So where exactly is the line, for original fiction (particularly tabletop games) between schlock Standard Fantasy Setting trash and Original/Good?
If it's not particularly medieval, or particularly Western European, but still has humans and roughly, vaguely resembles Afroeurasia with magic and fantasy creatures, is it still a Standard Fantasy Setting? Does it become one if there are too many creatures that draw from real world mythology? Or if there are demons and said demons are generally mean?
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Original and good don't go hand in hand.
See
Adding to this: Original, particularly in the space of tabletop games, is very often counter-productive to good.
First post best post.
Wrong.
Original settings are rarely good, and good settings are rarely original.
That being said, where is the line that divides anything from standard grade to good?
Standard trash steals from one or two other settings.
Original and good steals from four or five other settings and blends them all together.
Think about why you're including a stock feature of fantasy. Think about what purpose it serves in fiction. Is it necessary? Don't include anything for the sake of including it. Don't include something without evaluating its purpose and necessity. Why are you drawing from a certain geography? Why are you drawing from mythology for creatures? Why are you including demons? Are any of these features truly necessary to tell the stories you want your world to tell? Conversely, if you do want to include elements of "schlock Standard Fantasy Setting trash" why are you afraid of doing so? Why does it matter if what you make would fall under that label? Don't let others' perceptions of what you make frighten you from creating what you want to make.
You're reasons for including them can be very shallow too. If you want to include dragons because they're badass and intimidating, you don't need any more justification. 90% of everything in fantasy is just there for vibes and atmosphere. Asking yourself why you're including each element is still important though because it helps keep you from botching the reason why you included them in the first place.
>If you want to include dragons because they're badass and intimidating, you don't need any more justification. 90% of everything in fantasy is just there for vibes and atmosphere.
If you throw shit in just because it vaguelly feels cool, then you will end up with the generic fantasy shit OP is asking about.
It's not going to have any "vibes" or "atmosphere" if your reasoning for it's inclusion is shallow and poorly thought out. That is the problem OP is brining up.
Atmosphere is achieved precisely by very careful and thoughtful selection of your components, so that they all refer to greater, underlying themes or associations. The trope alone is meaningless, your ability to give in a gripping CONTEXT AND PURPOSE is what gives it meaning, and any emotional or thematic charge.
As a side note, it's quite amazing how many people on this board actively defend use of ZERO imagination in conjuring up worlds in a genre whose name translates to "imagination".
Frick off. People like fancy swords and wizards, this is how you end up with neither.
Low-fantasy is a superior sub-genre for non-morons. And you can still have fancy swords and wizards, they should just be meaningful.
>If you throw shit in just because it vaguelly feels cool, then you will end up with the generic fantasy shit OP is asking about.
But I don't find any of that cool.
>Is it necessary?
Nothing is nessicary, and mean nothing.
>Why are you drawing from a certain geography? Why are you drawing from mythology for creatures? Why are you including demons?
...because building from the bottom up is easier tham the from the top down. Ideally to tell stories we would a set of clearly defined things that we let play out naturally. Of course nobody does this we all have elements we want and leave them floating then build down. The key part is to eventually build down though, if there are demons they should be defined, because if they are mistakes will be visible before hand. Back when people tried for good story telling irrelevant of if they succeeded or not they would write lore bibles before finishing their stories because making sure the building fits it's foundation is integral to it's structure.
Well, what does "include" mean here? What does necessary? I enjoy worldbuilding. I have pages upon pages of notes on migration patterns, laws, agriculture, weather patterns, food, architecture... Will my players ever see this? No. But I enjoy doing it and I will continue to do so. And when it comes to games I don't stick to it. I prefer to have my players enjoy themselves, setting be damned. But if they want to know, I absolutely give them info.
I sadly have to agree.
I think that's mainly because most people go in half wienered with ideas they can't execute properly and are unwilling to kill their babies. So you end up with a bunch of shit that makes no sense in their own context. Meanwhile copying something good and proven makes sense for an RPG. Most people won't care about most of the setting as long as they can have fun. And for most people reading through pages of info just isn't fun.
