>Genre is called "fantasy" >Somehow today it

>>54635562
>Somehow today it requires the least amount of imagination for creating a new work
That's a nice opinion you have. Care to elaborate?

>What went wrong and how do we fix this?
Nothing went wrong, and you fix it by creating something that YOU like and stop worrying or carring about people's opinions.

>>54635562
>Was Tolkien a mistake?
No.
>What went wrong
Marketing reigns supreme.
Pandering to the lowest denominator.
Avoiding anything complex or unexpected or even just superficially looking like it could be complex for fear of alienating consumers.
And of course people actually often being dull as fuck.
>how do we fix this?
>>54635624
What he says. Time, exposure and sadly enduring more financial failures than necessary.

>>54635562
You were a mistake.

>>54635562

Nobody knew that elves and dwarves hated each other before tolkien. Now, due to LotR movies, everyone knows that dwarves and elves hate each other. This means I can make a story in generic fantasy land where dwarves and elves hate each other, without having to actually explain WHY they hate each other. It's just ingrained in the public psyche.

Dwarves live underground. Elves like trees and shit. Dwarves like axes and hammers. Elves like bows and swords. Dwarves make beer, elves make wine. It's all pressed into every viewer's skull.

I can just present a random dwarf, and people will immediately understand that the character is a gruff-but-steadfast person who meets challenges head on and isn't afraid of danger, who values his friends and family above his own life, and values honor and his word greatly. His name is Baegar Bronzebottom or Garnak Fizzleshit or Farin Trolldefenestrator and no one bats an eye. I'll go further.

He comes from Khaz-[gutteralsounds] or The [mineral] Mountains. He worships a god whose name sounds like a combination of common german and yiddish phonics. He has an enmity with elves. He goes on and on about his extended family. He's a smith, or the son of a smith, or he's a smith and also something else.

Now, if I go against that ingrained image of a dwarf people have, I'm fighting against the grain here. People already like dwarves. It's also arbitrary. Why am I using a dwarf if it's not the commonly known dwarf? I'm just ripping someone off, changing one or two things, and then jerking myself off saying "I'm so clever and innovative!".

Your other option is to create an entirely new world of races and shit, all made from scratch. That is not only difficult to do, but it's risky (everyone already loves dwarves and elves, who will like the Xith'tol~bagh?), and you have to spend a considerable amount of time explaining all your different races and why they're different than humans and why they need to exist in the setting. cont

>>54636388
You should really slip them the tip and make your dwarf look like a drow. No other change, just make them look like a drow. Now you have your classic Norse Dwarves.

>>54635562
Sodomize the plants.

>>54636388

You're either adding more content to your story, dragging it out and increasing your load/budget (for film or animation), or you're cutting your story to explain your six-armed, winged lizardmole people.

The other thing is that fantasy draws from myths.Tolls, ogres, hags, bugbears, dwarves, elves, and all that shit come from human history. If you make a new race, it's either something completely made up (which why not make it scifi at that point), or you're drawing from myths that have already been done 50 times before (eg the 600 types of vampires and zombies).

So, fantasy is set. It's not going to change until the whole fantasy fad up and gets overdone like Star Trek in the 90s. Then we'll get another LotR, Kingkiller, or whatever the fuck else is popular made into a movie in 2027.

And then we'll repeat the cycle. God, don't you hate it how EVERY Xith loves yams and how ALL their parents are were-centuars?

>>54635562
>Was Tolkien a mistake?
No, but your mum told me you were.

Go find a fantasy setting that isn't generic garbage like L.E. Modesitte's Recluse books. His stories and characters are nearly identical for every book but the history, magic and world building in general is some of the best I've come across in cesspool fantasy genre.

>>54635562
We need higher fantasy. One of the biggest reasons fantasy is so homogenized is that most fantasy races, and their cultures, are very human in nature

>Dwarfs are short stout stoic
>Elves are wiry magic aloof humans
>Orcs are bigger greener meaner humans
>Halflings are literally just short humans

If keeping these fantasy races, but you still want to be original, you need to stretch some of their qualities out beyond what's human. Maybe drop some of the qualities too.

>>54636519
It's so sad that we apparently can only have a Xith who loves yams, if the concepts of Xith and Xith liking yams have reached widespread cultural penetration beforehand.
Apparently we can't just show a Xith, and show how he gets exited about yams.
Apparently we can't have the story be about Xith, it seems like we can't establish things.

It's sad.

