The problem with low fantasy settings is that near the end it always turns into high fantasy. You can use Berserk or song of ice and fire as an example. Both started as low fantasy and turned into high fantasy near the end. How would you solve this problem in a low fantasy setting?
Counter-point: Witcher remained mudcore all the way through. Just end it with killing the protagonists not upping the stakes indefinitely.
Same with Conan and the Hyborian Age
You are the ones either not creative enough or you've been feed the eternal cycle of crap that is modern media (like the people that writes said bs high fantasy final arcs) and cannot just think on a story that doesnt end up like that
>You are the ones either not creative enough or you've been feed the eternal cycle of crap that is modern media
The latter. I do know of a worldbuilding that gets me fired up on low fantasy, I almost spewed the beans when writing the post. But most everyone trying to do low fantasy gets so lame is not worth the encouragement. I mean, if your fetish is being a barbarian at least do it right.
I decided not to encourage low brow fetishes that wont even acknowledge themselves as one.
Does it really though? At the end of The Witcher you've passed through magic-intense sections of the story and there's now a grand empire starting up that is basically going to be the high fantasy mega-empire .
>Mega empires can’t exist in low fantasy
What?
>Rome
>Frankish Empire
>Achaemenid Empire
>Caliphate
>Mongol Empire
>Ottoman Empire (somewhat outside medieval tomeframe)
>Habsburg Empire (somewhat outside medieval timeframe)
>>Rome
is also "somewhat outside medieval timeframe", because medieval period starts at the fall of Rome
>How would you solve this problem in a low fantasy setting?
By not doing low fantasy, it's not worth it. If low fantasy could carry a campaign or story, we wouldn't have this problem. The fact that issue exists demonstrates that low fantasy can't support an enjoyable fantasy experience.
Modern D20, replace black people with lizard men, replace asians with elves, replace indians with orcs. These people getting into shootouts over turfs. The most high fantasy it gets is that the leader of a rival gang might be a dragonborn.
Same as the other guy. Low fantasy is not creative enough so high fantasy takes the stage at the end.
Why is it a problem?
>Berserk
>high fantasy near the end.
berserk becomes high fantasy by the middle of the story
Berserk *starts* as high fantasy; then we flash back to the supposedly 'low fantasy' era for a while.
Christ, on the same token, ice zombies show up within the first five pages of the first book of the Song of Ice and Fire, and there are living dragons by the end of that same book. (The fact that the characters are too fricking stupid to realize they live on a high fantasy world is a separate issue.)
The first 3 pages of Berserk is him blasting a sex demon in the face. It was always high fantasy.
Run a historical/alt-historical game instead.
>The problem with low fantasy settings is that near the end it always turns into high fantasy.
You know how easy it would be to be right? Name two low fantasy series that stay low fantasy and don't go high by the end.
>can't name 2
What counts as "low fantasy" in your opinion?
NTA but...
>Theft of Swords
>Song of the Gargoyle
>King Arthur
also Black Company
Depending on how much piss he has in his pants he may declare that the Ten Taken Back or whatever are high fantasy
>settings settings settings
I'd rather talk about games, personally.
>the problem with low fantasy is bad writers
That isn't a problem.
game of thrones was high fantasy from the beginning, because it took place in the fantasy realm of westeros without a single appearance from a regular earthling
You just made up your own definition of low fantasy, decided it was true and are now showing everyone you're a Dunning-Krueger moron.
Yelling at yourself in the mirror again? That doesn't seem healthy.
Self-restraint? Stories based on realism don't have this problem so why does low fantasy? Establish a baseline of fantasy that you never pass and keep it to that area.
Well then it just feels stagnant. The thing is fantasy games are anti stagnancy because you're meant to always level up and fight stronger enemies. It's how stuff just devolves into eventually killing gods.
>you're meant to always level up and fight stronger enemies
Yes.
I’ve always hated exponential power leveling in games
>Be veteran soldier for 20 years
>Level 1 fighter
>Spend three months adventuring
>Level 6 fighter
>Spend six months adventuring
>Level 10 fighter
>Spend a year adventuring
>Level 20 fighter
I prefer lighter growth that’s more about specialization and honing your abilities. Yourself from after your adventure can wipe the floor with your old self, but he can’t fight an army of your past selves. You’re a better marksman, you have better gear, have some new skills, but you aren’t twice as strong, able to shoot four times faster, and hit twice as hard when you score a hit.
