Different Settings Explained

Steampunk

>Skyrim
>Low Fantasy

Teslapunk

Skyrim doesn't shoehorn magic everywhere though

Dieselpunk

Atompunk

Every image's description and most of the examples are utter horseshit.

is the most offensive example because it implies there's any actual work of fantasy where everything is such an extreme grimderp nightmare.

Whoever made this shit needs to not only read more but actually fucking pay attention to what they're reading.

>you can literally buy spell books from a corner shop

Urban Fantasy

Cyberpunk and Post-Cyberpunk

Science Fantasy

>Futurama
>Post-Cyberpunk

My fucking ass. It's space opera in its purest form. Like it's just a fucking parody of Star Trek.

Who made all these? Was it you, OP?

What I mean is that the world feels mostly grounded in reality, armour and weapons are normal-sized and large sections of the population distrust or don't use magic (Elves being an exception).

These are wrong. The actual literary definition of High Fantasy is “takes place in a fictional world”. Low Fantasy takes place in the real world.

If the story doesn’t take place on Earth it can’t be Low Fantasy. All those examples are High Fantasy.

No I found it when I made a google search. I haven't heard of half the examples.

>Steampunk set in Europe, Mexico, and U.S.
>tfw too few Asian steampunk things

And Imperialism makes it so open for this shit.

As a funny side note: I actually found a book some time back called 'Steampunk Armies of the World'. And surprisingly, it wasn't too bad.

None of the people featured in it had arbitrary gears, cogs, and pipes. All of that was kept to the technology such as anachronistic (at least in function) firearms, equipment (including power armor), and even touched on more obscure locations not commonly done in steampunk such as Canada, U.S. had both Union and Confederate, Arabia, China, Vietnam, and Japan.

Sadly, I couldn't pick it up. It was kind of interesting.

Don't forget enchanted weapons.

In a bit of seriousness, based on how seldom NPCs used any type of magic and how shitty magic system was, (also the magic college) I'd say Bethesda was leaning towards low fantasy.

my favorite aspect of Urban Fantasy is the juxtaposition of mundane and fantastic.

The nightshift intern who works in the paranormal ward of the hospital and finds out their recent Vampire patient, for some reason CANNOT accept AB blood or needs to get fuckloads of painkillers for the werewolf and does it all with the same exasperation one would have towards normal human patients.

And on the flipside, you have the God running a multi-trillion dollar international-interplanar business but is fretting over taxes and how their public image will crumble when people find out he fucked the Hispanic housekeeper.

>What I mean is that the world feels mostly grounded in reality

Citizens regularly caution you about avoiding giant enemy crabs. You can visit shrines to devil gods and talk to them, gaining their powers. The plot revolves around a world-ending threat; people aren't shocked dragons exist, they're confused as to why they're back. Using your voice to kill people is something everyone understands. Bandits wearing burlap thongs and brandishing butter knives will shoot lightning bolts at you.

Skyrim is High Fantasy by virtually any definition. If all it takes to be low fantasy is people not swinging swords the size of surf boards around then I don't know how the fuck you process any kind of genre.

The Elder Scrolls universe takes place in the fever dreams of sleeping gods where reality and time warp based on your geological location.

This has got to be the most retarded post on Veeky Forums right now. Holy shit.

This one gives it some stiff competition.

>Citizens regularly caution you about avoiding giant enemy crabs.

You use that as an example? It's a different world yeah. Do Mudcrabs have magical properties? Do most actual animals in Skyrim? No.

>You can visit shrines to devil gods and talk to them, gaining their powers.

The premise of why you gain blessings or powers does not entail magical divinity, having faith = getting blessings, hence why the explanation of Talos being a God "cus his shrine works" is equally fictitious. The Divines exist because people have faith in them and worship them.

>The plot revolves around a world-ending threat; people aren't shocked dragons exist

Skryim takes places a long time after the Oblivion crisis. These world ending events do not occur so often. People *are* in disbelief about dragons thinking they are merely legends, not a common-day occurrence. The mood of the populace towards magic and magical creatures is critical in understanding if it is high fantasy or low fantasy.

>Using your voice to kill people is something everyone understands

Yes because you're the literal Dragonborn, not an average guy by this world's standards.

>Bandits wearing burlap thongs and brandishing butter knives will shoot lightning bolts at you.

Shooting a lightning bolt is simple enough. You cannot learn an all powerful world ending lighting spell as a normal player.

>Skyrim is High Fantasy by virtually any definition.