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>>54635624
>That's a nice opinion you have. Care to elaborate?
Fantasy is very stagnant. Most of works are basically reiterations of Tolkien in slightly different sceneries. Truly original authors like Zelazny, Gaiman or Wolfe are rare and don't have much influence on overall development of genre.

Development in fantasy is measured by financial success rather than the actual value of work. Not that it's different from a lot of other mediums, but in case of fantasy that's rather contradictory: this genre is supposed to fuel imagination and be free from a lot of boundaries, but in practice it follows a set of dogmas and deviation from them is exception rather then something ordinary.

I'm not implying that something has to be over the top original to be good, but this stagnation is pretty sad. Notable number of sci-fi writers like Bradbury, Philip K. Dick or Asimov are part of literary canon in some way or another, while fantasy authors don't get as much recognition, which kind of speaks about state of genre.

I would be rather happy if you will prove me otherwise.

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>>54636587
>Go find a fantasy setting that isn't generic garbage like L.E. Modesitte's Recluse books.

>>54635562
Homonyms.

>>54635690
This nigga understands.

>>54639019
>Zelazny
MMMMMMM, my dick!

>Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to ensure any possible benefit for which you may be eligible after the destruction of your body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure your receiving said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen.

>races this
>races that
>dwarves, elves, orcs
>winged whatevers
>lizard-whatevers
Try coming up with an interesting human people instead, for fuck's sake. I don't give a shit about your !NotHuman's totally original donut steel biology. I don't need to hear about their glued-on rubber fucking forehead.

Just try coming up with actually interesting human characters.

If you can't manage that, I don't need to hear about your totally original elves.

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>>54635562
>Was Tolkien a mistake?
Yeah, or rather not he himself or his works but what they did to the genre. It defined the genre to such an extent that there's no shortage of stale copies.

Tolkien went to original myths and history for interpretation. Many post-Tolkien authors go to Tolkien to interpretation. Much like anime, the entire industry has become incestuous (which is why mangaka who have no fucking idea how boobs work can make a living drawing boobs).

>>54635562
stereotyper started long before tolkien
>conan

>>54639250
>Many post-Tolkien authors go to Tolkien
Not even that. The only thing people ever borrow from Tolkien are surface elements. The stories themselves and the writing style have always had more in common with American pulp fantasy such as Conan or Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

>ITT: Newfags who don't know the history of their own genre.

The ossification of the Fantasy genre into a strict formula is a relatively new phenomenon.

Go back and read fantasy works from the 70's and 80's and you will see SO much more willingness to experiment. This was an era when the line delinting Science Fiction and Fantasy was much less rigidly defined and you had tons of crossover between the genres.

Then in the 1990's it was decided that Planetary Romance and Weird Fantasy was no longer allowed. I blame the popularity of all those Forgotten Realms novels which solidified a fixed formula for Fantasy in the minds of a new audience and made publishers reluctant to experiment.

>>54639456
Yes. Come to think about it, almost all my fantasy is either Lovecraft-era pulp or '60s/'70s LSD trip fantasy.

You could start by picking up some fantasy literature rather than basing your opinion of fantasy off of green texts you've read on 4chan about 5E D&D games.

>>54639456
>I blame the popularity of all those Forgotten Realms novels

I can buy that, it seems a lot of this so-called Tolkienesque fantasy has very little to do with Tolkien, and a lot to do with DnD.

>>54639486
There is no denial that there were great fantasy books, but we are talking about current state of genre.

For starters, can you name some relatively modern authors, who actively advance fantasy instead of walking on developed ground?

>>54635562
The best most unexpected /k/ ending I've ever seen to a fantasy movie.

>>54639456
>I blame the popularity of all those Forgotten Realms novels
It figures that D&D would ruin everything somehow.

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>>54636388
I get where you're coming from. I remembered how some fantasy neckbeards would get triggered by any portrayal of a dwarf without a beard.

>>54639250
>Much like anime, the entire industry has become incestuous (which is why mangaka who have no fucking idea how boobs work can make a living drawing boobs).
Wow, this is possibly the best analogy to the problem with modern fantasy that I've ever seen.

>>54639563
>For starters, can you name some relatively modern authors, who actively advance fantasy instead of walking on developed ground?
The Game of Thrones books, the Stormlight Archive, and the Kingkiller Chronicle are all modern fantasy works, stylistically distinct from each other, and also hallmarks of their genre.

OP is complaining about an issue that isn't there.

