What is high fantasy?

Bwoop bwoop narativist faggot detected

In contrast, the modern common definition has high fantasy being focused around the battle between two moral forces (i.e. good and evil or law and chaos) and low fantasy is focused more around living or surviving in a fantasy world.

Careful there, user. You're gonna cut yourself on all that edge.

High Fantasy typically has three things:
>A world that doesn't function on Earthly physics
>A plot that pits the fate of the world in the hero's hands
>Ignoring how human society works as a whole to make things lagging the tech level or magic capability

Bonus features:
>Fan service
>White human men still in charge
>Black and white morality

Yeah obviously fantasy universes should be ruled by tranny niggers

Well fuck. I thought it correlated with highly magical and low magic settings.

Thanks for the education.

Better not stretch those imaginations too much

> objectively incorrect

Prove it.

Prove how alignment at all contributes to a good RPG. Hmm I wonder why no other RPG uses it. Probably because it is bad and does not represent realistic human motivations.

Prove how hit point bloat doesn't just cause combat to drag on while forcing damage to escalate insanely between level.

Prove how a game that has been schizophrenic for its past five editions and lacks a focus or a consistent community, can possibly be subsisting on anything but brand recognition ten times that of its next leading competitor. Even fucking Pathfinder is just D&D in new clothes.

Swing and a miss, I don't even like narrative games.

A good way to describe it that doesn't get you bogged down too heavily in determining minutia is whether or not the supernatural is a part of or intrusive to the world.

somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed today

It's objectively incorrect because we've already had the academic definition, and you didn't even use the popular definition either.

Also, muh opinions, but whatever.

That would actually mean Frodo and Sam was part of a low fantasy. Huh.

reddit.com/r/weedpunk

frodo and sam were focused on the goal of defeating sauron, they were very much part of the grand struggle between good and evil.

But it was pretty much a survival game.

I think I used that definition, but honestly it's pretty clear that it doesn't work like that now.

No, it was about good (Sam) keeping the evil (ring) from overtaking Frodo during the quest to save the world.

I haven't seen anyone use those academic definitions, so I'll share the way I've seen high and low fantasy used for about 6 and a half years in online roleplay communities:

>High fantasy
>Supernatural elements are relatively commonplace (one might ride a flying broomstick to work, for example). Even if they're not commonplace, they tend to elevate the player-characters abilities to supernatural levels in ways that make them many times better than a normal person. Player-characters in a high fantasy setting are practically superheroes; they have relatively few worries (can often use powers to dodge most common problems like transportation and food) and might be able to destroy whole armies.

>Low fantasy
>Supernatural elements are not normal or common at all, and the player-characters' capabilities do not extend far beyond what a highly talented and trained person could do. A player's magic might be flashy, but it's not world-changing. Antagonists may have more powerful magic, but they are exceedingly rare. Player-characters in a low fantasy setting will have problems if badly outnumbered, and they often must contend with the same problems ordinary people face, such as arranging for transport and handling food supplies. They have few if any abilities that can trivialize those issues.

>Prove it.

High fantasy takes place in a fictitious setting, such as Middle Earth or Faerun. Low fantasy takes place in a fantasy version of regular Earth, such as with the Dresden Files or World of Darkness. Just because you want "High Fantasy" to mean "D&D alignments and hit points" doesn't make you not a dipshit.

Just for that the ruler of my next setting will be a post-spell black woman you little bitch

High fantasy: Obviously fantastic setting with high levels of magic. Societies use magic to function AND magic is an important part of the plot(s). LotR, wheel of time, etc.
Low fantasy: More plausible setting with less magic, Societies use magic to fuction OR magic is an important part of the plot. Gentlemen Bastards is a decent example of the former, aSoIaF a good example of the latter.
Urban fantasy: Ostensibly takes place on earth, but with magic. History may or may not be altered, but modern-esque cities must exist in some form. EG Harry Potter, pretty much any anime with magic

Probably going to get autismed on since it's a pretty hot topic, but whatever.

I think that's effectively what it really means now, since it's what most people I know of think it means, that definition he gave sounds really shitty and roundabout for the sake of academically being inclusive of whatever the fuck it meant by "secondary worlds"

This is the common definition I see. The academic definition also works.

In order to avoid confusion I've started using your definitions to define high and low MAGIC settings.

>In order to avoid confusion I've started using your definitions to define high and low MAGIC settings.

High and low *power* are also acceptable.

While Gentlemen Bastards is definitely low fantasy, society doesn't rely on magic at all, it's far too uncommon for that.

Bondsmagi exist, but they are rare as fuck, and their magic is costly enough that they wouldn't waste it needlessly.

Also, the city of bondsmagi is an extreme corner case. Pretty much the only city where magic is normal, and even there their city doesn't rely on it.

