So fa/tg/entlemen what do you like more low or high fantasy and

>>52878103
I prefer high fantasy because I enjoy creating interesting and strange imagery in my settings and also because it lets me easily dial any given conflict up to eleven by having higher powers be heavily involved

>>52878103
Low fantasy = there's a direct connection to reality as we know it. E.g. Narnia, Neverending Story.

High fantasy = the setting has no direct connection to the real world, at least not one acknowledged within the work. E.g. Earthsea, Star Wars.

Just sayin'.

>>52879054
usage determines meaning, they're both used commonly to refer to the amount of 'fantastical' elements in a work

>>52878883
I was just gonna say what this anon said, but less elegantly and with more words.

>>52879054
No.

Low Fantasy=fantasy grounded in reality. The traitor betrays the king for 50 silver.

High Fantasy=fantasy that is grandiose. The traitor betrays the king out of romantic jealousy.

Low fantasy will have players doing adventures for merchants, soldiers, etc. People who are necessary for the everyday running of a kingdom. The goals of these adventures will seem small in the grand scheme of things. High fantasy will have players working for a wise old king or whitebearded wizard. The goals of these adventures will decide the fate of the land.

>>52879146
What?

of those two scenarios, someone betraying a fucking king for 50 silver is the LEAST believeable.

>>52879211
What that anon means is that in low fantasy people have more down to earth motivations like monetary gain and their goals are also much smaller.

>>52879485
I know, dude

>>52878103
I like the point where magic is getting to be known by normal people, but there aren't many mages around yet.

Like the time period where schools of magic have just begun being formed, and apprentices are literally just about to "graduate" into competent mages.

Therefore I can still bring a mage here and there if the story or campaign needs it, but they also completely disappear when not needed as they are low in number.

I tend towards high fantasy, although I can enjoy both. I like the more grandiose, mythological sort of storytelling, rooted in metaphor and theme more than in any attempt to be realistic or grounded.

>>52879146
Do you have a citation for that?

No.
Low Fantasy=magic is rare and powerful, everytime it's used, the world changes. Monsters are rarer, more dangerous. Gods hardly exist or work in mysterious ways.
High Fantasy=the wizard casts fireball 3 times a day. 4d4 orcs died. The god of magic dropped by to give the wizard a thumbs up.

>>52879621
I guess you like low fantasy more then?

>>52879726
Yes. I still like the second one, though, tyvm.

>>52878103
In the interest of not JUST being a pedantic shit, to answer your question: I like when the magical is interwoven with the mundane. Where it's not necessarily all adventure all the time but where magic and the other fantastical elements have had a marked impact on how people live their lives.

>>52879621
That's how /tg/ typically misinterprets it, but it doesn't make it so. "High-magic" versus "low-magic" or "grounded" versus "fantastic" would be more accurate.

People keep saying "beg the question" when they mean "raise the question", too.

>Magic is somewhat rare and very weak, just real-world herbalism or alchemy with a slight edge. More powerful magic does exist but is the stuff of legends.
Animals and nature are often dangerous, monstrous even, but things like fire-breathing dragons probably never even existed. Who knows if the gods are even real but there is evidence of a spirit world/ astral plane/whatever you call it.

Whatever this is

>>52879054
WRONG

>low fantasy: Western fantasy epics
>high fantasy: Anime

>>52878103
High fantasy and high magic. I don't see much point in playing anything else.

>>52878103
It depends but generally high fantasy. The real world is a small enclosed space, it's not very flexible in general and it's a lot easier to break suspension of disbelief. Note that on matters like "are Harry Potter (set in a 'hidden' place) or Lord of the Rings (set in a distant past lost to history) high or low fantasy" I consider them high though they're technically low. They are unaffected by the rules that bind most low fantasy.

>>52879146
He's actually right, though. They're literary terms. His definition of low fantasy meaning "connected to the real world" is contentious (many people consider any other world to qualify as high fantasy, even if it is reached via our world, eg an alien planet or Narnia, and you'll be hard-pressed to find people who consider LotR low fantasy, though to be fair, you'll be hard-pressed to find people who know that Tolkien stated Middle Earth was just prehistoric Europe), but low fantasy means fantasy set in the real world and high fantasy means fantasy set in another world (with entirely its own rules, history, geography, etc).

