How much fantasy is too much fantasy?

[CryptRat]

I want more sword & sorcery RPGs, where the magical is actually magical and not mundane. Where you explore a labyrinth and fight the minotaur, rather than a minotaur of which there are many in the game and you can meet them in standard random encounters.
I don't want to find swords +1 and +2 wielded by every bandit captain, I want to find the legendary Skullcleaver which has been enchanted by a powerful sorceress 200 years ago and which has some badass special effects rather than just a mundane +1 to hit.

Make the magical cool and mysterious and build it up to be special, then actually make it special. When there's only one medusa in the game and she has a petrification attack that you have to defend yourself against by covering your eyes with your shield, and the snakes that make up her hair can attack you with a dozen strikes each turn, and she also uses a bow with poisoned arrows, and she has a horde of venomous snakes as her trash mob allies, that is going to be a much more memorable and cool encounter than regularly having random encounters against 3 medusas against whom you can defend yourself with easily available protection from petrification scrolls.

I could not disagree more. What you describe seems super boring and precisely describes all the bad games out there, one interesting boss encounter for 100 not interesting encounters. Good games like KOTC are the exact opposite of what you're describing, you keep fighting spiders, mages, dragons and other enemies which have arguments to value. And it's not only the enemies, you can use fireballs, confusion, dispell and paralysis spells and the encounters are crafted so that you have to. It's more fun to play that a bunch of swordsmen fighting packs of swordsmen and occasionnally you find one bomb or fight one boss where you use your bomb.

 

[DalekFlay]

I like high I guess. I'm super into sci-fi and fantasy both, and often times the more grand the better. One great aspect of games is there's no limits, they can make polygons of anything, so unlike a live-action show or movie they can get really wild with it. I also like low fantasy though, as long as the content is good. I'm not super picky.

I also have a major boner for alternate history, and wish we got more of that. Recent Wolfensteins with their "what if the Nazis won?" thing for example. Give me that type of thing in an RPG please.

 

[Darth Canoli]

I could not disagree more. What you describe seems super boring and precisely describes all the bad games out there, one interesting boss encounter for 100 not interesting encounters. Good games like KOTC are the exact opposite of what you're describing, you keep fighting spiders, mages, dragons and other enemies which have arguments to value.

What about less combat but tough and tactically interesting fights with big rewards ?

 

[CryptRat]

I could not disagree more. What you describe seems super boring and precisely describes all the bad games out there, one interesting boss encounter for 100 not interesting encounters. Good games like KOTC are the exact opposite of what you're describing, you keep fighting spiders, mages, dragons and other enemies which have arguments to value.

What about less combat but tough and tactically interesting fights with big rewards ?

But then magic and fantasy are mundane if they concern half of the fights, that's what I'm advocating for.

 

[wyes gull]

Don't really give a shit if there's "magic" or how many people use it, don't care if there's multiple races or monsters or what have you.
I'm just sick to death of elves, dwarves and orcs, of the same 5 monsters over and over again, of knights and swords and kings and castles and all that medieval crap and of people trying to speak "ye olde".

For a genre whose only restraint is the limit of one's imagination, it sure does seem to be driven by a ton of unimaginative cunts.

 

[Darth Canoli]

You can have interesting combats against knights, archers thieves ambushing you in a dark forest, assassins, a houndmaster and his fighting dogs, a pack of wolves (River of time had a very good wolves encounter, wolves surrounding one character after the other).

Something different and well made is more likely to be remembered (Fallout, Planescape, Arcanum ... )

 

[Incendax]

Anything but No Fantasy. I’ve never met a No Fantasy setting that wouldn’t be improved with a cup of Fantasy.

 

[Delterius]

Anything but No Fantasy. I’ve never met a No Fantasy setting that wouldn’t be improved with a cup of Fantasy.

world war 2

 

[Sranchammer]

Anything but No Fantasy. I’ve never met a No Fantasy setting that wouldn’t be improved with a cup of Fantasy.

Reality > Fantasy every time. A lot of fantasy is just dumbed-down historical events.

 

[Sacred82]

Q: is low magic exactly the same as rare magic?

 

[The Great ThunThun*]

In LoTR (as opposed to The Silmarillion) magic is rarer than in Conan's world. But this is not what makes Conan "low fantasy". In LoTR-verse, divine order and great powers play a direct role in the plot. While in Hyboria their role is subdued, mysterious and implied instead of being out in the open.

 

[FreeKaner]

Right now it seems every setting is either no fantasy or high fantasy. So more games that are low fantasy like Darklands would definitely be most welcome.

 

[Sacred82]

In LoTR (as opposed to The Silmarillion) magic is rarer than in Conan's world. But this is not what makes Conan "low fantasy". In LoTR-verse, divine order and great powers play a direct role in the plot. While in Hyboria their role is subdued, mysterious and implied instead of being out in the open.

