I agree with the above post, a fantasy setting that uses fantasy sterotypes must conform to those sterotypes, otherwise it creates confusion. And not all ''traditional'' fantasy settings make bad games - Baldur''s Gate II is a superb game, and neither does slavish adherence to AD&D rules nessacarily make bad games, agian BGII is an excelent example, and Planescape:Torment, which although hiding most of these rules, does use them to a large extent. It''s games that use the AD&D ruleset to hide a lack of plot or purpose or charecter interation that are bad games; one of the things that made Panescape:Torment so good was the well defined sense of purpose and the strong plot.

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
You know, we can''t really complain that all games these days are clones of old ones....think about how much money there making from doing it.

I don''t really know what that post had to do with this thread, but damn ! How can you say such a thing?
I hate clones. Some smart designer invents a new game genre, and all the other companies steal his idea to make money and bore the gamers. Don''t they have any ideas of their own?

If they make their games for the love of money instead of the love of video games, they don''t deserve your money.

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quote: Original post by krez
those "generic fantasy" things (like elves living in trees, et cetera) do not come from D&D, they come from J.R.R. Tolkien.
granted a lot of games use what has become the "standard fantasy" and just suck, but i think it is because of a bad game design and storyline, and not because they used Tolkien''s ideas.
all these RPGs that use the same old elves and dragons and fire spells aren''t necessarily crappy just because they use these tried-and-true themes; neither is a crappy RPG made good by inventing one''s own version of elves (or calling them something else, or [ *gasp *] dropping the elves entirely and placing the game in the future).

I don''t understand why a game would have "elves" and then make them different from standard elves...I mean I agree with what you are saying but is that really an issue? You make it sound as if EVERY game has to have some rough equivalent of elves...why the hell should they?

About the Tolkien vs. D&D, I said D&D because so many games want to use the D&D liscence and have classes and conventions that correspond to D&D. Tolkien had elves and dwarves and whatnot, but things like color-coded dragons are D&D inventions as AFAIK. I think if you look a the typical fantasy games a lot more of the classes, spells, creatures etc come from D&D than from Tolkien.

IMO if your goal is "let''s make a generic fantasy game" you are probably going to create a generic fantasy game. Also if you are advertising your use of D&D rules it occurs to me that you are thinking more about marketing than actual gameplay value.

Like I said, I don''t dismiss games just because they are fantasy, but they have their own look or feel or animations or *something* to distinguish them. That is why I used HOMM as an example, it has the most bland and generic setting, creatures and animation I have ever seen in a game.

But you know what HOMM has? Gameplay. It haa fun. It lets you *ignore* the trappings of setting and actually enjoy it for what it is: a friggin game.

The worse sin ever committed in game design is giving setting precedence to gameplay. (same goes for graphics, or a licensed character, or whatever)

And personally, I like having elves and dwarves and red dragons that breathe fire. My ZAngband character just sold off a bunch of armor with "resist fire" and "resist lightning" like properties to buy a Ring of Extra Attacks (+2) - and the game is based on ASCII graphics, with no consistent setting, and a *everything* randomly generated. But I''d much rather play it than some "original" fantasy setting where I have to deal with the creator thinking he''s hot shit because he created a truly original race of underwater cat beings with 3 arms that communicate with color.

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
I don''t understand why a game would have "elves" and then make them different from standard elves...I mean I agree with what you are saying but is that really an issue? You make it sound as if EVERY game has to have some rough equivalent of elves...why the hell should they?

i didn''t say any game HAD to have anything! i was just responding to a post a few spaces up; he was talking about how he didn''t like the "standard" elves and dwarves, so i put in my 2 cents

quote: About the Tolkien vs. D&D, I said D&D because so many games want to use the D&D liscence and have classes and conventions that correspond to D&D. Tolkien had elves and dwarves and whatnot, but things like color-coded dragons are D&D inventions as AFAIK. I think if you look a the typical fantasy games a lot more of the classes, spells, creatures etc come from D&D than from Tolkien.

