I recently lurked around in the boards, looking for something interesting to read. I came across a "least favorite classes" thread wherein a lot of the posters commented that their least favorite classes included gunslingers, alchemists, samurai, monks and ninja. Usually, it was accompanied by a "guns and fantasy don't go together" or "it screws with my western fantasy aesthetic" addendum.
This got me thinking. What is my definition of "fantasy"? Pathfinder is a "fantasy" RPG, but what does that mean to me?
Well...to me, fantasy as it relates to my role-playing experience is a vast definition. I've had everything in my games from standard full-plate fighters to gay alchemist snipers (one of my favorite characters to date) to futuristic warriors lost in another time and on another world. In my opinion, PF doesn't really reach far enough with its fantasy. I love the weird and outlandish. People on the boards complain about guns and katanas interfering with their fantasy while I design statistics for Gun-Katanas that I give to half-robotic bug people who fly around on pterodactyls and fight armies of sword-swinging vampire-ghosts that summon aliens to do their bidding! Generic, vanilla fantasy has grown boring to me. I want psychic ogres living in Borderlands-esque piles of trash and discarded airship parts. I'm one of those people who hears that his player wants to play a HALO spartan and thinks "how can I fit that in?" instead of "why is he/she doing this to me?" Granted, most of my games aren't nearly this strange and bizarre, but you get the point. I love anachronisms and mixing cultures. The idea of a western samurai-vampire hunter with a bladed sniper-rifle is one that would feel normal in my games, rather than something "weird" and "against the grain."
But I understand that I'm probably in the minority. So how about everyone else? What is your definition of "Fantasy" as it pertains to RPGs? Are you a standard sword-and-sorcery gamer with noble knights and damsels in distress? Or do you hail from the anime-inspired ultra-epic gameplay side of the fence? Or maybe your style of fantasy is a steampunk-inspired dystopia inhabited with clockwork machines and downtrodden people. Whatever it may be, I'd love to hear.
...Catch Phrase,
-Chris
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I don't have a single view of "fantasy" I think there are many types and I like most of them. I am not a fan of mixing them all together. A few examples.
Traditional fantasy - Lord of the Rings
Gritty Fantasy - Conan
Steam Punk Fantasy - Iron Kingdoms
High Fantasy - A lot of the FR novels
Horror Fantasy - Ravenloft
Weird Fantasy - World is ruled by giant squirrels who battle robot bugs.
etc.
I like all of them to one degree or another but not when you mix them all.
The Kitchen Sink approach is Fantasy for me.
I don't want to run or play in a D&D/Pathfinder game that is strictly a riff on medieval European history or Tolkien. There's Runequest for that. Don't get me wrong, I like that stuff, and use some of it, but to play a D&D/PF game that is just that...vanilla...would bore me into apathy. D&D is supposed to be the kitchen sink approach IMO. The entire focus of the game is silly as all hell.
I want snake men and slavery and black magic and time travel and robots and Things That Should Not Be Named and atheism and nihilism and ninjas and plague and talking apes and gunpowder and inbreeding and unicorns and non-Euclidean geometry and sporting events and flying squids and constitutional monarchy and gentlemen with sword canes and radiation poisoning and hungry catoblepas and half naked dude/ettes with big ass swords killing things and hyper-intelligent wasp colonies and You Got The Picture A Long Time Ago And I Have No Idea Why You're Still Reading This.
To each their own, it's a game and it's supposed to be played with friends and the goal is to have a good time. Where anyone has fun along the vast spectrum of "Fantasy" that D&D/PF can accommodate is no one's business but the group playing it. If you're having a good time, you're Doing It RIght. All of these threads arguing the True Way are just hot air being blown.
So how about everyone else? What is your definition of "Fantasy" as it pertains to RPGs? Are you a standard sword-and-sorcery gamer with noble knights and damsels in distress? Or do you hail from the anime-inspired ultra-epic gameplay side of the fence? Or maybe your style of fantasy is a steampunk-inspired dystopia inhabited with clockwork machines and downtrodden people. Whatever it may be, I'd love to hear.