If your definition of high fantasy is just having magic and not taking place on earth then you are right, but that is not the standard definition to most people. Compare The Elder Scrolls to something like Warcraft.

You don't even need to bring up the CHiM shit to poke holes in that guy's idiot statement. Skyrim is filled with high fantasy elements and it's probably the most mundane region on the entire continent.

...

This is bullshit.

>TFW not shooting lesbian landed nobility with repeating airguns in Austro-Hungaria in Steampunk.

Have you been to one of nu/tg/pol/s traditional "politics, sexism, and racism" threads recently? I assure you, these are highly intellectual in comparison.

There are only 6 posters in this thread, it's obvious you're the same person replying.

Yeah, but those blatant trolling. There's a difference between blatant trolling and someone just honestly being retarded.

PEOPLE DISAGREE WITH MY MIND-BLOWING RETARDATION! THEY MUST BE SAME-FAGGING!

Swing and a miss, brainlet.

>The count is at 7, watch me drive it up to 8 by agreeing with them. Faggot.

Let's see more screencaps from the other 3

>N-no, it's the other 3. The other 3!

lmao

Oh man... trying this hard to defend e-peen on an anonymous image board after getting BTFO once. You really wana get BTFO 2 or 3 more times? Give it up kid, go find another board to be retarded on.

Waiting

Well, considering

are less than a minute apart, there's no way they're the same person, so thats two more.

At the very most you're left with 1 out of those 4 posts being the same person, maybe.

inb4 shoop

>You use that as an example? It's a different world yeah. Do Mudcrabs have magical properties? Do most actual animals in Skyrim? No.
>Skyrim is grounded in reality!
>Pssh well you can't use the existance of monster crabs as a counterexample because it's not the REAL world, silly!

>The premise of why you gain blessings or powers does not entail magical divinity, having faith = getting blessings, hence why the explanation of Talos being a God "cus his shrine works" is equally fictitious.
I'm not talking about getting your diseases cured when you touch the Love Goddesses shrine (which is still pretty High Fantasy). I'm talking about how you can talk to the God of Vampires and he sends you on a quest to get an ancient evil mace which drains peoples' souls from their bodies.

>The mood of the populace towards magic and magical creatures is critical in understanding if it is high fantasy or low fantasy.
People being afraid of wizards trapping their souls in rocks isn't indicative of low fantasy if wizards can literally trap their souls in rocks.

>Yes because you're the literal Dragonborn, not an average guy by this world's standards.
Mundane people can learn to use the Shouts. That's part of why Ulfric is so controversial; he cheated at a duel with the Shout.

>Shooting a lightning bolt is simple enough. You cannot learn an all powerful world ending lighting spell as a normal player.
>Skyrim isn't High Fantasy because magic is rare!
>No, I just meant super-powered apocalypse magic! Snapping your finger to create lightning after reading a "For Dummies" book doesn't count!

>that is not the standard definition to most people
Who's "most people"? Because you're the only one in this thread who believes Elder Scrolls is Low Fantasy.

>Compare The Elder Scrolls to something like Warcraft.
Warcraft is about a retarded forever war between Cosmic Light and Cosmic Dark. In the Elder Scrolls, the fucking mod tools exist in-universe.

...

You two are fucking retarded. I’m not weighing in on whether or not there’s samefagging but it takes literally 10 seconds to edit (You)s in or out with Inspect. Only moronic newfags think those are proof.

Here you go, kid.

See

>Asks for proof
>Immediately says the proof he asked for is invalid when he gets BTFO 4 times in a row with it.

Just how much of a newfag are you? Did you get a computer today when you turned 13? Adorable.

I didn’t ask for proof because proof is impossible. I called both the screenshot poster and the guy asking for them stupid. Your reading comprehension is terrible.
>calling someone a newfag when he thinks screenshots are proof of anything at all
How are you liking the site so far, newfriend? You’ll learn the ropes eventually.

OP here please stop shitting up the thread

To be fair, the thread had some problems from the start. These pictures you posted are so off-base you'd think they're trying to steal home.

Apologies OP.

High Fantasy has two different definitions that are often in opposition between them. This is the cause of 90% of the arguments about it.

In the old meaning High Fantasy basically meant Epic Fantasy, as Good Vs Evil and a long quest to defeat an Evil that can't simply be stabbed enough times.

In the new meaning High Fantasy instead has nothing to do with that, and is just referred to the prevalence of highly fantastical elements.