American Gods and In His Majesty's Service are low fantasy, A Song of Ice and Fire and Discworld are high fantasy. You'll note that I listed a gritty, "realistic" example and a whimsical or grandiose example for each. I also avoided more iconic examples that come to mind first because they fall on that contentious middle ground of being linked, but not entirely, to our world- For example I am heavily inclined to call the Chronicles of Narnia high fantasy because they take place in another world apart from ours with its own rules, while our world remains completely mundane, but the two worlds are linked to each other with doorways between them, so it is not ENTIRELY high fantasy. If anything this just demonstrates how "high" and "low" in this case are terms for the extremes of a continuum, with individual works existing relative to each other on this. How "grandiose" or "grounded in reality" something is is another axis entirely.

>>52881828

Colloquial use of language is more meaningful than academic definitions. It's natural for language to evolve and change over time, and while some of it might seem distasteful it's not something anyone can really control or stop.

>>52878103

Using the "secondary world" point of divergence definition...

Generally high. It's simpler, oddly enough; you don't give a fuck about reality.

>>52881873
You're going form something that, while there is a degree of contention and subjectivity to it, nonetheless deals in hard, clear, meaningful terms, to something that is entirely "muh feelings on the matter" and almost completely meaningless. In this case the academic definition wins hands down.

>>52881873
PRESCRIPTIVE FOR LIFE, MOFO

>>52882008

It's not about feelings, it's about how it's used.

Academic definitions and the recorded meanings of words are irrelevant as soon as they're written down, because language is an evolving medium and communication relies on what a word is understood to mean, not what some book says it means.

The very fact people like you keep popping into threads like this trying to argue over definitions kinda proves my point. You can't fight the tide or bring back the past. That the words meant one thing at one point is meaningless if most people, when using them in conversation, will mean another and will understand that one another mean the same, new thing.

Sometimes it sucks. Sometimes it's frustrating. Sometimes it's downright aggravating. But it is impossible to do anything about it. Even the Academy Francais have had fuck all luck, all linguistic protectionism is doing for them is making their academic ideal of 'French' a more and more different construct to how the french language is actually spoken and used in the modern day.

>>52881873

Yes, and by the same token, most people use "theory" to mean "a guess" or sometimes more charitably "an educated guess" rather than how the scientific community uses it.

>>52882208
>It's not about feelings, it's about how it's used.
I'm saying that you're using it to mean feelings, you thick shit. "Realistic" or "grandiose" are entirely matters of opinion. Both examples you name qualify as realistic motivations, just one of them wouldn't exist in a world where everyone was a sociopath.

There is also no one colloquial definition of "high" and "low" fantasy. That's how dumb colloquialisms work, they're tangents from a usually academic definition based on the observations of individuals of low to middling intelligence finding patterns in what is labeled as one thing or another. Therefore to some people it means "how gritty character motivations are" (your definition), to others it means "how much of a role magic plays," or "whether there are 'fantastical' creatures like dragons," or even unironically what >>52880054 (probably sarcastically) suggested, "how hammy or cartoonish the tropes are." All these interpretations are equally valid (which is to say they are not, but a lot of dumb people certainly think they are), and most of them are equally meaningless qualifiers by which you could define pretty much anything you want as whatever you want, as it's entirely feeling-based.

>Academic definitions and the recorded meanings of words are irrelevant as soon as they're written down, because language is an evolving medium and communication relies on what a word is understood to mean
Language evolves over time, sure, but this is an almost strictly detrimental process except where words for new concepts are added (mostly related to new technology, or esoteric fields that will never be relevant to the vast majority of the populace even in a so-called "mass intelligentsia"). When you give people the idea that they have the right to define terms as they please with the excuse of "colloquialism" you end up with massive failures in communication- You cannot argue this, as the thread you are in now would stand as definitive evidence against you.

>>52882509

The thread where people seemed to quite easily understand what one another meant until you barged in here shouting about your academic definitions? This thread, specifically?

>>52878103

The problem that I have with High Fantasy is that it often doesn't know how to control itself. It's to easy to fall into "a Wizard Did it".

