Why do most westerners prefer the low fantasy grimdark settings like Warhammer, Warcraft...

>Warcraft
>Low fantasy
>Grimdark
You're not familiar with WoW, then?

except japanese people put out a shit ton of grim and/or dark media

But Japan is what's keeping Wizardry alive... Also there was Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash from Japan recently, too.

You should probably learn what words mean before you use them, instead of just saying them, hoping people will take pity on how fucking dumb you are and explain the words to you.

I have only two players for such games nowadays, and I would prefer to keep the games at that number.

Here is a screenshot of the NPC roster for one of the two campaigns I run. Pardon the low screenshot quality. The tokens look much better when zoomed-in.

Neither Warhammer nor Warcraft are low fantasy; they "were" dark fantasy before the retardedness of AoS WoD wrecked them and turned their aesthetic into something terribly gaudy.

I like to think that I do a reasonably good job with some of these tokens.

I see. Are all those fox people Arcanaloths?

...

No. Some are guardinals:
lomion.de/cmm/guardina.php

Planescape has a surprising amount of animal-people outsiders. There are bear-people warden archons and ursinals, and arcanaloths might be hounds, jackals, or sometimes foxes like Shemeshka.

I'm trying to make a real high fantasy setting, but trying to set up metaphysics and cosmology, and have natural phenomena, societies and economies that follow the implications of the former, have at least the minimum relatability to be comprehensible and make sense in general without leaving any huge plotholes is proving to be quite a challenging task.

because in a world so sugary and perfect their problems cant be that bad

Metal music

Shemeshka? You mean that washed-up old hag? By the looks of that razorvine salad she wears on her head, I'd wager she's some kind of jinkskirt for the al-mir'aj guys. I think the razorvines actually took root and grew into her brain, because only a mentally defective arcanaloth would step outside looking like he/she does. She's not welcome in Gehenna.

Pic related is clearly the superior yugoloth. You should be grateful you can even look at this drawing of Lady Malvolia, you poor berk. Entire armies of yugoloths would fight and die just for a chance to kiss her feet.

Which one are you again?

...

My dick tells me I would love to be your player.

>Warcraft
>low fantasy
>grimderp

Sure thing, champ.

>warhammer
>low fantasy
>grimdark
The moment GW tried to make fantasy grimdark is the moment the game died.

You're mixing "low fantasy" with "dark fantasy." Something can be both "dark fantasy" and "high fantasy." For instance, Dark Souls.

Neither of them! I'm... uh... just a fan of Mal-Mal. I bought her entire line of clothing at Golden Volcano. My useless bezekira boyfriend went wild and couldn't keep his paws off me when I wore the same military uniform Lady Mal wore at her show. If you any taste at all you'll buy from her clothing line too.

Meeting her changed my life. Lady Malvolia is going to make Gehenna great again. I'm a #MalGal now. You should become a #MalGal too before it's too late!

If I touch that tail, will you die?

That would be exteremely fluffy

Japan actually had a pretty good heavy metal scene back in the late 80's. I generally use albums from that era when I run Jovian Chronicles.

youtube.com/watch?v=NEJf5SBgKhw

The answer to OP's question, or course, are JRPGs like Dragon's Quest, Skies of Arcadia, Grandia, etc. are lighter in tone (or just light aesthetically) and that tends to work into their tabletop games on some level; Wizardry and what it spawned were BIG deals over there so it's pretty influential. Whereas trends in the west are based more off of Hollywood blockbusters and Tolkien-esque fantasy novels. Which, past the 80's at least, take themselves more seriously.

There's pretty much a 100% chance you ARE a Westerner for asking this dumbass question, so chances are even by thinking of posting this you proved yourself a fucking idiot.

>mfw I can never take chinks seriously because they always seem and sound to me that they will start holding hands, frollicking in a circle while singing about friendship and sharing
>mfw no face
Also I'm not exactly /mu/, but that sounds like rock to me.

> I'm 12 and what is Berserk?

Are you responsible for this?

suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive/120/

What metal's here today? Daisuke Ishitawari, Naoki Hashimoto, 9mm parabellum bullet...

