Is "medieval fantasy" a creatively dead setting?

Not really because 90% percent of people who write it don't have a fucking clue about the 'middle ages'. In fact most people who opened this thread probably couldn't tell you the time brakets for the Middle Ages without google. It's from the 5th to 15th century. The beginning and end of the Middle Ages are so enormously different that comparing them is disengenuous.

>>52408628
Okay, I might've painted with too fine a brush there. My beef isn't with the middle ages, it's with the fact that 99% of fantasy settings crank back the technological and social clock to "knights and castles," add a bunch of magic and fictional creatures, then fucking STOP without considering how the shit they added would impact the world they made.

>>52408597

The concept is fine, but the execution fails every time. I don't think it's a problem of stagnation, as much as designers/writers trying to be "creative." Best thing is to return to source materials.

Some solutions for a setting that isn't shit:

- Anthrocentric ("No, you may not play a 1/2Elf, 1/4 Dragonborn, 1/4 Tiefling. You are going to play a male human fighter with brown hair, and you are going to like it.")

- Magic is rare, and it is dangerous

- No anime/Warcraft bullshit art

>>52408597
It's been dead since the 60s or so. LoTR and GoT revived the interest for the setting but LoTR was written at a time when the idea was new and GoT is a rare gem among a river of shit. Mainly because the focus is not on the extraordinary and the supernatural but on the realm of men. In any case, the setting has been exploited so much that it would be a miracle if someone ever writes something interesting for the genre ever again. Sci-fi is suffering the same process but at a slower pace because that setting has a way bigger room to work on.

Medieval fantasy on the whole isn't anywhere near out of ideas, what's trite by now is Humans Elves Dwarves Hobbits Orcs (or slightly reskinned versions) sitting on thrones and having Magical Family-Friendly Adventures.

One of the reasons aSoIaF and GoT were so damn popular.

If you're interested in fiction, I recently read Ishiguro's THE BURIED GIANT, and thought it was a very clever, very beautiful novel set right at the beginning of the Middle Ages.

I don't want to say much for fear of ruining.

>>52408701
See, I disagree. While "stagnation" might not be the right word, the problem I see is a systematic failure to follow up on what could be HUGE game-changers and let them develop along logical lines into something interesting.

How many settings can you find that have teleportation spells? How many of them have a space program?
How many settings have means of instant communication (speaking stones, telepathy, magic scrolls, etc.), but don't have communication networks?
Where are all the composite super-materials when you can find wizards that know alchemy and transfiguration on street corners?

I'm not saying that humans-only, magic-less settings are inherently bad, but instead of going grassroots and avoiding magical/fantastical elements, why not go in the opposite direction and get balls-deep in exploring the potential /of/ all that magic?
Adding just a handful of D&D/standard fantasy spells brought into an otherwise-mundane would have massive, widespread ripple-effects, and playing with them a bit opens up HUGE possibilities.

>>52408701
So the solution to creative stagnation is to make shit boring as fuck?

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>>52408701
>male human fighter
He really said it.

>>52408869
>is to make shit boring as fuck?
Black Company and aSoIaF are boring now ?

>>52408597
The only thing required for medieval fantasy is that it's a medieval society and tech level and that there's fantastic things going on.

If you want to get creative with it there's thousands of ways to innovate on that.
>focus on guilds instead of courts
>introduce phenomena inspired by other mythologies, god-like entities walking the earth, reincarnation, talking animals, alien overlords
>create new and different backdrops and landscapes, archipelos, tundras, canyons
>switch up the genre of story telling, from epic heroism, to noir crime to SoL
I'd advice switching up the roster for playable races too but too be honest I don't particularly enjoy the concept of playable races. Can't we just all be humans, maybe from different cultures with different specialities if it's a metropolian setting?

>>52408842

We have very different preferences, then. Though what you are describing sounds to me like science-fiction. A problem I see with commonplace magic layered over a vaguely recognizable setting is basically what you described- there is no plausible way that the setting would remain recognizable or relatable.

Still, Id's inderesding : DD

>>52408950
Those are some pretty cool ideas, but I'm more talking about exploring the technological and social changes that having magic would bring about, re: >>52408842

>>52408869

>t. actual furry

This is why every game i run ends up having aliens in it at some point. Current campaign is just goblin invading town, with the twist that the goblins are cloned cyborgs from a crashed spaceship.

>>52408940
Both aren't interesting settings.

Something I see in worldbuilding circles. Nothing grinds my gears more than seeing someone do the same Elves, Dwarves and Humans bullshit with the respective tropes along. I've seen it before. I've read it before. I've played it before. It's boring. For some yet unknown reason people fall back to this thing over and over again, and usually by their own will. They don't even want to be too different.

And then you get talk about genres. People are scared to expand the "fantasy genre" or go beyond its limits — whatever the fuck those limits even are. I don't understand why. Just do your thing, go with the flow of ideas. Don't stop because "it isn't fantasy" or "this is too scifi".

I don't mean you should necessarily try to be some unique snowflake fuck or creative genius. Just stop willingly limiting yourself. Please. There are no chains. You're just imagining them.

>>52409288
Genres were a mistake.

>>52409288
>unique snowflake fuck or creative genius
see, I think that's part of the problem too.
We fucking DEMONIZE originality on here.
Someone who puts a lot of focus into something is an autist, people who want to show off something creative they did are branded as "special snowflakes," etc.

