Observing an executioner in front of a crowd lazily lower his rusty axe onto the neck of somebody my character cares about on king Arlois' orders will always be more motivating for me than having to hear about how Drakthar the Malevolent rocket-punched my mentor through the 7 hells then banished him into the Astral Plains of Galadriel with the Eye of Verminus to suffer a thousand thousands lifetimes of pure suffering.
It's okay anon, feel free to be as autistic as you want, you're among friends here.
No, he isn't. I hate him and I hate you.
Okay. Personally I rather like high fantasy settings, but to each his own. Is this matter now settled or was there something else you wanted to discuss, OP?
Who asked.
Why can’t the former scenario happen in a high fantasy setting?
Also, why can’t King Arlois afford to give his executioners decent axes?
His poor rulership has wrought such economic damage upon the realm that not even vital institutions like the Executioner's Guild are receiving proper funding.
Sounds like I need to axe him a question about tax policies.
Frick the Executioner's Guild just revoked my license...
Sounds like he's really is only kinda bad. If the king was really bad then the executioners would be the best funded group in the whole of the kingdom. A booming business that's always looking to hire and put in express lanes.
Public execution isn't the only thing an evil king might abuse. You don't have enough information to make that call
>Also, why can’t King Arlois afford to give his executioners decent axes?
It sounds like what OP means by low fantasy is the kind of a mudcore setting where everyone wears undyed cloth and never washes. Decent, well-maintained weapons wouldn't be grim and gritty enough.
There's an irony that I'm sure he wants everything to be brown... except for the PCs and NPCs.
If they were brown too you wouldn't be able to see shit (actually you would but I'm using a figure of speech)
Yeah, axes are supposed to deal a quick, clean death, which is why irl beheadings were reserved for the executions of nobles. The axe would be clean and sharp. Commoners would be hanged
Not really, british executioners were famous for sucking at their job. Some nobles even paid to them to actually kill them with one swing, and they still failed
But everywhere else in Europe it was better
The intention of the axe was to deliver a quick clean death. That was the whole point of its design. You could only hope that the executioner himself was as flawless as the axe.
True, but the British suck at literally everything.
that's only because they drank themselves into fricking up
It's funny to remember the guillotine was instituted as a more humane way to execute someone as painlessly as possible and without the slip ups of an executioner.
What’s funny is imagining being executed by fr*nch ”man”
>fr*nch ”man”
>le safe edgy
you are like little baby, grow up and a practice real discrimination.
man as in mankind, not man as in male
hangings in the austrian style were supposedly a quick and painless affair, the meme anglo trap door hanging was the risky one
The Austria-Hungarian pole method wasn't medieval. Both were variants of the short drop. You're a moron
> Why can’t the former scenario happen in a high fantasy setting?
>high fantasy
>medieval
moron
This is incorrect, peasants were beheaded with axes. Nobles were beheaded with swords, as it was a gentleman's weapon.
Anon doesn't know what words mean. News at 11.
>Also, why can’t King Arlois afford to give his executioners decent axes?
Poor tax policy. It's the main plothook of the campaign is reforming the kings economic stances and helping refill the crowns coffers. First quest will be unraveling issues with crop productions in the western farmlands.
A man needs a name.
Senki Zesshou Symphogear. There's 5 seasons, the original, G, GX, AXZ, XV. That clip is from season 1.
damn that character design is terrible
Based, this is exactly how bikini armor works (it raises your entire AC).
(aroused wiener)
>gun fires the entire casing
That's 65% more bullet per bullet.
Then don't play in high fantasy settings?
I'm gonna be honest: The issue isn't high fantasy, the issue is shitty GENRE high fantasy.
Look at how the Elder Scrolls franchise has both of those things and they are both equally engrossing.
Genre fantasy is a blight.
what the frick would even be an example of a “non-genre” high fantasy?
He literally named one in his post what
xd
>he
pathetic
>tes isn’t genre fiction
are you moronic?
literally every game is a prisoner chosen by fate to defeat some looming evil wizard/demon, directly aiding a god emperor, corporeal or passed into divinity
what about it is not genre fiction?
TES is the rare case of genre fantasy that isn't terrible. I'm sorry you don't like Skyrim, but certainly any time you start hearing about people getting punched into Oblivion for ages like Miraak, it's just as engrossing as when you're watching Roggvir getting his head chopped off because of politics.
Which is the reason I even brought up TES in the first place, since Skyrim has both those things occur, and they both feel appropriate and fascinating.
>>tes isn’t genre fiction
>are you moronic?
Understandable from the games, as TES is only interesting when you binge the lore wiki until 3am.
>Wrong, LotR is genre fiction
While, it does look like it, I think it deserves a little credit for pretty much creating the genre.
>literary fiction cannot be categorised into a genre
Sorry, literary fiction is a genre, and the most pretentious genre at that.
>An elven apprentice wizard with a Light cantrip, nothing more.
If you can keep that up for an entire book you're a hero. The longer something goes on, the more mystery is lost.
>Sorry, literary fiction is a genre, and the most pretentious genre at that
I can accept that, but that just brings us back to
>what the frick would even be an example of a “non-genre” high fantasy?
He named fricking skyrim of all things, the most generic genre fantasy to ever exist.
High Fantasy, mind you, as a strict definition, means "Not Earth or an Earthlike place.".
The classic example of good non-genre high fantasy is actually Lord of the Rings, in which you have pipe-smoking buttholes who only know how to hide, hunt, and fish amid a world where sometimes the guy in the big hat just rattles on about the FLAME OF ANUR, AND WE FELL DOWN DOWN, FOREVER AND EVER, UNTIL WE WERE STRIPPED OF OUR MORTAL SHELLS, AND I WAS BROUGHT UP BY THE HEAVENLY HOST.....and then they travel to a place full of regular ass iron age knights to man a defense.
It's about believability, and things making sense and interacting as they ought to. Tolkien's world makes sense, elements are linked to each other. There's never a thing that is there because "That's what fantasy has."
That's the problem with Genre Literature. Genre Literature puts the genre and its trappings first, as a way to get people invested in your story by using the genre as a shorthand. Elves are there, because it's fantasy. Wizards are there and their magic works in a generic way, because it's fantasy. And so on and so on...and so when you have to hear about Drakthar the Malevolent rocket punching someone through the 7 hells and banishing him to the astral plains of galadriel with the eye of verminus to suffer a thousand lifetimes of pure suffering......
Well, there's no significance aside from "Real strong big hit super dead."
Wrong, LotR is genre fiction, and had been lambasted by literary critics as juvenile fiction on release, cs lewis aside, even into the 2000s, its elevation to literary heights outside of fantasy nerdom is a relatively recent affair coinciding with the rise of its mainstream popularity, ironically enough.
>as a strict definition
As a strict definition, literary fiction cannot be categorised into a genre, if it has a genre, it’s genre fiction.
> literary fiction cannot be categorised into a genre
Fiction without genre is like fiction without tropes: it both does not and cannot exist.
That is the literal definition of literary fiction, and if it doesn’t exist, than all fiction is genre fiction, and the debate is pointless because there is no such thing as “non genre high fantasy” in the first place
Whether literary fiction exists or is merely elitism against popular fiction is a heated debate in literary circles, but you can’t both argue non genre high fantasy exists and deny non genre fiction existing at the same time.
I’m not? You’re talking to multiple Anons.
Deflection won’t save you, Anon-who’d-flunk-a-Turing-test.