The term fantasy screams magic to me. No magic means no fantasy -- period. And it should be mentioned that magic means any supernatural power, not just tossing around a wand. Arcane magic, divine hokey pokey, psionic/psychic 'abilities', mutant genetics, and even George Lucas' take on telekinetics are all magic at the end of the day.
While I, like some, dislike boxing myself into one fantasy I do have a few pet peeves in regards to certain settings:
- Active deities. I don't like deities in my fantasy as it stands and it grows unbearable when every barely-tolerable-super-linear quest is given by priests with an avatar of their deity chatting away in the background. Religions are fine, but I don't like active deities mucking up an otherwise good fantasy setting.
- Tall, magic-creating, smarter-than-you-elves basically channelling Tolkien's work. Short, skittish, mischievious elves from folklore are perfectly acceptable, but leave Tolkien's elves where they belong.
- Hobbits/Halflings. Putting one of these into anything other than Middle Earth is equivalent to finding feces splattered about in your home. I've never liked under-dogs and halflings tend to be a race of under-dogs with plot armor. No thanks.
- Tribal or primitive themes. Low-tech settings are frustrating to run and play in unless it's a post-apocalyptic setting. Basically, this means anything earlier than the Dark Ages leaves me bored and ready to move on.
- Undead uprisings that only include zombies. I hate, hate, hate zombie plagues, because they have been done to death . A zombie plague is not a horror theme, it's a survival theme.
- Arcane magic that's dangerous to use, but divine magic that comes with seatbelts. I hate the whole deities-are-untouchable-and-make-everything-better outlook and how entrenched its become in many fantasy settings. If I find this gargage in a novel or campaign sourcebook, I stop reading and try to forget that I've wasted my money.
- Good vs. Evil on a daily basis. I don't outright hate it's usage as much as I hate the frequency of these conflicts. Not every battle will involve fiends and not every fiend should be evil. While the alignment concept is to blame for many of these woes, it runs deeper and won't be resolved in this thread.
That said, I'm up for all sorts of settings. Newly risen undead characters trying to survive in brightly-lit, paladin-protected metropolis in a far-future setting? Hell yes can't be yelled loud enough. Hermaphroditic catfolk gunslingers exploring foreign lands aboard steampunk airships with their tengu butlers? Bring it on. Ravenloft-inspired setting where characters scavenge laser rifles and hope the "radiation" doesn't turn them into "undead"? Sure.
As long as the settings are well written, I'll manage.
I definitely prefer classic swords & sorcery fantasy.
But I also enjoy the usual magic-heavy D&D world once in a while, and I'd be happy to try out some other stuff like Eberron if given the chance.
Funny enough, I have to agree on the front of Active Deities. I will accept just about anything, but can't stand a deity actually coming down and saying "yo" to a party. I'm working on a campaign world right now wherein I'm keeping all religions ambiguous.
...Catch Phrase,
-Chris
Generally, anything you might expect to find in the Fantasy/Sci-Fi and Horror sections of a book store.
Generally the only time I have a problem with throwing something into a setting is if the setting is suposed to be something very specific. For instance have guns in a Bronze Age game might raise my eyebrows, unless there is a good reason for them to be there and not just something just plopped in with no explanation. For instance, the guns could be from the invading not-Atlantians, and I would be fine with that.
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Everything.
I grew up with Norton's Witch World and Zelazny's Lord of Light and Saberhagen's Empire of the East and Bushyager's Master of Hawks & Spellstone of Shaltus and Freidman's Dark Sun Rising and Gygax's Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, all of which had technology and magic (and psionics, in some cases) interspersed.
Lieber's Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser and Moorcock's Elric and Corum tales also went from grim and gritty Conan-esque adventures to gods-defying tales of higher-than-high magic. It's all good.