We shame and belittle SO many people who just want input on, or heaven forbid some recognition for, taking creative risks because it's "cringey" or doesn't immediately mesh with our tastes or because it "strays too far."
The chains are very real, and we made them ourselves.

>>52409320
no, but slavish devotion to genre conventions definitely is.

>>52408597
Read good book, watch good movies, put serious effort towards becoming a better writer instead of trying to be "more creative" than the next guy.

>>52409382
...what does that contribute to this thread?

Like, yeah, I work every day at improving writing and shit, but if you don't think innovation and originality are necessary parts of worldbuilding as well, you need to drink some water and have a quality think on what makes roleplaying fun.

>>52409288
I am with you on fantasy races like elves, dwarves and even humans, having become too stale and "samey" in a lot of published fantasy settings. This is the reason why I love the Dwarf Slayers from Warhammer Fantasy, because on every level the dwarves in WHF are generic and boring (don't know if it is Seinfeld Syndrome), ecxept for the slayers, which I do not see anywhere else. Sure there are dwarf berserkers here and there, but I don't think they stand out like slayers do.

And since DnD and now Pathfinder are game systems that many people today know, they perpetuate this notion of having a standard cast of player races; Man, Elf, ½-elf, ½-orc, gnome and ½-ling. I've always wondered why orcs aren't playable, but half-orcs are - So that is what I actually like Elder Scrolls for doing. But back when I played a lot of Pathfinder, if I was the DM I'd always take this line-up of races, remove some from the setting altogether, add others to it, and change up one or two in some way, because having the same old every time is tiresome.

>>52409419
I just think way too many people spend all their time wringing their hands over originality when what they should be doing is creating a setting they like and then writing well within it. If your love and dedication go into something, then it will naturally become original and different. Trying too hard to not be derivitive is pretty much shooting yourself in the face.

>>52408842
There's Orion

>>52409340
Well, I meant more like chasing the idea of becoming or being unique is a bit sketchy. Either you are or you aren't. Just do your thing. Don't necessarily even think about uniqueness.

Forget tropes. Forget genres. Think outside the box or burn the whole fucking box and start from there.

>>52409463
Orcs aren't playable ?
Our DMs never forbid them.
As long as it's sentient, not OP and the DM agree in his setting, any race should be playable.

>>52408597
I also think it's dead. It went the way of the pulp adventure. Legendary old franchises like LotR are still drudging along due to their sheer recognisability, but there's nothing to replace them and there never will be.

>>52408597
>By which I mean, has the whole genre of "middle ages + magic and monsters" become so codified and stuck in its own conventions that it's in creative stagnation?

Yes, but not for the reason you listed, but because people who usually make or write fantasy settings don't often take into consideration how their fantasy aspects would change EVERYTHING.

The other part of the problem is that people who usually do understand this are criticized by ignorant puritans who claim their settings are "historical inaccurate" or otherwise suffer from anachronism.

Like, people who complain about potatoes or why there are no "black" hobbits.

>>52408597
Creative =/= fun

>>52408701

>Strawman
>Opinion
>Another Strawman

Wow, great discussion. What excellent quality of posts we have on this fine board.

>>52408597
>By which I mean, has the whole genre of "middle ages + magic and monsters" become so codified and stuck in its own conventions that it's in creative stagnation?
Nope since even today some writters can show their unique and fresh view on
>"medieval fantasy"

>>52408597
Everyone has an idea of what "medieval fantasy" is supposed to be and none of them are particularly creative, fun, or interesting.

Yes Mark, we know about how your setting is """"""""""realistic"""""""""" and """"""""""unique"""""""""" but we'd rather just fight monsters and earn treasure than take 10 minutes to calculate exactly how much we can carry without suffering from from encumbrance and we'd rather play races like elves and dwarves than sit around playing humans with no remarkable characteristics beyond being not!France, not!Germany, not!Scotland, and not!Italy.

Just cut the bullshit already, there's a reason why more people remember settings like Dark Sun and Eberron over Greyhawk.

>>52408940
Yes. They've always been boring.

>>52408597
No more creatively dead than space opera, cyberpunk, or any other popular genre fiction setting concept.

The real issue is most authors are creatively bankrupt and do nothing interesting with their world-building or narratives.

>>52408701
>I hate fun

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>>52408597
It's all about execution, and it's entirely possible to inject new and creative things or put creative spins on old things in settings, even ones that have been done to death like medieval fantasy.

See Game of Thrones. You know, that massively popular and successful medieval fantasy series?

>>52408597

Most of medieval fantasy isn't even medieval, it's early renaissance only without guns.

>>52408895
Yeah, it's almost like anon posted "male human fighter with brown hair" as some sort of humorous statement not to be taken completely seriously.

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How about a Napoleonic Fantasy Setting?

>>52409288
See, the problem is that unique settings become more difficult to relate to.

Everyone knows tolkien-fantasy, it's comfortable. Getting a group together to play in the Forgotten Realms is easy because it's what everyone knows.

The being said, I don't do this. My settings explore fantasy-magic-bullshit to their furthest extent and become more science-fantasy than anything else.

> Rifles & pistols that fire spells like wands.

> Bound elementals that act as AI to control and automate municipal processes and act as information brokers.

> Way Gates for instant travel.

> A floating wagon that has to be pulled by horses because the lateral movement runes stopped working 22 years ago.