Read the conversation before jumping in like a moron. You are arguing against a person arguing there’s no such thing as non genre high fantasy by arguing non genre fiction doesn’t exist. That’s like arguing gods don’t exist as a rebuttal of a claim god isn’t real
Wrong again, homosexual. Genres are marketing terms. What litficgays mean is that "good" writers don't write in genres. "Good" writers write whatever the frick they want and publishers slot them into genres. There are many problems with this idea, and they predate whatever gay shit you're mad about.
>its elevation to literary heights outside of fantasy nerdom is a relatively recent affair
This isn't quite right. It was definitely attacked by many stodgy literary critics who demanded that fiction had to be set on Earth to be taken seriously, but it was also one of the highest selling books of all time long before the movies came out. People in general have always like Tolkien's two most famous works.
>highest selling books
Yes anon, and popular appeal is a staple of genre fiction. Popularity and critical reception are wholly divorced.
I'm not making a comment on genre fiction. I'm making a comment on the assertion that its mainstream popularity was recent.
Frankly, it wasn't like it was universally hated by critics either. Its reception was mixed and still is, though to be frank the generation of critics that have an issue with anything in this vein are starting to approach their last years, because they're a relic of a small window in earlier modern history. Many thought it was exceptional, others complained that it was not 'real' enough to be true literature.
>making a comment on the assertion that its mainstream popularity was recent
There was no such assertion, I said its critical appraisal as high literature was recent and coincided with the RISE of its mainstream popularity in the early 2000s.
If you’re going to pretend LotR was anywhere near as popular before the Peter Jackson films (2001), we have nothing to discuss.
>lotr
>I said its critical appraisal as high literature was recent
Do you understand what high literature means? It doesn’t mean “literature that is good”.
That's fine, I took you to have meant it only gained mainstream popularity with the films, that's normally what people mean when they refer to the rise of something's popularity.
Though, I'd still disagree with the idea that it wasn't considered a literary classic. It was, there was just a loud group within literary circles that complained non-stop about it. And I'm not sure I'd consider it genre fiction either. Genre fiction is something of a nebulous term, but it's best considered to be the practice of writing to what you believe the established set pieces of a genre are rather rather than writing something that makes sense and is interesting to you. Tolkien wasn't really writing to any template - if anything, he created the template that later writers became enamored with.
>Genre fiction is something of a nebulous term but it's best considered to be the practice of writing to what you believe the established set pieces of a genre are rather rather than writing something that makes sense and is interesting to you
I agree with the opening statement, but what follows is vague nonsense that does nothing but muddy the waters to get every book you like through the door, as there’s nothing to prove someone intended to build a novel on tropes rather than merely writing what he likes or whatever.
Second, remember genre fiction comes from categorising classical myths, and Tolkien very clearly did reuse reoccurring elements from them, to the point that Gandalf is commonly referred to as an Odin stand-in.
Ok, and after the movies it sold 150 million books, a clear rise in popularity. Again, I never said it wasn’t popular, my entire platform is that it was considered genre fiction, also known as… wait for it… popular fiction, hence my comment about it becoming more popular leading to a rising view of it as literary fiction being ironic.
It was literally the subject of serious literary analysis from day 1. Like Dune, it transcends it's genre.
>as there’s nothing to prove someone intended to build a novel on tropes
Sure, you can't prove beyond doubt, but I'd say the fingerprints of such a design process can be pointed to.
Consider the difference between something like LotR and Eragon. Sure, Gandalf contains a reference to Odin, but he has a coherent reason to be in the plot and is fully integrated into the setting; he's not there to tick a box. On the other hand, why are elves and dwarves - entirely Tolkienesque elves and dwarves at that - in Eragon? They don't really have any distinct relevance to the world beyond being around, they're just sort of there. Well, they're there because the writer wanted to write fantasy, and in his mind fantasy meant 'elves and dwarves'.
>Sure, Gandalf contains a reference to Odin, but he has a coherent reason to be in the plot and is fully integrated into the setting; he's not there to tick a box.
Eh, I’m not sure I’d agree sans Silmarillion, especially at the heels of the hobbit.
Also, now that I’m thinking about it and speaking of intent, I seem to recall LotR being something Tolkien’s editor ordered because he found the Silmarillion draft too unpalatable to the common reader and wanted something he could sell.
>Well, they're there because the writer wanted to write fantasy, and in his mind fantasy meant 'elves and dwarves'.
Yeah, that's how I feel too about a lot of fantasy settings. Then you get people b***hing there are no elves or the elves are too different from what people are used to, and how if you hate the classic races you must be a contrarian or furry.
if the elves are that different why call them elves? calling a race of giant sheepherders and botanists “dwarves” would be moronic, as would be calling a a trebuchet a crossbow, so why are you surprised people are annoyed when some fart huffer pulls a le subverting expectations and using a word that conjures images of a specific thing to refer to an unrelated thing?
>Balbo was a human like any other, with long pointy ears and two noses sniffing from both of his feet at once, with a fondness great halls carved into mountains where he would sleep on his hoard of gold and cheese until the mating season when he would find the tallest tree around to stand on and spread his large fluorescent comb to attract females
>now this is good writing, not like those boring generic humans
Nah.
Elves are a broad enough mythological concept that they can be a lot of things. 'Elf' for the last 500 years has meant a ton of shit, and really the only commonality between them is being a race of magical humanoids. They're only an example of 'genre writing' when you literally just have them around for no reason and make no attempt to adapt them to your setting - the same way that it is genre writing to have magic that just does all the things you see in videogames or TTRPGs and has no specific relation to your narrative.
>Balbo was a human like any other, with long pointy ears and two noses sniffing from both of his feet at once
This is an entirely false equivalence. Humans are a real thing with a strict definition. Elves are a mythological superconcept that varies so much between different periods, geographic regions, and cultures, that one iteration can be nearly indistinguishable from all others. Both Santa's elves and Tolkien's elves are elves, as are Snorri's Christianized elves and German sleep-terror elves.
>'Elf' for the last 500 years has meant a ton of shit
and 400+ of those years are utterly irrelevant to 99.9999% of the planet, just like nobody cares homosexual meant a bundle of sticks for 700 years when most of the planet wasn’t even born when it changed meaning
stop being a fricking moron
even in last 50 years we have tolkien and warhamemr elves, who are literally master race and superior in everything compared to others races, vs dnd/dragon age/other gay dark fantasy shit with elves having massive penalties to stats or society just to circlejerk humans more
>master superior race
>dying race in its twilight, literally actively disappearing from the world
did you even read lotr
NTA but didn't they disappear because they essentially moved to a heaven with the god themselves?
debatable, they had to leave because they’d just die out
they suffered losses because men with morgoth/sauron were slaughtering them
>they had to leave because they’d just die out
They literally resurrect and some of them even traveled back to fight again.
>they suffered losses because men with morgoth/sauron were slaughtering them
Even at the end of first age when Morgoth almost won against their kingdoms, elves never mass traveled back.
They literally just got tired of shit by the time of third age
Also everyone in middle earth slaughtered everyone else, not sure what's your point.
>literally master race and superior in everything compared to others races
>e-everyone in middle earth slaughtered e-everyone else, n-not sure what's your p-p-p-p-p-point
?
>dominant and superior race can't die out because I said so
moron
Anyway, literally the only reason why they lost so much influence in third age was because mass migration from Valinor wasn't a thing anymore, and because they suffered the biggest loses during last war against Sauron, while others races constantly switched sides and half assed things. it's easier to just say frick it and go back to paradise after all shit they endured.
Nothing of it contradicts them being superior race
>tfw too superior to exist
My elves are 12 ft tall with large broad facial features, large flat teeth for grinding rock and turn to stone in the sun.
Unironically sounds a lot like some Shetlands elf-tales.
My dwarves have the lower bodies of a deer and the upper body of a tall muscular human. They prance around in the meadows and worship trees.