>>54640585
I agree with ASOIAF being a landmark, but it exponentially gets dimmer and dimmer with each book.

Haven't read Stormlight.

Kingkiller is only worth it for Patrick's writing style. Outside of it there is literally nothing new.

They're may be popular, but aside from ASOAIF I don't see there any major influences. Even then, Martin's books are not the only ones that made low fantasy popular. I.e. Witcher was a big thing in Europe even before the games came out, but this series is not exactly very modern, as it belongs to 90's.

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>>54635562
>What went wrong and how do we fix this?
by killing every human being on earth

>Was Tolkien a mistake?
yes, he should have fucking killed himself right after he came out of the womb, imagine a world without fucking homo elfs and gay hobbits, pure fucking bliss.

>>54640726
But Tolkien elves (in the books) are like, six feet tall and build like brick houses. Some of then have beards, even if it is noted as a rare thing.

>>54640585
>Anons complaining about how modern fantasy is stale and pandering to the lowest common denominator and the pleb masses that discovered the genre with DnD.
>But the truth is, there are many original high-quality works out there, but anons are oblivious on it because they're too retarded to read anything beyond classical fantasy.
>Meaning anons actually are part of the lowest common denominator and the pleb masses that they're complaining about.
Really activates my almonds.

I think the genre isn't stale at all. I think the problem is that books ( specially of the fantasy genre ) don't get much exposure anymore like they used to get in the pulp magazine era. Now most people only read books to look cool or fit in a group, meaning people tend to either read only what everyone else is reading or what no one is currently reading. And then new works of fantasy have a hard time becoming famous, because their best bet is only trying to get their work into a movie or TV series.

>>54635562
>What went wrong

People insisting that sci-fi themes, and fantasy themes are different.

>>54635562
That's why I call it sword and sorcery whenever I'm among people of equal powerlevel.

>>54640585
>>54640806
Now is the easiest time to bring your book to the public. Word of mouth is stronger than ever, and you don't necessarily need publisher to get exposure. Because of this comes a big problem - oversaturation. There is so much media that it's incredibly easy to miss a good book amongst the ocean of mediocrity. The ones that got into spotlight most of the time turn out to be flicks that pander to wide demographic. Commercial success doesn't automatically marks a hallmark in genre even if it's not a bad book.

Lets look at two hack frauds by the names of VanderMeer and Rothfuss. Both are about form rather than content, but first one is very innovative for his clever use of post-modernism and metafiction in his short stories, while the latter doesn't really bring something to the table except his quirky prose. Who gets the spotlight: the one that pushes boundaries of fantasy or the one that is simple to consume? I think you know the answer.

And there comes stagnation. There are good and talented writers that bring a fresh air into fantasy, but they're easily overshadowed, because oversaturated market honours those who are able to easily entertain wide audience.

>>54636663
>most fantasy races, and their cultures, are very human in nature
That's the point.

>>54640356
This is the same for sci-fi as well. Hell, it's the same for horror, for music, for films, for everything.

How does /tg/ feel about female fantasy authors such as Robin Hob or Elizabeth Moon? Both take generic fantasy tropes and mess with them to better serve their worlds.

>>54642969
Don't know much about those particular authors, but when it comes to female genre fiction writers, I love Le Guin.
Even when she writes a feministic book, she always handles it in a very subtle and reasonable manner. What actually funny is that some feminists criticized her, because Left Hand of Darkness used male pronounce for genderless race.

>>54643107
I've always meant to read that novel but sci fi doesn't really do it for me. Granted I've only read one of her short stories and as good as it was, just wasn't my thing.

>>54640778
I don't see how that has anything to do with being a homo or not.

>>54639174
>doing anything as fantasy as elves and dwarves is donut steel if it's not elves and dwarves
You are part of the problem.

>>54636388
This isn't entirely accurate.
Nowadays, it's also possible when a dwarf shows up in fantasy that people will expect him to have a shit-ton of swagger and oh-so-clever one-liners.
(While still being an alcoholic, of course...)

Write your own fantasy novel you lazy fuck.

>>54635690
>Marketing reigns supreme.
>Pandering to the lowest denominator.
>Avoiding anything complex or unexpected or even just superficially looking like it could be complex for fear of alienating consumers.
>And of course people actually often being dull as fuck.
So, like any genre of any product ever released.

>>54645458
This

>>54636519
Counterpoint: Dominions from Illwinter game design.

