Fantasy Rant

[Susano]

Re: Fantasy Rant

 

Two authors whose science fiction work I admire. I particuliarly enjoyed Bear's Heads' date=' and Cherryh's [i']Faded Suns[/i] Trilogy. I wasn't aware either had written fantasy. I'll have to take a look.

 

You might like Cherryh's Morgiane Saga then.

[Susano]

Re: Fantasy Rant

 

... and for something completely different' date=' Barry Hughart's [i']Bridge of Birds[/i], Story of the Stone, and Eight [or was it ten?] Skilled Gentlemen. Sadly, they go downhill in quality.

 

Eight Skilled Gentlemen

 

Someday I'll try and do character sheets for Master Li and Number 10 Ox.

[redner]

Re: Fantasy Rant

 

My replies are off-topic and off-base (you can ignore), but I can't help replying. So, here's my 2 cents:

 

On the other hand, there is the dictum: "the Torah speaks in the language of men," which is to say man most easily relates to his own experience and perceptions, and that the truth is hidden in a cage of words.

 

There was this guy that came to fulfill the Word and to condemn dogmas. Unfortunately, people created another dogma base off of him.

 

I guess the main thing is whether or not the stories theme requires "magic" to make the point.

 

Sometime being true to yourself is "magical". Take Howard Roark in Ayn Rand's "Fountainhead" for example. No way he's for real. Yet, millions aspire to his strength in character.

 

-

[Vondy]

Re: Fantasy Rant

 

 

Sometime being true to yourself is "magical". Take Howard Roark in Ayn Rand's "Fountainhead" for example. No way he's for real. Yet, millions aspire to his strength in character.

 

-

 

With this I agree. The answer is to run the games, and write the stories, that I care about and not sweat it.

[Vondy]

Re: Fantasy Rant

 

No? Perhaps not. But do most people consider dreams and visions prophetic?

 

I can't speak for most people. However, there's a dictum "dreams are one part prophecy and fifty-nine parts nonsense." To understand this statement you have to understand that in halacha something is considered nullified in one part in sixty*. In other words: most dreams are bunk. At the same time, Daniel's dreams were prophetic, so there are (rare) exceptions to the general rule.

 

Philosophers generally reject sensory input as reliable proof, requiring conclusions drawn from sensory input to be butressed by direct inferrence from an a priori premise, or by a logical a postieri argument. Dreams believed to be prophetic would also have to pass a rational threshold (test). The Torah discusses such a test (rooted in experiential proofs), and the gemara discusses different kinds of dreams at great length.

 

They are: 1) nonsense dreams, 2) dreams reconstructing your recent experiences, 3) symbolic dreams, and 4) prophetic dreams. The first two categories would contain the vast majority of dreams. Some other statements come to mind: "a dream follows its interpretation," and "an uninterpreted dream is like an unopened letter - it bodes neither good nor ill."

 

*About 1.6%, which is not unlike FDA rules that ignore some substances under 2%.

 

And' date=' are you saying that the mythic elements we’ve been discussing as part of a Eurocentric cultural matrix are somehow any less metaphorical?[/quote']

 

Not less metaphorical - more problematical.

 

The potential metaphors common in modern fantasy literature don't come from modern western European and North American culture. They come from cultures that no longer exist. In terms of Greek and Roman beliefs we have a decent amount of primary sources to tell us what they believed, and a good number of them have been carried over.

 

Especially in terms of the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Norse, we don't really know how they related to their myths. Aside from the text of myths that were written down during the early christianization of these cultures, most of what we know about their practices and beliefs was recorded by outside observers, who were often advesarial in their comments. As a result, the elements from these cultures that made their way into modern fantasy literature via tolkein were divested of most of their metaphorical value long before he was born.

 

Indeed, most literary criticism dedicated to Tolkein recognizes that LoTR is filled with Christian symbolism despite its anglo-saxon and norse trappings. Indeed, most metaphor in modern western literature is from a fusion of christian and greco-roman culture because that's what people in the West are immersed in. Most of the trappings from anglo-saxon and norse mythology (which define the genre today) have been stripped of their inherent meaning. A writer can use them in a metaphorical sense, but they have to make a conscious effort to do so - and that is not the norm.

 

In a gaming sense: most of these things (lets assume an elf by way of example) are fantastical elements without a significant metaphorical purpose, and could just as easily be replaced by humans when the plot is examined. They're there because they make gamers giddy with their "coolkeit." Now, some game-masters use them as metaphors, but they have to build the metaphor from the ground up to do so.

 

So is the problem not so much the specific mythos and ethos after all' date=' as the way fantasy tends to “literalize the metaphor?” Regardless of whose metaphor it’s literalizing?[/quote']

 

I'm not sure I can convey an external culture's metaphors (mine) without getting bogged down in lame exposition, or herbertesque appendices.

