Think about a rpg. Would you prefer to play a Dwarf/Human/Elf Warrior/Mage or a Xhan/Evu/Mera Asai/Abras ?

I've always the problem with cliches and alienation. When I play a game with a tolkin fantasy setting I never really thought about races and classes. I know and expect what are the common traits of the given races/classes.

Whenever I play a game in a fantasy setting without the common cliches I have a little feeling of alienation, or I try to map the given races/classes to the known tolkin fantasy setting. It is like a modern war game with laser guns in it, it just doesn't feel right.

Most (western) game companies shows us,that they fear to alienate players with other fanatsy setting, but as a gamedeveloper, what options do you have to change the setting? I want to give the player a world in which he feels good and not alienated, but on the other hand I want to deliver a new, mystic and interesting world.

What are your thoughts ? Cliche or alienation ? What games have succeed in delivering a new,refreshing, none tolkin fantasy setting ?

Part of the reason it's difficult to get people to adopt other fantasy worlds is that they're often ill thought out.

Tolkein spent a long time working out how his world works. It looks quaint from here, but the idea of "world building", of making fiction deep was radical then.

The reader often doesn't have direct access to the depth. There are ideas in LotR which are hinted at. There's a history which is obliquely referred to. Readers pick up on that -- they aren't conscious of it, but they're conscious that the world has richness; the parts all work together. It feels realer for the consistency.

Generally the flaw of the majority of other works of fantasy are that they are not deep enough. People are used to the world being rich -- they are used to the world they live in having historical references and a past. It's the background tapestry to their lives. They may not be able to quote to Shakespear themselve but Shakespear quotes will feel familiar to them.

When their fantasy world doesn't have that, it ends up looking and feeling like a stage set.

This is, by the way, one of the annoying things about the Star Wars series.

In the original trilogy, a bunch of stuff is "hinted" at. "The Clone Wars" is a phrase, dropped into a dialog. It hints at a past, but it leaves the listener to fill in the details. The universe gains richness and depth, manufactured by the observers.

In the next trilogy, they attempt to show ALL THE DEPTH. We have to and see the "old republic" and the "clone wars" and all those things. And in doing so we find they're not as interesting as we thought they would be.

We reduce a galaxy and all its people to about five different planets and half a dozen people all of whom seem to know each other. It strips richness and depth away from the Star Wars universe.

No-one questions that Ben fought with Luke's father in the Clone Wars a long time ago. It adds depth to Ben's relationship with Luke -- even before we know who Luke's father is.

By showing all the past we start to see holes in it. We start to wonder why Tatooine seems to be centre of the universe while also being a quiet backwater; Ben lives there, Luke lives there, Leia arrives there while under attack... that's the coincidence which sets the plot off. The best pilot in the galaxy is there. The biggest gangster in the galaxy is there. And Darth Vader grew up there... and suddenly the illusion of an insignificant planet in a vast galaxy just pops.

This is the same principle used by successful horror movies. Don't show your monster in too bright a light -- because the imagination of the viewer is more powerful than anything you can actually show.

Likewise the perception of a hinted depth is more powerful than your ability to actually portray it.

So what can you do to fix some of this stuff.

Well one of the things I would suggest is to change your species names. People in your world are likely to have a bunch of names for the other races. They'll vary in political acceptability, insult and acceptability. Call a dwarf a dwarf in one bar and they might beat you up for being a sympathiser with the "greedy shorters". "Dwarf" might be what humans see as politically acceptable, but they still find offensive. They prefer the term "mountain folk"

Meaningful names allow users to map the names easily. "You should go east and seek the Xhan named Ghj'dasxgh'cjdhjkh" causes people to break out of the world and think.

The reason is that they need to consciously work out what race a Xhan is. And then the names aren't memorable either.

Whereas "Eastwards is Karrowtown. You should seek Harvan of the Short Folk" doesn't trigger those mapping errors. The names are formulated in ways which slip easily into English. The use of a colloquial term for the race means that users don't have to break character and do a memory access to work out what you're talking about.

The dwarves of your world, conversely, might well refer to humans as "longshanks" or something similar in polite company and something worse amongst themselves.