>>54635562
>Somehow today it requires the least amount of imagination for creating a new work

Stop reading pulp fantasy? I mean, there are tons of interesting fantasy worlds that either throw the steryotype away or play on the sterytope to make something new, on the other hand if you only read dragonlance and the such, it's no suprise that the only thing you get is a rip off of tolkien

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Read this thread, you see these replies? That's the problem.

Fantasy is different things to different people and phrasing the question so broadly gets you nowhere,

>>54639250
>unironically comparing 30 years of writing to some chinese cartoons

>>54639019
>Fantasy is very stagnant. Most of works are basically reiterations of Tolkien in slightly different sceneries.
Almost nothing is, though. What you just said describes a lot of pastiches of fantasy, and parodies of fantasy, and summarizes a lot of people's first D&D campaigns. But practically no fantasy series with any decent amount of recognition published in the last three decades have been "Tolkien with the serial numbers filed off".

The Gentleman Bastards series is in no way Tolkien-esque, it owed more to Leiber and Vance. The Vlad Taltos series is more influenced by Roger Zelazny and Alexander Dumas. The Malazan Book of the Fallen has been said by Erikson to be influenced by Howard, Burroughs, LeGuin, Stephen Donaldson, Stephen King, Tim Powers, Glenn Cook, and his own study of anthropology.

The First Law trilogy, Night Angel, Mistborn, The Dagger and the Coin, the Greatcoats series, The Red Knight cycle, Kingkiller Chronicles, not one is a ripoff of LotR.

The idea that Tolkien pastiches dominate fantasy is just a meme, it's not an actual thing that happens. If you think it's a legitimate problem then your only exposure to fantasy is likely Tolkien himself and also Dragonlance; clearly you, personaly, are wider read than that, so I'm baffled how you could have fallen for this meme.

>>54645662
I mean it's more like comparing 15 years of chinese cartoons to 15 years of some shitty movie series.
I've met multiple people who are inspired to write fantasy by LotR despite never reading it, only seeing the Jackson trilogy.

>>54642969
Not familiar with Moon, and not a fan of Hobb. My only exposure to her was the Farseer trilogy, which struck me as a coming of age story where the protagonist never comes of age. I spent the books waiting for Fitz to exercise some fucking agency, instead he spends 900 pages brooding about his relationship drama while letting other characters dictate the course of his life. It did not do anything for me.

Also I didn't think she really did that much with classic, 'generic fantasy' tropes in that one; human-only worlds where all magic is some form of vaguely codified telepathic powers isn't really a hallmark of classic epic fantasy. It owes more to Romantic Fanasy in the style of Mercedes Lackey and Katherine Kurtz.

Tolkien basically codified most of the past western mythology and folklore, there's folklore outside the west but that requires a lot of research the usual writer isn't willing to do and the usual hollywood producer will never do.

It's also hard to create new imaginative ideas without overlapping with sci-fi, keeping it non-pornographic, and creating disturbing entities or furries. So you're limited.

>>54635562
>>54630421
>samefagging a shitty thread from yesterday

>>54639456
>Then in the 1990's it was decided that Planetary Romance and Weird Fantasy was no longer allowed.

Wait really? Like was that an actual thing, or was it just a trend?

>>54635562

No, the wrong step was Terry Brooks, who showed that you could be a huge commercial success with nothing more than badly written Tolkien knockoffs.
Which only happened because of a major problem: fantasy readers a whole prefer to read things that are just like the things they've read before. New, strange ideas don't sell unless you're in science fiction.

>>54639456
My nigga!!!

>>54646772
I can't really disagree with you critique of Farseer. Fitz gets shit on for about 1200 pages and does little more than what he needs to to survive, but there's something about a lazy and inept protagonist blundering his way through the hero's journey that I found refreshing.

Im working through The Live-Ship Traders now which is the next series chronologically (takes place in a different part of the world) but I know that the final series in that particular world brings The Fool and Fitz back together for a resolution with more impact. It's just a matter of reading another 6 books to get there.

Every fantasy nerd should go read Moon's Deed of Paksenarian though, regardless of the female protagonist.

>>54640718
Not much of a landmark, unless it's your first fantasy.

>>54635690

It's not marketing, it's the fans.

Seriously. Look at scifi. You have your derivative shit, but the genre as a whole always tries to reinvent itself.