> Witchlight lanterns

> Armor and weapons fashioned from spell-woven ceramic and carbon

> Cities and building interiors folded into pocket dimensions so they're significantly larger on the inside

> Common household appliances like freezers, microwaves, matter replicators made possible by ingenious and complex artificy mass-produced by automated factories run by bound elemental AI

And that's just looking at the natural next-step tech levels that structured magic would lead to.

But with all that being said, I've brought out a few unique settings here with these kinds of ideas and they got torn to pieces so you can all go fuck yourselves.

I think these sort of genres have periods of growth and stagnation depending on many interconnecting factors in society.

I think fantasy has been in a period of stagnation for awhile now but has recently started growing again. You can see this in the popularity of media like GoT and the growing player base of DnD players. I think it's just starting but give it a few more years and we'll start seeing fantasy growing and updating itself and becoming something better.

>>52408628
>It's from the 5th to 15th century.

I don't think it's set down in stone. For my part I use from the fall of Rome (476 AD) to the fall of Constantinople (1453), but it is entirely arbitrary.

>>52408940
God yes. Thank you for finally saying it.

>>52408651
Do you think medieval romances and folk tales should also consider the socio-economic impact of dragons, wizards, and hippogriffs?

>>52408628
i Honestly don't think the problem with creative stagnation stems from lack of history knowledge.

>>52408749
>GoT
>not ASoIaF
Take your cuck propaganda back to R*ddit.

>>52408940

> Is *successful, popular thing* boring now?

You know where you are. You should know what kind of answer you're going to get.

>>52417974
If they are trying to do anything beyond teach a moral lesson to children then absolutely.

>>52408701
This, finally.

The strength of character development is worth a billion goofy Mos Eisley Cantina races. It seems people feel like mechanical depth the least interesting type of character depth is the be all end all of character development.

>>52409340
>autist
Hi newfriend. Autistic is a compliment here.

>>52416316
The crowd where GoT is popular isn't the one you want at your table. GRRM is a hack.

>>52418481
Hello, newfag.

>>52408597
it's just a setting. you pretty much also need plot.

>>52408597
No ideas are bad, because some of the shit you love best are shitty and boring ideas that are executed well, almost certainly.
If you mean in TRPG's, then it depends on the skills the GM.
If you mean in writing, then it depends on the writer.

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>>52408953
Why are people always so quick to say stuff is not relatable?

We have astronauts, I can imagine an astronaut. There is Isekai fantasy and tons of novels about portals to fantasy worlds. Mages make portals in numerous fantasy settings. But a portal to the moon like in the other anons example suddenly makes the setting unrelatable? It baffles me to no end. Oh no, I have to imagine a thing in a -fantasy- book, now I'm totally disenfranchised.

>>52409340
Fucking this.
I've read the "there is no originality"-spiel as a way to shut someone down from trying so often. In the dedicated worldbuilding threads no less.

>>52416487
YES PLEASE

>>52416517
>Common household appliances like freezers, microwaves, matter replicators

>>52418948
>I've read the "there is no originality"-spiel as a way to shut someone down from trying so often. In the dedicated worldbuilding threads no less.
That's the opposite of how it should be used.

>>52408651
To be fair, that's how most settings are.
No-one thinks about what the world will be like for common folk.

That's partially
1: Most people don't care about how dragons will affect crop rotation and bean farming.
2: Most history also ignores the low level commoners and focuses on the high level power players.

>>52408651
Came here to post this. In order for a setting to truly feel like a legit organic setting, it's important to have implications for the magic and technology available in that setting. Somebody said that this would make the setting less relatable, but it actually makes the most sense as in the real world finding logical applications of such things is how the real world itself advances in terms of innovation. It would only make sense that a world with magical communication happening often would eventually make it into its equivalent of the telephone the same way our world does. Without stuff like this, while the world itself may have been birth from the creative ideas of a person, the world itself lacks that kind of passion and creativity, thus it feels lifeless.

>>52416517
>Believing the Pre-Tolkein and Post-Tolkein fantasy myth

Tolkein
Did
Not
innovate

Everything from Middle-Earth was found in earlier fantasy books, Lord of the Rings was not genre breaking.

>>52422208
I'm not going to pretend that I'm an expert on the literary context of Tolkien, but one thing I would say that seems unique to Tolkien is the sense of ruin, of melancholy and loss that pervades his work, the idea that despite Good's triumph over Evil, something's being lost and that the magic and wonder is leaving the world.

Also Tolkien's appeal has lasted for over half a century. That'd suggest that his works speaks to something pretty fundamental

>>52422300
>sense of ruin, of melancholy and loss that pervades his work, the idea that despite Good's triumph over Evil, something's being lost

He actually got this aesthetic from George MacDonald, Lilith by the same author takes theses themes up to 11 and is probably the most depressing fantasy book ever written.

>>52408651
Basically this. It's always fun to watch them try to explain away wizards as super rare and then have half a dozen in the main cast. Similarly, I've seen way too often when the established physics of a universe get fundamentally fucked up just to drive a world shattering conflict.

>>52422300
Half of the appeal of LotR is the Bilbo/Frodo archetype of being normal people dragged on to a fantastic adventure, with a war story tacked on in Frodo's case.

>>52422453
Lilith is far more of something CS Lewis is influenced from than Tolkien due to how allegorical the whole thing is. Tolkien has publicly talked on how he himself isn't a fan of overtly allegorical themes.