What you're aiming for here is to replace the cultural background by moving the culture closer to the user. Think of the connotations associated with the N word -- the reasons why it's not polite to use it. But then think why that word HAS those connotations. It doesn't intrinsically possess them. It comes with cultural baggage.

Now even "orc" these days comes with cultural baggage. People think of a green-skinned monster[1], not very bright but quite violent. There's a whole market in violating that assumption; in fiction which portrays the classic fantasy races as other than their traditional roles.

When you invent names for races, they don't come with ANY of that cultural baggage at all. So you need to use engineered terms which do produce the right sort of cultural associations.




[1] Although the original Tolkein orks were black or brown. ISTR that green orcs are the invention of Games Workshop because the green skin colour looked better when painted.

I didn't think playing a Tauren in WoW was alienating, and they're not a classic fantasy race. I didn't think playing a tiger-person in Perfect World was alienating, except for the nonsense design that you can be several types of animal in humanoid mode, yet all male characters transform into tigers and all female characters transform into foxes. Using an animal or mythological base makes it easier for a player to feel like they understand a race because the player will already have background knowledge of that race. But any race, even literal aliens, can feel comfortable, and better yet, exciting, to play if the first 10 levels of quests and NPC dialogue express what the society is like and what the player's role within the society is.

An alternate approach is also possible - one could require the first character of an account to be human, and make the ability to play other races be something the player has to earn/unlock. Then the player will have learned some things about the other races while playing their first character. But, it's still essential to use the first 10 levels of play for any character to convey to the player what that character's world and role within it are like.

Have a read of some of Alastair Reynolds' stories (especially the relevation space books). They are Sci Fi, but he uses human names for the alien species (like the "Shrouders" that hide behind a space time distortion - ie: shroud). IT wouldn't matter what these aliens called themselves as Humans probably wouldn't be able to pronounce it.

Think about what we call ourselves: "Human".

This really only has relevence to us. An alien race would probably think of us as some other name. It is common in sci fi to call us Terran, but that is also a human made name (it means Earth), and even Earth is dependent on us (what race in their right mind would call themselves "Dirt", or "Dirtlings" - children of the dirt, one translation of Earthlings).

So an alien race might refer to us a "dirt people" (as that seems a reasonable translation of Terran). Imagine an alien race that kept refering to you as "that dirty person", you would think they were trying to insult you.

Now, in a fantasy setting, you can use this "misunderstanding". For example, if your "Xhan" race ment to them "Those who live from the ground", but a bad translation meant "Ground Eaters", then nearby humans might refer to them as "Dirt Eaters", "Rock Biters", "Mud Lovers" or something similar (with the more insulting translations used as insults).

This would occur more if the name they had was hard to pronounce, or a bit unfamiliar to outsiders.

Here is another example of how historical connotations and mistranlations can become netrenched. The region of Transylvania might evoke a mysterious and forbidding place. But he name litterally means "Beyond the Forest".

"Trans" - means "beyond" or go past and "Sylvan" means "forest". From Trans we get transport, transfer and such. And most people familiar with fantasy will know the Sylvan Elves (which would be forest elves) and such.

If you had a people referred to like this, that you establish a forbidding name (maybe because something occured there long ago) and then this name stuck for any mysterious place, or people from such a place. Strangers could then be referred to by this title, and a race that is new to a region might be called by this name (even though they have no connection to the original plce).

Eytamology is an interesting subject (well ok, not everybody find it interesting, but I do :D ) and you can use it to create more depth and a sense of history to your game world (this was the trick that Tolkien did, he even went so far as to create entire languages).

Interesting discussion. I would love to hear anyone's opinions on my sci-fi species names: http://inside.cosmicjack.com/known-alien-species.html

I take it that what some of you are suggesting is that a name like "Farks" should be replaced with something like "Multieyed" ?

I had the same sort of feeling which is why the Insectizen have their name ... it easily fits their look and even their charcateristics in game (purely instinct-driven).

Quote:

Think about a rpg. Would you prefer to play a Dwarf/Human/Elf Warrior/Mage or a Xhan/Evu/Mera Asai/Abras ?

If you're going for a generic game, then use Dwarf/Human/Elf Warrior/Mage. If you're going for something different and are afraid of alienating players, you can slowly introduce them to Xhan/Evu/Mera Asai/Abras by (for example) simply let everyone begin on newbie island without a class. After doing a couple of quests and trying out the game mechanics, have them choose Xhan/Evu/Mera Asai/Abras to leave newbie island and onto the main gameworld.

