Awful fantasy

What did they mean by dick?

...

>not using miscibility rules
Not at my table.

Let me guess, she actually thinks she's being clever here.

>The high fantasy shitposter made her standard fantasy shitpost and the standard fantasy shitpost baited a high fantasy poster in its low fantasy replies.
At least she tried, I guess.

>And I bet this is the same kind of person who in one breath condemns both "standard" fantasy elves and the Japanese sexualized ones because standard is bad but deviations of the standard are bad too as long as I don't personally like them.
>Standard Elves and Jap-Elves
>Thinking that hating them as to be mutually exclusive
>Thinking both aren't equally condemnable for different reasons

That speck of Brown stuff on your tongue gave away your shit taste user.

But aside from that, I have to agree with you, this guy does sound like a faggot.

To paraphrase Pratchett, a big problem with fantasy books is that the writers only read other fantasy books for inspiration , so you've seen everything before.

>Anime was a mistake

I actually found that one pretty funny.

It's also that they ape the content and not the model.

So much irony in one post

I feel like there comes a point in the life cycle of every fan of fantasy where they get embittered about how "derivative" the popular works of the genre are and start sneering at every mention of "elves," but I've also noticed that at a certain point they also go on to realize that fantasy that aims to be contrarian for the sake of being contrarian is equally trite and take a more nuanced approach to

Eventually you Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Elf, and that's usually when you find the people most invested in high fantasy as a genre.

Most people who are still stuck in their "hurr Tolkien ripoff" phase never had much investment in the genre to begin with.

Friendly reminder that the Awful Fantasy twitter raised 90 thousand US dollars to produce a charming and wacky card game all about how dumb fantasy cliches are!

Why am I supposed to get mad about this?

The genre for the most part *is* Tolkien. It's like trying to have a Westen without cowboys and Indians.

People 100% centre themselves too much around Tolkien, both in for- and against- camps.

Why are you advertising for them?

>Fuck this generation.

You had me for most of it, but this shit pisses me off. Every single generation has said this about the next one or, alternatively, some contrarian within the generation.

IIRC there's some ancient greek text with the exact same complaint

What's the bar for high fantasy? At what point can something stop calling itself low fantasy?

When the average person can reasonably expect to interact in some way with magic at some point in their lives.

By the classic definition of "High Fantasy," a story is high-fantasy as soon as you're telling a story set in a constructed world other than earth.

By the modern interpretation of High Fantasy, its typically the difference between "Magic is an active force that influences, either directly or indirectly, the daily lives of the average person" vs "Magic is mysterious, distant, and strange."

Hmm... I feel like that's part of it, but then that would make settings like Eberron with widespread, low-power practical magic "high fantasy"

>Every single generation has said this about the next one
But demographically speaking, every one of those generations had the absolute certainity that there would be a following one. Our generation (and debatably the Boomers too) are selling our entire legacy and future on the other hand, on a scale hitherto unforeseen in human history.

Our generation isn't "those darn youngsters", they're literal traitors.

Eberron has flying ships powered by captured spirits. It is 100 percent high fantasy.

>Hello, my name is user. I'm completely unaware of anything that happened before the 80's. Please take me seriously!

That's not why Eberron is high fantasy. It's high fantasy because it's a constructed world and not "our world".

High fantasy is when the vast majority of people in the setting do anything other than perpetually eat shit.

Speaking as someone with a masters in anthropology and minors in both history and sociology, I hate to break this to you but your fear that you're living in the twilight of civilization is just as widespread throughout history and culture as your belief that the youngsters are ruining everything.

I like the latter definition far better because it seems to be less arbitrary and more useful.

>Star Wars has robots and Space Ships, it's 100% hard sci-fi.

Flying ships and captured spirits are indicators of the highness of fantasy. Robots and space ships are not indicators of the hardness of sci-fi.

We've already established that in the traditional sense of the term any story taking place in a constructed world is "high fantasy." We're talking about the modern construction of the term, where "High Fantasy" is taken to mean stories about high adventure with a lot of magic whereas Low Fantasy refers to the ASoIaF books or the Witcher Series, where the tone is gritty and the effects of magic on a person's daily life is relatively sparse.

The setting that is basically early 20th century America and Europe with magic instead of technology is the same genre as pic related?