>less in RPGS, alas. At least in literature they kinda try to do urban fantasy, for example: but somehow this doesn't extend to games

Personally I think fans think the problem is with the... the aesthetics of the thing, but it's more about the structure of the stories.
See the threads we have about new races, while apparently people still play 95% of the time murderhobos. And they don't even rewrite the old races, which is a very interesting thing if you think about that.

>>54652247
To be more precise it is probably best to say a feedback cycle of product, marketing (and marketing concerns) and consumer.

>>54650666
>Nerds hate women schtick

I got a hard drive full of 80s anime that says otherwise.

Bump. Need a little more time to reply.

>>54646609
Haven't read some of the works you've mentioned. Will definitely check them out.

Maybe I simply didn't have a very good experience with modern books that often get recommended. For example, I found Kingkiller, Malazan, First Law and Mistborn to be quite disappointing. They might have some interesting qualities, but I thought that most of them fell flat as a books and didn't bring anything good to genre.

>>54655805
If you haven't already, read the one-off stories Abercrombie set in the First Law world after the trilogy ended. His writing and characterisation both improved drastically after he finished the trilogy and the plotting is much better by virtue of not being stretched out over a 2 more books that weren't needed.

Mistborn and Kingkiller are both garbage though (especially Mistborn).

>>54636388
>>54636519
So... fantasy is like science fiction, but lazier?

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>>54636439
It's been done.

>>54647721
>anon thinks this is only the second time OP has made this thread

How to not look like a newfag on /tg/:

Step 1: go to 4plebs archive and click the /tg/ link
Step 2: search for threads with Tolkien in the OP
Step 3: wow OP sure makes this thread a lot

>>54645583
Good point, but as a counter-counterpoint it is based on preexisting real world myth.

>>54635562
>Was Tolkien a mistake?
No, unoriginal people who autistically screeches at every fantasy writer who doesnt copy him are the mistake

I wrote a pair of books (nothing fantasy related tho) but sing i love doing short stories or read it i hang out in a pretty famous forum, and i see that shit every day, with someone showing off his work (for free) and getting shat on for the slightest deviation from the tolkien formula, the last one i remember was a guy writing about his interpretation of sea merchant dwarfs, and every single one complained about that with "muh tolkien!"

>it's another, 'anon thinks the genre is all elves and dwarves because all the D&D campaigns he plays are like that since it's what there are rules for by default' episode

When I was a teen, after reading the silmarillion, I was doing my own world with a story, a little bit of it was kind of a rip off, but I wanted to create an extra race that are closer to god than even elves, they were kind of a rip off the moonfolks.
And the idea was that they left the normal earth through some portals because they run away of the conflict.
There was an origin of the world, there was a "pre era wars" there was a main characters, and odessie, multiple stuff happenling in diferent parts of the world, and the twist is that the bad guy wasnt that bad, he just love his brother so much that he refuse to let him go.

There was "angels" rip off, that pretty much turn into demons, but based on what their heart desire at the most important monent on their lifes, they turn into a monster or demon to fullfil that roll, they could even be just "good demons"

Also, eastern lore was avaible because the world was supposed to be avaible because the world was just to big, and there was a lot of mountains in the middle.

There was just a little pintch of steam punk like technology, but more primitive, it was really rare, I guess stolen from stuff like Urza and his inventions.

And I had a little book where I wrote everything that came to my mind...
and alof of it need refindment for sure

>>54639456
Yeah that makes sense. While Tolkien's influence is obviously there a lot of it seems to come through D&D, rather than directly.

>>54658430
>posts newfag tutorial while simultaneously acknowledging the problem
>doesn't reply sage to shit tier thread
bravo, anon, bravo

>>54652247
But urban fantasy is boring and gay.

>>54639174
Can't do that anymore, anon, it's called cultural appropriation and it's badwrongfun. You either make everyone a straight white nerd like yourself or you put pointy ears on them and claim they're not Asians.

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>>54661173
It can be done right though.

>>54662005
That is new weird, not urban fantasy.

>>54662045
Why not both?

>>54642969
I enjoy Friedman but the husbandos can get old fast.

>>54639038
But the Recluse books ARE garbage. He said what he really meant.

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>>54656498
Mistborn was a good book with two sequels that probably shouldn't have existed.

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>>54635562
Because people - even fantasy nerds - can't get through Gormenghast, The Book of the New Sun or The Worm Ouroboros.

Hell, I had access to the unabridged OED while reading TWO and most of the time it wasn't much help with Eddison's vocabulary.

Meanwhile even a soccer mom can handle The Hobbit.