 

Besides' date=' if you’ll forgive my saying so – if it was good enough for Moses….[/quote']

 

I am not a prophet, nor am I the son of a prophet. Not everyone gets the same user permissions.

 

I get the impression that there is SOMETHING you miss in the kind of high' date=' epic fantasy you used to enjoy. Can you identify what that is, and why you miss it?[/quote']

 

I enjoyed building complete worlds that could serve as a canvas for far-reaching tales without the pitfalls of "historical fiction."

 

But perhaps it would be better to talk specifics and work from there.

 

THE ELVEN CAMPAIGN: I sat down and created a complex elvish mythos and cultural ethos, as well as a history of this world from the ground up (this was a long time ago), and then I ran a world shaking epic adventure with the players playing their generations mythic heroes that deconstructed the hand outs they were given on their culture's myths and culture - and ended in a battle royal that included two ancient factions of elves, the first generation of elves (who were akin to godlings), and our heroes, who hung with the big leagues. However, aside from the mythos, the thing I enjoyed the most was how free and fun the whole thing was.

 

THE RAVENLOFT GAME: Easy enough. I love the old gothic horror novels and monster-mash flicks, and I like headlining villians. Sometimes they're more interesting than the heroes! Darth Vader, Fu Manchu, Moriarty, Bloefeld, Dracula, Mr. Hyde, Frankestein, Herr Otto Flick! And I like vampires and werewolves, and have a real knack for candle-light and ghost stories. It had epic moments, but it was mostly episodic, and since I had so much material available (between the van richten's guides, the various lords of ravenloft, and easily tweaked modules) it was easy to run. They were all a part of troop of thespians who made their way through the realms on a paddle-boat while solving horrorific mysteries, and I kept their sheets during play (no hit point references), which made them nervous, and led to our first foray into descriptive prose and cooperative storytelling. For me, the mood, and the players focus on their characters rather than their stuff, made me happiest.

THE SPELLJAMMER GAME: This turned out to be a sword and planet(s) story with occult mystery and gothic fantasy bits thrown in, as well as a libberal dose of space opera cliche. For instance, the major henchman was a 20th level anti-paladin death knight with an undead unicorn for a mount and an endless store of Darth Vader quotes. Each of the villians had a story behind them, and they each had to be undone to overthrow the sphere spanning empire that was ruled from a once beautiful world that was now ruled by a vampire emperor and his harem of in-fighting vampire babes (not to mention his vampiric secret police), which was quickly dubbed 1950's VAMPIRE PLANET. One of my players said he loved that game because in the first encounter with the main henchmen everyone but the priest got killed (he evaced the bodies via an amulet of the planes and ressurected them with a staff - and no one knew how many times he could use it), and because all of the villians were "bad to the bone." I think the part I liked the best was the fact that all of the villains had a story behind them and role to play.

 

THE WARRIORS GRIMM: Well, there was this time we raided hell... the warriors grimm included my first character ever (and some of the very early ones indeed) and ran from age seven to nineteen. And I shared GM duties with a good friend from about the age of 10 onward (his older brother ran before that). We had no idea what we were doing, and learned all our lessons about role-playing by screwing this one up, but the last five years of this game became truly epic, and those early characters, who had become like a favorite flannel shirt faded and soft after many years, got three-dimensional personalities and histories along with the world being overhauled. Part of the charm, though, was power-gaming in style. Those characters were fantasy super-heroes. Why did I like it? Nostalgic memories, power-gaming with soap-operatic melodrama attached, and a handful of characters I'll never forget.

 

Simply put: I'm not fun anymore.

[assault]

Re: Fantasy Rant

 

Philosophers generally reject sensory input as reliable proof' date=' requiring conclusions drawn from sensory input to be butressed by direct inferrence from an a priori premise, or by a logical a postieri argument.[/quote']

 

Philosophers generally should be beaten with sticks. This is the simplest way of proving that sensory input is indeed reliable proof. And you get to beat a philosopher with a stick.

 

Indeed, most literary criticism dedicated to Tolkein recognizes that LoTR is filled with Christian symbolism despite its anglo-saxon and norse trappings.

 

It is useful to remember just how long ago the Anglo-Saxons became Christians. True, a lot of the meaning of their pre-Christian symbolism has been lost, but there is still almost 1500 years of Christian-era symbolism to draw upon. Similarly for the Norse, although for a shorter period.

 

Symbols change their meaning over time. The folklore and legends of Europe in, say, the 17th century, weren't the same as those in the 7th, obviously. But there still was a body of folklore and legends, and there were at least some points of continuity, however tenuous.