That being said, Tolkien has definitely been influenced by MacDonald, but really just influenced not directly copypasting anything.

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>>52408842
>How many settings can you find that have teleportation spells? How many of them have a space program?
>How many settings have means of instant communication (speaking stones, telepathy, magic scrolls, etc.), but don't have communication networks?

Yeah, fucking hell, I know a guy who has all this crazy magic in his setting, sometimes going well beyond the normal realms of "this is a mishmash pathfinder setting that isn't Golarion because I'm original", except he falls into the exact same trap as Golarion in that everything is just a stagnant nothing. The world doesn't change because of all this magic, and the "connections" this magic makes, like portals between towns and long-range communication are unimaginative at best. It's a real shame, but not everyone wants to write Shandy for every setting.

I mean, I do, but not everyone.

>>52422835
Sounds fun

>>52408597

I don't agree that the genre is stagnant. Why? The devil with any story is never the genre, but the details within.

Some of the very best stories come from environments where precious little that is unusual is going on. This allows the reader to fill in many mental blanks, which liberates the author/GM to focus upon crafting something compelling. It's the interplay between people and the conflicts that really come to the fore, and they show so strongly when they must be focused upon.

The trap is a misplaced sense of what creativity is. Creativity is not throwing as much of the bombastic as possible into a scene. This is my beef with settings like numeria. In numeria, everything needs to be utterly alien and detailed. This is fine, to a point, but saps the reader or listener's precious attention span. You can only push that button so much before you desensitize them.

>>52408597
Yes, it is firmly in the ghetto of genre fiction, written by people who have no frame of reference other than other genre fiction.

>>52408597
Generic medieval fantasy is what happen when a generation discover tolkien and make books ripping off surface elements.Then people grow up on these books, influence further books AND D&D. Then D&D influence said new books who then influence D&D and videogames who then...

You get the idea. Fantasy's been circlejerking itself in a spiral of unoriginality. But there is also the problem that anyone trying something vaguely new gets shit on.as 'snowflake'. Of course, it often is but 90% of everything is crap anyway.

>>52408651
The problem with seriously considering the implications is that the only autists who care about that are also the ones who will go out of their way to try to poke holes in your explanations. Easier to just handwave it.

Let's be real here, most of us know fantasy purely via D&D and derived products, videogames and maybe some anme. Lord of the Rings is the only older shit most of us know and it's popularity is owed very much to the Peter Jackson movies. Beyond that, we got Game of Thrones.

Most people who play tabletop RPG and are under 25 have probably never read the works of, say, Lord Dunsany, Moorcock or Howard.

>>52408628
hell most fantasy staples, like full plate armor paladins and fighters commonly wear, don't even show up as a common thing until the Renaissance

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Every fan of high fantasy hits a "sick of elves" phase, I feel, but the truth of the matter is that the average person who sits down to play D&D wants to act like a dwarf, banter with an elf, and fight some goblins.

There's plenty of room to inject weird shit into the world within that model and I certainly like to do that when I get the chance, but the average person who wants to engage with a fantasy role playing game is doing it because they find the trappings of genre conventions appealing, not because they want me to "subvert all the tropes" for them.

>>52425672
I feel you. I have several of my own settings created that are something either completely different or just a reimagining of general fantasy tropes, and to me they don't feel like something the general public and/or the average player would enjoy. I think it's easier to make something everyone can understand and process that they won't have to guess about every five seconds when working through. TTRPGs are a poor place to make something new and original when your players are working off of experience that would then be expired. It's easier to make a good campaign than it is a good/original/whatever setting or mechanic or whatever.

>>52425672
"Subvert the tropes" is just another type of unimaginative copying. It is just the tiresome obsession with novelty with no real substance.

>>52425672
>>52425718
While they are certainly not above smugness and pretentiousness, there are some OSR blog which show some interesting re imaginings, ranging of just one race to a class to a monster. Sure, D&D is fine and dandy if it's what you and your group like but one does not need to reinvent the wheel by starting back at reinventing fire.

>>52425756
>"Subvert the tropes" is just another type of unimaginative copying. It is just the tiresome obsession with novelty with no real substance.
It's usually done by pretentious postmodern blowhards who don't understand why this element came to be in the first place.

>>52425783
Is postmodernism really anything other than the shallow pursuit of novelty?

>>52418179
>muh taxes

Fuck off, Gurm

>>52425783
>It's usually done by pretentious postmodern blowhards who don't understand why this element came to be in the first place.

Or literal autists from TV Tropes

>>52425829
It is a lost of (entirely meaningless) things but I like to think of it as an attempt at the 'high brow' version of emo teenagers saying how nothing is meaningful combined with an utter lack of talent. It's like the story of the emperor with no clothes, except people are circlejerking at how deep a turd in a cup is and how profound and 'sticking it up' to 'the man' it is.

Meanwhile, a wise man see a turd in a cup being held up at the same level as michaelango's David by a bunch of idiots.

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>>52425672
This. Typically the people who complain about stagnation in the genre of fantasy literature have either inundated themselves so deeply in decades of admittedly derivative works that every surface element reads as trite or never really engaged with the genre beyond its surface elements at all. A Song of Ice and Fire, Kingkiller Chronicles, and the Gentleman Bastards books, for example, are three wildly different stories that all have very standard "fantasy" trappings about them, and the similarities beyond the surface level quickly dissipate once you actually engage with them as independent works.