>>54661173
Not when done well. See: Grimm

But definitely when done poorly. See: Grimm again.

>>54662610
I loved the Book of the New Sun though.

>>54662045
You can't just put adjectives together and call it a genre.

>>54663461
I didn't coin the term. But if one adjective is a valid genre name, why not two?

A lot of good innovative fantasy recommendations in this thread, but what can be done to bring it into the tabletop scene? It seems like as far as our hobby is concerned, no amount of literary progress matters if the rulebooks still shove half-orcs in the players' faces.

inb4 "stop playing d&d"

>>54652247
>t the genre as a whole always tries to reinvent itself.
No it doesn't, it just changes its technobabble as whatever "technology" it was relying on before becomes either common or laughable.

>>54666421
Don't be silly, science fiction has a vast array of innovation, it's not all stories about scientists going too far, those silly humans ruining things, or the morality of a contrived situation but in SPACE.

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>>54666284
>rulebooks still shove half-orcs in the players' faces

Attempt a free-form character creation and decide what the racial stats are that way rather than picking from a book. This can lead to some more player-driven world building and ends up way more fantastical than what passes for typical fantasy now. The best way to achieve this is to not play with the kinds of spergs who have "optimal builds" for their characters.

>>54639019
>Most of works are basically reiterations of Tolkien in slightly different sceneries
I hear this tossed around a lot but I rarely see a fantasy novel with a genuine elf in it.

There's Malazan, First Law series, The Black Company, Everything by Brandon Sanderson, Wheel of Time, Name of the Wind, etc., all popular and doing their own thing

I think this idea that fantasy is stagnant just comes from /tg/ and the domination of Tolkien inspired games. Actual books don't have this problem.

>>54656498
I'd argue First Law was the best thing he's done, with maybe Best Served Cold edging it out for not being dragged out through three books. All the others were pretty forgettable imo. I simply couldn't bring myself to care about anyone or anything happening in The Heroes.

>>54656498
>>54662600
What's wrong with Mistborn?

>>54669507
But the spergs are the ones that pick the most fantastical races and options in their quest for optimal builds. Normies are perfectly content playing elf rangers and dwarf fighters.

>>54669507
This. If you want to include a whole bunch of unfamiliar shit in your game, you absolutely must spend time talking about and preferably creating this stuff with your group so that everyone has an equal level knowledge and is at least somewhat invested from the start. Nobody wants to read your novella and nobody wants to play a game where most of the time is spent explaining things that their characters already know.

>>54670306
>Wheel of Time
This one actually takes a lot from Tolkien.

I think it's not even about elves and dwarves. It's about use of monomyth, being a book about epic quest and war, excessive worldbuilding in place of characterization or story, quasi-medieval settings, etc. Those aspects are quite prevalent.

>>54671740
And it veers off and does it's own thing with eastern themes of balance, reincarnation, etc

>>54671740
>excessive worldbuilding in place of characterization or story
WoT has a ton of characterization that drives the plot. It's just everyone is an unbearable shit.

>>54671793
It does while still being a pretty cliched.

Old, but gold:
http://www.rinkworks.com/fnovel/

>>54670435
>spergs are the ones that pick the most fantastical races
Only if the fantastical races have better numbers than the more "mundane" fantasy races. This may be the case in RPGs that suffer from power creep as it drives up book sales to the spergs.

>>54671811
I didn't mean Wheel of Time in specific. Problems I mentioned were a more general commentary to >>54670306
>I hear this tossed around a lot but I rarely see a fantasy novel with a genuine elf in it.

>>54662005

China mieville is unmitigated garbage who can't write a decent character or internally self-consistent world to save his life. The fact that it is marketed as something different speaks volumes about the laziness of people who just want to read "something different" and have no actual taste otherwise. Because if they actually wanted to find something different, they could totally do that, something that would be much better than mievilles tripe. But instead it gets celebrated as oh so cool and weird, and few bother to look any further.

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>>54635562
>but that's wrong

>>54671965
>Old, but gold:
>http://www.rinkworks.com/fnovel/
Not really. While some of the points are okay, a lot are just literally autistic "badwrongfun" or plain wrong.

>>54671740
>It's about use of monomyth
>write a basic outline of a story so generic it fits everything
>everyone thinks you are some genius
This meme needs to die.

>>54674911
I generally get where you're coming from, but it would be rather nice if you'll provide some counter-examples to Mieville's book. If there is a decent "something different", I would gladly hear about it.