Lord of the Ring is the archetypal High Fantasy novel but by the modern definition it's very low fantasy. Magic is rare, Supernatural elements are few and far between them. You have very mundane battles 90% of the times.

Skyrim is the opposite.

Combine these two and you have the Sword & Planet fantasy. Flash Gordon, John Carter of Mars. It feels like the mixed genre categories each ought to have a High/Low/Dark/Heroic variations.

>Examples of low fantasy
>Skyrim
>Be Dovahkiin
>Destiny is to defeat the dragon that will devour the world
>Also to kill the evil dragonborn who wants to take over the world
>I'm just gonna stop vampires from plunging the world into eternal night as well
>Have a family on the side

Everyone seems to believe steampunk is over saturated but I haven't really been able to find a whole lot of stuff themed around it after looking. There still hasn't been a mainstream property for it that establishes its tropes.

Yeah this. It's overrepresented in the cosplay scene but but that has dick all to do with actual genre fiction.

You can find a good amount of YA fantasy books about it but that's about it. You only ever get works with bits and pieces of it, likely because any halfway decent writer knows you can't write a story fully based on cogfoppery.

>Discworld
>Low Fantasy

The literal GODS walk around and break the windows of atheists.
Plenty of times did the heroes have to stop some evil force, be they cosmic Horrors unleashed by a dickhead wizard, movie monsters coming to life or money.

And NO MENTION of the Black Company.
Shame on your OP.

>the literal magical college in the corner of the province
>people immediately point you to the college if you ask them about magic and spells
>the Companions have jobs to kill rogue wizards
>the buttloads of caves in Skyrim usually have a mage or two as the boss or helping the boss
>the entire Forsworn questline has Forsworn that use magic to attack Markarth

Play the fucking game you goddamn monkey. It's a damn good one if you mod it.

Don't forget the DLC questline where you either hinder or aid a coven of vampires from stealing an ancient magical bow and using it to turn off the sun. During which time you actually visit hell.

>discworld is low fantasy
>skyrim is low fantasy
This is wrong. So much of these things are wrong.

Thanks for reminding me I still need to read black company

I think you could reasonably work Skyrim into a low fantasy setting if only it wasn't a videogame.

Given proper scale and viewing it through someone who wasn't the player character would give a better idea of how common or uncommon magic and such is in the setting.

Most practical magic is pretty piddly anyway when you compare it to other IPs.

Wait... I though Mad Max would be Diesel Punk.

Google low fantasy holy shit
Low fantasy
>harry potter
>dracula
>world of darkness
>any zombie apocalypse
>tales of king arthur

This is a terrible definition for a genre, considering those settings have vastly different levels of fantasy elements. It makes much more sense to define High and Low fantasy based on the tone of the story:

>High Fantasy: epic, grandiose. The story is about idealized characters and great conflicts for the fate of the world. Often has an extremely fantastical setting, but not always.

>Low Fantasy: gritty, "realistic". The story focuses on lesser scale conflicts, usually derived from individual interests or national politics. The characters tend to be more gray and flawed (or they are all assholes if the author is an edgelord). Magic and fantasy elements tend to be lower.

This is wrong though. Firstly, it forgot to include Lankhmar on the list of S&S series and secondly S&S is hardly heroic. Conan was a barbarian, a thief, a pirate and even a eventually a king, but any heroics was secondary.
Reeeeee this triggers my literary 'tism

>The absolute state of Veeky Forums

if you are not defining them depdnign on how fantastic the settings are what's the point? Gritty and epic are already words that exist.

My dude....epic

You know where else you can have simply ebin times? >>>/reddit/

None of OPs examples are settings. They're genres.

Discworld is steampunk if anything.

>it implies there's any actual work of fantasy where everything is such an extreme grimderp nightmare
Soulsborne

This is bullshit. In any of the original Conan stories, which this faggot has never read, conan wears armour quite a lot, usually a mail shirt and a helmet. KYS

Skyrim is stuffed to the brim with tombs of the reanimated dead, there is an invasion of dragons, said dragons get their souls sucked up by an otherkin, you can get the magical blessings of the gods from shrines, the sun is literally emitting magic to the land and all the sentient races has some kind of magical properties baked into their stats.

The logic behind sorting them is also contrived as shit. Sometimes the technology and aesthetic determine genre, but other times it's the characters? There's zero reason for this kind of compartmentalization especially when the creator is obviously confused. Just fucking say science fiction or fantasy. Jargon is anathema to comprehension.

those were both kind of magic fights, personally I think Avatar would be Wuxia and that it's just wrong there

The entire world functions on principles of magic: it's as magic as it gets.