Close enough.
>mainstream popularity in early 00s
Anon, it sold 50m copies BEFORE movies
Do you even understand what it means for book to sell 50million fricking copies?
Anyway, modern fantasy writers still use similar arguments to criticize Tolkien works
>High Fantasy, mind you, as a strict definition, means "Not Earth or an Earthlike place.".
It hasn't meant that in a very long time.
>no but in academia it mea-ACK!
Nobody cares what it means "in academia".
Lord of the rings takes place on earth, with modern world being 4th age...
Also, lord of the rings actually has all low fantasy tropes, like magic being rare, usually evil. And mostly coming from artifacts and rituals. And first book until they reach elves has shitton peasants and down to earth gays who b***hing about work and life
Just saying
>magic is rare
They literally have more magical items than I do at 5th level
wizards are rare. there's 5.
elves have a form of magic though so it's disputable
also walking trees and shit exist
Elrond and Galadriel are both Ring-bearers, without those we don't see them perform any obvious supernatural acts (such as Elrond banishing the Nazgul when they tried to cross into Rivendell).
>They literally have more magical items
Not really
Hobbits 4 swords, but they were specially made. And they aren't even magical, just giased to kill nazgul
gandalf has sword from first age, but that's all
>Not Earth or an Earthlike place.
>Lord of the Rings
Anon, you might want to try actually reading one of these days.
There are elves and talking trees and dragons and multiple giant towers held up by magic and far below the earth are eldritch horrors and you can reach the undying lands by sailing west.
For the sake of high vs low fantasy, Middle Earth is not an earthlike place.
> Middle Earth is not an earthlike place.
Middle EARTH literally is our Earth. It's even explained in the Silarmillion. It's just that over time Earth lost its magic and the magical beings faded away. This is utterly crystal clear in LotR and in the Silmarillion and in Tolkien's letters.
Do you people even read these books you talk about?
middle earth is explicitly flat
>middle earth is explicitly flat
Again, do you even READ the books? After Eru sank Numenor, he took Aman out of Middle Earth and curved the flat plane into a sphere. Which is why no one can just fricking sail to Valinor, like Ar-Pharazon tried, anymore without bullshit elf magic.
Why is /tg/ so full of homosexuals that get stuck up on the most pedantic shit instead of focusing on the crux of discussion? Does whether middle earth count as past earth actually change the fact that OP is a homosexual with no understanding of high vs low fantasy?
But further more, if we ignore the fact that he doesn't know basic definitions, could he still be right in his central point? Personally yea, I prefer a setting where magic has a degree of grandiose to it instead of being used constantly just for the sake of magic. But we can't discuss that because we all need to wave our dicks about over what high fantasy does or does not mean.
I’d argue The Witcher is a decent example.
People call it low fantasy because there’s mudcore stuff like villages full of paranoid peasants and shit but there’s like ogres and trolls and dragons and mages and shit wandering around alongside concerns about military logistics and taxation.
The “monsters around every corner” thing is just video game bullshit, and using it as a basis of your understanding of the setting is like using respawning bandit camps every 50m or swords not hurting them unless the guy swinging is a high enough level.
The stories are very much low magic.
Nope. High Fantasy. See
>An example of Low Fantasy would be Bram Stoker's Dracula.
So literally Witcher stories
Good job, you totally failed to read the entire post before posting.
No, you failed to read the ducking g and stories are clearly basing this on the video games, because “discovering something not right about the world that leads down a rabbit hole of magic and monsters” is the entire concept.
>b-b-b-b-but muh real world
Renaming Germans, Russians and Czechs does not a fantastical realm make.
No, but making an order of magic people who go around casting magic and hang out in every castle mages it a fantastical realm for sure.
In The Witcher the general public know about the fantasy elements, don't they? If so, then by the given definition, no.
No, they “know” the same thing irl people know about monsters. Also, the Romanians know about Dracula and vampires in BS Dracula, it’s not like he invented vampires.
So now Conan and Lovecravt Mythos are high magic?
>So now Conan and Lovecravt Mythos are high magic?
Yes to Conan, no to Lovecraft,
The entire point of Lovecraft is that people don't know that eldritch, other entities exist outside of very secret cults that must be discovered. In fact most of Lovecrafts works by the end the protagonists isn't sure if it is some fantasy monster or a drug induced nightmare he vaguely recalls. The general public does not know that Hastur is hanging around ready to do something jerkish.
Lovecraft exists in our world and is low fantasy.
The entire point of Lovecraft is that there are entire cities full of magic frog people and everyone in the city, normal people included are fully aware of it.
These cities are hidden from general knowledge though. During The Shadow over Innsmouth, Olmstead doesn't know that there are Deep One Hybrids in Innsmouth, and when he meets them he doesn't understand what they are, instead dismissing their appearance as the result of inbreeding. He doesn't expect any fantastical elements like frog people or dark reef gods, he believes for as long as he can in a mundane world, like the vast majority of people living outside of Innsmouth.
In low fantasy you are allowed to have secret organizations that know of the fantastic elements of the world, but they, like the townspeople of Innsmouth aren't advertising it to the world.
You left out the part where he turns into a magic fish man and goes to live underwater eternally with his magic grandma calling him through fantastical visions, very low fantasy.
Yep. It is a common trope in low fantasy, especially the horror stories, that the protagonist rejects the full cycle of the Hero of a Thousand Faces and never returns as a master of their own world, instead plunging themselves fully into this over world in a way they will never return from.
It isn't a mandatory trope, once again see Dracula, but a common one.
You’re hopeless.
I'm correct, you just think like a child.
>Low fantasy takes place in our world
>you think like a child
Low fantasy does not necessarily take place in our world.
I literally quote your post, moron.
Give examples otherwise.
Half the stories either actively include government agencies or state they became aware of the events in the epilogue, or the protagonist is the only unaware person and everyone else knows for a fact magic/demons/aliens exist and are relaying the story to the reader through the protag as his stand-in
>Elder Scrolls
>engrossing
Maybe the older entries Arena to Morrowind. Everything from Oblivion onward was a bland mush where you didn't need to know who you were fighting to finish a quest. Just follow the quest marker and kill whatever is in that area then follow the quest marker again.
That's just for the first few days/quests, it rapidly devolved into fast travel hopping back and forth.
The video games aren’t particularly fun but it’s a great setting to run campaigns in.
I can't imagine a bigger snorefest than the Elder Scrolls franchise. What a load of inconsistent derivational trash.
>didn't even try to save them
It's 8:00 AM and you've already made the worst thread of the day. Congratulations you coward.
Based. This applies to more than just high fantasy. I fricking hate what I call "name soup." Sentences full of proper nouns are painful to read, especially if you don't have context to build up each one prior to reading them. It's not as awful with non-fiction because whatever you're reading is something you can research to build an actual perspective on a subject. I was filtered by The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy because the second or third chapter was full of alien names with very little spacing between them. I don't give a frick that Geldengaar Smeeznitz works with Leedledong Genjipus at the Fedeldidder Writter Critter, located in Krinununa Dadagaga at the corner of Weeweenis Hotchkup's and Sanponio Vegbeenz. I don't care that he drives a Hoogelhooger that goes 70 snippars on the Yureque. It's not immersive and it's not an excuse that they'll be explained later or it's supposed to feel foreign to you.
> I was filtered by The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Good Lord in Heaven, this is the worst post I have ever seen on Ganker, and I’ve been known to hang out on /misc/.
“Filtered by Hitchhiker’s Guide”? How can someone write these words and even know what /tg/ IS, let alone hang out on it? You sure you shouldn’t be at the sports bar drinking sports drink with your sports fan buddies and saying “bro” every third word?
