Why do people insist on aping tolkien instead of going directly to mythology and folklore for inspiration?

>finding good roleplayers
Easier said than done

Who apes Tolkien? This kind of Tolkien-centric argument across fantasy as a genre is weak because

1) people making it have usually mainly read Tolkien-derivative works and use that as their basis
2) Tolkien himself was derivative, not just taking things from mythology but drawing considerably from the works of earlier writers like William Morris.

Sometimes what's considered derivative of Tolkien is functionally just a classic heroic fantasy narrative that Tolkien in no way invented. So, what specific works are we saying are based on on Tolkien?

Because you have a lot of pre-Tolkien fantasy as well right? You have the people Tolkien was writing with concurrently with in the Inklings (including C.S. Lewis). You've got T.H. White. Three Hearts and Three Lions, as a draft, was written before LotR. You've got Harold Shea - de Camp and Pratt and the entire Weird Tales crowd with all of its characters and fantasy and sci-fi. Conan, Red Sonja, Jirel of Joiry. You've got Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. You've got Lord Dunsany. Arthur Machen. William Morris himself.

And post-Tolkien you have, of course, shit like Shannara. But is Shannara solely derivative of Tolkien? I don't think so - there's a lot of e.g. Lord of Light that bleeds in there as well. And post-Tolkien you also have stuffs that actively rejects the Tolkien story. Your big one everyone knows is like Elric, but you've also got Mieville, M. John Harrison, I mean Ursula Le Guin isn't exactly aping Tolkien either.

tl;dr - I think most people who say fantasy apes Tolkien don't read much fantasy.

Pretty much this, but I'd also argue that people who claim that fantasy apes Tolkien simply hasn't read Tolkien. The few elements of his work that do show up a lot in modern fantasy, like elves, dwarves and orcs, almost always share nothing more than the name with the races he created.

That's a good pupper.

This fella is right.

Nobody is along Tolkien. Everybody is aping Warcraft & Final Fantasy. And George R. R. Martin.

what is pic related from? it looks familiar

>aping tolkien
You misunderstand.
People are doing the good ol' "on the shoulders of the giants" thing.

They aren't inspired by Tolkien who was in turn inspired by folklore and mythology.
They are inspired by Game of Thrones, which was in turn inspired by fantasy of the 50s-70s, which was in turn inspired by Tolkien, who was in turn inspired by folklore and mythology.

Basically, modern fantasy is derivative ad infinitum.

nevermind found it it was from the frank frazetta battlestar galactica ads

You wont find good role players that way though, you'll just find a bookier type of nerd.
The ideal role player is someone with an outgoing personality, a talent for performance, an interest in story telling and has the ability to do basic maths in their head.

What you are looking for is an actor or stage baby not an autist that read the correct book,

There's nothing wrong with that.

It only becomes a problem if it's the only inspiration. I mean fantasy authors who only read fantasy.

Still, what the problem with that other than-
>ARG, STOP HAVING FUN!!!
Writing a good fantasy story doesn't have to involve drawing from other genres. It only involves being a good writer. Period.

>being a good writer.
And to be a good writer requires one to read broadly and a lot.

>going directly to mythology and folklore for inspiration
>not aping Tolkien

>Why do people copy this instead of that?
Everything is a copy of something else, chill.

Because you already know tolkien and derivatives.
These fuckers can hardly be assed to read the fucking player hand book, you think they are going to stomach real epics with archaic language?

Because the "people in conflict" and "maker of his own destiny" themes are more compatible with modern taste than "man vs nature" and "man being a tool of greater powers" themes that were pervasive in actual mythology

Its not that everyone is ripping Tolkien, its that your brain will look at a modern high fantasy trope that Tolkien might not have even used himself an immediately file it as derivative when in reality they are things that have been developing over time through the work of different authors, everything is derivative

If everyone was actually just aping Tolkien then elves would still be perfect demigods and orcs would still be an intelligent and industrious race

Why the hell would I want my setting's main deity to be someone who turns into a swan and rapes innocent mortals?

that's LITERALLY WHAT FOLKLORE IS, retard.

Recycling and retelling stories.