Warcraft is not dark fantasy since W2
AoS is still arugably dark

You're a kawaii foxgirl

>Warcraft
>low fantasy

Berserk is niche and Dark Souls word of God is meant to emulate western fantasy.

If any other series went on a hiatus for over a decade it'd be niche too.

For you, sempai

Don't know about you, but I love the aesthetic of JRPG-tier fantasy. Granted, I often find something to dislike, but floating cities, airships and the like are really, really awesome.

I do dislike certain exaggerated character tropes within japanese stuff and there's always something to rail against when there's a story. That doesn't prevent me from loving the shit out of the good ideas.

I like my fantasy both ways and as a mixed cross between the two, as long as it makes some kind of sense and is a joy to interact with, while you play with the group. (Death, trauma and other negative shit can be enjoyable.)

>with floating cities, airships, magic crystals powering everything and high saturation screenshots?
Warcraft has literally all of those and in greater amounts than most JRPGs?

>warcraft
>warhammer
>low fantasy

OP is so full of shit, that I can feel reality crumbling around me.

>WC3
>Not dark fantasy
What's your benchmark for darkness? I'd say the main character slaughtering thousands of innocent people as he descends into madness and becomes the most powerful evil entity on the planet is pretty dark.

Filthy weeb.

And it was shit.

Fuckers like you are why Veeky Forums and /v/ are shitholes. The whole "weebs are shit" meme needs to die.

Because Japan still has the ability to dream and imagine instead of being so fixated on realism. They aren't restricted by arbitrary rules that bind our reality. Also because Japan generally has more inventive and creative settings/premises than the west.

My collection of anime tokens numbers a staggering 273 files and 208 MB. This rises to 320 files and 246 MB if I include my monster tokens.

What would be an ideal place to upload all of them to?

Because when everything is magical and fantastical, it stops being magical and fantastical to behold.

Bullshit.

send me to the lower planes

Gehenna is full. There's no space for slaves. We don't need you. Stay out!

Butthurt baatezu detected. What's wrong? If you devils could just loosen up and relax maybe you'd learn to have some fun, but you're so concerned with your stupid laws and regulations.

My GM made the quest, but that is my character!

>implying
I like jrpg fantasy more.

/pol/ called in sick so /a/ covered for them today?

Mega?

Not all JRPGs are high fantasy, floating cities, crystal-powered magitek and cute girls with bubblegum-colored hair.

I've been wanting to run a campaign based on or inspired by the Dark Souls series for a while.

b-but brown girls

Warhammer has organized colleges of wizards that burn battlefields, a multitude of active Dwarven holds, Ulthuan and you call it low fantasy?
>Senpai, please.

Warcraft is the shiniest of shiny. Didn't you just watch that movie like every other nerd in the world? It was bigger in China than it was in the US and you're whining that it isn't as cool about Chinese Video Games?
>Senpai, please.

ASOIAF is pretty grimdark, but that's because magic has ebbs and flows and the whole point is that high magic went away for a few hundred years and everyone forgot.

You should check out Burning Wheel and Torchbearer for actual grimdark fantasy

literally what?

Veeky Forums gets "trolled" by racist cretins from /pol/ on a regular basis, but rarely see this weeaboo garbage

Where do you think you are senpai?

user you're doing that thing where you trick yourself into believing everyone "on Veeky Forums" has the same opinions and taste as you.
So then you act like anyone who likes different things must be an external invader instead of people who just don't like the same stuff as you.

But Dark Souls is the Nips' take on Western Fantasy.

>racist cretins
>weeaboo garbage

You got a problem with Japanese people or something? Don't like other people enjoying their culture? Does the cultural appropriation trigger you?

I'm a weeb, and I think we're shit. The problem is non-weebs thinking they aren't shit and that weebs are the foreigners to Veeky Forums.

>cultural appropriation
literally kill yourself famalam

I've always wondered, why can Japs do better takes on our folklore than we can do takes on their folklore?

>The problem is non-weebs thinking they aren't shit and that weebs are the foreigners to Veeky Forums.
A nice way to put it user.