So Darklands would be high fantasy by virtue of God(s) being directly involved?

IMO low magic would mean there's little magic both in quantity and quality. If you have few cases of magic but they tend to be decisive in some ways, not low magic anymore.

Another question, does low magic make low fantasy?

 

[vota DC]

I would say Tolkien fantasy but with non human races that have nothing of magic and they are just mice, kittens, doggies and bunnies with opposable thumbs.

 

[Delterius]

Anything but No Fantasy. I’ve never met a No Fantasy setting that wouldn’t be improved with a cup of Fantasy.

Reality > Fantasy every time. A lot of fantasy is just dumbed-down historical events.

you are being unfriendly

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

I will list problems which comes with every tier listed in poll (from my point of perceptive):

> No fantasy (if we talking about medieval setting, before guns became a thing)
- Setting restricted to "Historical accuracy only". This is a problem, because history of mankind is fucking mess, consisting from legends mashed with facts and sprinkled by propaganda. Wars, chaos during plague and hunger and censorship made many historical writings disappear or being rewritten to appease someone's agenda. Some regions just don't have suitable amount of documentation for creating historically accurate game.
- Since there no magic, you can play only as fighter or rogue and your weapon choice will be restricted by region where game set. Many weapons, used during conflicts of Middle Ages, was designed to be used in formations more than 10 men, so some weapons will be not viable for small party/lone pc.
- No monsters means only worthy opponent is humans and fighting people all the damn time can be VERY BORING sometimes.
- No unique loot for rogue to steal/for fighter to loot. I mean, yeah, you can become rich by selling another piece of gear from Milan, but armor and weapons progression stops very quickly. And some point even very patient players will skip looting corpses.
- No barbarians, if you would play as naked bodybuilder with two handed weapon - you catch arrow in knee and die in suffering from disease.

> Low fantasy (why the fuck OP bringing GOT as example, I have no idea)
Look, guys, I loved to watch movies about Conan the Barbarian when I was a kid ( I didn't knew at that time that there is a books about Conan and magazines, tho), but there exists some problem with low fantasy:
- If magic really rare I doubt that player will be allowed to create magician, so we again stuck with fighter, rogue and (some improvement) barbarians.
- Contradiction inside very setting: if some race (or monster) know that they have magic power, while humans not - what makes them sit far away instead of enslaving humans or killing them? Nobody will sit on their asses in distance when they can just prey on weak. At least in harsh setting, distant from "rainbow and friendship" setting.
- Sure, you can now fight with monsters, but before you will fight mostly humans without any surprises (like fireball in your face for example). Kinda makes things predictable.
- High chance for story to be turned into overused "Evul wizard vs good martial class" troupe, because creators of game will be wanting to cater to specific audience.
- Reactivity problem, because kinda annoying, when NPC pretend that magic is a legend, while your pc/party returning from battle with monster/evul wizard and can't even tell everybody that magic exist and monsters too.

> just like Tolkien fantasy (I don't call it "medium" fantasy because magic is still rare)
- So people know about magic and it's benefits, but still no ruler tried to create loyal school of magic by bribing/forcing few magicians to train other people to be magic users (and therefore increasing population of magicians from 0,01 to ->10%)? Sounds strange to me.
- People know about dangers of magic, but still not hostile to magicians and don't go on witch hunts? Even more strange.
- Different races in "just like Tolkien" setting means in majority cases that there will be elves again, fuck elves
- Overused "magic declining" troupe. Tolkien at least had decent reason for this, meanwhile many other writers used stupid "just cuz" excuse.
- There was already too many copies of Tolkien, just stop.

> "High fantasy" (in fact not that high, just copy of D&D)
- Retarded situation when shitload people know magic, but somehow monsters still isn't driven into extinction and village/city need somebody to do dirty work.
- For "High fantasy" many games have very limited magic system, designed by somebody with limited imagination and stereotype about magician as debuffer/dps and not guy who can walk on water, turning water into wine and creating other majestic miracles.
- Many "high fantasy" games fallen under dark influence of political agenda, in result instead of diverse cultures, architecture, clothing on different races we see almost identical cities where all races mashed together and speak on same tongue, wear same clothing and etc. You can't anymore say "Hey, this halfling town is nice" because all midgets forced to live in same houses as big races. you also can't use napalm on elf village, because you can hurt humans and midgets, which is sucks.
- World in stagnation, there no development, many thousands years may pass, but no improving of living conditions, fucking sucks.

Propblem of +1 or +2 sword being on every bandit leader is just shit design, if ofc bandit leader wasn't tough boss. This problem have nothing to do with fantasy, same shit can happen with every game.

Personally I want another game like Arcanum or Underrail, where magic and technology exist together (in balance or not, it's another question), but unfortunately inclined Hybrid setting isn't represented in poll. In my opinion "high fantasy" can be salvaged in magic department with enough creative mind and without "statement" about races.

