Genre is called "fantasy"

We need higher fantasy. One of the biggest reasons fantasy is so homogenized is that most fantasy races, and their cultures, are very human in nature

>Dwarfs are short stout stoic
>Elves are wiry magic aloof humans
>Orcs are bigger greener meaner humans
>Halflings are literally just short humans

If keeping these fantasy races, but you still want to be original, you need to stretch some of their qualities out beyond what's human. Maybe drop some of the qualities too.

It's so sad that we apparently can only have a Xith who loves yams, if the concepts of Xith and Xith liking yams have reached widespread cultural penetration beforehand.
Apparently we can't just show a Xith, and show how he gets exited about yams.
Apparently we can't have the story be about Xith, it seems like we can't establish things.

It's sad.

>That's a nice opinion you have. Care to elaborate?
Fantasy is very stagnant. Most of works are basically reiterations of Tolkien in slightly different sceneries. Truly original authors like Zelazny, Gaiman or Wolfe are rare and don't have much influence on overall development of genre.

Development in fantasy is measured by financial success rather than the actual value of work. Not that it's different from a lot of other mediums, but in case of fantasy that's rather contradictory: this genre is supposed to fuel imagination and be free from a lot of boundaries, but in practice it follows a set of dogmas and deviation from them is exception rather then something ordinary.

I'm not implying that something has to be over the top original to be good, but this stagnation is pretty sad. Notable number of sci-fi writers like Bradbury, Philip K. Dick or Asimov are part of literary canon in some way or another, while fantasy authors don't get as much recognition, which kind of speaks about state of genre.

I would be rather happy if you will prove me otherwise.

>Go find a fantasy setting that isn't generic garbage like L.E. Modesitte's Recluse books.

Homonyms.

This nigga understands.

>Zelazny
MMMMMMM, my dick!

>Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to ensure any possible benefit for which you may be eligible after the destruction of your body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure your receiving said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen.

>races this
>races that
>dwarves, elves, orcs
>winged whatevers
>lizard-whatevers
Try coming up with an interesting human people instead, for fuck's sake. I don't give a shit about your !NotHuman's totally original donut steel biology. I don't need to hear about their glued-on rubber fucking forehead.

Just try coming up with actually interesting human characters.

If you can't manage that, I don't need to hear about your totally original elves.

>Was Tolkien a mistake?
Yeah, or rather not he himself or his works but what they did to the genre. It defined the genre to such an extent that there's no shortage of stale copies.

Tolkien went to original myths and history for interpretation. Many post-Tolkien authors go to Tolkien to interpretation. Much like anime, the entire industry has become incestuous (which is why mangaka who have no fucking idea how boobs work can make a living drawing boobs).

stereotyper started long before tolkien
>conan

>Many post-Tolkien authors go to Tolkien
Not even that. The only thing people ever borrow from Tolkien are surface elements. The stories themselves and the writing style have always had more in common with American pulp fantasy such as Conan or Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

>ITT: Newfags who don't know the history of their own genre.

The ossification of the Fantasy genre into a strict formula is a relatively new phenomenon.

Go back and read fantasy works from the 70's and 80's and you will see SO much more willingness to experiment. This was an era when the line delinting Science Fiction and Fantasy was much less rigidly defined and you had tons of crossover between the genres.

Then in the 1990's it was decided that Planetary Romance and Weird Fantasy was no longer allowed. I blame the popularity of all those Forgotten Realms novels which solidified a fixed formula for Fantasy in the minds of a new audience and made publishers reluctant to experiment.

Yes. Come to think about it, almost all my fantasy is either Lovecraft-era pulp or '60s/'70s LSD trip fantasy.

You could start by picking up some fantasy literature rather than basing your opinion of fantasy off of green texts you've read on Veeky Forums about 5E D&D games.

>I blame the popularity of all those Forgotten Realms novels

I can buy that, it seems a lot of this so-called Tolkienesque fantasy has very little to do with Tolkien, and a lot to do with DnD.

