Originality

ORIGINALITY is greatly OVERRATED on Veeky Forums. The more unique things in your setting, the more overhead from explaining things to players before they can just get to the playing-a-story bit, as opposed to a setting that works mostly as they would expect.

Fantasy works because it plays off all the myths, fairytales, archetypes and popular culture that make up our common cultural heritage. It's over the top, but in a way that everyone is familiar with.

You shouldn't attempt to pull off the most unique and original setting and blow your players' minds with your cleverness - except maybe if you've all played P&P games for 20+ years and have seen and done it all already.

>The concept of originality became an ideal in Western culture starting from the 18th century. In contrast, at the time of Shakespeare it was common to appreciate more the similarity with an admired classical work, and Shakespeare himself avoided "unnecessary invention".

>ORIGINALITY is greatly OVERRATED on Veeky Forums
>Veeky Forums is one person

Every sensible person knows you have to balance "new" with relatable. Both DMs and players don't appreciate the same old thing over and over. It's about the setting/whatever FEELING fresh. It's OK to be inspired by something you like, but simply copying it note-for-note is shitty.

>You shouldn't attempt to pull off the most unique and original setting and blow your players' minds with your cleverness

I haven't really seen anyone on Veeky Forums trying to do this. Most I see is DMs or players looking for opinions or ideas. I don't know why you're attacking a strawman as opposed to bringing up the idea of people trying to force "muh originality" in a more neutral way.

>The more unique things in your setting, the more overhead from explaining things to players before they can just get to the playing-a-story bit, as opposed to a setting that works mostly as they would expect.

If you show-don't-tell this isn't necessarily so. Building a city in the tusks of giant elephants doesn't necessitate telling the story of how those elephants were killed or where they lived or any of that shit. And when the players come back to a razed city in a few years do I need to tell them what happened? Not really. They can speculate.

And when I do leave changes "in-text" as it were, it doesn't usually cost much effort either. Like how hard is it really to have thieves call the well-populated gallows in the center of your town the "nevergreen tree?" And how fucking stupid are your players that they would need an explanation for that shit.

People talk about originality like you've got to invent a new goddamn color, but that's a strawman version of what anyone is asking for. People want novelty. There are a lot of ways to hit that target. A lot of them are easy.

>City inside giant elephant tusks
I know this is a thread about originality but I'm stealing that shit

>ORIGINALITY is greatly OVERRATED on Veeky Forums.
I EMPHASIZE that Veeky Forums ISN'T a single ENTITY you FUCKING mongrel raised RETARD.

Veeky Forums, of all the comunities I know that deal with creativity and stories, values originality the lowest
it's a symptom of DnD normalization, people start to think the minimal differences between generic basterdized tolkien stories are significant

>ORIGINALITY is greatly OVERRATED on Veeky Forums. The more unique things in your setting, the more overhead from explaining things to players before they can just get to the playing-a-story bit, as opposed to a setting that works mostly as they would expect.

I agree, which is why I roll my eyes on every faggot trying to make native american Elves or inuit Orcs or whatever the fuck.

>City in Giant Elephant Tusks
Setting is Discworld-esque, a flat world stood on the backs of four elephants who walk in a circle on a giant turtle.

The City in the Tusk was founded by the first explorers to survive going over the edge of the world: They hooked their way around under the continent to land on one of the elephant's tusks.

Once there, they started initially building in a minor crack in the tusk, but eventually they started mining it out, carving Buildings from Ivory like they were that one tribe of native american cliff dwellers that i can't remember the name of right now.

What you're saying is true, but you're saying it like a total ass. There are some times when people try way too hard to make their settings original, oftentimes with ineffectual, trite trope reversals that don't actually result in anything original. However, I will still always appreciate a truly unique idea.

Mesa Verde.

The whole city is very slowly moving, back and forth as the elephant walks in it's inexorable circle, and suffers a scheduled very small earthquake every time the elephant puts it's foot down. People who live there keep time by the pace of the elephants.
---
The residents are a mixture of explorers who daringly ventured over the edge, only being able to travel down towards the turtle, survivors of maritime disasters where their ships were swept over the edge, and refugees who fled over the edge of the world hearing rumors of the city below where towers of Ivory stand.

Mesa Verde mind.

There's such a thing as trends, shitbird.

Man, the level of whining on this board is exponentially increasing. Now we have people whining about the concept of originality.

>People want novelty. There are a lot of ways to hit that target. A lot of them are easy.

Fuck it, might as well expand on this a little.

What's odd to me is how much emphasis those seeking (or bitching about) originality place on milieu and addition. With stories you usually have some structure (mystery stories work differently from hero's journey shit), a tone (comedy, tragedy, horror), and a milieu (genre trappings like you get in westerns, fantasy, scifi, etc.) People fail to recognize that juxtoposing new combinations of tone and structure with your milieu can make something off the wall with extreme ease.