The reason why these surface elements exist is half replication, but it's also half because the works are being written for people who find those elements appealing. High fantasy doesn't have an elf problem so much as you probably have a problem with elves - it seems asinine to complain about the "standard fantasy races" or another "fantasy medieval setting" in a genre written for people who find elves and wizards cool as aesthetic, conceptual trappings and not people who think they're trite.

People want to play D&D because of, not in spite of, fantasy tropes that they like. Trying to reinvent the wheel always strikes me as a practice in self-indulgence that's more likely to alienate the core player base of the hobby than actually accomplish what it's setting out to do. People like the Witcher because they like fantasy shit. People like Game of Thrones because they like fantasy shit.

or, "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dwarf"

>>52425854
TV Tropes was such a mistake. It may tell you what story elements are but it does not and cannot tell someone how these elements are used or why they are used the way they are, resulting in autist seeing every single work being stripped down to it's bare components.

>>52408940

They have pretty boring settings, yea.

>>52425914
Setting in itself does not make the story. But....yeah, Game of Throne sucks and nowadays it is 'babbys first fantasy'.

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>>52408950
>I don't particularly enjoy the concept of playable races. Can't we just all be humans, maybe from different cultures with different specialities if it's a metropolian setting?

>Not thinking playable races are boss as fuck

>>52416517
>And that's just looking at the natural next-step tech levels that structured magic would lead to.

NOT ALL MAGIC IS DND. REEEEEEEEEEEEEE

>>52425875
One need only look at their entries to realize how little credibility they have. There will be next to nothing other than Harry Potter in the Literature section, and then six paragraphs of MLP examples, and more anime examples than you can shake a stick at.

The point of a setting is to provide a backdrop for a story to take place. The setting is not THE STORY. A setting is only as bored and tired as the story being told in it. If all you're doing is Eragon: The Plagiarizing of course it's going to be shit.

Read The Red Knight, Christian Cameron.

The Genre isn't dead or ossified, the authors are just reading too incestuously. Fantasy authors read fantasy authors who read fantasy authors. Get some mythology into your work, some history, some philosophy, some theology, some of the classics. You need to read stuff besides Fantasy and Scifi when you're setting up your setting.

Oh, and stop doing world ending threats for fuck's sakes.

>>52408597
people still enjoy it, so its still fine

>>52408597
It has not.

People generally simply copy what's been done rather than attempt something new.

We have loads of historical setting books. Particularly for GURPS/brp/rq/SW. Even if you're not running one of those, you can use the setting books.

You could also use them as well detailed inspiration points for your own setting.

>>52408701
>setting that isn't shit
>"You must play a male human fighter"
>Magic is rare
Does not compute.

>>52408759
>aSoIaF
>GoT
Aren't those just an endless parade of shitty people doing shitty things to other shitty people? Why would I be interested in a setting where everyone is evil?

>>52408842
It sounds like you just want to put modern/future technology into a fantasy setting and have the world work basically the same as ours, except the technology runs on magic instead of electricity.

>>52416316
It's not exactly creative to just take D&D and remove most of the spells and every alignment except Neutral Evil.

>>52427204
I'm pretty sure he was just arguing how fucking stupid it's that a setting with magic as science (eg. majority of high fantasy) stays in medieval stasis for thousands of years. Even worse if magic is easy to learn and common or there are ruins of magitek civilizations everywhere, but no-one ever succeeds replicating their tech.

>>52408597

I'm not so much bored of Middle Ages settings, but more so of "unrealistic" fantasy settings (before any autists get triggered, I'm using that word loosely).

I love a setting like Game of Thrones (initially, at least, before all the resurrection and dragon shit) or Lord of the Rings where there isn't really any overt magic, and everything feels like it could've happened. I like gritty, but with light-hearted moments. Dark Souls and Bloodborne fit, if you ignore the player magic systems.

I don't like shit like D&D or Warcraft, where stupid armour, massive weapons, cartoony designs, and overbearing magic systems make it obviously fake. They're so far removed from Middle Ages that they aren't even in an analogous time period any more.

>>52409288 here.

I might just add, I think TTRPGs and homebrewers are often really harmful in all of this. Relatability is something that keeps coming up, even in this thread. People can't relate and figure out alien worlds. Thus they can't use and play in those worlds. To be quite honest, bullshit and excuses for being lame and/or sucking at worldbuilding.

And to people who introduce new and obscure ideas on 4chan, get btfo'd and hurt: grow up and get real. Sure you need to get, swallow and apply criticism, but just remember where you're posting. Also, it's very hard to transmit and understand your ideas here unless you've fleshed out your idea exclusively and transferred your thoughts on paper. Also look what I wrote before, common excuse for shitting on your ideas.

I think what keeps medieval fantasy going is an image of a knight - both warrior and politician at once, who can charge into battle with his own banner and change the world with bravery and military prowess alone.

Warfare after the invention of gunpowder invites image of faceless lines of solders standing and taking shots at each other, slowly turning into pointlessly horrible meatgrinder and finally rather unsportsmanlike shooting at brown people in modern days. Everything before invokes disorganized faceless hordes with occasional faceless phalanx.

>>52429000
>People can't relate and figure out alien worlds.

Tbh, the fiction which inspired D&D was more varied than the high fantasy status quo which developed in AD&D after the mid 80s or so.