There is no denial that there were great fantasy books, but we are talking about current state of genre.

For starters, can you name some relatively modern authors, who actively advance fantasy instead of walking on developed ground?

The best most unexpected /k/ ending I've ever seen to a fantasy movie.

>I blame the popularity of all those Forgotten Realms novels
It figures that D&D would ruin everything somehow.

I get where you're coming from. I remembered how some fantasy neckbeards would get triggered by any portrayal of a dwarf without a beard.

>Much like anime, the entire industry has become incestuous (which is why mangaka who have no fucking idea how boobs work can make a living drawing boobs).
Wow, this is possibly the best analogy to the problem with modern fantasy that I've ever seen.

>For starters, can you name some relatively modern authors, who actively advance fantasy instead of walking on developed ground?
The Game of Thrones books, the Stormlight Archive, and the Kingkiller Chronicle are all modern fantasy works, stylistically distinct from each other, and also hallmarks of their genre.

OP is complaining about an issue that isn't there.

I agree with ASOIAF being a landmark, but it exponentially gets dimmer and dimmer with each book.

Haven't read Stormlight.

Kingkiller is only worth it for Patrick's writing style. Outside of it there is literally nothing new.

They're may be popular, but aside from ASOAIF I don't see there any major influences. Even then, Martin's books are not the only ones that made low fantasy popular. I.e. Witcher was a big thing in Europe even before the games came out, but this series is not exactly very modern, as it belongs to 90's.

>What went wrong and how do we fix this?
by killing every human being on earth

>Was Tolkien a mistake?
yes, he should have fucking killed himself right after he came out of the womb, imagine a world without fucking homo elfs and gay hobbits, pure fucking bliss.

But Tolkien elves (in the books) are like, six feet tall and build like brick houses. Some of then have beards, even if it is noted as a rare thing.

>Anons complaining about how modern fantasy is stale and pandering to the lowest common denominator and the pleb masses that discovered the genre with DnD.
>But the truth is, there are many original high-quality works out there, but anons are oblivious on it because they're too retarded to read anything beyond classical fantasy.
>Meaning anons actually are part of the lowest common denominator and the pleb masses that they're complaining about.
Really activates my almonds.

I think the genre isn't stale at all. I think the problem is that books ( specially of the fantasy genre ) don't get much exposure anymore like they used to get in the pulp magazine era. Now most people only read books to look cool or fit in a group, meaning people tend to either read only what everyone else is reading or what no one is currently reading. And then new works of fantasy have a hard time becoming famous, because their best bet is only trying to get their work into a movie or TV series.

>What went wrong

People insisting that sci-fi themes, and fantasy themes are different.

That's why I call it sword and sorcery whenever I'm among people of equal powerlevel.

Now is the easiest time to bring your book to the public. Word of mouth is stronger than ever, and you don't necessarily need publisher to get exposure. Because of this comes a big problem - oversaturation. There is so much media that it's incredibly easy to miss a good book amongst the ocean of mediocrity. The ones that got into spotlight most of the time turn out to be flicks that pander to wide demographic. Commercial success doesn't automatically marks a hallmark in genre even if it's not a bad book.

Lets look at two hack frauds by the names of VanderMeer and Rothfuss. Both are about form rather than content, but first one is very innovative for his clever use of post-modernism and metafiction in his short stories, while the latter doesn't really bring something to the table except his quirky prose. Who gets the spotlight: the one that pushes boundaries of fantasy or the one that is simple to consume? I think you know the answer.

And there comes stagnation. There are good and talented writers that bring a fresh air into fantasy, but they're easily overshadowed, because oversaturated market honours those who are able to easily entertain wide audience.

>most fantasy races, and their cultures, are very human in nature
That's the point.

This is the same for sci-fi as well. Hell, it's the same for horror, for music, for films, for everything.

How does Veeky Forums feel about female fantasy authors such as Robin Hob or Elizabeth Moon? Both take generic fantasy tropes and mess with them to better serve their worlds.