I enjoy the concept, but I do not enjoy the way it's written. I have no problem with dense sentences because I can always find a definition and expand my vocabulary. The introduction of President whoeverthefrick was so antithetical to what I enjoy that I was filtered. I don't believe that it's good practice to introduce a character or setting by bloating passages with many proper nouns, especially those of an alien or magical nature. Those do not have an established counterpart in real life. I don't enjoy sports for the same reasons: though it is admirable that people can use their bodies to perform specific tasks in a competition, there are too many terms and names that have no use to me elsewhere. The difference with jargon specific to tabletop games is that I can actually continue to play into my old age and don't have to watch other people play instead. There's no national association and infinitely more variety. All of that said, I'm going to get off of/tg/ to actually play some cards games.
Personally I don't care for Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Terry Pratchett, or Monty Python.
>doesn't care for Douglas Adams
>doesn't care for Monty Python
>>>>>>>>>>
't care for Sir Pterry
Only Brit author I like is David Gemmell, God rest his soul. His Jon Shannow stuff got a little weird with the time travel, but it's not intolerable. I think you guys would like how he does magic.
Actually, I do remember kind of liking Good Omens. I think maybe Pratchett and Gaiman kept each other in line, because I read Sandman and American Gods and didn't really care much for those either.
>Observing an executioner in front of a crowd lazily lower his rusty axe onto the neck of somebody my character cares about on king Arlois' orders
Yet always defaults to high fantasy tropes at the finale, curious no?
>lazily lower his rusty axe
That's sounds stupid
How do you even lazily lower your axe in such situation?
Maybe it's more descriptive of his attitude rather than the speed of the axe. Just his 9 to 5.
"Methodically" would be more apt, then.
Methodical implies great care is being taken, lazily implies little care is being taken while lowering the axe.
Laziest way to lower something is to drop it.
Why do you have to value one over the other?
They can both be engrossing in different ways, and it isn’t like normal executions don’t occur in high fantasy settings.
The biggest problem with high fantasy and the reason why Eberron is the worst D&D setting ever is this. For magic to feel magical, it needs to be rare, wondrous, mysterious, and miraculous. The more common magic is, the more banal it is. When magic is a science, it's a mundane commodity. When everything is magical, nothing is.
When you've got a party of aasimar, dragonborn, tabaxi, tieflings, etc. and everyone has some kind of magical powers, then everything is wienered up from the start. You can no longer have anything magical or mysterious because magic is an everyday thing. In Eberron, the worst D&D setting, it's even worse because magic is industrialized and there's basically nothing wondrous or mysterious, and everyone knows everything there is to know about magic.
Now picture the opposite. A setting that sets out to make magic feel wondrous and miraculous again. I'm talking low fantasy. Picture a setting inspired by medieval history. Life is tough, war and plague sweep through the lands, and peasants eat flavorless gruel. The party is a band of common bandits with no magic, and all grown, human men, no women. After raiding a village, they're covered in blood, piss, and shit, hauling loot and comely women back to their bandit fort. They get lost in the forest, and then they see her. A lady of unearthly beauty in a shimmering gown, right there in the middle of the woods. Her ears are long, pointed. She holds up a flower, and it glows, like nothing the party has ever seen before. They recall the tales of the Ancient Ones who dwell in the oldest woods...
What did they just encounter? An elven apprentice wizard with a Light cantrip, nothing more. But it's rare, wondrous, miraculous, and mysterious, because the rest of the world around them is gritty realism. And that's what magic should feel like it.
If you love magic, make it rare. Don't let PCs use magic, don't let PCs be anything other than human men. Stop all this high fantasy shit, stop this Eberron shit.
That pasta has never been true or insightful, and it won't become so through repetition.
> For magic to feel magical, it needs to be rare,
Well that’s just plain wrong. I’ve been enjoying fantasy settings with ubiquitous, practically scientific understandings of and approaches to magic for most of my 36 years of life.
Then don't pay in high fantasy games. You do play games right?
Anons, you're responding to stale old pasta.
>Anons, you're responding to stale old pasta
I know, i'm using it as an attempt to start a serious discussion on the argument
>Anons, you're responding to stale old pasta.
Doesn't mean it's not wrong.
>moronic strawman about le magic being too widespread
It just needs to have stakes. What i find fricking annoying of d&d magic is that's no different than a commodity, a magic item is no less interesting than an electric appliance. Vancian magic also could be extremely interesting if was really delved in for once instead of tiptoeing around it with each edition in a way to abandon it -but not really.
I'm just going to pitch my personal favorite setting here because it matters.
Iron Kingdoms is steampunk fantasy, with magic items being pretty common. Thing is though, those magic items are industralized, you carve runes, add a power source, and build an object around it to get a a reliable and consist result, but one that's limited and requires external power.
Actual, traditional magic items? They're incredibly rare, because making them can straight up kill you. It's so dangerous that most people can only make maybe around 3-4 in their entire life, and they usually stop their because they drain their soul into their last masterpiece because magic is fickle. So actual magic items are often extremely powerful(mostly because anyone who bothers to make a magic item goes all out, who the frick would risk their life for a +1 longsword) and might straight up have the soul of their creator in them, which makes them priceless relics to the groups their creators belonged to.
I guess I personally like it because industrialized and standardized magic items are that way because they're safe and simple, rather than simply being "better".
>magic item is no less interesting than an electric appliance.
god i fricking hate moronic americans with their moronic backwards understanding of grammar
you mean it's no MORE interesting than an electrical applicance.
you homosexuals do the same shit with "i could care less" NO YOU FRICKING COULD NOT CARE LESS
god i hate you so much
>posts GoT shit
Opinion discarded.
So a band of rapists and murders are stopped by a simple cantrip by someone with no armor, no weapons and a woman. The wizard was raped and torn apart instantly after the shock wore off as the first thing these frickers would do is think to kill it. You made a party of murder hobos.
>Life is tough, war and plague sweep through the lands, and peasants eat flavorless gruel. The party is a band of common bandits with no magic, and all grown, human men, no women. After raiding a village, they're covered in blood, piss, and shit, hauling loot and comely women back to their bandit fort.
I need my misery porn
Fantasy is all about being miserable
the world
the characters
me especially
I need it all to be miserable
No hope, just constant drab misery
I fricking hate positivity in my fantasy, it must be fricking horrible
oh and yes rape
women need to be rape commodities
or just need to be killed so miserable men can become more miserable
holy frick i love misery please give me more of it
... Peasants ate salmon in the summer and pork in the winter.
Honestly, it sounds like your history isn't too much better. Peasants ate fairly well or else they wouldn't have been able to work. The commoners wore bright colors because noone of authority wanted their people looking like poor dregs, it made the lords look bad. Bright colors, decent food, those were common. Sure. There were dangers, but it wasn't a vastly grim setting. Even the nobility showed kindness to hobos: they held banquets with thick bread plates called alms that would soak up the juices and spices of their dinner and then hand out these alms to the poor to help them out. Hence, "Alms for the poor". Lords weren't apathetic to their people, so it behooved them to keep conditions as best they could.
I get what you mean about high fantasy taking the fantastical out of magic, making it mundane. I agree with you enitrely. But I also know history wasn't the misery porn you make it out to be or else no one would be alive today to talk about it.
>Even the nobility showed kindness to hobos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagabonds_Act_1597
>Literally picked an act first proposed 100 years into the Renaissance...
Black person Columbus sailed to the Americas in 1492 and you're talking about a law passed a goddamn century after that, why does something that only took effect in the goddamn 17th century have to do with a discussion of medieval fantasy? Do your medieval settings include the goddamn falklands?
