The problem with high fantasy

Does anyone ever feel like it's really hard to get into most high fantasy settings...? I mean, like, ok, there is Lord of the Rings, that I can get behind, I'm not an expert, but I know what it is about, I can recognize it very easily, but then when I look at something like D&D or Magic the Gathering i'm just like "uuuuuugh'. And don't take me wrong, I like those games, I enjoy them, but it's basically impossible for me to even know from where to start to approach their lore, or how follow it, I know things from them, but in my mind they're basically "ok, so...Yes, fantasy, medieval, but with...Things" I cannot in Magic, like I can in say...Yugioh...Automatically know what most of my cards do just by looking at them, or even know exactly what they are besides "It's a dragon, it's a soldier, it's a (creature)'. I've tried to read into the story, and I do find the concepts interesting, but it's really hard for me to remember it after a while, and I didn't find it that appealing to begin with, tho I can't really say why.

Now...LotR was the first thing I related to medieval fantasy, even tho the idea of what it is has always been ingrained in my mind since forever just due to exposure in media, so it's normal that for me, that's the one form of medieval fantasy I can fully get, for you it might be different, but I feel like the fact that they're so similar to each other makes it kind of hard to get invested in more than one...D&D is an extreme example, since it has multiple continuities and multiple worlds inside the multiverse.
I feel like the more a setting deviates from the rest, the easier it is to get invested in it. For example; I've played far more hours of Elder Scrolls than I have Final Fantasy, yet I could probably tell you more about what FF is about than I could ES, simply due to FF standing out a lot more for me.

Does anyone else feel this way? Or is it just a ((you)) problem?

Depends on the setting and the reader. So, it is partially you, and partially what you read. Broaden your reading horizons. Go to a used book store, hit the Sci-fi/Fantasy section, and pick up some books written before 1980. There's some incredible stuff out there that never, ever, ever gets mentioned.

This sounds like a personal taste thing.
I understand, though do not share your difficulty.

Any names I should be looking out for? I tough a lot of currently on-going fantasy series could be dated to around that time.

Is it not hard for you to remember what the differences between the Elfs of different works of fiction are? That's an example of the kinds of difficulties I find, also just making weird creatures with weird names and not giving them that many defining characteristics.

This poster is right, read more high-fantasy novels, Wizard of Earthsea's a good start

>Wizard of Earthsea's a good start

Never heard of it, but the plot sounds nice and simple, so I'll give it a go.

... That's not high fantasy.

That's like detailed world building in your games.

.... The funny thing is that YGO is getting into that with recurring characters and archetypes in cards.

..... Do you only play attention to the first manga, before Duel Monsters was a thing?

Just flip through a couple of pages in the middle and see if you dig the style

LotR established and popularized many conventions used by most fantasy settings today. The difference is that LotR had things like magic in more of the subtle sense of folklore and fairy tales.

Picture an industry that starts out with a simple premise. Then hire some interns, let the interns make their mark on the setting, repeat this process every 5 or 10 years for 50 years straight. Now you have modern fantasy. Physics now barely exists and folklore and myths aren't mystical and unknowable, they're just hitpoints.

I get tired looking at character races and seeing okay this is fignob, fignob is like a fobnog but with a different power and glowing eyes, and fobnogs are somehow related to elves. Or I see demons and it's like okay evil monsters are created or influenced by otherwordly, these are demons, but there are also devils, and each has lesser demons and regular demons and greater demons. Got it, sure. Wait!!! Not so fast, there are also elder demons which created the other demons, but even those other demons had even more ancientest demon creators totally more ancient and different than ancient demon creator demons. Also some other otherwordly entity created the demon world and demon spawn, and something created those creators too.

I get real tired of that shit real fast. Like I wont even care what it is anymore, just tell me how many hitpoints this cthulhu has and if it's dead yet.

I read all of Duel Monster, stopped paying attention after that. Cards had a lot of personality in that tho, and they were very distinct from each other, so it wasn't very hard for me to recognize them and know what they did and how powerful they were just by looking at them.

In Magic I always need to read the cards in my hand unless I've been playing with the same deck for a long time, and even then I mostly recognize just sort of the general outline of what they are, I don't really know anything about them from a lore perspective.

I didn't read your post but my problem with Warcraft is they have started making orcs too large. I mean, wasn't Grommash supposed to be slender for an orc? In the war3 cinematics, they're very muscular and larger thsn humans, but come the fuck on. Garrosh in WoW and the orcs in the warcraft movie look like fucking ogres.

when did it become popular to hate fantasy

Yeah, he was.