Yeah, makes perfect sense.

>but your fear that you're living in the twilight of civilization
I'm willing to believe that. What I'm not willing to believe is that every generation had as much evidence to back that up as we do. Some certainly, there has always been a "last" generation for every decline, but not every single generation. We are, objectively speaking, fucked.

Witcher is pretty high fantasy, just with a grittier tone and Slavic folkloric influences.

Almost every single hard sci-fi story I've ever read has some form of artificial intelegence and many are actually ABOUT A.I. A smaller, but still significant portion of hard sci-fi tales involve interstellar travel.

Star Wars has both. It's absolutely hard sci-fi.

Don't be dense.

It's a pretty big genre.

Sure, we might have more evidence the world is ending than any generation before us, but EVERY generation has had more evidence of the world ending than any generation before them.

However, we ALSO have more evidence than any generation before us that we are an extremely technologically capable species capable of adapting to new and worsening situations- and every generation before us has had more evidence of that than every generation before THEM as well.

What it really comes down to is that our knowledge and power as a species is expanding extremely rapidly- our capability to both help and harm ourselves expands with that power. We may be closer than ever before to ending ourselves as a species on accident, but we're not there yet, and as long as we're around we also get closer to expansion to other planets, perfecting medicine, eliminating aging, mind uploads and AI, etc. At some point we will either destroy ourselves or make doing so unfeasible.

Well, alternately, we toe the line between the two until the heat death of the universe decides things for us, but I consider that somewhat unlikely.

Why does the green thing have tits for eyes?

Now hold on a second, you don't know it has tits for eyes for sure.

It could just be wearing a bra as a blindfold.

>We are, objectively speaking, fucked

Okay, and I'm explaining to you as a person who "objectively" knows more about these things than you, we're actually probably going to be pretty okay at the end of the day.

Your sense of scope and scale are really limited in regards to what demographics you're looking at, and I'd like to see what your predictive models are beyond entirely baseless extrapolation and doomsday signaling. "Objectively speaking," the next generation after the millennials is already here, and globally they're being born to living conditions better than any other in nearly the history of the entire world, in a historical period with less violence than any other in the history of the world.

What I suspect are your fears about islamification and probably "cucks" aside, The Kids Are Alright.

Oh, of course that's also possible.

Why does the green thing have eye-brow cleavage?

The point I'm trying to make here is that it's not necessarily the set-pieces and specific elements of a setting that define it's genre, it's the mood evoked and the themes expressed in the setting.

Star Wars is High Fantasy in space. The space ships are horses or boats, or even just a large gathering of people/ armies. Planets are towns or cities, the Force is magic, droids are basically just people.

In the same way, the bound spirits in Eberron are basically an analog to internal combustion engines. The spirits have to be bound in crystals and the trade of these crystals are creates power and wealth. Sound familiar?

>it's not necessarily the set-pieces and specific elements of a setting that define it's genre, it's the mood evoked and the themes expressed in the setting.
Right, but a setting in which magic is commonplace automatically evokes a very fantastical feeling. Just like Star Wars is High Fantasy... in space. That last bit is crucial. It could've been regular high fantasy, but the fact that it has robots and starships instead of golems and airships sets the tone.

4 u

>We're talking about the modern construction of the term
The modern definition is pure bullshit.

Great post.

>low fantasy dick

I'm incredibly triggered. Apparently sex can't be fantastic.

Yup. Just like how star trek and district 9 are both sci fi.

Why?

It's a useful and fairly intuitive distinction. Lots of fantasy elements, it's high fantasy. Few fantasy elements, it's low fantasy.

When you get into this "constructed world" bullshit it becomes pointless and arbitrary as fuck.

What if every generation is actually verifiably worse than the previous one?

>It's a useful and fairly intuitive distinction.
That's a lie. It's a nebulous distinction with very unclear parameters applied exclusively by pretentious authors and critics to separate "deep and mature" shit like Game of Thrones and China Mieville's steampunk schlock from "kiddy fantasy" like Lord of the Rings.

>When you get into this "constructed world" bullshit it becomes pointless and arbitrary as fuck.
Another lie. There is nothing difficult to understand about what a constructed world is. A constructed world isn't our world and isn't connected to it. It's as simple as that.