>There's nothing wrong with that.
There is a lot of wrong with that if the writer doesn't dig deeper in his search for sources of inspiration.
Being merely inspired by Game of Thrones without reading the works that preceded it means that the work inspired by it will likely be shallow and re-inventing the proverbial wheel.
The wider sample of inspiration sources results in exploring unusual topics for the genre, while the deeper sample of inspiration sources allows the writer to understand the overall conventions of the genre.
Basically, width search = originality, while depth search = authenticity. You can't write a good book without both.

Basically this.
Fantasy is the "I don't have to read or care about realism" setting that everyone gravitates towards.
It's based on fiction that everyone already knows. How big of a portion of the population is going back to read ancient mythologies of europe?

Nah man. We're lucky if 20 years down the road D&D vampires aren't turned into sparklebois.

Most other well received settings? You'd better have picked up a book and read something, but god knows that reading is fucking boring and for nerds.

Plot hooks

>Fantasy
It's sad that there are people who think this is what 'fantasy' is. That it's all narrowed down to elves, orcs and dwarves kicking the shit out of each other in a shitty renfair setting.

It's like saying "well sci-fi is about cyborgs wearing trenchcoats striding through rainy, neon-lit streets at night as they try to track down rogue AIs".

Why the fuck wouldn't you?

While you're correct, I would advise against theater departments when trawling for players. Theater nerds are some of the most histrionic drama queens you'll encounter. They aren't fun to hang out with in any kind of creative envrionment.

Just gotta find the guy who's just happy to have a part and be in the show and steer clear of the idiots who throw a bitch fit when they aren't cast as lead

It's not even the spotlight hogs, those are a problem. I've been friends with a lot of theater geeks and have known a lot more. Spend enough time with them and even you'll eventually wanna hurl them into a trash can with the other dweebs.

What "people" are you talking about? Game designers? Game master and players? Novelists? (Which would of course be outside the purview of Veeky Forums.)
Your wording is unhelpful.

But to make an attempt at answering what I think you might asking, originality is not particularly valuable in an rpg setting or adventure. When one plays an rpg one is not attempting to create a work of art, but merely amuse oneself and one's fellow players. It is much like fanfic that is written solely for the enjoyment of the author. Unoriginality provides familiarity and eases improvisation. Creativity, and especially collaborative creativity, is made easier when not starting from a blank slate.

>almost always share nothing more than the name with the races he created.
Liar.

Doing a lot of flying so reading through lotr again. One thing is true, tolkin was a master world builder. Characters are kind of simple and idyllic but, are placed in a fantastic fleshed out world.

Other fantasy settings rip off tolkin because he took the time to lay the ground work. If you put elves in your setting you dont need to lay down a lot of lore, since most people will get they are long lived and are a bit tragic.

You know this is Veeky Forums not Veeky Forums right? We are supposed to be talking about rpgs, not novels. Tolkien is pretty influential in the realm of fantasy rpgs.

Also, aping Tolkien doesn't doesn't require that a work be without any other influence. Shannara is mostly a rip off of Tolkien. There are surely other things that were an influence on it's creation, but that doesn't make it any less an aping of Tolkien. The same is true of the Wheel of Time and so many other "epic" fantasies.

Maybe the golden middle ground is finding someone who used to do acting but has since left lost all those social circles for some time now, where they had time to normalize. Anyone who actively identifies as a "theater kid" or "theater geek" probably isn't what most groups are willing to deal with. Thinking on it, a lot of the worst people I know are big theater junkies who think they're top shit or think "lol im so wierd and geeky i like theater i like not sports i like being awkward and quirky i like being loud".

Makes me glad I recovered

>GM a DnD campaign using the traditional setting
>Players think it's boring
>GM a Shadowrun game using a tweaked setting that's merely based on the original
>Players autistically screech over canon setting deviations
Why do I even bother attempting to GM?

Second post, best post.

>George R. R. Martin

Who?

>that pic

Lovecraft made an entire story about a colour unknown to man and science, why can't you?

check out Dominions strategy game
This is what you want if you want mythology

Call me a pleb but it's my favourite Lovecraft story. The pacing is great.