I guess it's not so much that they rely on it, but they do use the alchemy for lamps, agriculture, etc, and live in magical buildings. What I mean is, it would be a big blow if they were to somehow lose it, even if they could still get by.

The more a world separates from our own in history, natural laws and conformation of lands and beings the higher fantasy it is.

The more the things in the setting rely on magic rather than laws affine to our world, the higher magic it is.

High and low fantasy are such broad categories and no one can agree what they mean. It could be useful to separate magic/power levels from settings to give a clearer idea of what they are like.
Westeros, for example could be considered a low fantasy secondary world setting.

High Fantasy is when electricity doesn't work and you jam in whatever you want without worrying about things like how the population is fed, where their water comes from, how they get enough fuel and grazing land for animals, and other logistical problems rampant in fantasy

>My DM thought a desert town could support a population of 36000 people without petrol nor surrounding farms

It's somewhat of a historical oddity. People tend to forget that before Lord of the Rings became so huge, Conan the Barbarian was the most popular fantasy series. Conan claimed to be set in the history of the real Earth, just in a fictional part of it, so Conan and it's imitators were actually low fantasy.

Low Fantasy isn't dead, stuff like the works of China Miéville, Haruki Murakami or JK Rowling are low fantasy, it's just that the audience has got so used to secondary worlds that they no longer see them as a thing that needs to be mentioned.

anything by tolkien

A lot of fun, usually.

Existential horror but for engineers.

>>White human men still in charge
>>High Fantasy
>>What is Mercedes Lackey, Anne McCaffrey,Tamora Pierce, and the sheer glut of high fantasy novels starring women like the fad it is at the moment.

Welcome to Veeky Forums newfag! I hope you come to enjoy this board and its community while you are learning about rpgs and the fantasy genre! Be sure to look up that helpful list I gave you, I think you will like what you'll find. Little advice though, be sure to read more before you try to explain a topic you are obviously new to. First impressions are often inaccurate.

My table is always open to you. Although we do have a policy that anyone wearing non-medicated glasses or other hipster tendencies gets thrown out. So keep that in mind if you ever want to join.

So according to any of these definitions My Little Pony is High Fantasy? Neat.

Yes, but High vs Low fantasy isn't a measure of quality. Its more a short hand description of setting and is more often used as adspeak than anything useful.

I don't know if you realize it, but your definitions are sort of a proxy for the academic definitions.

You describe High Fantasy as a world where fantasy is in everything.

You describe low fantasy as a world that's basically like the real world, but with a few fantasy bits tucked in.

Also, I can't think of any genre work that fits your description of high fantasy that isn't a video game or RPG.

>I can't think of any genre work that fits your description of high fantasy that isn't a video game or RPG.

That is fitting, because I've seen it used almost exclusively in reference to vidya and tabletop.

And I think you're right, I imagine they kind of evolved from the academic definitions. They probably got spat around through a game of telephone for 40 years, used by people who often didn't know the academic definition (and often didn't have much of a literary/academic background), were confused with "high power"/"high magic" descriptions of games, and accumulated some other mutations along the way.

white human men have to be in charge, or no one will believe it

>feels good being white and in charge
>forever

Elves 'n' shit.

8ch.pl/fim/
A world with it's own set of rules where gravity, physics, biology is completely new.

In the original literary definition, High fantasy is fantasy where the fantasy elements are native to the main world, low fantasy is fantasy where the fantasy elements are not native to the primary world, or exists in secret or on planet earth.

So. Harry Potter? Low fantasy. Secret, not mainstream to the main setting, set on earth. Narnia? Low fantasy. You go from earth through the wardrobe to another setting: Narnia.
Dresden files? Low fantasy, Urban fantasy subcategory. Set on earth, fantasy elements are not mainstream.
Lord of the Rings? High fantasy The fantastical elements are in the open and native to the setting.
A Song of Ice and Fire? High fantasy. Not earth, fantasy elements are more or less in the open depending on where the characters are from.
Conan the Barbarian? Trickier. The setting is, according to the author, set in a "prehistoric earth" from before a set of cataclysms that more or less wiped the slates clean, but we are supposedly descended from the Hyborian races. So even though it's not set on earth as we know it, and even though the fantasy elements are native to the setting and in the open, it could technically be called low fantasy.

Of course, none of this matters since the common usage definition has shifted to be "if it's gritty it's low fantasy and if there's tons of magic and cool shit and it's shiny we call it high fantasy."

Just like how Literally doesn't mean literally any more.

A poorly defined approximation.

...approximation of what?

Oh, ok, now I understand what high fantasy is; I've been actually wanting to watch something like that for a while...
Can someone recommend me some movies/shows/cartoons/animes like OP's pic?
High fantasy stuff that's not gritty/gloomy, something with lots of light and cool visuals set in a colorful and vibrant word; something that inspires a sense of wonder and contains lots of different places and enviroinments
Right now the only thing that comes to mind is AtLA

Are you dense or just trolling?