Nowadays, I play World of Warcraft and / or Warhammer Online, where some classes use guns, while others throw fireballs, and it's still all good. Growing up a fan of comic-books, where Iron Man (ultra-tech), Dr. Strange (ultra-magic), the Hulk (radioactive mutant) and Black Widow (unpowered spy) co-exist more or less without conflict, and various lands, like Asgard and Atlantis, are regularly depicted as being both advanced magically and scientifically, I probably have a whacked perspective on mixing the peanut butter and the chocolate. :)
Mine would have to be not being 'me' for 3 to 4 hours a night, every other week. Or more frequently than that, so yay me!
Being 'me' is fantastic. Not being 'me' is fun.
"To be matter of fact about the world is to blunder into fantasy — and dull fantasy at that, as the real world is strange and wonderful." -- Robert Heinlein.
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Everything.
Guns, katanas, robots, lightsabers, psychic powers, and chainsaws are no less "fantasy" than a European sword.
All that is needed is that the setting and/or themes be fantastic.
Personally, boxing Fantasy into a small fenced-in definition bound by cultural lines is one of the worst things that can be done to the word. Medieval Europe has absolutely no monopoly on that word or even "traditional fantasy".
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Everything here too.
As a matter of fact, the first two games that really got me into RPGs were Final Fantasy 6 and Arcanum, both of which mix magic and technology into an amazing blend of awesome. So I have no problems with gunslingers and the like.
I believe in a more lovecraft mix then most peoples fantasy you may never see a dragons angles or gods in a powerful spot in my campaign because I down play them. But you will see regular races holding that kinda power. Drow living top side playing the good church will they send crusades to kill off all arcane casters in order to rule the world and such
Also a big fan of renaming things ,you want a katanas oh you mean elf razor ya you can do that
Fantasy is anything that can be imagined. I don't judge one person's ninja magic any worse or better than another's weird west. I don't fetishize Tolkien, Lovecraft or Howard.
When I run a game all I ask is players choose characters that are consistent with the tone I'm trying to set.
This:
I'm currently running my own rift on the expedition to the demonwebs campaign for 3.5 using pathfinder and connecting it to the crusades against the worldwound. I have a wide range of where the PC's are from and what classes and such they are using -- I love this because it shows just how much of a problem the worldwound is.
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I like standard sword-and-sorcery stuff when it comes to my Pathfinder/D&D gaming. Anime-inspiration is fine. Other cultures are fine.
But if I want steampunk, I'll go play GURPS. If I want mechs, I'll play Battletech. If I want cyberware, I'll play Shadowrun.
I like all that stuff, but I don't want it in my Pathfinder/D&D games.
There are such a bewildering variety of types of fantasy that everyone can take a hard line and limit themselves to whatever they are in the mood for.
One day I might be in the mood for Lord of the Rings where no-one is above 5th level and magic is a mysterious and subtle force. But that does not stop me from wanting steampunk and shotguns the next day or over the top, high-level wuxia action the day after that.
The power of Pathfinder is that each day I can adapt it to whatever I am in the mood for. One day I might even be in the mood for your game with whatever ridiculous rules about what is or is not fantasy you have.
So gnomes then?Tall, magic-creating, smarter-than-you-elves basically channelling Tolkien's work. Short, skittish, mischievious elves from folklore are perfectly acceptable, but leave Tolkien's elves where they belong.
Not exactly, but the differences are small enough that it's just easier to drop elves completely and find something else to replace them.
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I like a little of it all. But defined and separated I guess.
My "Fantasy" as far as PF/D&D/AD&D goes is very Europian-ish to me. LOTR/Shannara/Forgotten Realms. My fantasy, since being introduced to AD&D with the first printing of the Player's Handbook by my friends dad, is very cliche'd I guess you could say. 13th Warrior with Chimeras. Excalibur with Harpies and Trolls and Goblins. Oliver Twist with Cthulu aspects in the cellars and sewers.
But we split our game time between PF and Star Wars Saga Edition. I love my lasers and guns etc also. I just do NOT like them mixed.
When playing PF as a player we are in a Planescape inspired setting where everything goes. We have a psi-enabled gnome with a wand in one hand and an arquebus axe in the other right alongside a Drizzt wannabe, Gandalf with a red mohawk and a sadistic streak, a Gnoll Barbarian and a straight laced female rogue with a silver coin fetish. And it works for us.