>>54670379
Not either of them, but here's my take on mistborn: Warning, spoilers ahead.

It's "Stuff" of fantasy is amazing. You have a really cool magical system based on the various metals. You have a neat if somewhat archtypal rivalry between lobotomy-gods. You have very interesting monsters in the Koloss. If you started there for making an RPG setting, you'd have a great foundation.

The story itself is bad, and a large part of it is the sudden shift from plucky underground rebels with a very limited perspective in the first book, to them running most of the world and trying to save everyone in the later books. That means you get a sudden infodump about a lot of setting information, people cultures language, etc. that wasn't there in the first book and is radically inconsistent not only with previously established stuff but with itself. You've had the perennial rule of a god-king for at least a thousand years, nobody's ever known anything else. That's why as soon as he's overthrown and you have new people in charge, you're talking about different theoretical ideologies. People talk in a very middle american late 20th century lingo; they wear suits as formal clothing. Despite no other evidence of refridgeration techniques, or any industry/tooling processes outside of a late medieval/early renaissance level, we have canned food for preservation. Sanderson makes a lot of stuff, a lot of detail, and very little of it fits together, winding up detracting from the work instead of adding to it.

>>54675657
>That means you get a sudden infodump about a lot of setting information, people cultures language, etc. that wasn't there in the first book
I don't remember there actually being all that much of that. The viewpoint always remained restricted to the happenings in the Final Empire, which iirc was a relatively small region by the north? pole because the world was fucked and everywhere else was assumed uninhabitable. Language/culture never varied beyond the foreign street slang spoken by only one character, and you get suggestions there were/are other things, but that was going on as early as the first book through characters like Sazed or Elend. The rest I'll agree on; Sanderson can't write natural sounding dialogue worth a shit and the technological level of the setting was always wonky, though I expect Sanderson did that on purpose in an attempt to make it seem more unnatural; at one instance it's pointed out how having canned food yet otherwise seeming backwards was some bizarre work of the Lord Ruler meddling with societal progression. There are other problems but I wouldn't say together they amount to making the overall work garbage.

>>54675235

Counter examples of what? Good writing? Uniqueness? What kind of style? Do you want something wacky for whackiness sake?

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>>54679363
Well written wackiness. Preferably with focus on narrative rather than worldbuilding.

>>54679766

Since you posted a comic image, I recommend Enigma, Shakara, and Girl Genius for comics.

For pure fantasy, I'd suggest Rumo or the 13 and 1/3 lives of captain Bluebear, both by Walter Moers.

If you don't mind getting a bit sci fi, then try Feersum Endjinn, or Against a Dark Background.

>>54674911
>>54675235
Seconded. As a huge Mieville fan, I'm highly interested to know what other Something Different stuff you think I ought to be reading.

>>54679363
>>54679766
>>54680232
Sorry, I started reading the thread backwards and failed to parse it correctly. I appreciate the recommendations, though I admit I'm mystified by the implicit claim that Girl Genius contains self-consistency or well-written characters. (It's fun, and I like it, but those are not its strong points.)

>>54680232
Thanks a lot. All suggestions look really interesting, but not sure about Girl Genius.

As far as I understand, Rumo and Bluebear are somehow connected. Does order matter?

As for sci-fi, I'm already familiar with Iain Banks through Algebraist. Are Endjinn and Dark Background much different from it?

>>54662610
>Gormenghast,
Got thru the first book.

>The Book of the New Sun
Have not heard of.

>The Worm Ouroboros.
Fucken loved it.

>>54635562
WIZARDS such a good fucking movie

>>54680443
>Are Endjinn and Dark Background much different from it?

They're different in the sense that neither of them are space opera, they take place on a single planet. I liked them better than Algebraist. They get pretty weird IIRC.

>>54680282
Lud-in the Mist and Necroville (also printed as Terminal Cafe). The first for something on a subject, style and scale very rarely found in modern fantasy, the second for something weird that captures something of mievilles urban grit but has much better characters.

>>54680362
I gave the first anon a grab-bag of recommendations to try and find something that could cater to several tastes. While girl genius characters are very hammed, I would still argue that the rules by which the world works are generally quite constant.

>>54680443

Rumo and captain Bluebear can each be read independently of the other. So can the other two titles, which are separate universes entirely. The Algebraist is in fact the one Ian m banks book I HAVENT read, so I cant properly speak to it, but the reason I recommended those two is because they are both variously rather dark, has a lot of fun weirdness for its own sake.