Slowly introduce your players to new concepts.

@Katie
Thanks for the input. I didn't make it clear enough, but I want not only to change the names but although the cultural background,story,traits of
each race/class. Tought you have some very interesting options about developing a game universe!

@sunandshadow

Quote:

I didn't think playing a Tauren in WoW was alienating, and they're not a classic fantasy race. I didn't think playing a tiger-person in Perfect World was alienating...

Tauren is a nice example. They are not the classic fantasy race, but derived from the minotauron, the tauren are still very familiar to most people and
they live still in the classic fantasy world with elfs,humans,dwarfs and orcs. It is not just one aspect of a game universe I want to change, but the whole
game universe which differs from the tolkin universe. This is more common in literature, still even in literature most (high) fantasy settings are derived from the tolkin universe.

You sugguest to take a tolkin based universe and introduce new races/classes/cultures to the more experienced players. At least I should keep the universe close to something known, either medival, tolkin or mythology.

@Edtharan
Sci-Fi is always more open to new backgrounds, stories and races. Even with the "base" universe star wars and star trek, many sci-fi universes differs much more from star wars/star trek, than fantasy from tolkin.

@Tangireon

Quote:

If you're going for a generic game, then use Dwarf/Human/Elf Warrior/Mage. If you're going for something different and are afraid of alienating players, you can slowly introduce them to Xhan/Evu/Mera Asai/Abras by (for example) simply let everyone begin on newbie island without a class. After doing a couple of quests and trying out the game mechanics, have them choose Xhan/Evu/Mera Asai/Abras to leave newbie island and onto the main gameworld. Slowly introduce your players to new concepts.

This is somewhat dangerous, isn't it ? What I mean is, that you "lure" the player to your game universe with the illusion of a certain universe(elfs,orcs ..) and "change" the universe afterward, with the effect that players who want to experience something new will not touch the cliche game and players who expected a tolkin like universe will feel cheated and leave. On the other hand it seems to be sustainable solution.

--

Well, it seems that I need to derive my universe from a known universe. I could try to design a completly new uiverse from ground up, but I'm not tolkin.
So, what are my options ? Choose names which directly points in the
tolkin/warhammer universe like green-skins or long-ears, but leave enough space to change the background, story and culture which differs from the known universes ? When I use the term orc/elf instead of green-skin/long-ears would it not be more restrictive ?

Quote:

Original post by Ashaman73 @sunandshadow Quote: I didn't think playing a Tauren in WoW was alienating, and they're not a classic fantasy race. I didn't think playing a tiger-person in Perfect World was alienating... Tauren is a nice example. They are not the classic fantasy race, but derived from the minotauron, the tauren are still very familiar to most people and they live still in the classic fantasy world with elfs,humans,dwarfs and orcs. It is not just one aspect of a game universe I want to change, but the whole game universe which differs from the tolkin universe. This is more common in literature, still even in literature most (high) fantasy settings are derived from the tolkin universe. You sugguest to take a tolkin based universe and introduce new races/classes/cultures to the more experienced players. At least I should keep the universe close to something known, either medival, tolkin or mythology.

Actually I was trying to say that Taurens are cow people. I would understand them as cow people equally well if they lived in a totally non-Tolkien universe. Thus my second example, the cat-people in Perfect World. Perfect World has a Chinese-themed setting. It does have a race called Elves, but they have wings, not a typical Tolkien trait; that race would have worked just as well if it had been called Avians or Angels or Wingfolk.

Let's consider WoW's Drenai, they are a more abstract example. What are they? They are not anything from Tolkien or Dungeons and Dragons. They have animalistic traits but they are not based on any one specific animal. Yet they work because the game explains to you that Drenais are aliens (of the sort from star trek, star wars, babylon 5, etc.) You are the refugees of a great civilization, and some of the NPC Drenai couldn't adapt to that change and wander around being depressed, like they have PTSD. Culturally, Drenai are strongly religious and value honesty, so you can imagine yourself as a paladin or cleric, even if you have technically chosen to be a warrior or mage.