>>52882543
>the thread where people have been arguing about the definition of two terms with half the people stating the academic definition or ignoring the argument altogether and actually answering the OP on the basis of the academic definition, and the other half arguing several conflicting colloquial definitions, plus one guy, strangely enough, arguing that colloquial definitions are superior
yeah, that one

you fucking retard

>>52879054
not in the context of RPGs desu

>>52882509
i think however a pattern is emerging by which most gamers consider low fantasy a fantasy world with comparatively few fantastical elements (magic, monsters, etc.) and a high fantasy world one with fantastical elements in abundance. pretty sure that this is getting prevalent. and surely it's a more useful distinction than others proposed.

File: GURPS Fantasy.jpg (210KB, 617x801px) Image search: [Google]

210KB, 617x801px

>>52878103
>Low fantasy, is closer to realistic fiction than to myth. Low fantasy stories focus on people’s daily lives and practical goals; magic provides a way to achieve those goals, and makes it interesting. A low fantasy campaign asks what it’s like to live in a world of monsters, magic, and demigods. Most low fantasy magic is evenly distributed in the world, not sharply focused in certain places. Its effects are predictable and knowable. Low fantasy magic is less a source of wonder than a toolkit. Characters in low fantasy are more concerned with practical goals, less with great passions. A high fantasy traitor might be motivated by passionate jealousy, tempted by the devil, or perversely sympathetic to the other side; a low fantasy traitor wants 30 pieces of silver. Merchants and criminals are minor figures, or entirely absent, in most high fantasy. In low fantasy, they are not only prevalent, they may be the heroes.
>GURPS Fantasy page 6

Pretty simple to understand.

File: curseemporium.jpg (169KB, 760x596px) Image search: [Google]

169KB, 760x596px

>>52878103
Generally I prefer low fantasy like Conan and Dark Sun and LoTR. I think the world is more interesting when magic is rarer and more mysterious, when it can't be used as a brute force to solve any problem, and when simply casting spells draws a reaction from onlookers and there are stigmas and superstitions involved in the arcane.

That said, High fantasy is cool too. It's just that some of the rules and the setting have to be very well defined, because powerful or common magics can drastically change what is possible and thus create plotholes and serious inconsistencies in the setting unless a GM has figured out exactly what is and isn't possible, and the logical conclusions of how certain magic has permeated the world and what the possible long term effects are.

>>52878103
I'm gonna be that guy and say medium fantasy.

>>52886761
I was going to say that too!
Medium for life!

>>52886668
>LoTR
> low fantasy

>>52886668
>plotholes and serious inconsistencies

Pretty much this.
Any setting with commonplace light, food, healing, flight, teleportation, mindcontrol, resurrection, gates, massmurder, undead, etc. is one which is so far removed from medieval or dark ages Europe as to be completely unrelatable.

Low if it's combat or politics focused.

High if ya gettin' REALLY fuckin' wierd wit it

>>52887205
Honestly for me I love high fantasy politics. Like doing things such as arguing with a clan of dragons on the current political-social positioning of their old allies and things like that is amazingly fun.

File: nithing pole.jpg (17KB, 533x400px) Image search: [Google]

17KB, 533x400px

>>52886761
This

My setting is based mostly off of old European folklore. Magic exists, but "casting" magic is incredibly rare and isn't like shooting fireballs out of your hands. Kingdoms of Elves exist, but they have more subtle magics like in LOTR, and generally keep to themselves, on the fringes of the known world. Mythical beasts exist, but are also extremely rare and exist more in old stories and legends.

Most of my aesthetic comes from Late Antiquity/Migration period Europe, a time when magic was a part of daily life, in things like superstitions, prayers, curses, and talismans for good luck.

>>52886668
>>52887026
LOTR is meant to be more like a mythology than anything

>>52887263
>>52887026
There's no magic in LotR

>>52887343
Go back and read Tolkien's letters. The crafts of the Enemy are sometimes called magic, and so is what the elves can do, but they do not call it magic as to not be associated with Melkor/Sauron.

>>52887382
If low fantasy means more grounded and less magic then LotR is low fantasy

>>52887454
You can argue all day about what low fantasy and high fantasy mean, and I don't have any specific definitions, but what does "grounded" even mean in a setting where gods interact with the world and magic (yes, MAGIC) rings of power cause insatiable lust for domination in people? If you mean what >>52879146 said, that is a really terrible metric because people could act for either reason in either setting.

>>52887609
They aren't magic rings of power. They're just so wonderfully constructed that people have their personalities consumed by their desire to posess them.