Spin a globe, throw a lawndart.

Bang, you now have a new and original setting unless you landed in Britain or France.

Play as a Lief Erikkson inspired party exploring a continent of peoples who have never seen pale faces before.

Set your campaign in fantasy!Arabia, with genies and paladins and enlightened desert elves studying light itself.

Be pirates in a pre-gunpowder era, ramming trade ships with your bow and discovering maps to sunken cities to plum for treasure.

Scour the frozen wastes of the North seeking the source of the Aurora.

The only thing that holds back medieval times as a setting is the fact that everyone covers such a small geographical yardage and pretends the whole world is like that.

>>52408628
>It's from the 5th to 15th century.
that's one definition. A lot of writer would say that Late Antiquity went on to about the 6th or 7th centuries. It would also vary depending on which area of Europe you were talking about.

>>52417418
I prefer to separate the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages, since the early period of post-Roman Western Europe when tribal Germanic confederations ruled people who still called themselves Romans is obviously very different from later feudal societies that had knights and whatnot.

476 is as good a place as any to say the Dark Ages began. From my British perspective I'm tempted to use the death of Alfred the Great as the end point (899). However, another good marker would be the crowning of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor in 800 (although that still kind of feels a bit early).

From there, I'd say the Early Middle Ages runs from 800/899 to 1066. Again, this is biased towards my British perspective (1066 being the year that William the Conqueror invaded England), but the Battle of Hastings is actually quite an important marker as it was a battle where English troops fighting in the old style of the Dark Age Germanic tribes met the newer mounted European knight and were decisively defeated. If you want a less English-oriented end date, 1095 (the start of the Crusades) is also good.

From there the High Middle ages lasts from the late 11th century to about 1353 (the end of the black death). The Black Death is a pretty obvious termination point for most of Europe.

The late middle ages could be said to last from 1353 to 1485 (the year Henry Tudor defeated Richard III). Again, if you want a less English oriented date Columbus's discovery of the New World (1492) is also a very good reference point to use.

>>52425967
>in favor or playable races
>pic related is actually poking fun at super-mixed parties.
The irony

>>52429695
I did this, and the dart bounced off the globe and hit my turtle.

Do I try again or do I pay homage?

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>>52429857
Do it.

Either set it on the Disc, or do a Xenoblade and the entire planet is actually back of a turtle and the different continents are ridges on the turtle's back.

>>52429000
I think at this point you're either being dense or intentionally missing the point.

This goes beyond people revisiting conventions because they're familiar and relatable. These are stories that revisit conventions because they're written both by and for people who like elves and dragons.

This isn't a failure to innovate, this is literally just you not being the target audience. Stop being a ponce about it.

>>52409288
>Nothing grinds my gears more than seeing someone do the same Elves, Dwarves and Humans bullshit with the respective tropes along.

Because that's what people like playing, you dumbass.

When I play dungeons and dragons I want to plumb dungeons and fight dragons, not spend three weeks relearning everything I know about high fantasy so I can play in your snowflake setting.

Honestly, the trick to introducing fun stuff to the setting is starting vanilla and then gradually adding your homebrew stuff as you and your party introduce new concepts into the world.

My DM started in a pretty typical setting, but now we've crashlanded on Ravenloft in a Starjammer after buying out a corporate goliath who through his own INT 5 planning skills had melted down the entire population of his world into sapient blob monsters. One of our party members is a walking mushroom (formerly tiefling druid) and another is a cleric who can't cast magic for fear of being corrupted by the god who stole him from his own deity after he put her in a coma.

>>52408597
Not really. Only autists and retards bitch about the breaking of genre conventions, most of the time, unless you're intentionally being a cunt about things for intellectual credits.

You want to step outside the box? Go for it. Your idea has likely already been done, but that can be said of everything. Fuck originality. Authenticity is all that's important.

>>52408701
So the solution to being overly tied to convention is to instead nail yourself to a slightly more narrow subset of those selfsame conventions?

Bravo, anon.

Fuck conventions. It's all stylistic choice at the end of the day. You only need to work within the established meaning if it assists you in telling the story/making the setting that you want to make.

>>52408940
Black Company rides on the shoulders of its characters. It's setting is pretty generic.

Though this magic weapons factory thing shaping up between the Lady and One Eye is interesting (well, I say 'shaping,' I haven't started The Many Deaths of the Black Company yet). The soldiers use them like real people would. Instead of waiting for the intended target, they'll fire their magic tubes and anything and everything because that's what's safest and that's really all that matters for the who actually gets to shoot the thing.

>>52429134
Heroic fantasy doesn't need any specific time period. For example majority of films with heroic fantasy themes are set in western, modern or sci-fi setting with guns.

Also, it never was a thing in reality.

ITT: autists warble fatuously, pretending old /tg/'s creativity didn't die when we became a censored board.

>>52430489
ITT: The Cult of Novelty decrees that /tg/ isn't Subverting The Tropes enough

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>>52430489
Ah yes, anon. What I really long for is the long-lost creativity of the /tg/ unified setting.

What the world of stagnant fantasy fiction really, really needs is more Sergals.

I can't stand gonzo settings, the aesthetic clashes with every system I've tried so far.

>>52430763
Explain me how generic furry crap makes settings better?

>>52430894
He's being sarcastic you dolt

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>>52416487
>>52419446
There's the Temeraire books, though that's more historical fiction than it's own thing.