Actually, as someone else pointed out, the literary definition of low fantasy is that it's set in our world.

So any urban fantasy is likely to be a low fantasy and technically most myths, even creation ones would fall in because they occur on our world.

Admittedly, does feel like a funny definition since the Ramayama is technically in the same category as Hellblazer.

He didn't cheat, duels to the death include magic and shouting is one of the only magics warrior nords respect.
It's controversial that he used it because he clearly didn't need it to win that fight and many people considered it both overkill and cruel.
Like agreeing to a fight to the death with someone weaker than you, breaking their weapon in the first five seconds and then proceeding to kill him anyway, not by noble blade to the heart either, probably crushed his skull and disfigured his corpse if we ignore the hardware limitations and look at what the shouts actually do.

My favorite

even in Bloodborne there's the transcendence theme where you can transcend your humanity and become an infant great one, which is actually still kind of dark but still

>high fantasy
>save the world

>low fantasy
>save the nation

can we at least agree that this is retarded and basically the same?

Literally no one should care about that dumb definition. Anyone can parrot fucking wikipedia but no one ever stops to think "what's the actual point of this distinction again?" It's counter-intuitive arbitrary bullshit that is of no use to anyone.

Better is probably
>High fantasy
>Save the world
>Low Fantasy
>Save yourself

Not-OP here please get better examples

They were at least tolerable before but including a slew of shitty -punk derivates beginning with calling Steampunk "the one that started it all" is just wrong

which one is Ghostbusters, where magic does legitimately exist as magic but it can all be explained and operated on by science?

Does it bother anyone else that LotR fanfiction became so ubiquitous that is turned into a genre of its own?

I'm starting to think that genre definition are only as specific as they are because of autism and non of this hair splitting matters.

Nah, that's just Post-Apoc.

Discworld is a lot of things but only very little Steampunk.

It matters when people are WRONG about it

at least they are different.

i am no expert in the field, but i would define the divide in how exotically fantastic the setting and the story is because it deeply changes how the reader sees the setting and the protagonists.

a very low fantasy looks like some mundane adventure in the middle age.it's believable and relatable and somewhat close to our rationale, often resemble our history and nation, .fantastic elements likely just add a touch of mystery to the narrative.
As the fantasy goes higher the settings and the plots reach further away from us, mythical creatures, magic, gods, epic plots, exotic cultures and continents get introduced.Fantastic elements are more likely the foundation of many things in the setting and plot.

it's a scale with many gradients and there is not a clear divide. you can go "higher fantasy" only on some aspects while being low on others. for example you could have a world with elves dragons and dwarves where you save the world but magic is very low and rare and yet you would still call it "fairly high fantasy".

Not if it's meaningless to begin with.

...

Next you'll tell me TVTropes is a useless timesink of irrelevant nonsense analysis.

Just because some (ok, most) of these definitions are useless that doesn't mean they all are. For example, cyberpunk is legitimately a thing but it's cheapened by association with all these gimmicky -punk derivatives which in turn leads people to reanalyse cyberpunk as just another retrofuturistic aesthetic with a single defining feature.

I'm just explaining why you'd find King Arthur, Harry Potter, Dracula, etc. would all be counted as low fantasy.

Now frankly, I kind of agree that low fantasy should be "magic is low key" compared to "high fantasy".

Admittedly, people would still argue with me on the specifics but in my mind what makes a low fantasy is:

>the supernatural isn't always obvious and about half of it even can be quantifiable by science (albeit not replicated easily) or at least have non-paranormal surface explanations.
>Not all the supernatural is magic, just because you're the most powerful magi in the world doesn't mean you can explain why Tallen's 'Lucky Arrow' does always seem to hit a better target than even it's master intended.
>As stated above: magic and the supernatural tend to be fairly low key, the flashiest and most 'directly powerful' spells would basically be the novice destruction, spells in Skyrim (thus, skyrim is high fantasy. Besides it's still part of Tamriel, not Skyrim's fault it's just the lamest landmass)
>The most powerful magic isn't in the hands of mortals or even necessarily things that could be called 'sapient' at least not actual characters in the story. More forces of nature, and attempts to control them (even by mighty villains) usually will backfire disastrously.
>And as mentioned with others: action is fairly grounded. So even the greatest swordsmaster AND mage cannot defeat an army by themselves.

there's that too. look at my fucking post.