He was also supposed to enjoy singing, hence the SCREAM part.

It didn't. Veeky Forums is just full of contrarians.

This

Veeky Forums just likes to hate stuff

>LotR High Fsntasy
Because only few elite charachers knowing and using magic makes it a high fantasy. Snot like Gandalf uses a sword or anything. LotR is cool because it is subtle on the fantasy elementsband they feel natural as a result.

Shortly after fantasy was invented.

I don't, I enjoy some of it, it's just an actual thing I can't help with most of it.

That's mostly his writing. There's not a lot of magic in the setting (Besides with the gods throwing shit around or whatever and the rings and shit) and the magic heh of the setting is mostly done through the interactions of the characters and the history of the setting, like the languages and the cultures and stuff.

I'll admit I'm not very well versed on the subject because I've only seen the movies. I'll probably get called an ignorant pleb but whatever. I worldbuild as a hobby, I'd like to think I might know a couple things about it.

In the end it's still Veeky Forums. And Veeky Forums hates the things they devote their time to.

Don't worry about it. Stringent lore is a cancer on roleplaying. When everything your character can do is already prescribed by the way they would act because LORE it's not even roleplaying anymore.

I had only glanced at that art for the OP before, but looking at it closely it's pretty grotesque all the elf bodies strung up like that. Blizzard masterbates to killing elves, or making them slaves or what have you. The setting wouldn't really even change if you just take them out all together, wonder why they're there.

I don't have trouble with that. Any examples of those weird named, boring things?

.... Why the fuck are you comparing a book to a card game?

Why the fuck are you comparing a book to a framework that allows people to make their own unique fantasy settings?

>Is it not hard for you to remember what the differences between the Elfs of different works of fiction are?

if you are some kind of fucking casual I guess.

t. tourist

nobody who have been here long enough actually spout shit like "(insert board here) hates (what the board is intended for)", it's mostly because tourists like you who bring your inferior taste and stupid questions to the board you are visiting, get BTFO by the residents for being a retard with shit taste and think the above-mentioned board just hates (thing) because they don't echo your taste.

Yeah I get the same, the D&D setting and lore behind it currently feels artificial whereas other universes feel more organic and thus easier to get immersed into.

I thorought the Scream part of his name was because he let out a huge scream when he charged into battle. Like it was supposed to be ear piercingly loud or something

I am going to be blunt here because you type like someone who doesn't like to read texts, as evident from your inability to condense your paragraphs.

The answer to your problem is to open up google and just start reading, be it PDFs or wikis. While most wikis are paraphrased contents from books, they do a good job in transitioning their content into bite-size information that can catch your eye because of how unique they are, thus helping you to remember.

If you seriously find it hard to distinguish races between different settings, try and find the most interesting bit of information you remember, for example:
Orcs
>WH/40k Orc/ks: fungi-based lifeform
>Warcraft Orcs: aliens who crossed a magic portal into Azeroth
>LotR Orcs: tortured elves (only origin I remember, I am not that well-versed in LotR myself)

Lord of the Ring orcs were theorizing by Tolkein to be warped elves, but he didn't like the idea so much and it doesn't quite explain their gigantic numbers. Perhaps at one point they were, but what we see now is basically a creation, they are bound by magic and don't have the usual souls/spirits other races do. That is why they are so cowardly, and numerous. Orcs are generally dumb in LoTR but terrifying in that they have no morality, so will eat anything, even their own kind.

>"I don't like thing"
Good for you.
Read low fantasy settings, then.

It's sounds like what you're saying is that a lot of fantasy is very derivative of other fantasy stuff, which creates a cycle of things feeling samey and generic.

It is true, and it is a fault of the genre. Not the main reason I find high fantasy uninteresting, but it's a factor.

>Tolkien invented two fictional languages for his mythology
>his books are some of the greatest fantasy ever written.

pics kind of shit mate

Oh you haven't heard? We're all supposed to hate Tolkien now and say Lord of the Rings is a blight on the genre because... uh... Reasons, I dunno something about D&D or the filthy normies or reddit probably...

>D&D
>related to Tolkien in any way but race names
It's based on Conan, not LotR

Not used a lot outside of names, and names are usually simple in that. When you are getting new weird words thrown at you every 5 minutes it starts to just feel like white noise, especially with most fantasy languages being some scandinavian-german monstrosity that will sound even more just like white noise if your ears aren't accustomed to it.