Literally takes place during the Napoleonic Wars but there are dragons fucking everywhere. And they're smart. Different regions have different subspecies (the English have Longwings, which spit acid, Turks get the only firespitters in the setting, African dragons are YUUUUUGE).

No magic. Or I don't think there's any magic, but you get to watch a dragon roar so loud that it creates a tidal wave, so there's that.

>>52422208
Yet, when I say Tolkien-Fantasy, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

But if I said Beowolf-fantasy or Crockette-fantasy or MacDonald-fantasy or Edda/Norse-fantasy you'd most likely not have a clear understanding.

You nitpicky cunt.

>>52426004

Vancian Magic is the onlY GOOD MAGIC SYSTEM REEEEEEE

Sci fi is just as bad if not worse.
If I have to deal with another han solo clone rogue womanizer with a heart of gold, I'm gonna shoot myself.

>>52408842
>Wanting the plebs to have magic

You're a class traitor to magekind.

>>52431193
>tfw came to unironically believe this after trying every other system under the sun
OD&D's strict(er) Vancian casting is probably the best.

>>52431193
Vancian magic is only about how the spells are cast. Not how magic itself works and it's origin. I think point of that poster was that there is also sort of spiritual/ritualististic magic that isn't just technology by other name, but generally this is very rare, so usually it's just technology by other name.

The popularity of Game of Thrones pretty much shows you can violate the established norms to great reception.

>>52432633
It doesn't really violate any norms though. It's pretty much just standard low fantasy with focus on character drama (eg. politics and power games) and latter is what makes it popular and stand out. The setting isn't anything special nor innovqtive.

>>52432633
Name one norm GoT violates.

>>52430353
I get the feeling people who try to be authentic are met with the same adversarial "fuck originality" chant all the same.

>>52408597
Yeah, its god awful unoriginal shit. What we need is more steampunk magitek shit, like arcanum or ff6.

>>52432967
Rape? Dicks Pussy Tits Balls Gays Lebians Whores? Its mainstream degenerate ERPG. Thats violating a previously held norm. Also it kills people without the writer having written the character into a corner, which is pretty rare

>>52434822
That has more to with characters than the setting and it has been done many times before. You must have only read fantasy for kids (like Eddings or Salvatore) if you think GoT is so radical.

>>52408597
>By which I mean, has the whole genre of "middle ages + magic and monsters"

Playing arthurian legends would be fun. You can unashamedly tip your fedora hard and do all sortsa shit for m'lady after all.

>>52429857
Time for Spelljammer.

>>52434765
Funny thing about Arcanum is that it's both one of most original fantasy settings and straightest shameless Tolkien rip-off I know.

>>52434822
>It's got sex and violence in it and that makes it COOOOOOOL!

Stop.

>>52408953
Gentle reminder: Fantasy and sci-fi used to be considered the same genre.

Yes and it has been for nearly 70 years

>>52434952
They didn't have fedoras back then.

>>52436361
They still are. It's just that some obnoxious fantasy kids don't realize it and some really sad hard sci-fi grognards get triggered by anything not hard enough for their standards.å

>>52434822
Pretty sure George RR Martin didn't invent rape

>>52436473
Ok. Why is it useful to consider them the same genre?

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>>52408749
>GoT
>Good

>>52434931
Mainstream bro, its on tv.

>>52436361
They really weren't. The difference between the genres was set as soon as they were invented by George MacDonald (fantasy) and Jules Verne (sci-fi) in the mid-19th century.

>>52436526
Because in essence both are fantasy and making such arbitrary distinction is pointless. It's also that they combine well and quite many of best settings ever have both in them.

>>52436526
Sci-fi is fantasy with the fantastic elements abstracted away as far as possible (which isn't very far).
Well explored fantasy and well explored sci-fi are virtually indistinguishable.

"Generic" fantasy and "generic" sci-fi look pretty different, but that's only because they (a) are poorly explored and (b) are trying to look different.

>>52436650
They ran in same magazines during pulp era (along with horror), they usually are sold in same section in bookstores, readers/writers are largely same people, both heavily use "hero's journey" as a theme, magic or similar paranormal forces are common to both, both often take place on another planet etc.

And also both are products of one's imagination (thus fantasy) with heavy focus on sense of wonder and worldbuilding.

>>52436611
>hurr

>>52436675
>>52436761
And you think it would be more convenient for the consumer to list them all in one category?

>>52436882
We think it would be more convenient for the consumer if the author were to treat them as one category.

>>52436776
>They ran in same magazines during pulp era (along with horror), they usually are sold in same section in bookstores, readers/writers are largely same people
That just means the same type of people generally like both genres, doesn't say much about the content of the genres themselves.

>both heavily use "hero's journey" as a theme
Pretty much all fiction can be abstracted to Jungian archetypes.

>magic or similar paranormal forces are common to both
Depends on which ones we're talking about, but magic and the paranormal are distinct for a reason: magic defies rationality, while the paranormal could at least conceivably be explained.

>both often take place on another planet
"Planet" and "world" mean different things.

>And also both are products of one's imagination
Just like all fiction.

>with heavy focus on sense of wonder
You can marvel at both science and the supernatural, but that doesn't mean they're the same

>and worldbuilding.
Every fictional universe is a world that an author builds, even when it's our own world.

>>52436933
Convenient isn't the right word.
Enjoyable.

