I have a weird question to ask, Veeky Forums. Why is the wast majority of fantasy in set in a pseudo-medieval world...

I have a weird question to ask, Veeky Forums. Why is the wast majority of fantasy in set in a pseudo-medieval world? Is it just a legacy thing or is there is actually something about that time that appeals to the genre? I'm getting kinda thick of all the knights, kings, elves and Gendalfs. I think I would like to run weird non-modern and non-medieval fantasy game. Are there any good games or game settings like that? Is there something I should read or watch for inspiration?

Weird non-modern and non-medieval fantasy thread, I guess.

partly legacy, partly swords and bows

>Why is the wast majority of fantasy in set in a pseudo-medieval world?
basically it's due to suspension of disbelief, the closer the setting is visually to the world the audience are familiar with the harder time they have accepting fantastical elements, by making it sort of medieval Europe you can get away with a lot more and the audience will also probably know enough about it that you don't need to explain the more mundane stuff

Fantasy antiquity, run something where high magic and artifacts are being created and everything seems to be on the upswing. If you later feel like doing medieval shit have the ruins of your previous antiquity setting still be around, and high powered items that were common in fantasy antiquity be artifact level in fantasy medieval.

>I think I would like to run weird non-modern and non-medieval fantasy game.
Isn't that the second most popular kind of fantasy? Especially if "non-modern" can mean futuristic.

We had bows since what? - neolit? and swords since the bronze age. Is if want to talk gear you'll probably better off talking about armour.

Eh, I probably should have been more specific. I'm not talking about sci-fi with psioncs.

Most settings aren't pseudo-medieval so much as a wild mix of pre-gunpowder technology. You don't see a lot of fantasy settings with actual feudalism, for example.

If anything, medieval Russia and the medieval middle east is arguably closer to the average fantasy setting than medieval western europe.

Romanticism, mostly. And that era can reasonably tie in most other cultures as "mysterious race from far off land" because that was right at the end of such a thing existing

Lazy worldbuilding. "Ye Olde Medieval Times" with wizards bolted on is a lot easier to write about than "modern world with coherent explanations for why the world isn't completely different from what it would be like if magic had existed for the past thousand years", mainly because we understand our time more than ye olden times.

Yeah, but olden times are a lot of different time periods and different places. I don't know more about late medieval Europe than Greek city-states or neolithic tribes.

I would play the shit a game about stone age style tribes dealing with weird magic and strange monsters.

Hack writers trying to ape Tolkien's success.

There's a D&D derivative for that, Wolfpacks & Winter's Snow

Well I mean... I got a bronze age fantasy setting is that different enough?

Cool. I'm kinda thinking Numenera-style shanagens minus pseudo-medieval setting and, from what I've been told, a pretty bad system. I could probably mine Numenera for cool ideas.

I think part of the appeal is the tradition of it. History has so much fantastic mythology to draw upon that it's very easy to make a fun fantasy setting along those lines, and the aesthetics are on point.

Of course there's a lot of radically non-European Medieval fantasy, and some of it's pretty mainstream. Morrowind, for example, or the Stormlight Archives. Jeeze that stuff is out there.

A couple reasons.

A) It's comfy. Many (but certainly not all, or even most) capture the very nice parts of medieval life while being able to conveniently skirt around the bad ones. Adventurers stop the threats around your villages (instead of bandits, goblins, etc) and disease and poor nutrition can be waved away with magic or religion.

B) The generic 'medieval fantasy' actually covers a god damn humongous spectrum of time and draws elements well enough from all of them. All the way from the roman empire to the pre-industrial pike and shot era. While Bronze-Age fantasy is usually kept separate; the truth is the specific details and significance about these different time periods can mostly be melded together without much difficulty.

C) It lends itself easily to heroic fantasy stories and tales. I don't want to go into it further for fear of starting an argument.

Personally, I'm a pretty big fan of both tribal fantasy and industrial fantasy, the closest things to that generic medieval fantasy, but people tend not to like them. At least they think the stories can't be as interesting, or something.

One final note; very few fantasy settings are actually just Fantasy version of X country or place in Y time. Most have unique elements, races, magic, nations, etc. They are all in a few ways unique.

I always found it stupid.

Medieval fairytales and legends had kings, castles, and knights because that was normal everyday reality for the storytellers.

The fantasy was the supernatural intruding on that reality. Be it a dragon, a witch, talking animals, or a deity.

Coralline was a nice example.

Fuck me I need to sleep

*Coraline was a good example of a modern fairytale

Bump

Greek or roman fantasy?

That would be cool, glory of heracles was pretty nice

Can you give me a couple of examples of tribal fantasy? I think I might want to read something like that.

Check Blades in the Dark. Is industrial fantasy ala Thief and Dishonored.

Because fantasy = LOTR.

1. Tolkien
2. Most fantasy writers come from a European or European-derived culture, so they're more familiar with European history and culture than they are with others. The medieval period works because starting with the Age of Exploration and the Renaissance, we started filling in all the blank parts of the map; the medieval period still had tales of dragons and ogres and such.
3. Eventually, it became "the way things are done".

To be fair, there are actually plenty of fantasy settings not based on medieval Europe, so