>>52887693
And how do you justify the turning invisible part?

>>52887693
Tolkien explicitly stated the true power of the ring was that it caused the wearer to develop a desire for power, not only a desire for the ring itself. The fact that it enhances a person's capabilities is secondary. That's why when Sam carried the ring, he saw a vision of himself becoming a benevolent lord, and turning Mordor into a garden. Magic is specifically the craft of Melkor, and his desire to have control and order over all things.

Seriously. Read Tolkien's letters, and come back when you know what you're talking about.

>>52887714
It was so artfully crafted that when worn it causes light to reflect off it in a way that makes its wearer invisible.

>>52887765
That's not magic though. That's just the nature of evil. Things that are "magic" in LotR are just things that are normal but made by beings from a super ordinant category so they're extra.

>>52887783
>Things that are "magic" in LotR are just things that are normal but made by beings from a super ordinant category so they're extra.
What about when Gandalf lights his staff in Moria?

>>52887805
His staff isn't just a piece of wood but a carefully crafted mobility device. Helping an old man to navigate in the dark is a natural function of his mobility device.

>>52887855
How about the trolls turning to stone?

>>52878103
For me its low, just because I legitimately don't know how to both do high fantasy and make something coherent in which players have a meaningful role.

>>52887783
>>52887855
>[Melkor] will rebel against the laws of the Creator - especially against mortality. Both of these (alone or together) will lead to the desire for Power, for making the will more effective, - and so the Machine (or Magic). By the last I intend all use of external plans or devices (apparatus) instead of developments of the inherent powers or talents - or even the use of these talents with the corrupted motive of dominating: bulldozing the real world, or coercing other wills. The Machine is our more obvious modern form though more closely related to Magic than is usually recognized.

>I have not used 'magic' consistently...[Elven] 'magic' is Art, delivered from many of its human limitations...and its object is Art not Power.

J. R. R. Tolkien

now please stop posting

>>52887609
You're being unnecessarily obtuse. The standard definition of low vs high fantasy is very clear; one is more like reality in than other. If a setting treats magic like technology, it's low fantasy. If demigods acts like real rulers, it's low fantasy. If all the undesirable but realistic aspects of society are fully apparent in the setting (racism, slavery, everyday crime), it's low fantasy. If the setting glosses over all of this in favor of epic quests and characters, it's high fantasy. High fantasy is just another way of saying myth. I hate to quote the burger-meister but does Tolkein explain what Aragorn's tax policy is? That's because the Lord of the Rings is high fantasy. Tolkien doesn't care about describing what it's like to live in Middle-Earth. All he cares about is writing a detailed mythology.

Also, you ever hear the saying reality is unrealistic? It's because we expect the motivations behind people to be simple because in most cases they are. So you could say, yeah the traitor could realistically be jealous. However, what is he jealous of? His opponents beauty? Why? Because it let's his opponent succeed where he can't? A low fantasy setting would explore these motivations while a high fantasy one wouldn't because that detracts from the story.

Of course, neither is mutually exclusive. The burger-meister might describe in horrid detailed the qualities of a nobleman's feast or the details of his next political gambit but he'll skip over the day to day business of a running a fiefdom. After all, you have to write to an audience. This becomes even more apparent in pnp rpg campaigns. The players and GM might be attracted to a setting because of it's low fantasy qualities but ultimately desire to run a high fantasy campaign within the low fantasy setting. Or the low fantasy campaign might morph into a high fantasy one. Or vice versa. Campaigns can be chaotic that way.

>>52878103
I dunno, you could call it mezzo-fantasy. I like realisticall stuff with magical things being known, but nothing like DnD with fireball totting wizards, more like prayers, talismans than work for specific things, curses, mythical beings than live in your house doing little pranks, evil beasties to slay, spirits than can be banished with salt, prayers and holy water... Euro myths made real in a whole.

>>52887864
Trolls were created (or corrupted) by Melkor (a super ordinant being)

Because Melkor can't truly create life and because he was already evil with his desire for dominion when he created them they must be evil as well, which means they are wretched and hate the light (hating/fearing the light is a natural property of being evil) And because he made them from stone in the first place they turn back into stone.

>>52887906
That's what I'm saying. How do you think that letter is an argument against me?

>>52887914
Well first off, I never claimed LOTR was low fantasy.

