the book being as silly as it is, why not?
Well, ok, maybe I am talking out of my ass here... I bet there is an RPG setting somewhere that does this but I cannot bring it to mind, then.
However, the same fundamental issue that my OP is just one manifestation of still stands: there are settings that often provide information that has ZERO viable relevance to the game-in-play (witness the exalted example or SLA's big secret, etc), and in my opinion they often do this because they're writing for the "reader", rather than the "gamer".
RPGPundit
First, I'm gonna smite you all with my Midnight Sunstone Bazooka...
I would mention that The Truth, for SLA Industries, was meant for, and available to those who were Writing for the game line, though the exact particulars I never discovered... like if anyone ever got hold of it that way... I just recall that being proffered as the Method to discover the Truth (sign an NDA, have a project you are writing... that sort of thing).
Since it was, in fact, being kept out of the players (and GM's!) hands, I'm not sure it really matters as this thread describes. Its there for the writers of the game explicitly.
I, for one, am cool with that.
A lot of writers make up shit for their settings that isn't meant for public consumption. Look at the piles of shit based on notes published for both Middle Earth and Dune alike, after the author was dead. Most of it is pretty stupid when presented, but having that background, no matter how dumb, informs the main text, enriches it.
Thats my theory. I'd stick to it come hell or high water, but seeing as you all have been mightily smited by said Midnight Sunstone Bazooka, I'm guessin' it'll be awfully quiet around here for a while....
Quote from: Spike;463183First, I'm gonna smite you all with my Midnight Sunstone Bazooka...
I would mention that The Truth, for SLA Industries, was meant for, and available to those who were Writing for the game line, though the exact particulars I never discovered... like if anyone ever got hold of it that way... I just recall that being proffered as the Method to discover the Truth (sign an NDA, have a project you are writing... that sort of thing).
Since it was, in fact, being kept out of the players (and GM's!) hands, I'm not sure it really matters as this thread describes. Its there for the writers of the game explicitly.
I, for one, am cool with that.
A lot of writers make up shit for their settings that isn't meant for public consumption. Look at the piles of shit based on notes published for both Middle Earth and Dune alike, after the author was dead. Most of it is pretty stupid when presented, but having that background, no matter how dumb, informs the main text, enriches it.
Thats my theory. I'd stick to it come hell or high water, but seeing as you all have been mightily smited by said Midnight Sunstone Bazooka, I'm guessin' it'll be awfully quiet around here for a while....
Well, here's the thing: if it doesn't affect the setting, there's no reason for the information to exist.
And having read the Truth of SLA: Yeah, it pretty much matters, explaining as it does everything from why a given prolific species exists to the very nature of reality itself.
Relevant to the ongoing discussion here:
http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/fearoffiction.htm (http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/fearoffiction.htm).
I'd have to say I favor Transgressive SF over Campbellian SF, for the simple reason it opens up entirely new possibilities, however that is often inconceivable unless the storyline and plot is well integrated into the game.
Traveller, for example, is Campbellian, Trans-Human Space, Transgressive.
It's just easy to Jump the Shark when playing in a Transgressive SF game, by that I mean, some folks will have difficulty in making the connections between disparate technologies. This makes the Far Future Alien Worlds a much more difficult sell for an average group of RPG players.
So FFAW appeals to a niche, a much smaller subset of all SF RPG players.
Quote from: Dan Davenport;463265Well, here's the thing: if it doesn't affect the setting, there's no reason for the information to exist.
And having read the Truth of SLA: Yeah, it pretty much matters, explaining as it does everything from why a given prolific species exists to the very nature of reality itself.
Damnit, this damn Midnight Sunstone Bazooka must be broke... DAMN YOU RAVEN S. MCKRAKEN!!!!
Now, where was I?
Oh, yeah: The Truth.
See, I was a fan of SLA Industries for something very close to 15 years before I ever learned 'The Truth'. Not knowing 'The Truth' had absolutely no impact on my enjoyment, even though I KNEW that 'The Truth' was out there.
Reading 'The Truth' actually divided my SLA-Fandom into two seperate camps in my own head... the old skool version I'd loved for years where we have no idea what is going on in all those weird intro fictions, and it doesn't matter, and a seperate game entirely where I do know it, and it becomes this entirely new thing where seeking out and using 'the Truth' actually matters. Both have quiet a lot of potential, to me, thus the revelation (or lack) of The Truth doesn't really matter from my ability to enjoy the game.
Contrast this with the Dune Prequels (which I mentioned not entirely tangentally...). I enjoy me the hell out of some Dune. However, its isn't just the hackery that is Kevin J. Anderson that makes me dislike intensely the Dune Prequels (which I hate having read them...), particularly teh Butlerian Jihad arc. I appreciate the richness and depth they gave the setting of Dune, can even see how they did that, but reading about it was profoundly disappointing... mostly because it was incredibly stupid... Its a bit like seeing a sausage get made really.
I use this sort of thing in my own setting (detailed in stupid length, and in nearly obsessive detail on this very forum... pimp, pimp!). The PC's, and even the players seriously have no reason to know that their 'world' is nothing more than a refuge from the impermanence of chaos, that all mortal life is meant merely to reinforce 'reality', or really any of it.
Its there if I want it, and it really does improve the depth of the mythology, but in several years and three campaigns in that setting I've never really made the very nature of reality a part of the game itself.
How is that fundamentally different from a secret future history?