The Witcher?
Risen?
Does Brutal Legend count? It’s definitely fantasy.
I’d say that Star Wars is certainly fantasy, and not really sci-fi. So I’d give it as an example of a non-traditional fantasy story.
Well, I certainly do agree that many fantasy writers go about creating a work in a way that uses the tolkien high fantasy setting as a base to a very heavy degree, because the reader will basically know what to expect.
He will see (or read about) a couple of familiar faces, some might have a slightly different role, but they’re still the same dudes at heart.
You can call this lazy, but I partially can relate to this notion from a readers point of view.
It’s like reading a semi-historical novel set in Ancient Rome or in WW2-era France, you are losely familiar with the basic foundations of the world from the get-go.
Many scifi “worlds” play the same trick by creating alien races (or future human institutions) that closely resemble an established or historical entity.
Late era Star Trek Klingons always strangely remind me of fantasy dwarves, Babylon 5’s Centauri were obviously a Roman Empire set in the future, Star Wars’ Jedi were heavily inspired by Japanese Samurai … just to name a few.
I can also relate to the notion of wanting something different, especially once you read a certain amount of novels the sameish approach will start to annoy most readers. But I think we have to live with the fact that fantasy as a genre IS tolkienish. If you stray from that path too far, it ain’t fantasy any longer.
If you set your story with magic in the industrialization era, doesn’t it instantly become a steampunk story?
If you put set it in the future and mix in spaceships, won’t it transition to the scifi era? (Hello Star Wars)
Are the russian …Watch novels by Sergei Lukyanenko “classical” fantasy novels?
I read a few fantasy novels that tried to break free by getting rid of orcs and dragons and tried to rely on different stuff, but they often ended up creating another nemesis race which strangely resembled orcs but was merely called differently. There’s only so much you can do, appearently.
It’s like most scifi stories provide very human-like alien races. The only thing that comes to mind spontaneously when I try to come up with a scifi “setting” that doesn’t heavily rely on humanoid aliens is the old 4x game Ascendancy with it’s wacky alien races.
But it appears most people would not put blame on a scifi story for including - oh boy, what a cliche - giant spaceships, bipedal humanlike alien species, faster than light travel or energy weapons.
rezaf
Except for one particular book series, I haven’t seen an elf or a dwarf for quite some time in my readings, though one other does have the medieval castles angle.
If you set your story with magic in the industrialization era, doesn’t it instantly become a steampunk story?
Isn’t a steampunk story with magic a subgenre of fantasy? I think fantasy is a more inclusive and big genre than you think.
Well, you are correct of course, but if you bring subgenres in, isn’t the whole tolkienish ballpark called “High Fantasy” or somesuch and a medieval fantasy story with dragons and orcs would automatically be “High Fantasy” and the criticism would have to be changed to: “Why aren’t more games made about other fantasy subgenres?”?
Except there are a few. Troika’s Vampire surely ain’t high fantasy.
Neither was Arcanum, which did have orcs and knights, but definately was more steampunkish.
The introduction to Lionheart was pretty slick, you know, until the whole game fell apart and became awful.
The late Wizardry and - to a lesser degree - some M&M games did have a science-fantasy angle to them.
There’s are semi RPGs about the aforementioned …Watch novels.
I’m sure I could come up with more examples if I tried harder, but I’ll leave it at that.
rezaf
I am happy we agree. People speaks of fantasy as something bad, you question them… and in the end they were really speaking about Tolkien-inspired, High Fantasy.
I’ve never quite understood why the Sword and Sorcery subgenre e.g., Conan, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Elric isn’t more represented in games. Saving the world every now and then is fine, but sometimes just adventuring is the thing.
One of the things that made Darklands so great was that you could simply ignore the whole main quest thing and just wander around Germany gaining a good (or bad) reputation.
Yeah. While games have problems with tired fantasy conventions, I don’t see the same problem in fiction. Or rather, it doesn’t matter in fiction because while there may be only a handful of AAA RPGS, there are nearly unlimited books (at least since the net). It’s easy to avoid anything you feel is tired.
FWIW, the last high fantasy I happened to complete, Long Prince Quartet, didn’t really have any of these conventions.
Also, I do find standard tropes to have some utility in games. Especially fantasy strategy. I know what kind of units rangers will be, what sorts of things dragons will do, that wizards are likely weak but kick ass, etc etc.
Yeah, I mean what would be the result of having dragons in a game be the swamp dragons of Discworld? A lot of whiny gamers, that’s what.