HOLY
FRICKING
BASED
HOLY
FRICKING
BASED
HOLY
FRICKING
BASED
HOLY
FRICKING
BASED
>Picture a setting inspired by medieval history.
>posts ahistorical Hollywood mudcore blandslop pictures
>What did they just encounter? An elven apprentice wizard with a Light cantrip, nothing more
I like how your example requires metacontextual knowledge of DnD's "setting" to be even remotely "impressive". It's a stock standard LE SUBVERSION OF LE EXPECTATIONS tripe
> Life is tough, war and plague sweep through the lands, and peasants eat flavorless gruel. The party is a band of common bandits with no magic, and all grown, human men, no women. After raiding a village, they're covered in blood, piss, and shit, hauling loot and comely women back to their bandit fort. T
I would like a low-fantasy medieval inspired setting that isn’t stereotypical dung core
Honestly, the only fantasy I am attracted to right now is actual medieval romances and Wagnerian stuff. Nothing beats them, they have everything modern fantasy has but better. Tristan and Isolde, Parsifal, ale Morte D’ Artur, didrik of Berh no modern fantasy work can beat them. And magic is partly based on real life folk and Goetic magical practices, but is also far more exaggerated, gives it this mysterious quality.
An early modern work I think has all of the trappings of high fantasy without the bullshit I would say is Orlando Innamorato/Furioso, still feels fun and fresh this day
>For magic to feel magical, it needs to be rare
The King of Elfland's Daughter has magical bullshit happening every other page and it's more magical than whatever tedious normie garbage you like
this moron’s really trying to score nerd cred for The King of Elfland's Daughter lmoa
I think his point that even something as basic as that handily disproves the pasta.
I hate this fricking meme so much. Good job moron you made me mad
Kino as always
I will NEVER read it
I think you just wanted an excuse to post that pic.
Given that your moronic image exists, there seem to be plenty of other homosexuals share your sentiment. Find one of them to wallow in your grimdark bullshit with.
You don't need to tell the internet whenever you take a dump.
Of course her armor is shit.
If it was proper bikini-armor she wouldn't even have felt those arrows.
Well I hate pretentious homosexualry and I'm glad that high fantasy filters people like you.
Well yeah that means you're an adult.
>he doesn't know what high fantasy is
The two examples you used aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, in high fantasy targeting the characters' loved ones is far better for there being stakes than targeting the PCs.
Fricking Marvel-gay
freeshrugs.jpg
>Executions don't happen in high fantasy
Tune in next week for more moronic takes in "shit tg-iggas say"
To be fair both longbows and crossbows can pierce plate armor, your elf girl was fricked either way, what she needed was a shield and the knowledge to raise it and stand under it so only the forearm would get fricked.
I hate scifi, I do not care about space, spaceships are cold and soulless, non space scifi isn't any better, I don't want to go on some hackerman quest, I literally just want to have dwarves and elves shit talking each other in a tavern while some demon lord plots in the background
this is not even a joke I hate that scifi and fantasy are so frequently lumped together, I don't care if it's autistic and basic I just want pure fantasy
>spaceships are cold and soulless
Tell that to Moya and the Soft Cathedrals! Dipshit.
Fantasy and Sci-fi are under the same umbrella called Speculative Fiction. They are effectively the same shit under different names.
And most "science" fiction is just fantasy with a theme thrown on that looks like "science" to the masses but is not.
Speculative fiction is ultimately about the exploration of ideas through fiction. That is why the division between Fantasy and Sci-fi is illusionary.
No the division between "Fantasy" and "Science" in Fiction is that 99% of authors don't have any understanding of physics, mathematics, or the structure of existence.
If you read an actual qualified sci-fi author like Poul Anderson you will soon develop a distaste for "science-fantasy like star wars, star trek and other garbage tailored for the masses.
Star wars is a fantasy epic, Star trek is politics and the navy, etc...
Nerd.
I've read Poul Anderson, not sure why that would lead to developing a distaste for softer scifi.
Because once you've had Wagu beef, chitlins are just shit tubes?
Consider these facts: hard scifi, soft scifi and science fantasy have partially different appeals, and quality of a scifi work is unrelated to whether it's hard or soft. Book of the New Sun is full on science fantasy and also a greater work than any work of hard scifi that cones to my mibd - it's not greater because it's science fantasy, of course, but because Gene Wolfe is a great writer.
Then you haven't read any hard scifi, if you had then both of your other categories would be replaced with plain old fantasy because you would subjectively come to the realization that they are one and the same anyway. When you read your first true hard scifi you will feel like you have opened your eyes for the first time upon it;s completion.
I'm a pretty big fan of Aleister Reynolds, who writes pretty hard scifi, certainly with a solid scientific grounding. They're good books, not better than Book of the New Sun or Dune, not a particularly perspective-changing experience, but good books.
>Dune
Is not hard scifi, it's actually one of the prime examples of science fantasy.
I once read a story about a small expedition to a lost colony on a moon orbiting a gas giant, lost long enough for environmental adaptation on a biological level.
The colony was primitive and superstitious, also oddly cannibalistic. One of the explorers is murdered by his guide and eaten, his wife (of scandinavian descent and belonging to a future warrior cult society) hunts this primtive down to seek revenge. In the end she does not kill him, his two sons who he fed her husband two, or his wife.
And up until this point this story could have been science fantasy easily.
But you see the author made it hard by the inclusion of the final twist, the scientific detail to make it possible and real.
This planets environment lacked essential compounds that human biology required for the puberty process. The original colonists had accounted for this by extracting them from adult members and injecting to their children, over thousands of years as the society devolved to primitive status this ended up being replaced by feeding a man or woman to your children instead, likely resultant from a period of near-collapse and warfare, desperation of some sort that led to cannibalization as necessity to ensure their offsprings success.
Dune has no scientific detail, "Spice" is just magic, unobtanium, the "Force", etc...
So? My point is that hard scifi isn't better than soft scifi or science fantasy.
Yes it is, because it's not pulled out of his ass, the guy spent time making sure his imaginary moon had the right angle of tilt and size in relation to it's host to explain it's gravity, that all of his calculated orbits and so forth were true to real phjysics, that his necessary chemicals could indeed by acquired generationally through parents in this way, that injection or canniblization medically checks out in this circumstance, etc...
It becomes not just a story, but a possible future, a REALLY possible future.
When you watch star trek that's no different than smoking a joint, you're imagining things. Grvaity plating? FTL travel and communication? SIMULTANEITY?!?! Frick man, what a joke. These are not visions of a future, these are pipe dreams, FANTASY.
No, it's not, not in any objective sense. You preferring hard scifi over soft scifi is a different matter, anon. We all have our own subjective preferences. Being able to tell them apart from objective facts is a useful skill, and you should put some effort in learning that skill.mxdax
Internal consistency make everything better, Hard-SF is the best you can get in speculative technology.
What is the old science fiction called with Flash Gordon style ray guns and shit?
That would depend of how internally consistent the rule of frigging cool is.
Raypunk is a term that gets thrown around for it.
>raypunk
You just can't slap "punk" onto another word like that. It dosen't make any sense. There's nothing punk about that Picture.
Turns out yes, I can, and people will love it. You're just a salty b***h trying to pretend it is still the 70's. Words change old man.
shut the frick up nobody calls it that, it's pulp sci-fi you illiterate moron
if you add '-punk' to a word to describe an aesthetic you should have a nice day
I'm going to start referring to everything as -punk now, just to get a rise out of you. Classic medieval fantasy is now knightpunk while anything from classical antiquity is chariotpunk. Wuxia is asiapunk. Noire crime is trilbypunk. And butthole normalgays will buy into it and keep following this trend because they like to use jargon without understanding it. This is happening and there is nothing you can do to stop it.
wouldnt that be called pulp sci-fi?