Don't know much about those particular authors, but when it comes to female genre fiction writers, I love Le Guin.
Even when she writes a feministic book, she always handles it in a very subtle and reasonable manner. What actually funny is that some feminists criticized her, because Left Hand of Darkness used male pronounce for genderless race.

I've always meant to read that novel but sci fi doesn't really do it for me. Granted I've only read one of her short stories and as good as it was, just wasn't my thing.

I don't see how that has anything to do with being a homo or not.

>doing anything as fantasy as elves and dwarves is donut steel if it's not elves and dwarves
You are part of the problem.

This isn't entirely accurate.
Nowadays, it's also possible when a dwarf shows up in fantasy that people will expect him to have a shit-ton of swagger and oh-so-clever one-liners.
(While still being an alcoholic, of course...)

Write your own fantasy novel you lazy fuck.

>Marketing reigns supreme.
>Pandering to the lowest denominator.
>Avoiding anything complex or unexpected or even just superficially looking like it could be complex for fear of alienating consumers.
>And of course people actually often being dull as fuck.
So, like any genre of any product ever released.

This

Counterpoint: Dominions from Illwinter game design.

>Somehow today it requires the least amount of imagination for creating a new work

Stop reading pulp fantasy? I mean, there are tons of interesting fantasy worlds that either throw the steryotype away or play on the sterytope to make something new, on the other hand if you only read dragonlance and the such, it's no suprise that the only thing you get is a rip off of tolkien

Read this thread, you see these replies? That's the problem.

Fantasy is different things to different people and phrasing the question so broadly gets you nowhere,

>unironically comparing 30 years of writing to some chinese cartoons

>Fantasy is very stagnant. Most of works are basically reiterations of Tolkien in slightly different sceneries.
Almost nothing is, though. What you just said describes a lot of pastiches of fantasy, and parodies of fantasy, and summarizes a lot of people's first D&D campaigns. But practically no fantasy series with any decent amount of recognition published in the last three decades have been "Tolkien with the serial numbers filed off".

The Gentleman Bastards series is in no way Tolkien-esque, it owed more to Leiber and Vance. The Vlad Taltos series is more influenced by Roger Zelazny and Alexander Dumas. The Malazan Book of the Fallen has been said by Erikson to be influenced by Howard, Burroughs, LeGuin, Stephen Donaldson, Stephen King, Tim Powers, Glenn Cook, and his own study of anthropology.

The First Law trilogy, Night Angel, Mistborn, The Dagger and the Coin, the Greatcoats series, The Red Knight cycle, Kingkiller Chronicles, not one is a ripoff of LotR.

The idea that Tolkien pastiches dominate fantasy is just a meme, it's not an actual thing that happens. If you think it's a legitimate problem then your only exposure to fantasy is likely Tolkien himself and also Dragonlance; clearly you, personaly, are wider read than that, so I'm baffled how you could have fallen for this meme.

I mean it's more like comparing 15 years of chinese cartoons to 15 years of some shitty movie series.
I've met multiple people who are inspired to write fantasy by LotR despite never reading it, only seeing the Jackson trilogy.

Not familiar with Moon, and not a fan of Hobb. My only exposure to her was the Farseer trilogy, which struck me as a coming of age story where the protagonist never comes of age. I spent the books waiting for Fitz to exercise some fucking agency, instead he spends 900 pages brooding about his relationship drama while letting other characters dictate the course of his life. It did not do anything for me.

Also I didn't think she really did that much with classic, 'generic fantasy' tropes in that one; human-only worlds where all magic is some form of vaguely codified telepathic powers isn't really a hallmark of classic epic fantasy. It owes more to Romantic Fanasy in the style of Mercedes Lackey and Katherine Kurtz.

Tolkien basically codified most of the past western mythology and folklore, there's folklore outside the west but that requires a lot of research the usual writer isn't willing to do and the usual hollywood producer will never do.