But you're using one definition of high vs low. You can easily frame it another way. Take the Elder Scrolls series (the lore, anyways). It may describe the Empire's tax policy in detail, or give the exact functions and duties of the arms of Morrowind's Tribunal government, but you've still got magic everywhere, wizards in every town, and anthropomorphic lizard people running around. That makes it high fantasy to me, even though it often concerns itself with the mundane.

>>52887974
He literally equates elven art as magic, and if you're too dense to see that I don't know what more I can say to you.

How about this - if the ring's invisibility is just a "trick of the light" how does it let one see wraiths? And what definition of magic are you even using, that is making you deny it so hard in this setting? You're simply being either asinine or pedantic.

>>52878103
I can appreciate both, but high fantasy needs to be really high for me to get into it. Like whatever is going on in that pic is still far too grounded for me to appreciate it as high fantasy, even though it's also far too out there for me to appreciate it as low fanatsy.

>>52888010
I'd say ES is pretty clear cut example of low fantasy according to the GURPS Fantasy definition.

File: 1414026674214.png (22KB, 215x194px) Image search: [Google]

22KB, 215x194px

>>52878103
I have a question for you all...

I'm making my own fantasy world and each race is tied to a specific culture, per usual. I just realized that my cultures are all Eurasia focused and there's no room for an Aztec/Mayan culture/race. Is it okay not to have an Aztec themed area or is it basically considered mandatory in fantasy world making? How would you feel about playing/running a game that didn't have one?

>>52878103
High Fantasy High Magic: D&D
High Fantasy Low Magic: LotR, Conan, Shrek
Low Fantasy High Magic: GoT, Mortal Kombat
Low Fantasy Low Magic: Asterix, Dune

OH GOD FUCKING DAMN IT CAN YOU STOP ARGUING ABOUT DEFINITIONS

>>52889043
Make aztecs underwater. Aztec fishmen.

>>52889043
Go Atlantis. Basically cheat as Atlantis is "every proto race"

>>52889062
i guess what i'm asking is that should i swap a cultural theme for aztecs? i want a certain amount of races and a culture to match them. right now they're all Eurasian, so i feel like the aztec race might seem out of place. that, and i like the cultures i have right now.

but if more people like aztecs than i originally thought then i might have to reconsider

>>52886761
My brother. Medium fantasy, with low-medium magic

>>52878103
I prefer High Fantasy, partially because Low Fantasy is extremely overdone these days in comparison

So what is high fantasy anyway

Anyone got a definition somewhere?

>>52881873
Yeah, what >>52879146 calls "high fantasy" is called worldbuilding by most

>>52886668
>Dark Sun
>low fatnasy
Psionics is so common in fucking Dark Sun, you're a weirdo for NOT having some kind of Psionic power.

>>52889043
Be creative, don't just make everybody "not!Japan" or "not!Rome"

>>52879211
A major faith holds that one of the followers of their messiah gave up his leader to death for 20 silver pieces or so, is it really that unbelievable?

>>52889542
I haven't seen any formal definition that matches up with what you're suggesting. That's problematic because your definition really fails at being useful for categorizing settings. I suspect that's why you're failing at finding any concrete examples, not because of any ambiguity in the subject area itself.

>>52889597
Considering the rest of the unbelievable stuff in that particular myth, maybe?

>>52889481

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fantasy

>>52889043

Why going the usual way?

Also, it's fucking fantasy. You can have a not! Tibet in the middle of a "germanic" area if you do it with a pinch of salt.

>>52889043
Who cares? Make sure your world is interesting on its own merits and spend less time worrying about which cultures you steal from.

>>52888647
>using GURPS as an authority on anything

File: i'm too old for this faggotry.jpg (42KB, 640x468px) Image search: [Google]

42KB, 640x468px

>>52891947
>dissing SJG
I honestly couldn't care less about the system. However, the books are very well written and have good citations, which are sadly a rarity in rpg books these days. The latter stems from the fact the people who write for GURPS actually have degrees in what they're writing about. Most of them are also old hands, having written rpg books for decades (not just for SJG). So yeah, for many rpg subjects, GURPS is an authority.

>>52889044
>High Fantasy
>Conan
Almost nailed it.

>>52889597
Yes. "King of the jews" notwithstanding, Jesus and his crew were dirt poor. You'd better believe the Duke of York isn't going to turn on the King of England for the annual income of a modest tradesman.