fair enough... personally i think that most of the stuff in D&D (at least years ago when i played it) was based on Tolkien... sure, they have a specific and detailed breakdown of everything (so they can assign different stats and whatnot) but that is just an inherent difference between a book and a game; you need details like that for calculating battles, but not to write a chapter about a battle. obviously video games would use the more game-friendly version.

quote: IMO if your goal is "let''s make a generic fantasy game" you are probably going to create a generic fantasy game. Also if you are advertising your use of D&D rules it occurs to me that you are thinking more about marketing than actual gameplay value.
...
Like I said, I don''t dismiss games just because they are fantasy, but they have their own look or feel or animations or *something* to distinguish them. That is why I used HOMM as an example, it has the most bland and generic setting, creatures and animation I have ever seen in a game.

well, i am making what i hope doesn''t end up as a generic fantasy game; even though i still have elves and dragons, it should be quite an original spin on an RPG (if everything works out the way i want it to of course). i don''t care about D&D rules, nor about marketing... with any luck i can avoid being the target of all these people who don''t like Tolkienesque fantasy.


--- krez (krezisback@aol.com)

The problem with Tolkeen/D&D basied fantasy RPGs is that they are so common...and being basied on such simular ideas (elves must act like elves, orcs must act like orcs, etc..) it SEVERLY limits the games...limits the whole RPG potential...it''s like painting a picture with the same 8 or 9 colors...yeah the ''masters'' can do something interesting with it (B. Gate, etc..) but realisticly for most of the rest of us, we are going to have a hard time competeing...

The console side of things is an improvement...at least to them ''fantasy setting'' doesn''t meen a game MUST include dragons and what not...heck, those more diverse ''fantasy setting'' console RPGs outsell the Tolkeen/D&D basied ones.

An advantage to using the familiar elves/dwarves theme is it is firmly engraved in most peoples minds. Things like fairies and goblins are very familiar to almost everybody, and sometimes their preconceptions add rather than detract from the experience. When you''ve been hearing about ghosts from the time you were born, when they are mentioned today you get this deep-down feeling that you associate with ghosts. It''s very difficult to get somebody to feel the same way about a creature they never heard about before. Tolkien got many of his ideas from the folklore of many European countries. Dwarves, goblins etc, are all very old ideas. He took them and changed them slightly and brought them together into 1 world. It''s also a daunting task to create such an elaborate world of fantasy that has been created over 1000 years.
Don''t get me wrong. I want to see creativety. And as has been mentioned above, sometimes the same''ol works, sometimes it doesn''t.

Star Wars was fantasy, and it worked well without direct reference to elves, dragons, and other common variations of what video games commonly consider fantasy...

whats that? "Star Wars is science fiction!" you say? ...well...prove it.

All,

MSW, I see your point... On the one hand, Star Wars had the trappings of science fiction: spaceships, high technology and the like. On the other hand, it makes no attempt toward scientific realism or social extrapolation (mainstays of science fiction), instead it uses SF trappings to tell a fantasy story about an evil empire, courageous rebels, and mysterious sorceror-knights. If anyone is familiar with Gunnm/Battle Angel Alita, I think it is another example of this sort of "science fantasy." I suppose one could say that fantasy is any fiction in which things that could not possibly happen in real life happen as a narrative device to explore human reactions to extreme situations. If you say this, then any story not taking place in the present day or in actual history would be a fantasy. It''s really all a matter of definitions.

But we digress from the topic of the thread, which as I recall was setting ruining games. And on that topic, I agree with Mayrel: setting, even stupid setting, is tolerable as long as it doesn''t get in the way of gameplay. If a setting is bad I can ignore it. If gameplay is bad, I can''t play no matter how intriguing the setting.


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-SpittingTrashcan

You can''t have "civilization" without "civil".

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
I don''t understand why people try to cater to D&D so much. What percentage of the population plays D&D? But then I read reviews of something like Pool of Radiance and they guy is like "one big problem is that in 3rd edition rules dual classes are allowed for halflings, but in this game blah blah blah..." Apparently it *is* a big deal to some people...

This comes back to the consistency of setting again... except you now have a ''meta-setting'' of AD+D / Forgotten Realms, and people who liked that setting expect you to live up to it.


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