The only ones who unironically call themselves weebs are either memers or normies

They're more willing to not have everything hard grounded in "reality" and western folklore tends to contain some ridiculous shit.

>Jap
reminder that jap is a racist term

I like to use it self-deprecatingly. I'm a dakimakura-hugging, figure collecting, plamo building weeb.

Where the fuck do you think you are?

Why does no one use low and high fantasy right? They don't mean low and high power, they don't mean low and high magic levels.

Low fantasy takes place on Earth, or otherwise the same universe as our own, with the addition of fantasy elements, like World of Darkness. High Fantasy takes place in an entirely different world, like Forgotten Realms.

Dnd isnt low fantasy very much depending on the edition
also theres exalted which is now really good

They generally do it extremely terrible.
Dark Souls is a exception, standing a literal pile of shit.Generally, a lot things is done in a way where things are mentioned "Spear of Odin: Gungnir", but it never DONE.
Dark Souls might be the only game I have played where it goes balls deep in Norse mythology, and it actually goes there. Most games stop at refferancing that shit exists, you rarely see Hugin and Mugin or physically climb Yggdrasil.

Even for something like Boktai, its just a referance. You are not actually climing anything resembling a world tree, and the general design is generic weak shit.

The west is generally the same as the east. The strongest IPs are Dungeons & Dragon(no actual world building or deconstruction beyond cool shit), and other system or books adopted into things.
The STRONGEST IP in the west for Fantasy is currently Game of Thrones and Witcher, but are adoptations of existing IP, where things that look good in original format can't translate well into a Interactive Medium.

I'm not a huge fan of self deprecating humor so that's probably why I don't like the use of the term weeb as a catch all for anyone likes anime or Japanese related things

That's the thing, stuff like Dark Souls, Dragon's Dogma, and a few others are examples of Japanese interpretations of western folklore.

What's the western example of interpreting Japanese folklore, without it being well, for a lack of a better word, shallow and cringeworthy?

I can see that, but hey to each his own. I myself draw the line at self-deprecating humor when it's just being used to cover up self-loathing.

>recolored Ran Yakumo
ORIGINAL CHARACTER DONUT STEEL

Legend of the Five Rings, maybe the Avatar series (The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra)?

I never saw Westerns devs trying anything with Japanese folklore. Except for Dominions 4, and it's not a RPG.

Oh, you meant WITHOUT it being shallow and cringeworthy, my bad

hi, its clear youve played neither of those games. While on the surface Dragons Dogma, and the "souls" series of games appear western aesthetically, the lore and themes of the story are in no way western at all, they are extremely eastern and thus are in no way interpretations of western folklore, but rather eastern stories with a western coat of paint. For an example of the reverse of this check out Jade Empire.

Avatar feels more like mainland Asia (China, Tibet, Alaskan natives) than it does Japanese.

I like horror games, So having eldritch abominations that terrify the players are better suited towards low fantasy settings.

>hi, its clear youve played neither of those games.
Except I have. Care to explain why you think they're just eastern stories with a western paint? Another interpretation of things I enjoy is good in my book.

Honestly because Jap fantasy makes no sense, no one acts like a real human being, the technology is heavily skewed in a way that makes it obvious it wasn't organically invented and the entire affair often reads like someone serialised the setting as a TV show, ran it far beyond the original setting as envisaged by the creators and then they just started making shit up to keep it going.

Care to give examples?

Ken-san, please.

Nice sterotypes, faggot

m8
The Fire Nation is literally Imperialist Japan

The aesthetics and culture of the Fire Nation are still very much Chinese.

In fact, because of that, a large portion of the Japanese wasn't a fan of Avatar because the Fire Nation brought back some bad memories that they'd rather suppress, making them very uncomfortable.

alot of the themes are not very western, cycles of death and rebirth, very neutral settings in which there is no real good or bad. The main character has a heavy weight of fateful duty on them which they must carry out without complaint, there are alot of very asian and specifically japanese concepts in these games, they are not really representative of any western folklore im familiar with. This is of course not a shock they were both made by Japanese so. If you watch alot of anime youd see a lot of similiar concepts honestly the only thing that makes them feel not so japanese is the heavy coat of medieval European paint over everything.