In 3.5 one of the core books specifically stated that the PC's are exceptional, iirc.
Not really relevant. I don’t mind power levels, what bugs me is the power scaling. Playing Golden Age Superman who can leap tall buildings and is faster than a speeding bullet is fine, but having him develop into modern Superman who can see molecular interactions, travel fast enough to travel back in time, and juggle planets over the course of a single year in game is dumb as shit. I don’t mind a PC being a level 10-20 character who can solo a lance of knights or more, what I mind is him reaching that level in a short arbitrary time when his background my suggest that he should have already started to approach a peak.
Then that means you simply need to start at absolute mudcore realism and end at low fantasy.
Song of Ice and Fire also starts with a focus on knights and nobles, so there's clearly room to go lower.
>I keep shitting on the carpet, how do you fix this?
By not shitting on the carpet. Go take your goddamn meds.
I actually think it's a good thing if done purposefully. In fact, i think the two examples you used are great. The extent of the fantastical nature of the realm is revealed to the characters only as the story progresses. (Oh frick, high-magic/dragons/undeath/non human entities/etc., are real??) I think that's way cooler than super fantastical things existing out in the open.
The best low fantasy story ever told in English is about a wizard and includes a dragon. You people are abusing these terms into meaninglessness.
You fundamentally don't understand the terms you're using.
The problem you're about to run into is that High Fantasy and Low Fantasy don't have a strict separation, at least not for how you're trying to use them.
There are the definitions of low fantasy being any fantasy that is set on Earth, while high fantasy is everything else, though that's not exactly relevant or helpful to what you're asking about.
In order to solve the 'problem' you're talking about, you need to speak less in broad strokes, and actually nail down what you consider to be fantastical aspects of a setting that are the peak of what would be acceptable within the sort of tone you want, and then figure out how to build towards that peak.
>fantasy = takes place in a constructed world
>low fantasy = starts in our world, or a world like ours, and crosses into the constructed world
>high fantasy = takes place entirely within the constructed world (or if it is our world then so far into the past or future or so radically shaped by powerful forces that it doesnt resemble our world)
Not quite. Low fantasy means that the fantastical elements are supplemental to the normal, familiar logic and rules. A story about a fictional country's distant past can still be low fantasy in the fantasy bits are written about as non-fundamental and their presence is as strange to the characters involved as it is to the reader. High fantasy is an alien world to our own, where the social rules and physical laws are different in order to react to and display the fantastical elements. Most fantasy stories for the last half century have been high fantasy, but low fantasy used to be more popular.
Conan the Barbarian is a high fantasy story. Harry Potter is a high fantasy story. And yet they're both set on Earth. The Chronicles of Narnia are a low fantasy, portal fantasy story, which mostly takes place in a pocket dimension of spells and magical creatures where everything is questionably physical and almost entirely metaphysical. The Tales of Earthsea are low fantasy stories even though they're about a fricking wizard because the central conceit is that magic is rule-breaking and the world works like ours.
"low fantasy" was coined completely in reaction to the origin of "high fantasy" which comes from an essay in the 1970s that was trying to argue that there could be fantasy stories with the same artistic merit and cultural cache as other forms of HIGH LITERATURE. Then eggcorning happened and we come to the mess we have today, due entirely to publisher trends from three generations ago.
>Harry Potter is a high fantasy story.
harry potter is more like urban fantasy
which is where the constructed world and our world inhabit the same space
I think the big problem, seeing this thread and elsewhere, is that these are very broad terms that no one can agree on, and they're used different ways. It's almost schism-esque differences/beliefs about it that just make the whole fricking thing confusing.
Basically, there's three applications of the term "high fantasy", for instance. There's a more originalist use
mentions, but that was the original intent. Then, it got used and frequently still applied as an aesthetic metric - I remember charts years ago about this showing "low fantasy" with WFRP breastplates and more historically consistent "realistic" designs, some settings as more "middle fantasy" with some of the tropes and silly conventions of design (Maybe something like Elder Scrolls), and Warcraft and more silly Final Fantasy examples as the "high fantasy" with unrealistic proportions, giant pauldrons, bright colors, and kitchen sink settings/monsters/races and the like. These were generally put down as too noisy, ridiculous, and poor taste, which I generally agree with.