When running my campaign though, there is no "orient" or guns. Monks are allowed but no one plays one. Ninja and Samurai and gun-anything dis-allowed.
I am not of the generation that grew up with Final Fantasy/Anime stuff and I do not care for it, but my kids love it. I am by no means 'right' as far as saying my views should be standard, but I am 'right' when expressing MY take on MY created world when DM/GMing. I am blessed to have players who just say 'okay cool'.
Not exactly, but the differences are small enough that it's just easier to drop elves completely and find something else to replace them.So gnomes then?Tall, magic-creating, smarter-than-you-elves basically channelling Tolkien's work. Short, skittish, mischievious elves from folklore are perfectly acceptable, but leave Tolkien's elves where they belong.
So we are just ignoring all the historical references to any humanoid feyish creatures that's actually human height or sleightly taller?
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RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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What an intriguing thread...
To me, fantasy can be anything, but I have a particular type of fantasy that's my favorite.
1. There needs to be magic of some sort. Whether it's the wands of Harry Potter, the bending of Avatar: the Last Airbender, the Force of Star Wars, or whatever else; there needs to be magic. However, the Princess Bride gets a pass on this.
2. There needs to be a bit of favor toward the medieval. I prefer my fantasy and my sci-fi to be separate things. Thus, fighting needs to be magical and/or martial, not vehicle-based or gun-focused. If devoting your career to the mastering of swordplay is a deathwish because someone will just shoot you, then that's not the fantasy I want.
2b. Because of 2, I originally didn't like the introduction of the Gunslinger in Pathfinder. However, having played alongside one, I still feel like swords and magic are the defining feature of Pathfinder combat, so I'm okay with it.
That which does not exist in reality.
Way side track Spoiler
Does that include various invisible sky wizards people go to temples mosques and churches to pray to?
Do remember that there are a lot of things in Fantasy games, books, and films that were or in some cases still are considered divine or agents of the divine by people who walked this earth, and in their perception of the world, real.
I have to agree with Mikaze I am a throw it all in there sort of person although I may have to move Dark Mistress's giant squirrels into like a hollow-earth inside of the planet where the other stuff is going on. To the OP I try not to feed those folks who make comments that inspired this topic by arguing with them. I just count myself thankful that they aren't the ones writing the books for games I play.
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I am happy with Golarion's take on things. The kitchen sink is here but you don't have to use it if you don't want to.
One thing I am glad they haven't done is the "Consolidated Nation of Really Annoying Stupid Comic Relief Race X." This killed Krynn for me, Knights of Solamnia were cool, so were the distinct Elven races, the Towers of High Sorcery, the Gods and the Dragon Highlords, the whole setting had some awesome ideas.
Unfortunately this hard work was let down by Kender, Tinker Gnomes and Gully Dwarves. I hate them all. Seriously, plucky comic relief races should just die in a fire.
Thank you Golarion for not doing this nonsense.
** spoiler omitted **Way side track Spoiler
** spoiler omitted **
LOL fact!
I guess I'm a grognard. Or something.
Here's a great example of a couple of things I detest: Robots and Trains in a dystopian society. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about.
What I like: Classic, old-school dungeon crawls, with traps, dark, ancient and ineffable magics, and weird, creepy monsters lurking around every turn--and the ever-present potential to uncover some archaic, arcane treasure. Anything that seems like it was inspired by a Larry Elmore or Erol Otis painting. Anything that riffs on the works of Professor Tolkien.
I look at it this way: there are tons and tons of fiction novels that take place in the real world, with all the attendant real world limitations. There is no shortage of stories one can tell that take place here. Throw in Swords and Sorcery, and the potential increases exponentially. Anyone who finds it unbearably stifling on his "creativity" probably has some other, underlying, reason to dislike traditional fantasy.
I respectfully believe that throwing in weird crap just because it is weird isn't actually "creative." It is the lazy or unimaginative person's way of faking it. Sure, giant half-robot amoebas that fly around in clockwork teacups and battle seven-armed psychic insectoid platypodes for control of the last remaining source of bioluminescent, psychotropic rock-candy in the universe might sound "creative" just because you've never read anything like it, but it is really just a bunch of unrelated nonsense. I'll take a pass on that sort of silliness. I'd rather play a computer game that actually makes sense instead.