I blame copying Tolkien and video games

1. I think it's fair to say every modern fantasy setting comes from Tolkien in some way, either in small influences or blatant mimicry. He set the standard for how we think of fantasy races, for example. In his world, magic is a super rare thing, and very subtle, usually reserved for divine beings. Tolkien is creating a mythology, and thus only concerns himself with great people and great events who can use this magic. The average common man would know almost nothing about magic, and may hear tales of elves or dragonsord dwarves (just like irl Middle Ages Europe) though he probably has not seen them himself.

2. Modern fantasy settings (especially video games) take these magical things from Tolkien, but drop the subtlety. They take a hero like Fëanor or Aragorn and drop him into the everyday world, and give them all sorts of powers, but reserve them for the hero only. Sure, the hero can teleport from town to town, but the worldbuilding is never deep enough to ask questions like, "how doea the economy change if peasants can sell grain by teleporting it to a city?" Players aren't interested, and the creators don't want to usurp the traditional "medeival" aesthetic. They want to have their cake and eat it too; by including magic but not asking how it can change the world.

3. The only setting I think does a good job is the Elder Scrolls, where magic is certainly a part of everyday life and changes things for daily life.

>>52436962
>magic defies rationality
Actually magic is far more rational and scientific in majority of fantasy settings than paranormal things in sci-fi setting. Often magic is just another form of technology after all.

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>>52436962
>magic defies rationality, while the paranormal could at least conceivably be explained.
Even if we didn't both know that was bullshit, the foundation of sci-fi is in not trying to explain it.
Better explored sci-fi might pantomime an explanation, but that explanation is build on deliberately and carefully unexplained fiction.
>"Planet" and "world" mean different things.
Just like giant and fomorian, right?
Unless you explicitly use both and differently, they're synonymous.

>>52436962
>still believing there is any science in """"science""""" fiction

It's just as unexplained as fantasy. I would classify science fiction as a sub-genre of fantasy, for that they are both dealing with fictional worlds or our world with fictional and paranormal events not explainable with real life understanding. One happens to look like the past, the other the future

>>52433625
Not by anybody who is worth listening to

Retards gonna retard, regardless of medium.

>>52427204
You make that sound like a bad thing.

>>52437914
It's not bad, it's lazy.
Lazy doesn't always, and in this case doesn't, cause bad.
But lazy can causes bad, and is usually found alongside bad.

So no, it's not necessarily bad in and of itself.
But it /is/ always a clear flag: "probably bad here," it reads.

>>52429446
This. Outside maybe Tolkien a shit load of 60's 70's fantasy was like taking an acid trip. Have you niggers read Moorcock? I'm pretty sure he was high writing at least 20% of it.

>>52417974

Apples and oranges, smartass. Those stories aren't interactive. In a non-railroaded ttrpg where players improvise plans of action based on their environment and situation, these finer details might end up being very relevant.

Moreover, since when were medieval tales good? Some cunt kills a dragon, the end. Some other cunt fights a knight and saves a princess but it goes bad and everyone dies, the end. They really aren't all that compelling.

>>52438181

WFB ripped off Chaos from Moorcock, and it remains the only interesting thing in WFB apart from Chaos Dwarf hats.

>>52438181
What the actual fuck are you talking about nigga, you have a very low tolerance for postmodernism if you think Moorcock's shit was anything approaching a acid trip.

>>52438321
Moorcock is hands down the most well-known example of 70's fantasy (other than maybe Jordan but he's very down to earth) but there is definitely weirder shit out there. Lets just say that /heavy Metal was as much inspired by 70's lit as it inspired the science-fantasy to come after.

>>52436962
>doesn't say much about the content of the genres themselves.
For readers, sure. But
>writers are largely same people
says quite a bit about the genre.

>>52408597
Yes and no, I suppose. In the general case, yes, it's certainly in creative stagnation. However, there are definitely takes on it that seem fairly original; I like some of the ideas that I read at Goblin Punch or False Machine.

However, the extent to which "medieval fantasy" acts as a straitjacket on peoples' conception of roleplaying is rather remarkable. In /tg/'s worldbuilding threads, for example, it's often assumed that there's going to be gods, castles, monsters, magic, kings, etc.— or, if there isn't, the setting is in some ways defined by the absence of these things. I don't think anyone would appreciate it if I suggested stuff like "magical realism Los Angeles" or "there's an ocean of packing peanuts and occasionally it rains cheap ballpoint pens with dried-up ink" or "scientific evidence of an afterlife was discovered in 1957 and work in the field has progressed continuously since then." Granted, a lot of things are pretty hard to use— I'd like to run something using this map, but don't have any idea how—and there's the eternal "What system?" question, which is apparently quite vexing, but there's really a lot of underused non-medieval-fantasy stuff out there.

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>>52442545
And of course I forget the map.

>>52438225
honestly, I always thought Chaos was ultimately derived from Lovecraft

>>52408701
>- Anthrocentric ("No, you may not play a 1/2Elf, 1/4 Dragonborn, 1/4 Tiefling. You are going to play a male human fighter with brown hair, and you are going to like it.")

>- Magic is rare, and it is dangerous

>- No anime/Warcraft bullshit art

This is part of my bible for creating campaigns.

>>52408842
You might enjoy Eberron.

>>52408701
I think this is fair actually, i really haven't seen much of that around.

Everywhere i look i see sexy elves with magical talismans.