Then the 3rd use is more of an ethos, breaking down the actual specific elements of the story and setting in question. This generally trends alongside the aesthetic, but it is an important distinction to make, since it's where the confusion comes from. Really, the overall tone of a setting or story is what's important, and that comes as a combination of the aesthetic choices and ethos wholly - if you have a fully realistic human-only setting where Knights are doing Wuxia shit and throwing fireballs, that still evens out as high fantasy. But people get stuck in the minutiae where like the other poster said, if 90% of it is low fantasy, then 5% is truly high fantasy, it probably evens out to low in the end. But everyone has their own definitions and then splinter terms like "Mudcore" which I'd never heard until the last month, but is being presented as the lowest option, but on the same axis as these terms. Autism schism.
by that definition Berserk is high fantasy as all the stuff involving the astral realms, the God Hand and they influences over causality are pretty fundamental to the world
For a setting? Just don't write it that. Leave yourself a note or something.
For a game? Make character improvement capped or have diminishing returns, eg logarithmic rather than exponential.
If a setting is low fantasy 95% of the time and high fantasy 5% of the time, it remains low fantasy it just have high fantasy elements in it sometimes. Goddammit take your autism medications.
Is Lord of the Rings low fantasy?
The main characters were just some dudes
Except Gandalf that is literally an angel
>Except Gandalf that is literally an angel
yeah, and you totally got that impression from the books or movies, not some youtube lore video or wiki
Correct.
>the magical demon orgies and demon apostles and magic demon armors and magic demon rituals and anti-demon super saiyan demon rage and LITERALLY BECOMING A GOD are low fantasy.....BECAUSE I SAID SO
>tiny winged humanoid? big flying lizard? UMMM, THATS SOME SERIOUS HECKIN CRINGEYIKERS HIGH FANTASY
God I hate you and every Black person like you. You're even worse than the hard sci-fi israelites.
It happens, because writing high-fantasy shit is fun, that's why. You don't write a story, because "akshually, this is low-fantasy", you write a fiction you like that happens to be a mudcore. About examples - 99% of supernatural writings in XIX century are low-fantasy (MC saw a good-looking nymph, dudes partyied so hard after a wedding they summoned ghosts, MC resurrected as a political prisoner with ego top etc.)
>the problem with [shit I made up] is [even more shit I made up]!
Have you ever considered Canadian health care?
>Makes two high fantasy examples
Are you moronic? Berserk is as high fantasy as you can get, so ASoIaF (which is just initially low magic, something completely different), they just focus on being dark (berserk) and muh tax policy.
>low fantasy settings is that near the end it always turns into high fantasy. You can use Berserk or song of ice and fire as an example.
Are you moronic? Not shaming, but people of average intelligence can clearly see you're wrong about ASOIAF. Even if they've only watched it casually.
The ice zombies and the giant magical ice wall are important parts of the setting from the very first scenes/pages. Daeny bringing back the dragons in turn brings back the magic, too (see candles in the citadel, red priests gaining powers, etc.). Which happens in the first season/book as well. ASOIAF is literally about a mudcore world experiencing a magical catastrophe.
>Not shaming
You are and you should, dunning-kruger morons like op need to be put in check through humility.
Except you just made that up, cited two examples, and then pretended that this is some law that must occur.
Well Berserk does have a specific breaking point where Griffith warps reality and literally turns it into a high fantasy world overnight. Though even before that the fantasy elements were ramping up with stuff like the witches and the Turkish Daemonculaba and such.
Low fantasy means settings like Conan or LotR, not mudcore garbage pretending to be deep.
>Conan or LotR
>Low fantasy
Correct, both take place on Earth. Low fantasy doesn't mean low magic.
Yes it does.
Isn't it the whole point tho? Low fantasy is even mroe about the fantasy than the high fantasy worlds. In HF fantasy is mundane, it literally NEVER sticks up, why there's poverty of that kind, why there's farmers and street shitting goblins everywhere.