...

I'm comparing the lore of a book series with games and movies to the lore of series with books games and movie/cartoon in the case of D&D.

>The setting wouldn't really even change if you just take them out all together, wonder why they're there.
Elves are responsible for pretty much everything, user. They're literally the only reason the Burning Legion knows about Azeroth.

When it was appropriated by bearded, GOT-watching nu-male faggots.

>Kosak masterbates to killing elves
Fixed. Although night elves were sidelined to hell after TFT, they still had a roughly even mix of victories and defeats up until Cataclysm, when Kosak took over as head writer. He's openly stated he hates night elves, so pretty much every appearance they had after that involved them getting fucked over in some way or another.

You can also thank him for turning Sylvanas into Lich King 2.0, and Thrall turning into Green Jesus.

No one cares about your particularly specific description of who you got cucked by.

why before 1980? Because it's not known now or because it will be better?

I'm really confused as to what exactly your problem is.

Is it that different fantasy series use elves and orcs and shit and you get confused as to what backstory they have in each setting? Because generally each series will have their own origins for each race, but will converge on a few basic traits to make them easily grokkable.

For example, Elves in any series will have wildly different origins, powersets, and world hierarchy, but they all share the same general tropes- Tall/thin, pointy ears, often haughty, loves nature, and are often rivals to dwarves or another physical, stout race. It doesn't matter if we're talking about Bosmer, Altmer, or Dunmer from Elder Scrolls; Kaldorei, Queldorei, Sindorei, or Shaldorei from Warcraft, the Eldar from Warhammer 40k, Tolkien's elves, all the various elves from MTG, Artmeis Fowl's elves, Dragonspell emerlindians, or anything else- they're all still elves.

I think the answer to your question is that they're often similar to quickly ensure that the reader/player/whatever can grok the setting/character races without having to spell it out every single time. People are intimately familiar with the classic fantasy races, so simply stating that a character is an elf or a dwarf or an orc will jumpstart their characterization.

Not him, but I'm guessing that he specified before the 80's because that's before a lot of the major influencers hit the scene, most notably Warcraft and Elder Scrolls. Additionally, most normies didn't know much about Tolkien until the movies came out, the first of which were animated and in the late 70s/early 80s.

I have a friend who doesn't like reading scifi because (as near as I can tell) the tropes and schticks are less standardized and he feels like he needs to be re-oriented each time.

Try reading Discworld or the enchanted forest chronicles, op. See if your issue persists for general meta-fantasy parody.

>...? I mean, like, ok,

Warcraft and Elder Scrolls came out in mid nineties and didn't have influence until the 00s so they're the new kids.

What exactly do Warcraft and Elder Scrolls influence? They are popular, sure, but I don't see many other setting taking the "everything is a subrace of elves" approach of Elder Scrolls, or the "pile on as many anachronisms as possible" approach that Warcraft does

Warcraft has popularized ridiculous armour and Elder Scrolls ridiculous swords.

Most good high fantasy settings start off pretty familiar, but slowly introduce more uncommon elements as things go on. But (and this has been a big problem for a lot of fantasy writers lately) bad settings will try to throw everything out quickly in an attempt to say "see how different we are?" and try to get a reader's attention.

It's substituting subtlety and craft for gimmicks and autism.

I agree. After a certain point, the answer for everything is just "BECAUSE MAGIC" instead of being based on something familiar.

Or worse, when things are taken for granted, and widely available but for have no effect on the setting. Like access to resurrection magic.

I dunno the other user was talking about it. I don't think much thought has gone in to those settings personally so I wouldn't know what they influence. Bad writing?

Start with the first book published. Read the lore chapters. Then go in chronological order. And when you say you want to do something and some sweaty nerd pushes his glasses up and says "actually in the expanded universe..." you just say "yeah okay" and do it anyway.

>Warcraft has popularized ridiculous armour and Elder Scrolls ridiculous swords.
Exfuckingscuse me?

>popularized

yeah, you heard right

Warhammer just isn't that well-known. WarCraft was the one with the former gold standard MMORPG and had a arguably successful high budget cinematic movie (Thanks China....)

Eh, I think you just did all your YGO card memorization when you were young.

Why the hell is Trance better than WatttailDragon?

This problem doesn't exist in books. Stop playing video games and read one.

.... Hahahaha

Allow me to get pissed about Eragon.

He was able to burst peoples ear drums with his war screams.

They did kinda show up during the Seige of Orgrimmar.