>>52893258
Conan is high fantasy.

>>52878103
I'll let you in on a secret: you can absolutely have both in the one setting. Sometimes the game of the day is about settling inheritance issues among a couple of noble families or finding a bookseller who'll bind your occult texts without outing you as a heretic, other days you're hunting down griffons for spell components and acting as a go-between for negotiations between the fairy courts of night and day.

Arguing over definitions is pointless because when people start using a word wrong, it is corrupted forever and starts to truly mean its incorrect definition unless you jump on the defilers right away and execute them in the court of public opinion.

For example, the word "literally" now officially also means "figuratively"

For a more niche example "Roguelike" a word that used to mean a close derivation of a genre and style of the game Rogue and successors, now means "anything with a lazy attempt at procedural generation and permadeath".

Does it matter that the marketeers were completely wrong when they misused "Roguelike"?

Does it matter that teenage white girls were absolutely, hilariously wrong when they misused the word "literally"?

No.

According to the insufferable faggots who defend the new definitions, all that matters is that people understand what you mean when you say it.

Prior to looking at this thread, when someone said to me "I want to run a low fantasy setting" that meant to me that there was little magic, the lowly Sword +1 was a rare and amazing thing that had a full name and proud history, and therefore it was more realistic and gritty and closer representative of middle ages.

So if that's not what the term is supposed to mean, I am sorry to say but I think you're fucked and as a Roguelike fan, believe me it never gets any easier to hear people mangle your word, particularly when you start getting people who don't even know the original meaning at all and act like YOU'RE the one who is wrong. The worst feeling of all is realizing those retarded newbies are actually right...

>>52893542
high fantasy is when the fate of the world is at stake and the characters journey is to save it. In low fantasy the characters journey is more personal and doesn't affect the fate of the world

>>52894100
If an entire street believes something wrong, it's still wrong.

Literally does not mean figuratively, you are a retard and a pedophile if you think otherwise.

>>52894394

You see, in a perfect world, you'd be right.

But this isn't a perfect world, and as such you are wrong and this is the definition of "literally"

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally

And you can yell and scream about how literally, almost by definition, doesn't mean figuratively. And at the end of the day, you'd be wrong. And that, my friend, was my point.

Believe me it makes me mad too. But no amount of screaming and ranting will ever unrape the word "roguelike".

>>52878103
>king of dragon's pass
brb, gonna reinstall it.

>>52894951

thank goodness they patched it and put it on steam, it works perfectly

>>52892852

Except that, in this case, their definitions do not fit the same definitions that are used for literary works. Maybe high and low fantasy mean "lots of magic" and "not so much magic" in RPG terms, but when judging something that isn't a tabletop RPG, those terms mean something entirely different.

Frankly, they strike me as a bunch of incompetents muddling the meaning of terms explicitly used to define genre fiction, and misapplying them to PnP roleplaying games.

>>52894100
> those retarded newbies are actually right...
No they're wrong because their definition fails on a fundamental level; it fails to be a useful definition. You can't easily organize books or settings based Low and High Magic, that is too subjective.

In the end, really, this isn't redefinition of the terms "low and high fantasy" but a story on how little rpg players know about genres. Because outside of communities of rpg players, the definition is pretty clear and has been so decades.

The traditional rpg definition on differs from the literary one in that it simplifies the distinction; realism vs myth. In the literary definition, its much more about how similar the fantasy world is to our own and how emphasized traditional fantasy elements are. Which roughly boils down to the same thing but with one difference; the rpg definition says mythic stories in our own world are high fantasy.

Of course, both the literary and rpg definitions are not perfect; both high and low fantasy diverged into multiple subgenres long ago. And some sub-genres like Dark Fantasy and Sword and Sorcery use elements from both quite readily.

>>52894644
Find a teacher, professor, editor, or boss that will accept the new definitions. Few to none will. Slang comes and goes but formal language survives because it is useful especially when communicating across cultural and generational boundaries.

File: into the retard corner with you.png (140KB, 224x350px) Image search: [Google]

140KB, 224x350px

>>52895265
Actually their definitions boil down to the same thing with a few exceptions. You would expect this given writing a novel and rpg setting are very different tasks.