For example you could take the trappings of some workplace comedies like Parks and Rec or The Office but juxtapose that with the setting/milieu of bureaucracy within the Eastern Roman Empire and maybe assume that some elements of The Secret Histories are in play (there's some demonic shit, plus a lot that might work for laughs). Bam. "New" fantasy material.

The second big thing people fail to realize is how easy it is to just return to the wells the greats drew on. History, folklore, allegory, and escapist fantasy are deep fucking wells. There's a lot that hasn't been played to death but that people have a pretty intuitive understanding of. Hellboy fundamentally uses the same source material and doesn't get piles of Tolkien comparisons, and people didn't need to already know who Baba Yaga was for her to work as a character.

Last thing in next post.

The last thing that really baffles me is how little value is placed on excision. If anything this makes your setting easier to grasp. If you're doing an alt history where Edwardian England colonizes the moon using cannons and a bunch of old legends and made up bullshit about it are true, do you need fairies in this game? Picking a central high concept feels fresh in fantasy, but what would make it feel even fresher would be jettisoning a lot of the cruft.

I can meme too!

WARHAMMER 40K is greatly OVERRATED on Veeky Forums. The more dark things in your setting, the more overhead from explaining things to players before they can just get to the playing-a-story bit, as opposed to a setting that works mostly as they would expect.

Grimdark works because it plays off all the myths, fairytales, archetypes and popular culture that make up our common cultural heritage. It's over the top, but in a way that everyone is familiar with.

You shouldn't attempt to pull off the most grim and dark setting and blow your players' minds with your edginess - except maybe if you've all played P&P games for 20+ years and have seen and done it all already.

Ha

>For example you could take the trappings of some workplace comedies like Parks and Rec or The Office but juxtapose that with the setting/milieu of bureaucracy within the Eastern Roman Empire and maybe assume that some elements of The Secret Histories are in play (there's some demonic shit, plus a lot that might work for laughs).

10/10 would watch

Theodora is a slut! A SLUT!

One of the things really annoys me is when people try to avoid using some "generic" concept, like elves, by replacing it with their own made-up shit that fills exactly the same function and would have saved everyone a lot of energy if they had just used regular fucking elves in the first place.

There's no point trying to do away with something you find to be "overused" if you are just going to leave yourself with an elf-shaped whole in your setting that needs to be filled. If you have some new, original idea that CAN'T be expressed in a familiar way then by all means use it, but don't just make shit up for the sake of making shit up.

See, I want to agree with you, but plant people are an upgrade to elves in every way.

I have rarely actually seen this in practice. Usually people just keep elves. They'll have scarecrows, tin men, lionfolk, winged apemen, munchkins, and then fucking elves and dwarves.

It doesn't have to be elves you know. Various goblinoids are usually the first to be replaced by some other kind of monstrous humanoid fodder enemy.

>Giving a shit about the placeholder fodder enemies
Found your problem

>Not giving a shit about fights you design
>Months later
>"Wow guys why do my players complain about all my fights feeling samey and boring?"

Probably because you keep using the goblin placeholders, user.

Huh. True, and well said.

But that does mean 100% of all D&D settings don't fit this bill (if that is what you are implying). Every one of the Tradition Dungeons and Dragons worlds is crazy intricate and often flies in the face of traditional monsters and dwelling despite it's own stereotypes.
Yes even FR, yes Especially Dragonlance and Greyhawk (Especially). ... I guess on the surface Nentir Vale (points of light) sticks to tradition but not once you get into it.

I am partially guilty of this. I made a race that is in a similar niche to wild elves, and in universe are the mutated descendents of elves and humans. I play them up as more alien and strange. They don't look like elves which to me are just pretty humans with pointy ears. They look like if you poorly described a ballerina to Del Torro while you are on acid, and he is on shrooms. Weird elongated limbs, lean powerful muscles, joints were there shouldn't be, sharp facial features and cold focused eyes.

And ONE of those TRENDS is eternal BITCHING about Veeky Forums not PANDERING to YOUR entertainment.

GROW some FUCKING balls and CREATE something WORTHWILE you WASTE of OXYGEN.

Also, learn to fucking write like a normal human, you tumblr level piece of shit.

I want to squirt my dressing inside a cute salad!

>Dick Splinters.

Not if she's lush and leafy instead of wooden.

Why? Does that strangeness actually play into your setting in some meaningful way? Visual differences are especially meaningless, since we are talking about a non-visual medium, but if you use the distinction to make them act or be treated in a different way it can be more than just different for the sake of being different.

It also helps that you describe them relative to elves, rather than going out of your way to separate them only to have your players mentally label categorize them as elves anyway and then move on.