I'm not a fan of gunpowder (in fantasy games), or steam powered *anything*--although the one place it does work is Iron Kingdoms. If I want a break from traditional fantasy, I'll play there. But even that setting doesn't just throw in random odd stuff just to be odd--it all makes sense in the context of its own reality.
So far, the best example of a job well done has to be either Hollow's Last Hope or Burnt Offerings. Both are great examples of what fantasy should be...in my opinion.
Well...to me, fantasy as it relates to my role-playing experience is a vast definition. I've had everything in my games from standard full-plate fighters to gay alchemist snipers (one of my favorite characters to date) to futuristic warriors lost in another time and on another world. In my opinion, PF doesn't really reach far enough with its fantasy. I love the weird and outlandish. People on the boards complain about guns and katanas interfering with their fantasy while I design statistics for Gun-Katanas that I give to half-robotic bug people who fly around on pterodactyls and fight armies of sword-swinging vampire-ghosts that summon aliens to do their bidding! Generic, vanilla fantasy has grown boring to me. I want psychic ogres living in Borderlands-esque piles of trash and discarded airship parts. I'm one of those people who hears that his player wants to play a HALO spartan and thinks "how can I fit that in?" instead of "why is he/she doing this to me?" Granted, most of my games aren't nearly this strange and bizarre, but you get the point. I love anachronisms and mixing cultures. The idea of a western samurai-vampire hunter with a bladed sniper-rifle is one that would feel normal in my games, rather than something "weird" and "against the grain."
I define fantasy as all those things you listed, certainly.
My preference for fantasy, however, is much more narrow and limited than the above. I'm very much a "standard sword-and-sorcery gamer with noble knights and damsels in distress" kind of person. (Though I do have a soft spot for a small amount of steampunk intermixed as well.)
For me fantasy is about magic and limited technology, even steam power is pushing it for me. The occasional airship is fine but when they start becoming major forms of transportation and everyone has access to one it becomes less fantastic.
When I think fantasy I think wizards, dragons and mighty sword wielding warriors. Take Final Fantasy for example, the first 3 (as far as american releases go) were great even though 3 had mech suits,they were said to be powered by magic. FF7 was where the line was drawn, I remember playing that and thinking this is NOT fantasy.
That which does not exist in reality.
For me it needs magic oh and I like it to have bows as well. It can have guns I just want to be able to find a bow somewhere. Oh and I also want it to have special materials like mithral and darkwood.
I know my definition of fantasy is a three-way with Scarlett Johansen and Blake Lively. Definitely fits into the category of "That which does not exist in reality"!
What is fantasy to me?
The age old, never ending conflict of good vs. evil...no matter the form it takes. Shades of grey = ever worsening and heinous degrees of evil.
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Those who were around when Star Wars first came out, might remember Marvel Comics toting their comic book adaptation as being based on "The Greatest Sci Fi Movie Ever Made" or some such. Very quickly, though, there came discussion amongst writers and fans as to what constituted Sci Fi, and it was determined by the vast majority that Star Wars was not really Sci Fi, but a fantasy, set in space.
Around that time, I had discussions with my uncle, who was my mentor in those things when I was 7 years old, and his position was that Star Trek was Sci Fi, being that the things that happened it in often revolved around the speculative science, and though they sometimes seemed fantastic, they were always grounded in something the characters on the show thought of as "explainable" (even if Mr. Spock's explanation was "a form of life never before encountered," or "power source: unknown"). Star Wars, on the other hand, had nothing to do with the science, even if they did have a "Hyperdrive." The closest they got was adding the words Twin Ion Engine to a description of a space ship. They never focused on what that meant, or worried about explanations. On the other hand, they worried a lot about what the "Mystical Energy Field" that "bound the galaxy together" was.