>Frankly, they strike me as a bunch of incompetents muddling the meaning of terms explicitly used to define genre fiction, and misapplying them to PnP roleplaying games.

Wow, aren't you full of yourself. Please, post your qualifications so we may judge your definition of competent. Make sure to wipe the shit off of them because surely you're going to pull them out of your ass.

>>52895871
>appeal to authority
>ad hominem

GURPsfags everyone.

>>52879054
i thought high fantasy was more JRR Tolkien and the like while low fantasy would be something like Robert Howard

>>52879054
Or High Fantasy more magic and fantastic stuff while Low Fantasy is more grounded in reality with magic being either rare or low key/difficult -so High would have wizards, elves, demons, and dragons going right, left and centre while in Low they'd be rare or unique

>>52887343
I think its more that magic is leaving/leaking away from the Land making everything more mundane

>>52893542
Wikipedia says swords and sorcery which is more low fantasy in my opinion

>>52886668
>>52887160
well said

>>52896801
I said it elsewhere but things that are "magic" are just normal things but created by super ordinant beings. The super ordinant beings are leaving so things which are "magic" are going with them.

Songs for example are magical. Songs you can hear today can be emotionally moving but songs sung by a super ordinant being like an elf can move you on a next level. Jewels are shiny and desirable but Feanor, the greatest smith of the super ordinant class of Noldor Elves can make jewels so shiny and desirable that wars are fought over them.

>>52886761
I prefer mine rare

>>52889043
There's no such thing as a mandatory culture. If you don't want feather-clad nobles, corn, and human sacrifices, why should you need those things?

>>52887343
There's tons of magic. Hell, don't you remember the time that Saruman made an entire fucking race magically?

>>52887767
Actually, it enhances the wearer's innate properties. Remember how at the beginning of The Hobbit it tells us that hobbits go unnoticed as a racial trait. That's also why Sauron made it to enhance the Maiar racial trait of being a huge fucking magical badass.

>>52895058
The steam version is a shitty port of the mobile version, though.

Personally I'm holding out for Six Ages.

>>52897586
There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. If more of us valued jokes and shitposting above pedantic arguments about definitions, it would be a merrier /tg/.

>>52897749
thank you kind sir

>>52897688
>Saruman made an entire fucking race magically
Selective breeding isn't magic.

>>52897724
>Six Ages
Is this a real thing that will actually be released?

>>52897783
making two separate species mix is- although such things do happen in fantasy or science fiction but in real-life two different species mixing would be practically impossible.

The best fantasy is that which beggars definition according to such banal terms. I mean fuck, this answer is already in the OP. Look at Glorantha. Does anything truly happen that's supernatural? Maybe not! All the magic in KoDP could be ascribed to coincidence, superstition, and confirmation bias. Even the hero stories could just be a really wild trip. And if you ask the God-Learners, many contradictory things can be equally true and false. So at the same time, you've got a bunch of fucking barbarians shitting on each other's cows and being generally ignorant and religious, and at the same time you've got a dude fucking God's mom to birth a nation. But what he actually did was stick his dick in a hole in a cave. And yet it fucking worked.

>>52897804
Orcs and humans aren't different species. Orcs are wretched evil elves and humans and elves are biologically compatable.

>>52897853
What's the deal with cattle raids? Is it just like a violent blood sport between clans that the young men do when they're bored?

>>52897802
I don't see why not. Their initial estimate was that it would release last year, but that was the estimate made at the beginning of development, missing it is hardly unusual and the dev blog is still plenty alive. In fact I'd say it'll probably be out within the next few few months since all the latest stuff is related to bugfixing, playtesting, and marketing and it sounds like all or almost all of the writing and art is done, and the game itself has been done for ages.

You can ask the dude if you like, though.

>>52897853
Glorantha's shit though.

>>52897873
It's pretty much just theft. A cattle raid is something you do with a couple people and try to avoid being caught. A full-on raid is more like a violent sport. Either way, it's basically just the standard white "culture" of getting drunk on adrenaline and fucking with your neighbors.

>>52897898
You're shit

>>52897898
Your mom is shit.

>>52897930
>white "culture"
Really no call for that

>>52897930
Cattle raids were also pretty common with turkic nomads though.
It wasn't an exclusive celtic or germanic thing.

>>52897894
They seem to put out updates on their progress pretty often so there is hope.