>Well, what does "include" mean here? What does necessary?
If you don't understand those words, I kinda doubt you have any clue what worldbuilding is. Those don't need any special explanation here.
Is Eberron a standard fantasy setting?
I feel like Eberron became a standard setting through no fault of its own
>I feel like Eberron became a standard setting through no fault of its own
Truth. It was Wizards of the Coast's adaptation of Eberron to form the basis for nu-fantasy that caused the cancerization of modern fantasy into some sort of pseudo-steampunk, the cartoonish art style of the 3e Eberron books (which included literal comics) which gave way to the soulless 5e art later on, and more. Now the Eberron style is used as a crutch for coastal nu males who cannot comprehend a world without their modern conveniences, such a mail, cheap air travel, and coffee. These sòyisraelites can't imagine a world different from their own, they cannot fathom it, a core aspect of roleplaying. That's fine because it's basically a spectator sport now anyway. I was unfortunately exposed to the newest series of Critical Roll, which is now being mongrelized as if it weren't worthless enough, and saw a television broadcast mogul complaining about his ratings. What the frick is this? Perhaps an attempt at clever comedic subversion; but underneath the initial "heh, that's clever" is utter soullessness, standard tropes played up so that they can get a laugh and a Twitch subscription and an epic twitter post. No depth to them. No soul. Not that this garbage could ever have a soul, being a bunch of faded voice actors and withering roasties making a shitty webshow that's managed to scrape the bottom of the barrel and come up with handfuls of rotted sludge that is technically profitable, then proceed to fling the excess upon the D&D community. Eberron began this downfall, to this pseudo-steampunk magitech abortion of a setting that is simply an excuse to force so much high fantasy into everything that the worldbuilding loses all scale and scope or sense of anything. And with that comes abandonment of all sense, turning D&D into a literal cartoon world where anything is possible because muh fantasy and making it suitable only for children, both young and overgrown.
No
whoever came up with the name "eberron" should kill himself unironically for real
If I like it, it's good. If I don't, it's bad.
>Original
Only people without games "worldbuild".
Actual fact.
When you're playing a game, the world will naturally emerge.
Yeah this is always fun when it comes out naturally. Ran a game last night where a conversation between one player and an antagonist npc devolved into them politely shit talking each other. It was quickly established that their home planets were long time enemies, that the reason their was barely any life on either world was because a millennia ago they bombed each other into dust and at one time or another each was the others overlord as part of different space empires that had risen and fallen.
I dunno. I like having a map and some basic shit about the world made before the game. So I can at least have a quick point of reference for consistency. Then I can just add the notes to the things I prepared earlier as needed.
Only if you're a no-effort improv GM or you force your players down a railroad, both of which make for worse games. One does not build a good hexcrawl without populating the hexes, or a good city campaign without prepping anything about the city. NoGames worldbuilding can be distinguished not by there being any worldbuilding at all, but by the world building being a bloated mess of useless crap that will never come up.
>Only if you're a no-effort improv GM
or a never-gm player only
Okay, fair. A perpetual player could also do worldbuilding that's mostly useless. But my comment remains, that good GMing takes some level of worldbuilding prep.
>Only people without games "worldbuild".
Dumbest shit I ever heard
Someone more skilled in pre-modern civic planning might be a better judge, but my only thoughts on these cities is just whether or not it'd be feasible for such massive cities to establish such massive, singular walls around themselves. That's a hell of a project to try to pull off even with early industrial revolution nations.
Earth magic might be able to create a bunch of stone walls.
On the other hand if armies of flying monsters exist walls might not be the right design choice.
33ft seems to have been the practical height limit, since it is the limit different cultures reached. But as to massive projects, many large wall projects have been undertaken and for purposes of this thread and enclosed cities, the Auerlain Walls only took four years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurelian_Walls
As noted here
all such earthly fortifications were built without the use of magic or fantastic beasts, so if those are to hand then not only can wall height exceed 33ft but the construction time should also be commensurately reduced. Therefore, large circular walls of great height as picture in OP could be feasible within a 4-5 year construction timeframe. Possibly less, even significantly less, depending on the magic and/or beasts available.