Probably you’re right, but I would kill for a proper game based on the Guards, Guards! characters. I liked the old Discworld games based on Rincewind’s adventures, but the Watch are my favorite characters in Pratchett’s stories, and I would love to play an rpg, open-world, rts, hell – FPS based on those characters.
And this from a guy who just does not care for fantasy. If I could go for my true love, I would most love an open-universe (think Starflight or Star Control, but larger scale. Sure, I dream big) old school Star Trek adventure, going against the Klingons and Romulans back in the Kirk era. Ah, it’s good to dream.
What do you call the Wizardry/Might and magic category? Fantasy, fantasy, fantasy – wait, robots! Kill the robots! I’m in a spaceship? What?
Pern isn’t fantasy, it’s sci fi with bioengineering and psyonics. You just think it’s fantasy until later reveals.
Have you read THE DRAGONBONE CHAIR from Tad Williams. It’s the first of a series of 4.
Definitely Fantasy, naturally some elf-ish like folk around and other mythical stuff but something completely different.
I can recommend that especially if you’re abit worn out with “the old told like stories” in fantasy as Tad Williams has an rather “interesting” way to storytell.
On the linked page of his home page is also an description and an excerpt of it.
*edit:
It is possible to tell something new in the Fantasy Genre (although that isnt really new since its from 1996) but not many really bother coming up with good ideas and characters.
Yeah, there was a time when I read almost exclusively fantasy and burnt through a lot of series.
Tad Williams books are some of the better ones I remember, but I think they’re still High Fantasy at heart.
However, I am not one of the people burnt out of fantasy out of principle, and I’m sure many people here would argue that my standards are outrageously low anyway as I could even get a solid amount of enjoyment out of stuff like Dragonlance and RA Salvatore.
On the other hand, there were some series I actually aborted reading even though I tend to finish what I started.
Wheel of Time, for example, which I felt was off to an excellent start but the pacing became such a crawl essentially after the first bad dude had been disposed of, I found it to be unbearable. I have distinct memories of actually being so annoyed by the ongoing hunt for some “Cup of the Winds” (?) that at one point, I said to myself: “If they haven’t reached the darn cup 1000 pages from here, I’ll quit reading.” and actually started a pages-read counter. They didn’t and so I did.
Plus, as it turned out my fears back in the day that the series might never get finished by Jordan at that pace were not entirely unfounded.
I also aborted Terry Goodkind’s series, which started off solidly imo but was a chore to read sometimes and then went completely downh… err … off a cliff.
I long avoided Song of Ice and Fire because I was always worried that it was ongoing. And now that I have read the first few books I have to admit they are very good, but I’m STILL worried whether or not the series will ever be completed and have aborted reading the series for that reason.
rezaf
It depends on how closely you want to draw the lines. If you loosen it up to similar archetypes then all romance novels are basically the same, all fantasy is basically the same, all action movies are basically the same. In that case you can also say that Tolkien wasn’t the model, but Beowolf. Since Beowolf preceeded him and had many of the same elements.
But I dont think originality needs to mean everything is new an strange. You can create fantasy with elves and orcs and still have it be original. You can also create fantasy with elves and orcs and have it be completely derivative of Tolkien.
My problem isnt that new games/stories contain orcs any more than sci-fi storeis contain space ships. My problem is when the new game/story contains surly dwarves that hate horses and have scottish accents, elves that are immortal and perfect, a powerful wizard that guides the party, an artifact that is both powerful and cursed, a forest where the trees are alive, a former dwarven mine that is now filled with creatures, etc. Its not a theft of the objects, but the use of those objects in exactly the same way that bores me to tears.
I’m not sure about that. If you look at the paper RPG world, you find a large number of RPG games set alternative fantasy settings (Dark Sun, Runequest, etc…). Discworld as a setting would no doubt have interest; as long as the world building itself is consistent, players would no doubt accept it.
I agree- it seems like when people bemoan typical fantasy stuff they are really talking about 70s and 80s era stuff. I can’t remember the last time I read a fantasy novel that starred a farmboy who would become a king, had elves or dwarves, , involved the search of some ancient magic relic, etc. Sure those are still being published somewhere (just the nature of the number of books on shelves) but those types of stories aren’t really popular among genre enthusiasts. These days most seem to be taken things from GRRM’s template.
Not at all. I love sci-fi RPG’s and there are not enough of them. I get tired of Orc, Trolls, Dwarves, etc. Sci fi worlds seem so different and unique while fantasy seems stuck in a rut.
Sci fi worlds can be so much harder to create, though. All the technology and such often has to have some sort of realistic science and tech incorporated it. A lot more explanation needs to be given compared to the “magic” of much fantasy.