>It's a nebulous distinction with very unclear parameters applied exclusively by pretentious authors and critics to separate "deep and mature" shit like Game of Thrones and China Mieville's steampunk schlock from "kiddy fantasy" like Lord of the Rings.
what are you even on about m8. I don't know where to start with your bullshit but I think your problem is that you have a chip on your shoulder about "pretentious authors and critics" even though the distinction isn't meant to be a mark of quality in the first place and mostly just used by fans of certain types of fantasy to be able to discuss what they like.

>There is nothing difficult to understand about what a constructed world is. A constructed world isn't our world and isn't connected to it. It's as simple as that.
I didn't say difficult to understand. I said pointless and arbitrary. As if there is a meaningful difference between having to chuck a magic ring into Mt. Doom or Mt. Vesuvius. If there's magic in it it isn't really our world to begin with, is it?

Oh, and also, just because someone disagrees with you about something that doesn't make them a liar, you autist

>baneposting
>in 2016

That's it. I'm crashing this thread, with no survivors

...

It's not. Things were better in your day because you were young, and they were old. They thought you were more stupid than them and making things worse because you were young, but guess what now you are them. Someday I'll be them too and some other youngsters will have to inherit my mistakes.

Like said, it's not about set pieces, but tone and themes. The constructed world definition of high and low fantasy doesn't discriminate between that, or anything else between the sub-genres. The modern terms have far more use in every practical way, from determining someone's taste in literature to figuring out how you want to write your own stories.

I like the idea of possibly negative or unintented side effects of just downing all of the potions.

Literally how I'm DMing my current campaign. One of my players called me out on it.

>so what, is this just a procedurally generated generic fantasy world?

Fuck you, you little shit, it's only session 3. You've just ensured that the next time that you go to talk to an angel, he'll whip tentacles of pure light of his hands and spank you with them.

>I disagree with this guy. 1) he's a contrarian
>"our generation"; read: Veeky Forums troll uses empty buzz phrase to demonize literally anything they don't like about literally any millennial and got no backlash because there's an army of shitposters grasping at any opportunity to look above their peers to agree with them, what happens next you won't believe your eyes
>"I bet this is the same person (not that I have literally any evidence--I'm just trying to get all the rag posters from that unrelated issue to agree with me based on an emotional appeal) who CLAIMS all uninspired Tolkien ripoffs are not their cup of tea, but still finds depictions of weirdly idealized yet powerless rape-fetish-fuel pointy-eared thirteen-year-old trap characters ethically objectionable or at least says the trend was unexpected and makes them uncomfortable. HYPOCRITE."
>spams "our generation" again

When I saw four replies to this I expected them to all be making fun of the poster without realizing it was walking the line between sarcasm and trolling, but they're all agreeing with them... Was it not fake?

Read those replies again, a lot of them are saying that what he's saying has merit, but he's still wrong

> he'll whip tentacles of pure light of his hands and spank you with them

Careful, he might like that.

It's frowning

>D&D is tolkien

Initially, yes, it is so far removed from Tolkien now that they aren't equatable in any real way.

Tolkien is under powered low fantasy shit compared to D&D.

For example, a D&D Lich is a far bigger threat to the world than Sauron ever thought about being.

Several different dragon types, far more potent magic, crazy ass damage dealing melee fighters, mind-flayers, beholders, astral demons, etc.

>t. Shitty Millenial

:^)

I'm all for those generic, crappy knock-off fantasies if it's our first session together, but if we've been playing together for the past 3 years and your settings are STILL just "durrhurr NOT!WoW+Not!LOTR", then that's grounds for getting motherfucking

D R O P P E D
R
O
P
P
E
D

Fuck you, Gerald, you uncreative hack! LET ME DM FOR ONCE REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-

Of course

That doesn't mean it isn't true. Countries and cultures collapse throughout history, and things like education can play a tangible role in the life and death of a civilization.

>Initially, yes
Initially it had far more to do with Moorcock, Howard, and Vance than Tolkien (though he's still an early influence--just not a critical one). Just look at the pre-2e uses of Alignment and the existence of things like alignment languages, or how originally it only had a Law/Neutral/Chaos spectrum. Taken all together this is a very Elric way of looking at the firmament of a setting. And even now, spellcasting is a melding of what's found in Vance's 'Dying Earth' setting and some of the trappings of Greek classical elements.
And then of course there's the attached "OD&D setting", which is just weird.