In real life, cities this big usually went with layered fortifications, like Carthage's triple defenses, or single very thicc ones, like regular Chinese cities. Places like Constantinople managed to (re)build walls very fast if needed, sometimes cannibalizing even graves for stone. So the volume of materials and the speed aren't that much of an issue.
But as
noted, the height is a concern. The bottom city in OP's image has walls that seem several times taller than any building inside it. Without magical excuses or modern engineering, such walls would have to be as thick as Celtic ones to not crumble by themselves, and the front would have to be angled as well, basically making a donut hill around your city.
The first thing that came to mind when I saw them was that these cities weren't concerned about flying monsters, but armies of man-sized crickets and fleas, coming to jump over lower walls, eat all the grain and suck all the blood out of everything.
Back then settlements incl cities were made with "kernels" in mind within which every inhabitant could accomplish their daily chores in 15 minutes max.
Rectangular cities are exclusively made for cars.
Walls are about as simple a structure as it gets. The main issue is having a form of mortar to stick the bricks together. Otherwise 'build up' is a pretty intuitive thing. Sometimes mortar isn't even necessary, some incan cultures just carved stones to be perfect fits and are still standing today centuries later.
>Walls are about as simple a structure as it gets.
This would be a fair statement if we were talking about walls. But we were talking fortification, and that does require a BIT more effort and technical prowess than just building a wall.
Construction of city fortifications was generally considered to be some of the biggest infrastructure investment and projects you could ever undergo. In the good old Enuma Elish, you will learn about how a character achieves immortality by managing to pull of construction of massive city fortification.
That is not to say it's impossible. Most medieval cities, hell most major antique and ancient cities, had fortifications. The benefit of their construction outweighed the cost.
But as an infrastructure projects, they were MASSIVELY demanding and expensive.
The line was just chock on the concrete and it got washed away by the rain.
walled cities with a river running through them have been common in TRPG since at least the mid to late 1980
that looks very inconvenient
Thats the point.
The more inconvenient your city is to occupy the more resilient your forces will be in holding it.
Its the same reason why buildings that would be prime targets of terrorist acts, like news buildings, have fricked up stair systems, like needing to take an elevator to the top of the building and walking down stairs to get to the news rooms, and not every floor is accessable from every stairwell.
You know people need to have food, why don't prime terrorist targets keep putting themselves on fricking roads, could it possibly be because things need to be accessible.
This is pointless in the first place every single walled river city is going to be at a different level of writing quality, firstly because every setting is diffrent.
>if I make a city thats impossible to live in, it will be impossible to conquer
Genius 1000 iq move
Yes and...? It's always been bad is not an argument.
More like cities with a river running through them are a common trope because they're very common in real life.
For the same reason we build around railroads and hangers, you know what we don't do with the superior than river boat arterials? Block every other entrence.
What?
Arterial it's a major lane in a transport network, though hangers don't count on their own.
River boats are slow and limited compared to trains and planes as mass transportation.
Ah yes, let me just add an international airport and a huge railway network to my medieval fantasy town.
First off why not, nothing about this resembles a medieval city already anyway. Second not my point acess to an arterial does not justify building massive frick off walls around the entire population.
So what, are you saying city walls didn't actually exist or something?
You can count the number of fully walled cities on your fingers, they weren't and aren't medieval. Cities had walls, just not around the entire population as I just said.
You're wrong, but for different reasons. Castles and towns did have walls enclosing the population, but then the city grew.
Naturally a castle has walls surrounding the Castle, a village is born at the roots and around the castle. The place grows in relevance and wealth, so eventually another wall is built around for better protection. The place, however, continues to grow. There's no space inside, so people (generally the poorest) build outside the walls, which means outside the city and out of its jurisdiction. And so on and on.
How do you think all those large European cities have multiple walls? What even is Constantinople, the biggest example of them all?
>There's no space inside, so people (generally the poorest) build outside the walls,
A small note on that subject:
Building anything close to city fortification is an incredible risk for the city itself. In most medieval, or later walled cities (and yes, that was a majority of them, what the other guy says is moronic), buildings outside of the wall, but close to it, would have to be torn down in case of an incoming danger.