>Poul Anderson
Never trust a man with a misspelled name.
You should really give some of his short stories a try at the very least, Voortrekkers is an excellent almost "pure" science fiction tail, the human element is rather limited (but still essential), I don't want to spoil it.
If you can go for a full novel then.... Either Orion Shall Rise, or The Stars Are Also Fire (which is part of a quadrilogy and the whole of it is an amazing read that does not need to be read in order). The first of those two is about getting to the stars, the second is about that in the first, but goes interstellar and then comes back to earth, centuries pass between all four novels, I cannot bring myself to spoil more.
Any good fiction is about exploring ideas. That isn't a useful term.
>Rusty axe
That executioner is risking his own life doing that. Failing in execution and making the beheading procedure longer and more painful than necessary often caused the crowds to get angry. At least 2 executioners were lynched by an angry mob in 1600's Finland when they had to use multiple strikes to cut off a head.
Another crowd-rousing peculiarity in public executions was the belief that blood from an executed criminal had healing properties. So by the time the criminals head left his shoulders, people tried to rush underneath the chopping block to catch some of the squirting blood in whatever wooden cups or bowls they brought with them. The 4 appointed guards of the execution site barely managed to keep the overeager crowd at bay.
I have never seen /tg/ disscuss Sci-fi.
I've seen nerd flaming mad over 40k stuff (Which is technically sci-fi)
I've seen a grand total of 8-10ish people alk about battletech.
And anything else has been 3 people in a thread that dies in 16 hours.
/tg/ has at least three sci-fi general threads: Star Wars, Star Trek, Mecha Monday and occasionally Cyberpunk.
>battletech
So there is 1 science fiction general, 2 "sciencism" threads and one trans/bodymod thread.
Battletech isn't science fiction
Everything about is fantasy nonsense
40k is science fantasy
Never seen a HFY thread?
>I have never seen /tg/ disscuss Sci-fi.
hello, tourist.
There's a discussion going on /k/ it's honestly more like the top pic than the bottom one
And I think low fantasy is boring. I don't care about Lord Amralion's affair with the commoner tavern wench. I don't care that he sent assassins to execute her so no one knows his secret. I don't care about the peasant cleaning leaves out of the storm drain. I don't care how much shit princess Scatolia ate during the banquet.
shit as in stuff or shit as in feces? because if it’s the latter, do go on, I need some plot hooks for my upcoming SotDL game
Okay, then don't play in them.
Compromise: the former is ideal for RP; the latter is ideal for power metal songs that get you excited for your next RP session, even though the plot never escalates to such mythic heights.
>Observing an executioner in front of a crowd lazily lower his rusty axe onto the neck of somebody my character cares about on king Arlois'
I'm not sure how this is mutually exclusive with high fantasy.
If it was high fantasy he would be zapped into ash by a wizard dragon-rider but then you find out that he bound his soul through a forbidden ritual days in advance so he's actually still alive.
Posts like this make me wonder what kind of fantasy, if anything, fa/tg/uys read. Even trash like Forgotten Realm or Dragonlance books aren't what you seem to imagine high fantasy to be.
High fantasy is elminster banging every powerful magic using goddess, mortal and demon in existence intermixed with sessions as posing as a woman himself and then occasionally being imprisoned int he abyss by a meory shredding demon that he inevitably Just As Planned even though he's been reduced to a limbless corpse rolling in the dust.
High fantasy is also the Black Company trying to survive amidst the struggles of powers greater than them. It's Geralt of Rivia trying to make a living in a shitty and hostile world. It's FitzChivalry Farseer growing up as a prince's bastard and serving his legitimate relative's political goals by working as an assassin. It's the Prince of Krondor recruiting a group of desperate convicts facing death sentence to undertake a covert high-risk mission. And so on, and so on - high fantasy is extremely varied, anon. You should read more than just Elminster books and see for yourself.
>Black Company
Ahh yes to flirt with an evil soul-sucking sorceress who turns out to be beautiful, then bang her more powerful and more evil (somehow) sister who rules the known world, then dig up her dead even more powerful and still more evil husband and then kick his shit around for a bit before essentially just burying him again.
Then make off for Not!India and a magical desert of portals to alternate almost identical worlds, knock up your wife with the soul-child of a goddess, have her kidnapped and turned into a cult figurehead, kill her soul-mother of a goddess, then bodyswap with a giant crucified lizardman to live out eternity as an immortal with your ex-sorceress world leader wife trying to figure out how she can jump you now giant and cold-blooded bones.
Oh yeah and once upon a time you had two other children with her but neither of you remember that part of your lives because she did some freaky memory magic. And your sexy sister in law kindapped you while she was headless and tried to jump your bones too.
"High" Fantasy indeed, lol.
And Black Company does all this with stakes and tension being real and human drama mattering. So yeah, high fantasy indeed.
I know, I left out the good parts where a bunch of old crusty mercenaries sit around farting and playing cards in buttfrick nowhere.
Can you explain to me exactly what you think high fantasy is?
Fricking no one here can define low and high fantasy, they're just using one descriptor for the shit they like and the other for the shit they don't.
I like them both, or rather I like them in all their various definitions.
Which is weird because it is pretty easy to google 'low vs high fantasy' and do some basic reading.
I don't know man, I feel like there was a time when if you went posting random dumb shit that could easily be disproved then the entire internet was rabid to spam links proving how stupid you were for not doing any prereading at all. Somewhere people got lazy and complacent and now you get away with shit takes like 'Lord of the rings is low fantasy because magic is slowly dying out!'
Think the bigger problem is people here not being able to differenciate low VS high fantasy from low VS high magic, also an infestation of cynical midwits/pseudos that can't separate their strawman from real books and game settings because they don't read shit outside their masturbatory threads
>Think the bigger problem is people here not being able to differenciate low VS high fantasy from low VS high magic,
Some anons also seem to have difficulty with differentiating these things from low vs. high powerlevel.
Can you explain the difference between high and low magic categorically? Without depending only on examples. You can use examples if you like to clarify your position, but do you have a definition that doesn't boil down to 'high magic is like this setting while low magic is like this setting'
not him
>high magic
protagonist has direct access to magic
>low magic
protagonist doesn’t have direct access to magic and magic is not a common occurrence
“protagonist” here means players for ttrpgs, and “direct” means not through artifacts, with the caveat that if the artifact provides general access to magic, rather than a specific effect, it’s high magic
examples
lotr I’d put as low magic high fantasy because magic is in the background and I don’t consider gandalf to be a main character or all that relevant to the plot
black company too, low magic high fantasy, magic is reserved for the opposition, rarely encountered (though the nature of the writing sometimes strings those occurrences closer than in universe) and generally not controllable by the main cast
harry potter is high magic because the “normal world” is in the background and the main characters encounter and use magic frequently
same for hellblazer, ostensibly takes place in the real world, but as far as the protagonist is concerned, it’s magic all day every day
also
>inb4 one eye etc
pleb tier magic
>inb4 muh sorceress
sexy gandalf
How about star wars? Luke is capable of using the force and regularly does but the force is so obscure and rare that many have never even heard of it, and those that have most disbelieve it.
it’s been a decade since I’ve seen the original trilogy, but from memory it’s high magic overall, maybe in isolation one of the films could pass for low magic
the prequels are definitely high magic, haven’t seen the new ones
Something feels wrong about a setting where in the entire trilogy we know of a number of people who are capable of willingly using magic that you could count on one hand being described as high magic.
refer to
hellblazer and harry potter have .0000001% of the population being wizards or whatever, but that is irrelevant when the world is experienced through their eyes
by your logic, doctor strange is low magic
>by your logic, doctor strange is low magic
Not my definition of high and low magic. I'm just trying to explore how robust that definition is and how well it works to various popular works.