This has remained the dividing line for me, for fantasy and Sci Fi over the years. Fantasy is anything where the fantastical is the explanation, whether it be a god, The Force, some divine energy from within, magic, Fate, Destiny, a weird artifact, or whatever. That includes cowboy stuff where it is obvious Fate is involved (or the tale is treated like a fable). Guns can indeed exist in fantasy. Just like lasers can.
Steampunk can ride this line, of course. In Steampunk, the inventions can become the focus, and even have explanations based on some small amount of pseudo-science, though likely with a fantastical element. So Steampunk is what I would consider Fantasy, but Sci Fi heavy.
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As for my definition of fantasy, I’ll take everything and the kitchen sink (with magical tapware). Swords, sorcery, slings, arrows, guns, plasma cannons, knights, ninjas, pirates, monkeys, wizards, ESPers, Jedi, dragons, dinosaurs, FTL drives, demons, ghosts, aliens, high tech, low tech, medieval, modern, post apocalyptic, zombies, elves, Venusians, monkeys, magic, sufficiently advanced technology, tentacles, power armour, chainmail bikinis, castles, deep jungles, monkeys, frozen wastelands, tropical islands, battles against evil overlords, journeys to Faerieland, dreamworlds, gritty, whimsical, vast armies, overbearing trade guilds, mounted combat, steam trains, talking animals, rainbow unicorns, monkeys, Cthulhoid horrors, hopping vampires, sneaky thieves, farmboy heroes, misunderstood orcs, ravenous trolls ... it’s all good.
Having said that, I don’t necessarily want all that all mixed together all the time. Sometimes mixing a whole bunch of that together can be fun and give a really awesome result, sometimes I prefer to stick with a more limited sub genre of fantasy.
Personally I’m glad that Pathfinder for example has given us the tools to play a fairly wide range of different types of fantasy games – you don’t have to use them all, all the time, but they are there. And as for the official Pathfinder setting, well it was stated pretty early on that the goal was to have a setting where just about any type of fantasy game you could think of could be set, and on the balance I don’t think that is a bad thing. I’d rather have people set their games in Varisia or Cheliax and ignore Numeria and Minkai than to not play Pathfinder ‘cos they don’t feel there’s a place for their ninja or gunslinger.
Personally I’m glad that Pathfinder for example has given us the tools to play a fairly wide range of different types of fantasy games – you don’t have to use them all, all the time, but they are there.
See, this has been my point, too, whenever the subject of guns, or something similar has come up. I understand that they are not good for every campaign. But I really, really appreciate the fact that we have an official, "core" guide for them.
It's very important to me to feel like my decisions on these things come from a sanctioned source, to share with my players. It's important to feel like that support is there.
My preferred genre of fantasy has nubile courtesans, decadent orgies and heaving bosoms.
Everything else is bonus extras.
My preferred genre of fantasy has nubile courtesans, decadent orgies and heaving bosoms.
Everything else is bonus extras.
Why would you heave a bosom? I prefer to keep them close.
Maybe you meant a Boson? I could understand heaving one of those overboard.
So we are just ignoring all the historical references to any humanoid feyish creatures that's actually human height or sleightly taller?Not exactly, but the differences are small enough that it's just easier to drop elves completely and find something else to replace them.So gnomes then?Tall, magic-creating, smarter-than-you-elves basically channelling Tolkien's work. Short, skittish, mischievious elves from folklore are perfectly acceptable, but leave Tolkien's elves where they belong.
Not all of them, just the ones I don't care about.
Not all of them, just the ones I don't care about.
Oh well in that case carry on. Have you considered a career in politics? I think you might be well suited for it.
Not all of them, just the ones I don't care about.Oh well in that case carry on. Have you considered a career in politics? I think you might be well suited for it.
Vague statements alone cannot replace ranks in Bluff. Politics remain outside my reach.
Vague statements alone cannot replace ranks in Bluff. Politics remain outside my reach.Not all of them, just the ones I don't care about.Oh well in that case carry on. Have you considered a career in politics? I think you might be well suited for it.
Hm... ooh I know Doom sayer! We have an opening since the last guy has been wrong four times now.