So it really wasn't that easy for the city to expand outside of those walls. A big strip of land had to be kept clean between nearest structure, and the fortification itself. Otherwise, that structure could be used to scale the fortification, as a cover from the fortification, and otherwise threaten the safety of the town.
>You can count the number of fully walled cities on your fingers, they weren't and aren't medieval.
Want to know how I know you are american?
Oi theres a wall 'ere musta' gone around da' 'ole cit'a that's how the muslims tell me'my citi a' londoon is like.
>So where exactly is the line, for original fiction (particularly tabletop games) between schlock Standard Fantasy Setting trash and Original/Good?
A good setting exists in a book, a GM's notes, the background of a trading card.
Schlocky "system and setting agnostic" slop "fantasy" exists between fa/tg/uys ears in leu of a brain. Seeing people talk about "fantasy" as though there was a single unified body of universally accepted characteristics that make up the genre really ticks me off.
even a classic schlocky elves dwarves wizards and dragons 90s pre-film as-stereotypical-as-it-gets lotr setting can be fun and original and good if its done in an interesting way
>between schlock Standard Fantasy Setting trash and Original/Good?
The thing to understand here is that your "standard fantasy settings trash" essentially means what in literary theory we call "generic".
That is to say, the fiction is created not to communicate some kind of valuable (original or not) concept, but rather to simply satisfy pre-existing expectations about said genre.
Genre fiction exists to deliver to you what you already know. It delivers orks, elves, knights and all that shit not because it has an actual IDEA to communicate to you, and these are necessary symbolic or metaphorical tools to communicate the idea - but simply because most people are used to expecting those in anything that is labeled "fantasy".
Basically, what I'm getting at is that it's not about what you use, but how and why you use it. If you want to avoid standard fantasy trash, think about why, EXACTLY, are you selecting the individual elements, and not including anything unless you can formulate their grander role in the story you want to convey.
Good worldbuilding is a specific type of narrative, but ultimately, it's a narrative. If you do it well, you use it to convey a message, or a collection of them, that people may find beautiful, or thoughtful, or relatable in other way.
The generic, standard fantasy trash is trash because all of the elements are there for no greater narrative reason. People toss them in because it is a convention to have them there, and no other reason. "People expect them", or "every other similar story I've seen had them." That makes them bad. There is no fun in exploring their purpose within the settings from an audience or player perspective. They are there, but they have no reason for being there to uncover or piece together.
Good storytelling requires your elements to be purposeful. Because enjoying the fictional part of your story means piecing together their purpose. Good world-building or settings-writing is no different.
t. english major??
>t. english major??
Actually, general linguistics and social anthropology. You don't have to have a title in a discipline to understand it's base principles.
>it's
Yeah, not an English major for sure.
>Yeah, not an English major for sure.
Not english at all. Not even ESL to be frank. But I think I'm still comprehensible, and that is all I give a frick about.
I'm sorry for making you insecure, I guess. What else do you expect me to say?
People don't like those things. What they like is what a skilled author or designer can achieve with those things.
There is a reason why OP is asking what he is asking. Why in WB threads, 99 of all suggestions is left without any replies. It's because people endlessly shuffle around the same 15 building blocks around and expect anyone to give a frick.
There is nothing wrong with using these building blocks, but you have to actually fricking build something out of it.
People have been getting bored of this shit. If every single one of your campaign elements is the same fricking cliché they played a thousand fricking times, just tossed in because you think that is the extent of the effort you put in. It's an equivalent of jiggling keys in front of someone. It has lost it's luster a good while ago.
If you can't put that bare minimum effort in, just use a pre-made settings. Why do you even fricking bother to make your own fantasy settings if it's not actually fantastic and has nothing that hasn't been done better by more skilled people?
Either put some fricking effort in, or just don't bother at all.
>People don't like those things. What they like is what a skilled author or designer can achieve with those things.