If 'High magic' as a genera gets me results from starwars where only 5 people in the galaxy know magic all the way to harry potter where every significant character solves all their problems using magic then I'm not sure what value this distinction has. If a genera doesn't help collect thematically similar works then it isn't a genera.
let’s look at the characters
>luke
>leia
>han
>chewbaca
>vader
>emperor
>yoga
>lando
>obi-wan
>r2d2
>c3p0
>boba
5/12 wizards
and if you actually cut out the fat, the percentage only gets higher
let me ask you this: suppose you were playing a game of dnd in a setting where literally nobody outside the party had any access to magic whatsoever, but the party was 4 level 40 wizards, would you call that a low magic campaign?
>suppose you were playing a game of dnd in a setting where literally nobody outside the party had any access to magic whatsoever, but the party was 4 level 40 wizards, would you call that a low magic campaign?
Yes. Because playing in a world where nobody else has magic but we are all wizards far beyond what the system was even designed for is a very, very different game to one where other rivals also have magic.
The game you described sounds more like we would basically get to act as gods on earth, each ruling a quarter of the globe as we see fit and shaping civilisations to our whims. We're no longer playing dnd, were building a no magic fantasy setting in sandbox mode, and the enjoyment comes from watching the mundane world and how it reacts to a wave of our hand. Magic is no longer a tool of the character, it is a meta-device.
I’m sorry, but you’re moronic, the setting doesn’t exist in a vacuum, it is filtered through the narrative, and if the narrative all about magic, the work is high magic, this is not debatable
conversely, if a world full of wizards is filtered through the narrative of a mundane peasant exploring crop rotation on his farms isolated from the greater world, the work is not anything approaching high magic
last reply
What if they do have direct access to magic, but it’s subtle?
>Observing an executioner in front of a crowd lazily lower his rusty axe onto the neck of somebody my character cares about on king Arlois' orders
Yep, that certainly NEVER happens in high fantasy. No sir. Not a thing that shows up in more or less every single medieval high fantasy at all.
>posts low fantasy
>a setting with dragons, ice monsters, giants, zombies, magic, forest elves, sea monsters, and has season that last years
>low fantasy
What did he mean by this?
They are all on the verge of extinction, magic is being wiped out of the world since GRRM agrees high fantasy is gay which he stated many times and initially did not even want to include those elements in his works.
>They are all on the verge of extinction
You got that backwards, they are on the return, key plot point there. In any case doesn't make the elements not exist. Not to mention the other things like wargs and faceless men. Hell assassins who can shapeshift are such an accepted thing that the nobility don't even wonder what they are when brought up as assassin options.
No.
Daenerys has the last dragons in the world and they are puppy-sized compared to those her ancestors rode on.
The White-Walkers end up completely wiped out.
Giants have only a very small population left, scattered across the northernmost corners of the world.
The Children of the Forest will soon be completely gone.
Practitioners of magic are restricted to secretive cults and the untamed corners of the world.
The events of ASOIAF were more a last hurrah before the end than anything else.
It's a big motif of GRRM's works that magic is fading out due to humans and will soon remain only in half-remembered myths and legend.
>Daenerys has the last dragons in the world and they are puppy-sized compared to those her ancestors rode on.
Not really a fair comparison when Balerion was already generations old when Aegon rode him. Compared to Drogon being a few years old.
It's explicitly mentioned that the dragons kept by the Targaryens have gotten smaller with each generation since they arrived in Westeros.
Which is true, but Dany's dragons aren't of that stock and are already bigger than the stunted ones.
>It's a big motif of GRRM's works that magic is fading out due to humans and will soon remain only in half-remembered myths and legend.
So you are saying he ripped off Tolkien, who he despises so much, huh?
>The White-Walkers end up completely wiped out.
When?
>game of thrones wiki
>source is S08E03
have a nice day
>So you are saying he ripped off Tolkien, who he despises so much, huh?
He doesn't, what's with this meme?
A portion, hopefully a small but loud minority, of /tg/'s userbase seems incapable of comprehending any middle ground between uncritical adoration and complete loathing.
LOl, great point (NTA)
>J.R.R.Tolkien
>George.R.R.Martin
Yeah, he's totally not a fan right? lol.
>He doesn't,
>>It's a big motif of GRRM's works that magic is fading out due to humans and will soon remain only in half-remembered myths and legend.
Hmmm
>The White-Walkers end up completely wiped out.
Not sure what that has to do with the books anon.
That is how it will end.
The show-writers didn't just come up with shit on the fly, GRRM still gave them pointers as to his general idea of where the series should end at and they just had to fill in the blanks (which they were very shit at).
>The show-writers didn't just come up with shit on the fly
Well they had to of since the night king doesn't exist in the books(HBO even taking the effort to remove the reference to the night's king in the viewers guide), and that the show dropped so many plot threads that it would be basically impossible for the story to end up where it did in the show.
Wish show did Sansa's mother coming back as revenge obsessed undead
But noone would read a bunch of inter-house drama circlejerking about who fricked who's sister if there wasn't dragons and such.
I would.
You can find that in a dirty letters magazine for a lot cheaper.
>and initially did not even want to include those elements in his works
He really shouldn't have called the original run "Blood of the Dragon" then. Kinda railroads the writing process.
Stephen King did one called Eye of the Dragon without dragons in it. It's been about 30 years between here and then, but I don't recall a dragon.
George also ended that story with the dragons. Anyone who read that first short story knew where things were going. Hell he didn't even need to add the others yet he made them a central part of the overarching plot.
I had no idea, I've been soured on that since he let those homosexuals finish his story before he did. I don't think I even read the last book? Or did he not release it yet? I can't recall and I don;t want to.
He goes on the list with that fat Rothfuss frick that promised he'd already finished the trilogy when I picked up number one.
>I had no idea
The original short story is just the Dany chapters of book 1 with some slight differences(important ones too though I doubt that plot thread will ever be finished). So it finishes much like it does originally with the dragons being reborn.
Ah I see, nothing missed then except whatever changes are haunting you, so don;t say! lol. Admittedly I am more peeved with martin for something I liked becoming mainstream trash than I am with him ruining the story by letting some hacks frick it first, it was never one of the best IMO just, an addictive read? Nowhere near like what it would be to my soul if say Black Company got turned into HBO trash in this decade.
>except whatever changes are haunting you, so don;t say! lol
Oh it's not really important, just thinking about what climate lemons grow in.
>since GRRM agrees high fantasy is gay which he stated many times and initially did not even want to include those elements in his works.
You are a lying piece of shit.
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/interviews/article/77490-george-r-r-martin-dreamer-of-fantastic-worlds.html
>No one knew whether I was a science-fiction writer or a horror writer; so my decision then to do a high fantasy book was partly motivated by the Imp of the Perverse in me refusing to be typecast. After A Song of Ice and Fire, my next book may well be science fiction or horror or something else
So he explicitly made a decision to write High Fantasy. Read the interview, they are other times he references ASOIAF as high fantasy.
Why lie when people can just google to prove you wrong so easily?
GoT is very much high fantasy. Since you zooming homosexuals literally have no idea of low vs high fantasy I'll help you out.
Low fantasy takes place in our world, but poses that there is a hidden, deeper, fantastical element to the world that few know about. An example of Low Fantasy would be Bram Stoker's Dracula. Dracula takes place in real world locations in a real time period. It is supposed to be able to fit into our timeframe, as if it could have really happened though clandestine enough that few people will ever know about it. The appear of low fantasy is that you, dear reader, on your way to work could discover something not right about the world that leads down a rabbit hole of magic and monsters.
