Which do you prefer

Which do you prefer,
High Fantasy or Low Fantasy?
strawpoll.me/12722337

Depends on the setting.

Didn't vote in your pointless survey, because depends on the setting.

Fair enough, survey is just there for shits and giggles
And yeah I completely agree that its very dependent on the setting, I guess I should have worded the OP differently, maybe "Which appeals to you more?"

Pic unrelated to post, I see

High Fantasy with a low power level. You can have as much magic and outlandish setting detail as you want, just don't let the player characters become over-powered videogame game protagonists by level 5 like DnD and all it's derivatives do.

>"Which appeals to you more?"
Still would depend on the setting.

It would help if you knew the original definitions were:

High Fantasy: Whole-cloth fabrication of a new world. It's not Earth.

Low Fantasy: It's Earth, but with magic which isn't supposed to be there.

Huh, I always just thought it was "High Magic Fantasy" and "Low Magic Fantasy" but people just omitted magic to save time.

Sorry for being a plebian, I just thought it would be a fun thing to talk about the strengths and weaknesses of both styles

Thanks for the heads up though

That's also wrong. It's low fantasy if there's any kind of connection to Earth. Narnia and The Worm Ouroboros are both low fantasy, as is almost all fantasy that came before Lord of the Rings.

Be careful with phrases like 'original definitions', user.
But yeah, OP, try to define your terms better, especially when you have a pic that fucks up what you're going for that badly. John Carter of Mars is not even remotely close to Low Fantasy, by anyone's definitions.

>John Carter of Mars is not even remotely close to Low Fantasy, by anyone's definitions.
Sorry, I should have spent more time getting the thread ready, I just grabbed some of the first images on google for "high fantasy art" and "low fantasy art"

I'll accept any insults thrown my way for my laziness and ignorance in regards to the subject though,

ur a fag

And your mother smells of elderberry.

I like both depending on how I feel and combinations between the two.

lol

This would make LoTR low fantasy.

But yeah, the low fantasy and high fantasy divide is probably the most unhelpful classification that I know of.

That's why I prefer classifying fantasy on the magic, either on the low-high axis based on the power and involvement of magic in the story or on the soft-hard axis based on how well explained and internally consistent the magic is.

But to actually answer your question, I prefer high fantasy. So many low-fantasies are just blatent self-insertion "I wish my life was better" sort of whiney bullshit escapism that doesn't broach any insightful ideas or interesting stories.

It's just hours of "gasp, things are so different here in magic-land!". The worst is self-insertion into the story, but only slightly behind that is using the main character as a fucking vehicle to describe your magical realm. Just fucking shoot me already. Sweet fucking jesus

In a Veeky Forums sort of setting, low fantasy at least has the redeeming quality that the players ACTUALLY GET TO LEARN about your magical realm and discover things. Which could appeal to some people. But holy shit is there just so much fucking tripe and shitty magical realm CRAP that I'd be wary as all fucking get out. Likewise, with a high fantasy Veeky Forums game, the problem is describing the world the players. You really need an established KNOWN setting otherwise the players don't know shit they're supposed to know about. And no, nobody wants to read your 57 page backstory about the setting. Yes, your magical realm might be great. No I really don't want to go. No I don't even want to visit. That's great, don't call me, I'll cal you.

>This would make LoTR low fantasy.
Nobody fucking read the Similarion. Nobody has any fucking clue that it's eventually going to be Earth. And hey, until the children are involved, even Narnia is high fantasy. You know, for it's... backstory/history/whatnot. But in come the Earthling children and down it drops to low-fantasy.

Lovecraftian fantasy

Why would it help?
The current definition provides much clearer classification between different sorts of settings.

>inb4 GURPSfag

Also
>inb4 phone poster

GURPS Fantasy is a pretty good read even if you never play GURPS.

So is pretty much every other GURPS supplement.

>magical realm

The cat is probably the most OP of the four.

>which do you prefer
>depends on the setting

no
fuck you for once that fucking answer doesn't apply at all
it is literally asking for your personal preference, you fucking faggot

cligning to that definition of low and high fantasy is like trying to say "gay" still means happy, and "boner" still means "prank/mistake" or that literally still literally means literally

you're just wasting everyones time being pedantic

Technically it's arguable, but I'd say low fantasy.
I love what was being called "high fantasy" in the days of yore. Tolkien is my favourite writer. But he is not high fantasy anymore - since things like D&D, Warhammer and Warcraft inflated the power and magic levels in fantasy SO FUCKING MUCH. LotR has nowadays more in common with Conan than with modern high fantasy. Consider also the fect that the best Tolkien RPG doesn't even have a caster option for PCs, just option to learn what in D&D would be cantrips for SOME of the races/nations

Therefore the borders need to be pushed for this differentiation to even make sense anymore. Or some intermediate term needs to be created

Also this, those semantic autists clinging to obsolete and useless definitions are quite amusing, if also pathetic. Or maybe exactly because of that.

what would it be called if my fetish is exploring a magical world?

An explorer/serious roleplayers. Who annoys everybody because by fuck they just want to get to the next part of the quest already.

I'm not sure what to call what I like. When I think of "fantasy", I think of fictional elements that really stand out, which I don't like. I like fictional elements to be extremely well-blended and seamless. Fictional/magical things should be widespread and stained into every element of life, in such a way that they feel natural and the author has thought out every consequence of the fictional monsters/magic/races/materials.

Fantasy should feel truly foreign. Not "our world except with dragons and fireballs", but a world which has actually suffered the realistic consequences of having dragons and fireballs, and as a consequence the aesthetic and working structure of the world has changed, and the people have different perspectives than real people do.

I think he meant that he likes a setting by its quality, not merely by what is happens to contain.

IDEK OP and both those look cool as fuck in the pics. I prefer the high(?) fantasy which is like something from a Dio album. The whole "Knight in shining armour with his barbarian friend defeat the skeleton horde in the marshlands to save the maiden from a necromancer"