Wrong. There's a good reason why fantasy is dominated by humans, human-like demihumans, and medieval pastiches, and nobody gives a frick about any other combination of locales and myths/aesthetics for a fantasy setting.
>There's a good reason why fantasy is dominated by humans, human-like demihumans, and medieval pastiches, and nobody gives a frick about any other combination of locales and myths/aesthetics for a fantasy setting.
Just like how people go to other towns or countries and still eat choose to only eat slop like McDonald's, which is probably you
This is the most braindead I've read on here
>There's a good reason why fantasy is dominated by humans, human-like demihumans, and medieval pastiches
Yeah, and that reason is that A) humans and demi-humans reflect our need to face beings we can relate, and the over-use of medieval romantism and European mythology is because we have all been exposed to some REALLY GOOD works that used them, because they were written or designed by very competent people.
Incompetent people like you then can't figure out anything else but desperate recycling of those materials over and over, without any understanding of what made them interesting.
If we grew up less with Tolkien and Lewis, and more with say, Thousand and Night's, our fantasy would look very different, but we would still have to deal with shitstains like you completely killing any imagination by your own innane and absolutely uninteresting own endless shuffling of Jinns, Ifrit's, Roch's and Ghouls.
But again, that is besides the point. People liked Elves, Dwarves and Dragons in Tolkien's work because he was a very smart, and very thoughtful author, who had great vision of how to use them.
Not because those elements are inherently engaging. There are literally thousands of pages of shitty amateur fantasy written every day using the exact same elements, that NOBODY reads because they are fricking boring and pointless
I think you missed the point by the way, despite me being very clear about it. The issue isn't with the elements you use, but with how incompetent tards like you use them.
Western fantasy has been for a long time considered the THE single most creatively bankrupt genre for a reason. And that reason is you.
Again - if you don't want to put effort into your world-building, just use the work of someone at least marginally competent. Everyone will be happier.
>general linguistics and social anthropology
so like a wothless version of an english degree haha
Without phoneposting, quality of threads would rise rapidly.
Without phoneposting the quality of the internet itself would rise
Thus, the phoneposting must end for humanity to proceed.
no river bends
no forest
no grassland
final destination
Tucson?
standard trash settings are good for game because players are least beholden to lore and can act/be whatever they like
this is why i love urban fantasy
Why do you imagine that such a line exists?
midwits turn the contrast on life up so much that things are unrecognizable silhouettes
>So where exactly is the line, for original fiction (particularly tabletop games) between schlock Standard Fantasy Setting trash and Original/Good?
I think of settings like food, just because a dish is completely original and never thought of before, does not make it good. Infact dishes that are considered classics and possibly "generic" have that reputation for a reason. Think of your generic fantasy setting as a plain hot dog, the correct combinations of toppings can make that plain hot dog waaaaay better, but put too much on or add the wrong toppings, and suddenly you would rather just have a plain hot dog
Damn, I just posted mine,
and saw this, hungry minds think alike I guess.
Worldbuilding is like cooking. You have a lot of ingredients, these are all your inspirations/stolen ideas. There might be a lot of ingredients you just like and just toss it in your meal. For a simple meal that requires very little ingredients, it may be difficult to ruin. That is more like a standard template setting, simple and satisfying. It might use a special sauce of your own to give it some flair. Very simple things that you just think is cool (like cool swords) and hardly has an impact in the setting is like salt and pepper, it usually doesn't hurt.
A far more complicated meal may require a vast array of ingredients and steps. If you just throw it all in a bowl and stick it into an oven, then you get baby's first "deep" setting. If you want to make something good, you're going to have to know how all the ingredients work together and how to apply them. You might like fish sauce but if you use it for baking a cook, it's probably just going to be shitty, no matter how much you just like fish sauce.
tl;dr: Basically, the difference is between putting in elements that you just like versus elements you know why you like. If you know the why, you know how to get the most out of it.
I hate this image so much. The first and second city are the same city. The first shot from the KonoSuba OP, the second is I think an in-episode shot. Of course a city is going to look similar to that exact same city on a different time of day.
At least you didn't post the version which claims one of those two shots is from Rising of the Shield Hero.