But my players quite enjoy living in mountainous temples and walled villages with a poisonous belowland, user.
A constant threat of falling and the dangerous underdenizens tend to make for highly variable gameplay compared to terrestrial fare.
And it has less of the physics bullshit deep oceans bring.

Sounds pretty cool, user.
Anything else you want to share about your setting?

>Every sensible person knows you have to balance "new" with relatable.

Very good point. This is why when I made a post apocalyptic setting for my game, I left out a lot of the exotic stuff until later on, it gave the characters something to hold onto and make sense of so that they could then absorb the new stuff without feeling lost in an infodump.

Flying machines are generally reserved for the upper class and nobles. Everyone else has to make do with tamed blimp like bugs.
These bugs are common prey animals, so it pays to have a noble escort. Alternatively, you can operate in a large caravan with many, many, many lanterns and riflemen.
Journeys to and survival in the poison land is possible with appropriate respirators, but generally avoided due to extreme danger.
Fortunes can be made on these expeditions, as many a trade caravan will crash, and it is not uncommon for nobles to die via blackout, leaving somewhat intact flying machines.
Regular hunts into mountainous tunnels are performed both for food and to keep the population of raiding insects down.
People tend to be quite religious, worshipping sun, wind, skies, or certain notorious monsters.
Clan warfare is common, and would be emperors rise and fall a few times a generation.
Slave trade is practiced in some areas, and is one of the few ways a non-noble can pilot a flying machine. The slaves participate in combination airshows/bloodsports. Casualties are high and attempted rscapes common, but those who prove themselves may buy their freedom or be inducted into noble houses.

>tamed blimp like bugs
Silt striders?

This is more fair, but isn't the typical example used for whatever reason.

On an only half-related note, I love me some undead fodder for being easy to vary even while keeping in a narrow theme.

>infinite skeletons limited to the room with the bones
>incorporeality, parts swarms, and corpses in the walls/floors for ambushes
>slow-hard-to-kill shit
>rotting, easily-dispatched plague vectors

With the goblin niche I think the variation comes a lot more from the dungeon as a complex than from the individual fights. Firstly when you've got intelligent enemies using the terrain and trying to either fall back towards or summon allies (and if they succeed in that the fight's a lot harder). Secondly when you've got multiple factions in the dungeon and can play them off against each other (so your goblins were sent as spies for the goblin king, but some mutinied and went bandit while the loyalists got enslaved in the mines below). And thirdly when they modify the dungeon to suit their goals in different fashions. Goblin shortcuts are cramped dirt passages or rickety causeways that won't support most party members, while maybe gnolls and drow have a totally different way of handling their sections. Wide open halls littered with midden, the queen crouching and snarling on the tallest pile. Archways with secret doors and switches, maybe spies hiding in the vaulted ceilings.

Less legs, and also you don't live inside them.
But yeah.

That is why I call goblins placeholders. They aren't important, the dungeon and organization is.

So like the RPG Sweet Chariot (www.flyingmice.com/chariot) plus... I don't know... Naussica or something?

My main inspiration here were nausica, hammerfight, fighter pilots, and the terror of the ocean.
With just a hint if shogun total war. Fucking warrior monks are great.

Underrated post.

, PI?

I am sad that site is down, I wanted to mine it for ideas.

Remove parens. Add .html to the end.

Hey, the html worked. Thanks man!
Ill get working on reading tgis. In exchange, a little more setting.

While rifles are common, the extreme close quarters inherent on blimp transport and mountain top living leave melee weapons as the main option for people who want to kill somebody without also losing their valuables to the mist or bombing.
Harpoons can ensure riflemen don't pop your bug, as that would mean dragging themselves down with your wreck.
Light metals for flying machines are difficult to find and process, and most of them are made of recycled parts.
Power is a hodgepodge, with much of it coming from bug oil, but with electric or steam here and there where it is practical.
Short range radio is a thing specifically so pilots can say fighter pilot shit to one another, and large scale electric production is difficult enough only for the very wealthy to have long range radio.
Pilots tend to wear filter masks and have basuc repair tools, in addition to personal weaponry, in case of a crash. Most times they can't repair themselves and fly away, but it is better than a parachute into a predator's claws.
It is mostly human only, but there is a minority of mutants, spirits, freak, and the like to accomodate my love for kitchen sinks.
Magic is not really a thing available, bar spirit dickery and the occasional blind prophet.

Out of curiosity, how long have you been running this at the table?

This is actually a long dead one.
I ran it for a few sessins. The players gave me unanimously good feedback, but then I did that thing I always do and abandon my online identity and make a new one without telling my players.
Because I am terrified of commitment, but want to gm.
Sorry players.

Overrated post.