Would a setting thats '80s style' but still low fantasy appeal to you?

Would a setting thats '80s style' but still low fantasy appeal to you?
So basic things like kings and nobles still in power, knights, arcane academies but with a dose of modernism (is that what its called?) everywhere, neon lights, radio, cassettes, not!coke cola, etc.

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Brutal Legend: Vaporwave Edition?

Sure.

I'm sold.

The word you're groping for with modernism is "retro-futurism"

uhhhhhhhhh

user.

Please don't base your ideas of the 80s solely on Kung Fury.

First off the 80s didn't have ONE style.

And secondly, all these things don't go with a fantasy setting.

An 80s fantasy setting would just be a standard DnD setting with some power metal imagery.

Mad Max meets Neverending Story.

Anything 80sy appeals to me.

Except Hall and Oates, which spotify refuses to understand. Fuck you, spotify.

that's a better approach that OP's dumb memery

Hey now dude. Be excellent to each other.

It's not dumb, but a fruitful question.

The Japanese are kings of this kind of stuff. For a specifically Western vibe, you could put some Cold War / Star Wars elements. An orbital Death Star around a post-apocalyptic Earth. FTL Dragons.

You could fuse Han Solo and Mad Max into a knight errand type. Robots and Chaos Warriors are pretty much the same, walking metal men.

it's dumb because your premise is about shoehorning non-fantasy 80s clichés into a fantasy setting instead of examining the trends of fantasy worldbuilding in the 80s.

At any rate, the setting that's the most representative of those, would be Warhammer Fantasy Battle. You can use that as a guideline.

So, sci-fi noir mixed with low medieval fantasy?

I think it's about finding the right initial parameters for specific outcomes.

OP wants 80's aesthetics on low-fantasy.

He-Man and Eternia with a hint of Transformers would be closer than WHFB.

He-Man is pretty much Mad Max and Neverending Story by itself. It started as post-apolyptic Conan story, like Thudarr the Barbarian, but turned out more epic in the end, a children's fairy tale.

80s aesthetics aren't a homogenous thing, they're several distinct design/fashion trends that have a few elements in common.

No. Hereditary military aristocracy being in power in a developed industrial setting makes no sense. It's not possible to make such a setting believable.

If your technological level allows for mass production of electronic goods, it would surely allow for production of accessible weapons that make the idea of a knight obsolete. You would get shadowrun instead.

isn't that just The Witcher?

>No. Hereditary military aristocracy being in power in a developed industrial setting makes no sense. It's not possible to make such a setting believable.
40k

Right, he said it makes no sense.

A lot of cyberpunk fiction shows society reverting to a feudal system as traditional political infrastructures are supplanted by or merge with the military-industrial complex. The heredity aspect just depends on succession laws and the level of nepotism at work in the setting.

>No. Hereditary military aristocracy being in power in a developed industrial setting makes no sense. It's not possible to make such a setting believable.
laughingJunkers.painting

it makes thematic sense.

And 40k is a post-apocalyptic setting with extreme levels of technological discrepancies that can easily justify how a small military artistocracy can control the rest of the population.

The Japanese canonical science fantasy canon always has a feudal hi-tech society. You could also have a Dune-like setting with FTL travel and a nobility per star system.

Also the Illuminati of our days, while not overtly military, is an hereditary plutocracy. The training of rich kids necessarily must teach them to maintain an emotional distance from the poor.

Heres your theme song
youtube.com/watch?v=vriYd6tVq1s

Also have you considered Mirrodin?
Mirrodin is basically crazy 80s CD covers fantasy with laser swords and half naked laser barbarians riding techno laser tigers, but realized in a completley deadpan super serious way.

Really? Have you not seen North Korea, like at all?

It's not really a feudal system.

It's not about heredity - majority of modern capital is also hereditary, which does not make us live in feudalism. It's about what constitutes power.

A functional analog of a noble in a cyberpunk setting is a commander of a government-affilated PMC (come to think of it, the best example of futuristic feudalism is Battletech, and a good example of such a noble house is, say, ELH being de facto Devion private security. The setting also does not make much sense).

A functional analog of a common knight is a cop with his own tank (or a mechwarrior with his own mech).

In cyberpunk both guys don't have power, they are tools for the megas. What constitutes power is money. Or capital if you will.

OP here, good suggestions guys.

Not OP but considering one of my college thesis was on that shit, might as well butt in.