Color of Magic is another obligatory mention.

game of thrones, the edgy fantasy CK2 series everyone is hyped about

I like aping the Eddas, the Ulster Cycle, and Arthurian legend.

Thats not imagining a new color, also theres a difference between colors and electromagnetic radiation on itself, the concept of a new color existing separately to human perception is fundamentally flawed because color is just an interpretation, the only way for a new color to "exist" is to rewire the human brain to perceive more than the three base colors

The "color out of space" is not even refeered to as a literal color, the concept is too silly even for Lovecraft, he was just called that way to emphatize that it was an invisible presence

>Quite literally the same process but with different things.
Except the difference is that the first is original inspiration and the second is incest. It's the same with anime and why it's mostly a pile of garbage: the first few generations were inspired by things from the real world, generations after that mostly looked at the older anime they were obsessed with. What we have now are derivatives of derivatives of derivatives with entrenched archetypes that exist for their own sake rather than characters that behave a certain way for understandable reasons. Though I do suppose that in both instances, the market has more than a little influence on why the status quo is what it is.

Hell, I believe part of the reason that GoT stands out is because it isn't just a lazy derivative of Tolkien, but a lazy derivative of semi-historical fiction that nobody ever heard of.

Frank Frazetta probably

Colour are interpretation though. So obviously when people describe colours they use names for colours we know like Red,Green and Blue. But you could just name a new colour like "gifty" and say "a colour to which no human can describe and befuddles their minds causing confusion and nausea". Colours are limited to perception not imagination.

Try explaining a colour to a person who has been blind all their life or somebody who is colour-blind. The blind person probably has a weird "thought-perception" of the colour like red "a colour of passion and warmth" they would have their own idea of what red looks like in their mind becuase they can't see.

Honestly imagine how trippy it would be to see a colour we never knew existed like if we manipulated our brain to do so. I can imagine, imagining a new colour but I cannot perceive the new colour but have a vague sense of absence like a person who is colour-blind and doesn't know the colour their missing out on. It's merely absent but it's there at the same time.

Forgot gif.

Not to reinforce point just cuz I think it's cool

Well if colors are artifacts of human perception then it is trivial to imagine new ones - just have non-human observers.

And color out of space was in fact a color:
>and when upon heating before the spectroscope it displayed shining bands unlike any known >colours of the normal spectrum there was much breathless talk of new elements, bizarre optical >properties, and other things which puzzled men of science are wont to say when faced by the >unknown.

Isn't colour a bit like number? You can't create a 'new number' any more than you could create a new colour.
There's a more succinct way of putting this but I'm too brainlet to find the right words.

>First time
>Look away because I expected a screamer
>Second time
>Look at the dot
>IT'S ACTUALLY IN COLOR

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS BLACK MAGIC?

>Hue,0-360
>Saturation 0-100
>Value 0-100
>Red 0-255
>Green 0-255
>Blue 0-255
Hue is more to do with the colour range though.

But this is physical realm stuff that measures perception.
So i'ma do this
>Depends on the setting

Seriously imagination is infinite since it can be illogical while our world has to be logical. You can't create a new colour within the physical word any more than you can create something that doesn't exist. However "think of a new colour, haha you can't, see imagination is limited" is like saying "think of a book infront of your eyes, open your eyes, wheres the book? Haha! See faggot your imagination is limited you cannot create a book in reality with your mind!"

It doesn't equate to each other. Just becuase someone can imagine a new colour doesn't mean the colour exists within our reality but in the imaginative it does.
It's like with people's ideas of characters looks.

Look at fanart. Everybody read the same description of a character but they all drew the character similar yet different becuase they all had their own idea of the character in their mind.

Telling a person to create a colour is easy with your imagination but telling them to create a new colour in reality has Little to do with imagination and more to do with limits of physical perception which would likely be possible through manipulating our brains which is science and logic.

Yes our physical colour spectrum is limited but our imaginative colour spectrum is limitless but it won't translate into the real world.

Also I first(not saying it originated there)saw this on 9gag years ago. It's usually associated with cool kids who are nihilistic with a wicked sense of humour(ironically).