>>52894100
>and starts to truly mean its incorrect definition
This right here is bad linguistics. You're a bad linguist, and you're spreading falsehood. I wish you would fall in a ditch and die.

>>52899789
Can you explain why? I think he's pretty spot on in that language is fucntional so if everyone I talk to about roguelikes thinks binding of isaac is a roguelike I have to come to realize that outside of my mind the word roguelike means binding of isaac.

>>52900071
The bad linguistics part is the part where he claims that there is such a thing as an "incorrect" definition.

>>52900228
Oh. I feel like that's a minor semantics issue where he agrees with the idea that no definition is incorrect because (unfortunatly for him) language is functional and doesn't just exist in his mind but he wants to retain that while he's going to adopt new popular definitions he will cling in his mind to the idea that some of the definitions he's using will be wrong.

>>52900307
It's not. To go further into depth, his example of "the word "literally" now officially also means "figuratively" is outright false. For one, the definition he is referring to does not mean figuratively, but is used as an intensifier. Much like how you would say "no, I'm not even joking, I am actually freezing to death to over here" even though you actually aren't. You're just feeling really cold and want to express that.

Secondly, that definition isn't recent, and has been documented since at least the 17th century.

Furthermore
>Does it matter that teenage white girls were absolutely, hilariously wrong when they misused the word "literally"?
They aren't. He's wrong in thinking that they are using their native language wrong.

Someone must have coined the expression "even a broken watch is right twice a day", but whoever that person was can't ever have met a linguistic prescriptivist as they are actually never right.

>>52879054

That would make Xanth and Gensokyo both low fantasy settings, which I guess isn't technically wrong.

File: rainbowstalin.gif (1MB, 800x591px) Image search: [Google]

1MB, 800x591px

>>52879146

Those don't sound like scenarios that are exclusive to either setting at all. Is Real Life high fantasy because an ex-priest turned rogue decided to become a dictator who genocided entire nations of people because he felt his god snatched away the only love of his life from his arms while abandoning him?

>>52900644
Good post. P. eloquent.

>>52887454

But that's not what low fantasy means.

High fantasy means elevated tone, noble characters, and elegiac themes.

Low fantasy means picaresque tone, selfish characters, and pulpy adventure.

Everybody needs to quit conflating high/low fantasy with high/low magic.

File: tara1-680x509.jpg (169KB, 680x509px) Image search: [Google]

169KB, 680x509px

High fantasy is for overweight people with shitty hygiene and low paying jobs. Oh, and they hate themselves (or they should).

>>52900981
He'd work for a fantasy villain of course. Throw in a young faithful man who wants to save or avenge his people going on a quest to stop or redeem that man and growing as a result, then it's high fantasy. Those definitions are narrative definitions and narratives are inevitably grounded in the thoughts and experiences of writers who are real, and don't have to apply to whole settings so much as individual stories. Level of technology and the nature of any metaphysics like magic or religion in the setting aren't really relevant to whether or not it's fantasy, but they have to be present. The original trilogy of star wars was high fantasy, while there are other stories in the universe whose narratives certainly aren't fantasy.

I've found myself enjoying "a wizard did it" levels of magic lately. Maybe it's because grimdark gritty realism has burned me out on explaining everything fucking thing through the text. I love Sanderson, but I feel like he started a landslide. Zelazny had dudes stroll through dimensions with magic cards that work as psychic cellphones because fuck you, a crazy dwarf did it. Where's that in contemporary fiction?

>>52878103
Low fantasy for when you're feeling low.
High fantasy for when you're high.

>>52897898
You're right

>>52902533
You gotta mix the two. Awesome technology and life-improving devices made by madmen that just happen to have problems that are related to being made by madmen.

Depending on how edgy you wanna get, those cards could potentially only work if the communicators spoke in perfect iambic pentameter, or occasionally something from beyond the fold would pretend to be the other person on the line and try to convince each person in on the conversation to do some creepy shit that appeases said eldritch beastie.

>>52897930
>>>/reddit/

>>52882543
I had assumed you meant high or low magic, actually.

But this argument over WTF high Fantasy is happens every time someone uses the damn term. We have like 3 of these a week.

I'm gonna say what I always say:

The terms have lost all practical value.

The academic definition never had any value, but it's the original definition.

The other definitions had practical value, but ambiguity has made them a wast of time.