The 80's style and "dose of modernism" he's talking about is obviously NOT what the 80's were. However the style he is talking about is one of an interpretation of the 80's seen through a lens of nostalgia, cluelessness and a feeling of wanting to distill the very best things of the 80's and turn it into a powerful, delicious broth of a time which never existed.
Of course this style i believe came at the beginning from the rise of the Synthwave genre of music which if i recall was spearheaded by Carpenter Brut and miami nights 1984. The eastethic of synthwave at the time was simply that of 80's muscle cars, satanic panics and bomber/letterman jackets however as it increased and popularity it developped its own completely unique style which bled into non-music circles due to it just looking so different from any other modern style of art that was popular at the time.
Either way if you took this style i talked about and made it into a fantasy setting i doubt you would end up with something like powermetal, the problem is that the 80's style is drenched in technology which of course is anachronistic to a medieval setting. Brutal legend worked with its lore building because rock and roll dosent need that many electronics however Synthwave uses a staggering number of computers, synthesizers and other things to really be able to handwave things away.

Magic, I ain't gotta explain SHIT.

Well shit. TTG made something cool. Guess i gotta give that to them. Also i think thats the first action scene in the show? ah.

Welp. cant refute that now, can i?

>Warhammer

I was about ready to just let your autismal screeching about the premise not being rigorous enough or tickling your asshole go, but then you go and suggest this. Please show yourself out. It's a poor pastiche of stronger 80s themes found elsewhere and you'd know that if you weren't a mental deficient.

Toss in some Knightriders?

No, it sounds like you're just mashing a thing you like together with another thing you like without any good reason for doing so.

>40k
>believable

Please sign me up.
I am super interested in this.

>it sounds like you're just mashing a thing you like together with another thing you like without any good reason for doing so.
"Because it seems pretty rad" is a reason, dude. Not everything needs to be super autistic and perfect. There are other forms of worldbuilding.

It might take some careful planning and a gold medal in mental gymnastics, but highway knights or magical computers or whatever else could be good.

sounds shallow as fuck

It's just a core concept, absent details. Of course it does. Gold star.

Welcome travelers to my night club. The Kingdom of Camelot Lounge, where the wine flows as does the waters of Avalon and you bath in the shining neon light with your polka dots.

I want to play this game.
I want to be a cyborg lay priest.

So dumb. Distinctively 80s fantasy is already a thing (the epitome of it, really), and it doesn't have fucking neon lights and shit.

>First off the 80s didn't have ONE style.
Only because it didn't have any.

If we're going retrowave, it's sci-fi or cyberpunk. Maybe cops-and-robbers type stuff. The 80s were all about their cop movies and science fiction.

Fantasy was more rooted in the 70s rock and in metal

In a cyberpunk world, you could have Don Johnson riding a speeder; but for fantasy, exotic animals are more fitting.

I feel like there are a few ways around that. You could just have it be heavily anachronistic, I don't think anything is completely wrong with that. You could make it so that the technology is incredibly rare and sacred, horded by the lords and ladies, with modernish cities surrounded by poor rural lands that fit more into tradtional fantasy. You could have it so that certain technologies are treated as good by the population and others are shunned, ala Final Fantasy X.

I'm more stating that the "modernism (is that what its called?) everywhere, neon lights, radio, cassettes, not!coke cola, etc." in the OP is far more the futuristic vibe, rather than fantasy. digital watches and home computers, plus vibrant arcades pumping out Missile Command and Arkanoid, and kids watched cartoons about transforming robots and pet turtles mutated in radioactive waste.

Not to say that fantasy didn't have it's place in the 80s. Not at all, it had a strong presence, but it's way more at home with Maiden and Priest than with New Romantics and Synthpop.

Autism has legitimately made Veeky Forums a worse place lately.

what does that have to do with 80's fantasy though?

Fantasy + Scifi was definitely 1980s and when I say this I mean Shadowrun. Cyberpunk future + Fantasy Races and magic

Sounds like shit

That sounds absolutely fucking terrible. I wish those interested luck with their game but I'm packing up my shit and walking out.

>what is conan, excalibur, deathstalker, krull, dragonslayer, the sword and the sorcerer and fire and ice
Though fantasy picked up in the late 60's and early 70's i think it reached top popularity in the 80's but i'll relent that sci-fi was absolutely the dominating genre

By producing posts like yours.

Or this:
youtube.com/watch?v=3Oe7Q8OCm5I

This kinda shows how everyday consumerism can merge with high fantasy.

Fuck man, i dig the idea of synth pop bards with magical boxes that make all sorts of crazy sounds to amuse comes out lords and ladies as they recline beneath the light of a neon moon whilst knights with laser swords duke it out upon strange geometric planes that extend into the vastness in godlike fashion and where queer and horrifying polygonal nightmares roam.

Your metallic form seems to be fashioned in this style.

EXCELLENT!
[air guitars]

Now, such as a thing almost exists. In the sense that sci-fi fantasy mashups are a thing. See also: the 1980 Flash Gordon which is perhaps the closest. But the idea of sloppily pasting a style that's based on something else is lazy and dumb. Especially the sort of ridiculous cargo cult OP represents, with random icons thrown in for no reason.

I thought that was 1960's style stuff? Y'know giant fishbowl helmets and rayguns?

Usually, but not necessarily always.
Anything that is 'outdated sci-fi' is retro-futurism.