High Fantasy is like Ravenloft and Strahd. Within the finctional realm of Ravenloft everybody knows that vampires are real and stalk the night. They take preventative measures to avoid them. They also know of a host of other monsters like the undead and dragons. They know magic is real. Their world looks nothing like ours. If you tried to speak to them aboid visiting France they would have no idea where that is or what it is like. It is a total otherworld.
A Song of Ice and Fire takes place in Westeros, a totally fictional continent with Dragons and forest spirits and shit. It is high fricking fantasy.
I feel like the Nightwtlatch books are worth mentioning somehow.
>our world
Low fantasy, or intrusion fantasy, is a subgenre of fantasy fiction in which magical events intrude on an otherwise-normal world.
People are already using the word as you describe. The more of our world's natural laws and assumptions are ignored by a setting the "higher" it is.
>Harry Potter and Dracula both take place in our world, but Dracula breaks fewer of our world's "laws" and thus is lower fantasy.
>Ace Combat and Age of Sigmar are both set in alternate worlds, but AC's "rules" are almost identical to Earth's and thus is lower fantasy.
When people argue about preferring low vs high fantasy like itt, they mean that in a relative sense. If you take an absolutist approach then you get weird shit like Star Wars being Low because it technically takes place in a distant galaxy in our universe.
>Age of Sigmar
>"rules" are almost identical to Earth's
I said Ace Combat was close to our world, not Age of Sigmar.
On the one hand, I get where you're going with this. You hate the mostly ostentatious nature of high fantasy, the general aesthetic and lore associated with it. Grimdark and/or realism is often absent in high fantasy, though the two aren't mutually exclusive but thanks to most settings it feels like they inherently are.
On the other hand, you presented your case/opinion very poorly.
The fact is a high fantasy can start with an execution or an assassination. Hell, high fantasy can start with a rape, murder, abortion, or voting Democrat. Many settings, high or low on the fantasy spectrum, can start with a realistic tragedy. What I think you're getting at is how high fantasy tends to be, again, full of spectacle in its presentation, even down to its naming conventions and often the plot, lore, and setting. Sadly, while this is not a rule of high fantasy, it is most certainly a common trope.
You might like this: a group a mercenaries, our party, was hired to investigate the undead at the local cemetery. Yep, undead, but in this setting this was highly uncommon. We took them down only to find out this had happened in another nearby town. We went there, it had already been dealt with. It happened again later, so we asked about dark lords. Nothing. We researched any hints of evil forces in the area, and still nothing. It wasn't until the fifth time I noticed something: a shovel left behind at an empty grave. This grave had a zombie in it. I checked the other zombies and sure enough they had all come from graves that had been uncovered. The shovel was wooden with a STEEL tip, so we went around to blacksmiths that made a shovel head made of steel. Found him, he made it for a local in the town. We went to the local at night, it was a man practicing necromancy in surrounding towns. Dude pissed himself when we approached him, so rather than kill him we handed him over to the nightwatchmen and gave the lord our report. The necromancer was placed in a stockade
Weird coincidence with necromancer living in same town you finally noticed shovel
How the frick you not noticed shitton of dug out graves in others graveyards?
Why would necromancer make zombies on so many different graveyards in the first place? Doesn't look it served any purpose to him, except making himself easier to find
Is necromancy even a crime?
It was a different town than where we found the shovel and noone thought to actually INVESTIGATE for far lomger than I'm comfortableto admit, and necromancy was illegal. He was practicing but "meant no harm". Basically he wasn't an evil mastermind, he was a simple guy who learned a dark power from a book. Obviously the book was confiscated. No evil lord, no dark shit, just a dude who managed to follow the rituals of a book and kept trying to get better at it because it was something different in his mundane existence.
Also the crime of public damage to the cemetery and disturbing the Graves. And the cost of having to have us hired in the first place.
Then just run your own game or play in groups like yours anon.
Of course this assumes you actually play games, right?
I too am annoyed with the trend towards anime power fantasy bullshit themes flooding into the fantasy genre, but we had the 90s and 00s when anime and video games was way more popular than tolkien or AD&D. But ultimately its up to you to find or create your own community of like minded grognards, I do it, I ban all furry shit and give hard nos to anime bullshit at my tables.
>muh magic needs to be wondrous, whimsical and inexplicable
Aka the DM just needs bullshit excuses to hand wave shit and demand his players be so impressed by MAGIC. The best magic system I have ever seen was purely based on german autism. The dark eye had such a scientific view of magic, along with a kind of etymology for spells from which cultures/races they originated, several dozen magic academies with different specializations and bureaucracy and fricking student depths young wizards found themself in.
That being said, magic users weren't the only ones who suffered from german autism. If you played a rogue there was an entire book with thives cant, networks of gangs and fencers. Oh and I remember a rulebook about roads and trade routes in the game world so the DM could realistically portray trade. It is such a shame so little of it is translated into english.
Everyone knows you're fat
The difference between high fantasy and low fantasy is based on how the average or most common viewpoint of that setting lives- with low fantasy settings being roughly appropriate to that time period/level of technology with magical creatures and folklore sprinkled on top, with high fantasy having fundamentally different mechanics down to the universe at large.
So Harry Potter, Eberron, and your average steampunk world (even without magic) are all high fantasy because the average person lives in a totally fantastical world where as Conan, LotR, and Witcher are all low fantasy because the people in that setting are still living in a mostly medieval/pre-industrial world with farming and castles just with extra monsters and magic sprinkled around.
>But the literary definition is worlds which don't take place on-
Don't care.
>story about space wizards fighting in a strange galaxy
>low magic
I don’t think there a single definition by which this makes sense.
Okay it depends on the era. If we're talking pre-order 66, yeah no not low magic.
If we're talking Original Trilogy, absolutely. Force users are rare and in hiding, most people are just trying to survive without the jedi, and the most powerful "Space wizards" are the sith who have absolute control.
What percentage of time is there NOT a wizard on the screen in OT?
It's more how common they are, Luke is more martial than caster because he barely knows how to use the force during the OT.
The appeal of high fantasy is the creativity of it and the amount of sheer bullshit you can get up to. Also the fun of pissing off your DM by introducing so much shit he can't account for or improvise around.
I love high fantasy, it's my favorite genre in my personal goyslop entertainment.
I don't remember asking
>Dealing with a tyrant homosexual kang that's mean to people
>VS
>Going to hell and back to save a fren
Yeah I'm gonna go with the High Fantasy option
>It's another Ganker thread on /tg/ where anons argue about genre fiction in the most worthless way possible
Can you guys even define high fantasy?
Is The Lies of Locke Lamora a high or low fantasy novel?
If only your mentor had 7 spear wielding man-at-arms under his coat.
dumb ass morons in this thread all of you
can't believe how ignorant the average person is to genres nowadays
What can you do, anime and video games have more influence over people's sense of adventure than real life.
Miyazaki kind of puts it best, when you have nerds aping off of nerd shit for multiple generations it all becomes incestuious and boring because all logic is thrown out and replaced by genre logic.
Miyazaki is a homosexual hackfraud hypocrite. His own goddamn shit makes no goddamn sense.
>t. filtered by absurdist naturism
The second part sounds like some of the parodies I hear about Cultivation Novels.
Cultivation is a genre with dregs as deep as isekai, at this point.
Lost in the desert? Lemme just conjure some fricking food to eat and water to drink.
Haha I love magic!
I always assumed in high fantasy that magic armor enhanced the users. D&D doesnt do that much but other systems do, like Palladium fantasy.
>hates boobs
Found the fat, ugly roastie.