It's also hard to create new imaginative ideas without overlapping with sci-fi, keeping it non-pornographic, and creating disturbing entities or furries. So you're limited.

>samefagging a shitty thread from yesterday

>Then in the 1990's it was decided that Planetary Romance and Weird Fantasy was no longer allowed.

Wait really? Like was that an actual thing, or was it just a trend?

No, the wrong step was Terry Brooks, who showed that you could be a huge commercial success with nothing more than badly written Tolkien knockoffs.
Which only happened because of a major problem: fantasy readers a whole prefer to read things that are just like the things they've read before. New, strange ideas don't sell unless you're in science fiction.

My nigga!!!

I can't really disagree with you critique of Farseer. Fitz gets shit on for about 1200 pages and does little more than what he needs to to survive, but there's something about a lazy and inept protagonist blundering his way through the hero's journey that I found refreshing.

Im working through The Live-Ship Traders now which is the next series chronologically (takes place in a different part of the world) but I know that the final series in that particular world brings The Fool and Fitz back together for a resolution with more impact. It's just a matter of reading another 6 books to get there.

Every fantasy nerd should go read Moon's Deed of Paksenarian though, regardless of the female protagonist.

Not much of a landmark, unless it's your first fantasy.

It's not marketing, it's the fans.

Seriously. Look at scifi. You have your derivative shit, but the genre as a whole always tries to reinvent itself.

>less in RPGS, alas. At least in literature they kinda try to do urban fantasy, for example: but somehow this doesn't extend to games

Personally I think fans think the problem is with the... the aesthetics of the thing, but it's more about the structure of the stories.
See the threads we have about new races, while apparently people still play 95% of the time murderhobos. And they don't even rewrite the old races, which is a very interesting thing if you think about that.

To be more precise it is probably best to say a feedback cycle of product, marketing (and marketing concerns) and consumer.

>Nerds hate women schtick

I got a hard drive full of 80s anime that says otherwise.

Bump. Need a little more time to reply.

Haven't read some of the works you've mentioned. Will definitely check them out.

Maybe I simply didn't have a very good experience with modern books that often get recommended. For example, I found Kingkiller, Malazan, First Law and Mistborn to be quite disappointing. They might have some interesting qualities, but I thought that most of them fell flat as a books and didn't bring anything good to genre.

If you haven't already, read the one-off stories Abercrombie set in the First Law world after the trilogy ended. His writing and characterisation both improved drastically after he finished the trilogy and the plotting is much better by virtue of not being stretched out over a 2 more books that weren't needed.

Mistborn and Kingkiller are both garbage though (especially Mistborn).

So... fantasy is like science fiction, but lazier?

It's been done.

>user thinks this is only the second time OP has made this thread

How to not look like a newfag on Veeky Forums:

Step 1: go to 4plebs archive and click the Veeky Forums link
Step 2: search for threads with Tolkien in the OP
Step 3: wow OP sure makes this thread a lot

Good point, but as a counter-counterpoint it is based on preexisting real world myth.

>Was Tolkien a mistake?
No, unoriginal people who autistically screeches at every fantasy writer who doesnt copy him are the mistake

I wrote a pair of books (nothing fantasy related tho) but sing i love doing short stories or read it i hang out in a pretty famous forum, and i see that shit every day, with someone showing off his work (for free) and getting shat on for the slightest deviation from the tolkien formula, the last one i remember was a guy writing about his interpretation of sea merchant dwarfs, and every single one complained about that with "muh tolkien!"

>it's another, 'user thinks the genre is all elves and dwarves because all the D&D campaigns he plays are like that since it's what there are rules for by default' episode

When I was a teen, after reading the silmarillion, I was doing my own world with a story, a little bit of it was kind of a rip off, but I wanted to create an extra race that are closer to god than even elves, they were kind of a rip off the moonfolks.
And the idea was that they left the normal earth through some portals because they run away of the conflict.
There was an origin of the world, there was a "pre era wars" there was a main characters, and odessie, multiple stuff happenling in diferent parts of the world, and the twist is that the bad guy wasnt that bad, he just love his brother so much that he refuse to let him go.