>>54662610
Gormenghast is fucking beautiful, what are you on about

>>54674911
>>54662005
Impliggin that kraken ain't the tightest shit. Didn't end on the best note, but that book was just unmitigated fun.

>everyone hating on worldbuilding
Ok I'm not defending that one guy we all know who says he's writing a novel but all he does is worldbuild. You need a very strong background in writing before you can create a worldbuilding section that doesn't bore people to death.
But I fucking love LotR, even though I couldn't tell you most of what happened in it. I remember trolls that turn to stone, ancient mysterious elves, and a world of enormous wilderness. I think that truly great worldbuilding doesn't need to detract from the plot, because the plot and the world are inseperable. Would star wars really be better if all the aliens were human and all the tech was realistic?

>>54635562
Tolkien wasn't a mistake, it's the people who blindly copy others who make mistakes.

>>54687843
There's nothing wrong with worldbuilding, especially good one. However, there are a lot of instances, when worldbuilding and narrative are treated as separate entities. Author can spend a lot of time to describe his mega-super-awesome magic system, but at the same time central characters will be cardboard cut-outs, themes will be inconsistent and narrative will be an excuse to travel to farthest land in order to show another piece of mega-super-awesome lore. Why not to publish a campaign setting instead?

Also, as you already mentioned, sometimes lore is simply boring, because it's treated like a part of check-list in order to publish a book, which is not really a necessity at all, i.e. Last Unicorn has consistent characters, narrative and themes, while having a minimum of lore.

>But I fucking love LotR
No-brainer. It's a product of years of hard work and love. There's a genuine effort and thought put into it.

>>54635562

Tolkien put his own spin on long established folk tales and myths. What we call the fantasy genre is the current incarnation of stories that have literally been rehashed over and over again since the prehistoric tribal age.

It's all about the presentation and the arrangement of the details, like playing music first composed many generations before you were born. Tolkien was just remixing shit, and most modern fantasy writers are just biting his style. And most DMs are just kids who are impressed by the latest pop music.

Tolkien was the Beatles, Gary Gygax was the Monkees, and WotC is someone at a bus stop trying to sell you his mixtape out of backpack.

>>54635562
I prefer a some classical fantasy tropes like elves, dwarves and orcs. It's the writing that needs to grab you, to tell a story.

But I do love refreshing stuff but then, I dunno. There's so many JRPG's that do things very different but I don't believe in the worlds. The worlds don't feel real or functional.

I'm not a fan of fantasy stories where every race all live together in metropolitan cities everywhere either. Unless maybe it's one city or country that does it so it's unique in that world. That'd be neat.

>>54679766
While I love Jodorowsky as both a movie director and comic writer, I wish he'd never done all these Incal spin offs. The Metabarons was ok, I guess, but it also feels like it takes place in an entirely different universe than the story it is presumably a prequel to, which might be why I tolerate it. The others just ended up ruining Incal.

Literature student here.

Most 'Fantasy' has always had trouble breaking the mold, and whenever something did break the mold that thing would ultimately get repeated endlessly itself. Before fantasy was fantasy it was epics and poems about the ancient myths. Most Western literature was based off the Greek myths and that lasted for a very long time until replaced with High Romance: The King Arthur Mythos and Orlando Furioso and Faerie Queene and so on. The Romance genre started to expand bestiaries with medieval creatures like gryphons and giants, as well as introducing medieval archetypes like knights and minstrels, all while still being heavily built upon and referential of the Greek and Latin Classics. Aside from a handful of Romanticist poems and such, there wasn't much being developed for 'fantasy' in the /tg/ sense after The High Romance period into the Enlightenment. Finally Tolkien is the last big player who introduced fantasy to the Nordic myths. Now fantasy is built upon at least three different traditions (Classical, High Romantic and Tolkien's). Tolkien also added the idea of "worldbuilding" or "mythopoeia". Before Tolkien, all fantastical works took place on earth and had no need to consider geographies or made-up pantheons; the acts of the characters were more important than the world around them. Ultimately what Tolkien did was good and innovative for a genre that had mostly remained stagnant for centuries, but it's so bloated now with around 3000 years worth of material that it's difficult to introduce anything new, while also virtually impossible to start from scratch. World building, while interesting, confounds the problem even more, because everything has to be original to its setting, while also unable to shake away the tropes that are so engrained in the genre. it's a very weird paradox.

>>54688457
And Arnold K is Death Grips

>>54640914
They are different though...