Well, so I decided to vote for High Fantasy, for the sake of balance.

 

[CryptRat]

You can have interesting combats against knights, archers thieves ambushing you in a dark forest, assassins, a houndmaster and his fighting dogs, a pack of wolves (River of time had a very good wolves encounter, wolves surrounding one character after the other).

Looks more fun if the party can cast mirror image, sleep and sticking cloud, some of the knights can cast hold monsters, one of the assassin wears a cape of enfeeblement and a wand of fear or the wolves are actually werewolves with everything that implies.

 

[Incendax]

world war 2

We already had a WW2. Having it again wouldn’t be quite as fun as having WW2 with a little Fantasy added in. :D

Reality > Fantasy every time. A lot of fantasy is just dumbed-down historical events.

Anything Reality can do, Fantasy can also do. It’s like choosing to have money, or have MORE money, even if you don’t use the extra money.

 

[JarlFrank]

I want more sword & sorcery RPGs, where the magical is actually magical and not mundane. Where you explore a labyrinth and fight the minotaur, rather than a minotaur of which there are many in the game and you can meet them in standard random encounters.
I don't want to find swords +1 and +2 wielded by every bandit captain, I want to find the legendary Skullcleaver which has been enchanted by a powerful sorceress 200 years ago and which has some badass special effects rather than just a mundane +1 to hit.

Make the magical cool and mysterious and build it up to be special, then actually make it special. When there's only one medusa in the game and she has a petrification attack that you have to defend yourself against by covering your eyes with your shield, and the snakes that make up her hair can attack you with a dozen strikes each turn, and she also uses a bow with poisoned arrows, and she has a horde of venomous snakes as her trash mob allies, that is going to be a much more memorable and cool encounter than regularly having random encounters against 3 medusas against whom you can defend yourself with easily available protection from petrification scrolls.

I could not disagree more. What you describe seems super boring and precisely describes all the bad games out there, one interesting boss encounter for 100 not interesting encounters. Good games like KOTC are the exact opposite of what you're describing, you keep fighting spiders, mages, dragons and other enemies which have arguments to value. And it's not only the enemies, you can use fireballs, confusion, dispell and paralysis spells and the encounters are crafted so that you have to. It's more fun to play that a bunch of swordsmen fighting packs of swordsmen and occasionnally you find one bomb or fight one boss where you use your bomb.

There wouldn't be 100 fights against boring mundane trash mobs though. Does Conan spend most of his time fighting hundreds of low-level mooks? Or does he break into the tower of a high level wizard, fight with a giant venomous snake, and face the powerful enchanter himself at the end? He's doing the latter, which is exciting and why we all love reading about his adventures.

Same with Hercules, Beowulf, and any other ancient and medieval hero. Every encounter of theirs is fun and unique with some special mechanics and gameplay element, if you were to translate these stories into games.

And I'd rather feel like Hercules, Beowulf, Siegfried, Conan or Red Sonja than an errand boy who does repetitive things.

 

[frajaq]

Whatever Arcanum was

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

Damn, people really struggle to read my previous post in this thread. I am sorry, I just wanted to describe my thoughts in detail, but apparently something went wrong.

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

Same with Hercules, Beowulf, and any other ancient and medieval hero. Every encounter of theirs is fun and unique with some special mechanics and gameplay element, if you were to translate these stories into games.
And I'd rather feel like Hercules, Beowulf, Siegfried, Conan or Red Sonja than an errand boy who does repetitive things.

And we get game where all abilities opened from start, all stats maxed out. It's like starting game with character of maximum level. In fact many RPGs systems is about guiding player's character from 0 to Hero and heroes that you described is imagery of high level character, not first level.
Unique encounters is cool and all, but what the point in them if you already overpowered and can just rush through them and defeat final boss in 30 min?

 

[theSavant]

Monsters and magic essential for fantasy. Without them it's just generic medieval simulator (like Kingcomrade Deliverance).

 

[Neanderthal]

Fantasy elements are often also confused with poor world building and everything making fuck all sense, the opposite should be true, you ground the world in its own internal consistency and the fantastic (whether spells or dragons) serve to provide departures from that.

However a lack of imagination often strangles creativity for low magic worlds, class is a good example, look at all the careers, backgrounds, specialisations you could follow in the real world and build on that. Not to mention the fantastic species professions. Read WFRP career guide for instance.

 

[Nyast]

Low fantasy doesn't make much sense in the context of an RPG. If you're a random character that starts at level 1 and has access to magic, then by definition it can't be low fantasy. Unless you're somehow "The One", but then to be coherent, none of the trash mobs should have magic, which would make the game pretty boring. There's a reason most fantasy RPGs are high fantasy, if you think about it.