There was "angels" rip off, that pretty much turn into demons, but based on what their heart desire at the most important monent on their lifes, they turn into a monster or demon to fullfil that roll, they could even be just "good demons"

Also, eastern lore was avaible because the world was supposed to be avaible because the world was just to big, and there was a lot of mountains in the middle.

There was just a little pintch of steam punk like technology, but more primitive, it was really rare, I guess stolen from stuff like Urza and his inventions.

And I had a little book where I wrote everything that came to my mind...
and alof of it need refindment for sure

Yeah that makes sense. While Tolkien's influence is obviously there a lot of it seems to come through D&D, rather than directly.

>posts newfag tutorial while simultaneously acknowledging the problem
>doesn't reply sage to shit tier thread
bravo, user, bravo

But urban fantasy is boring and gay.

Can't do that anymore, user, it's called cultural appropriation and it's badwrongfun. You either make everyone a straight white nerd like yourself or you put pointy ears on them and claim they're not Asians.

It can be done right though.

That is new weird, not urban fantasy.

Why not both?

I enjoy Friedman but the husbandos can get old fast.

But the Recluse books ARE garbage. He said what he really meant.

Mistborn was a good book with two sequels that probably shouldn't have existed.

Because people - even fantasy nerds - can't get through Gormenghast, The Book of the New Sun or The Worm Ouroboros.

Hell, I had access to the unabridged OED while reading TWO and most of the time it wasn't much help with Eddison's vocabulary.

Meanwhile even a soccer mom can handle The Hobbit.

Not when done well. See: Grimm

But definitely when done poorly. See: Grimm again.

I loved the Book of the New Sun though.

You can't just put adjectives together and call it a genre.

I didn't coin the term. But if one adjective is a valid genre name, why not two?

A lot of good innovative fantasy recommendations in this thread, but what can be done to bring it into the tabletop scene? It seems like as far as our hobby is concerned, no amount of literary progress matters if the rulebooks still shove half-orcs in the players' faces.

inb4 "stop playing d&d"

>t the genre as a whole always tries to reinvent itself.
No it doesn't, it just changes its technobabble as whatever "technology" it was relying on before becomes either common or laughable.

Don't be silly, science fiction has a vast array of innovation, it's not all stories about scientists going too far, those silly humans ruining things, or the morality of a contrived situation but in SPACE.

>rulebooks still shove half-orcs in the players' faces

Attempt a free-form character creation and decide what the racial stats are that way rather than picking from a book. This can lead to some more player-driven world building and ends up way more fantastical than what passes for typical fantasy now. The best way to achieve this is to not play with the kinds of spergs who have "optimal builds" for their characters.

>Most of works are basically reiterations of Tolkien in slightly different sceneries
I hear this tossed around a lot but I rarely see a fantasy novel with a genuine elf in it.

There's Malazan, First Law series, The Black Company, Everything by Brandon Sanderson, Wheel of Time, Name of the Wind, etc., all popular and doing their own thing

I think this idea that fantasy is stagnant just comes from Veeky Forums and the domination of Tolkien inspired games. Actual books don't have this problem.

I'd argue First Law was the best thing he's done, with maybe Best Served Cold edging it out for not being dragged out through three books. All the others were pretty forgettable imo. I simply couldn't bring myself to care about anyone or anything happening in The Heroes.

What's wrong with Mistborn?

But the spergs are the ones that pick the most fantastical races and options in their quest for optimal builds. Normies are perfectly content playing elf rangers and dwarf fighters.

This. If you want to include a whole bunch of unfamiliar shit in your game, you absolutely must spend time talking about and preferably creating this stuff with your group so that everyone has an equal level knowledge and is at least somewhat invested from the start. Nobody wants to read your novella and nobody wants to play a game where most of the time is spent explaining things that their characters already know.