Low fantasy rises the stakes where ultimately protagonists wouldnt be able to fight the same evil if they didnt elevate themselves. Points to make is - avoid changing the world as the story progress. Make it all weird and rare and it will be fine
You blathered in circles and said nothing at all.
No, i did not. Possibly poor comprehensive skills? I said that the point of LF is that it focuses on the rare fantastic phenomena and it best uses rare but terrific interaction, like Guts meeting Nosferatu Zodd for the first time.
Still just yapping
>Grey and gloomy medieval settings with traces of magic and the fantastical still here and there
>Stories usually naturally end up moving towards rediscovering those things
It's not really a surprise, is it? If you have a monochrome picture and put a red flower somewhere in it, the people looking at it will wonder what the red flower is about more than anything else. And in case of authors even they will get tired of
>serious drama and intrigue but medieval
after a while, that's exactly why put those hints at the fantastical in there in the first place.
>Your thread suck
Oh no, it's an ESL. That explains the low IQ
Low fantasy does not exist
I prefer Wimp Lo Fantasy
It's a problem that does not exist the way you think it does. Low and high fantasies are genres, not power levels.
What do you call high and low fantasy exactly? Is ASOIAF having three dragons in the whole world ans some ice zombies popping in a distant region where almost nobody lives enough to make it high fantasy while 99.9% of the population has never seen magic and lives exactly like IRL medieval peasants?
>The problem with low fantasy settings is that near the end it always turns into high fantasy. You can use Berserk or song of ice and fire as an example. Both started as low fantasy and turned into high fantasy
High fantasy means that the story takes place on another world. So from the start Berserk and A Song of Ice and Fire are high fantasy from the start.
Low fantasy is something like Harry Potter or King Solomon's Mines.
>You can use Berserk or song of ice and fire as an example.
I wouldn't since especially Berserk does not start out low in any way.
>Linguistic confusion: the thread
>The problem with setting is that it can change
Wow, so what's the problem?
Vaguely related but how in the frick do people consider warhammer fantasy low fantasy?
just look at the map
Ahh yes, the faux Atlantis with hyper magical elves. Or the Americas with similarly magical lizardmen. Then you have the arctic circle full of daemons and daemon worshippers, or the antarctic with more of the same.
Remind me, what are the definitions of low fantasy and high fantasy?
Frick if I know.
low fantasy is narnia, the pevensies are from earth
lord of the rings is high fantasy, what happens in middle earth stays in middle earth
its technically our earth, just thousands of years in the past, but the important part is that the entire story takes place in their world
Bullshit
Santa is not low fantasy. Magic fricking world creation around a lamppost is not low fantasy.
There is a few ways to view the question.
High & low "power level" of magic where if you have crazy powerful being striding around, gods & dragons & such then it could be seen as "High" magic. If you have a setting that's not magic in any way barring characters with precog then it's low fantasy.
Then there is the argument for ubiquity.
Magic that prevalent & on every corner could be seen as High Magic even though it's not powerful, this is mostly stuff like YA novels.
On the other hand you can have magic be barely there regardless of "power level" & be considered Low fantasy. Like Pirates of the Caribbean.
So some people base it on frequency of encountered magic, some base it on the scope & power of the magic has. Some idiots think that if it takes place on Earth then it's low magic & some people think that if it takes place on a world that isn't Earth it's High Magic. Ultimately if you can't get people to at least agree on terms the whole discussion is pointless
>The problem with low fantasy settings is
that both playing a full arcane mage if we're talking tabletop, or reading about a full arcane mage if we're talking books, is much cooler than le grumpy miser swordman or le rascal with a heart of gold.
Martial sucks.
Caster supremacy. Now and forever. b***hes.
Berserk really doesn't work here. Does it change genres? Sure. But it happens for a reason: Griffith changed reality just to have his stupid castle, and it's noticeably a bad thing.
Low Fantasy doesn't mean what you think it does. Low Fantasy is when the people who inhabit the story don't understand the fantasy elements and view them as alien and as a rule take place on Earth or a Mundane setting..
Walking Dead , Dracula, and Indiana Jones are low fantasy stories. Most horror is Low Fantasy.
There's also no such thing as High Fantasy, it's just Fantasy at that point.