I'd argue that D&D only truly fell into the "boilerplate fantasy" rut most people associate it with during the reign of 3e. That said, it naturally it did stretch outside of that as well, and D&D was always most well known for now-standard sorts of high-fantasy regardless. It just wasn't standardized quite the way 3e did it, as a product of how it had no choice but to consolidate a litany of different trappings into a a more dependably coherent ur-setting.

4e is almost comic book like--far more similar to the LotR films than the books, with an open committal to straightforward settings that are designed for theatrical heroic fantasy writ large.

Did I miss something? It feels like half the threads on Veeky Forums that stand out among the generals are about how going against fantasy cliches and abiding by them are both equally stupid and fantasy is terrible and we should all hate everything and that everyone except the poster is shitty and badwrongfun.
There's especially a lot about elves.

Also, seems to miss the point of this twitter, and also seems confused at this concept humans call "fun". It's not being contrarian at all, no more so than Pratchett was. Also, with that whole "standard elves" vs "hypersexualized elves", I feel like they're intentionally trolling by implying you can only have one or the other.

Is this one of those Mad Lib style card games?

Like in Diablo?

>Moorcock, Howard, and Vance than Tolkien
Yes, so much yes. Also need to mention Poul Anderson as one of the biggest influences on early D&D. Moorcock and Zelazny got their ideas of alignment from him. The troll and paladin are straight from his works. D&D elves are clearly a mix of both Anderson, Tolkien, and mythology.

Boomers are the worst. Xers are just their degenerate, incompetent minions.

By this logic Tolkien isn't technically high fantasy.

It can be, but not with "dicks" or "cocks." Even "member" just barely makes the high fantasy cut. Gotta have classy penis words.

Since when was Veeky Forums a place to react to shitty twitter feeds? You clearly don't understand how the internet centipede works.

well right now we are in the age of "mature" human only fantasy, which in terms appears to be just "History but less sophisticated", see game of thrones.

I for one will be glad when we can return to a time with elves. That beeing said i still dislike elves and dwarves as fantasy races.

Ha. These are cute little mini stories. They're not laugh outloud funny, but pretty cute.

~~~BEHOLD~~~

Somebody not retarded has come to fix all of your problems.

What is the real, actually useful and instantly understandable definition and difference of low fantasy and high fantasy?

Simple, and I'll tell you.
>Low fantasy; The rules of the world are like our world, but with fantastical elements or methods of 'breaking the rules'
>High Fantasy; The rules of the world are inherently different from our own

Case in point; most 'low fantasy' Game of Thrones or other fantasy worlds have people dying of malaria and infected wounds as much as they have trolls and dragons.

BUT in a high fantasy world, diseases are not caused by germs. They are caused by disease spirits, which can be appeased through X, Y, or Z.

~~~YOU'RE WELCOME~~~

So what you are saying is that if I had a setting in not europe, during the not black death, and toxic stank was actually the cause of that plague and miasmatic theory was totally legit, that this would be a high fantasy world?

Using potpourri gasmasks is now high fantasy? That's all it takes?

Twitter is total shit and this asshole is no exception.

>your thoughts on tis

Clichés become clichés because lots of people copy them because they're good.

The more clichés you use, the less your players have to think before they understand your world, the faster you can get to good RP.

Low fantasy dick spotted!

>Waaaah I don't have the imagination to make a normal fantasy setting work, so I'm going to bash anything that seems remotely like "generic" fantasy to me

This must be the guy who posts all the "What if the setting had *insert random gimmick here* in it?" threads

>Initially

D&D is far more Howard and Lieber than Tolkien.

Middle-Earth is not our world, in the way fantasy of the time used it.

If you read a lot of classic British fantasy works, a running theme is the fantastical being just over there. You walk into the woods, or into a closet, or sleep in a strange bed, and suddenly you're elsewhere.

There's no way to reach Middle-Earth from our land. It's an entirely different and separate universe, for all practical purposes. Theoretically it might be our Earth in the past, but it's really an entirely different world.

You seem upset