 

One of the better ways to get an "authentic" (European based) fantasy game might be to base it on say, Arthurian or Carolingian legends. These have the benefit of having themselves been built up from various layers of history and myth. In a sense, it's not possible to get this stuff "wrong", because every generation tells its own versions of the stories... (Pendragon is a fine RPG, of course, and "Pendragon HERO" would be a trivially easy conversion.)

 

Trying to generalise this a bit... actually, any "epic" tradition would be subject to this, whether it is transmitted orally, or written down. Meaning changes, and trying to freeze it is strictly for scholars.

 

And theologians, of course, which is really the crux of the thread.

[Curufea]

Re: Fantasy Rant

 

I view it as Tolkein and the early Catholic church both used the same local material, incorporating it into their own mythoi.

[Vondy]

Re: Fantasy Rant

 

 

And theologians, of course, which is really the crux of the thread.

 

I propose a different crux. Or rather, a series of them:

 

Can an external culture be conveyed in a crisp narrative form (or in a game)?

 

This rests on the writer's skill, but it is fraught with difficulties. You have to keep the narrative going without getting bogged down in exposition, which is a habit of digression science fiction and fantasy are known for. At the same time, you have to short circuit the reader's native cultural assumptions so that they will accept a new allegorical paradigm, and then you overcome the language barrier. In terms of the latter, cultures and the allegories that move them, are rooted in language.

 

When you consider that the mind is largely a brute-force insturment designed to translate sensory input and obtain survival for its meaty vehicle within a rigidly perceived hylic environment (space-time); and that language is a finite medium hard-coded to communicating those perceptions and cooperating in obtaining that survival, this isn't always as simple as it first appears. Our brains simply aren't very good tools for comprehending the totality of creation (alternatively: the structure of the universe), let alone the sublime, which is why we generally use anthropic language to discuss abstractions (allegories and metaphors), or attempt to break them down into concrete quantification (mathematical and phsysical number models).

 

Can it be done? With varying degrees of success. Some writers do it very well indeed (cherryh comes immediately to mind, but she's creating something new in her native language, not translating damned foreign ideas into a comprehensible form in English). In some ways its easier in a game because you can do the background work sans-narrative in advance, hand it to the players, and then use the narrative to explore that background work. This requires a GM and players who are geared to that sort of thing.

 

In this case the question becomes: why do it? And this comes down to why I like the imagination. Frank Herbert used Planetary Romance as a means of exploring the ideas that moved him. That's how Dune was born. I have a similiar motivation. I want to explore the ideas that move me. And the science fiction and fantasy medium (I will refrain from the term genre) are excellent tools for this because they drop real world baggage and assumptions. On the other hand, sometimes I just want to kill bad-guys with fist-loads of dice. Low-brow, but true.

 

Can I do it? Probably. The Elven Campaign worked like a charm. The difference here is that I'm more personally invested. The Elven Campaign was just for giggles.

 

The fact that I've started to think like an author, rather than a writer.

 

Narrow down a theme. Jot down an outline. Sit down and write. And then rewrite until its right. Concerns about genre and market, as well as the sensibilities of the literateur are irrelevant. Writing is a job and needs to be treated like one. If the product is good its good. If its not its not. The same goes for Game Mastering. Too much art ruins the excecution, too much science (breaking the game down into theories and forms) ruins the fun, and too many genre strictures eliminates potential stories.

 

The normative structure and focus of the genre.

 

Here's the thing. Fantasy tends to focus on one major character (with companions) who has a major story arc and epic task to perform and that's the end of it. In general fantasy novels are one shots, or closed series (most commonly the trilogy). Both the epic scale, and the totality of the character's experiential arc are such that their tale is done. THE END and HAPPILY EVER AFTER. That's not good for an open-ended series, and its not good for most games because they are ongoing and players generally want to have their characters go on until the players tire of them irrespective of the story being told. I think this is why I tend to focus on grittier games, with more heavily detailed worlds, and with plot structures taken from mediums that are scaled to keep the world in tact and the characters going (crime stories, political thrillers, pulpy exploits, pig farming, etc).

 

Now, this isn't universal. Some writers use a different character structure (RR Martin comes to mind), but generally its a world shaking, epic event thats in play, and one that must eventually have a certain finality about its end. And even if you have other tales for them, how many times can you save the kingdom/world, stop the invincible menace, and get the chastly-asexual-yet-oh-so-sexy girl before it becomes blase? The issue here is one of scale. And, while a lot of gamemasters run a game for a year and quit, my limited experience tells me that once they build a world they like most keep using it, and the characters tend to last a while, too. In a writing sense, the Deryni chronicles fit this bill. Kurtz has been fleshing out that world for 15+ novels, but each book, or set of books, tells a complete story.

 

And this is where modern fantasy drives me nuts. A lot of authors have figured out that readers love recurring characters (and the world is a character in many ways), but they've stuck to the classic structure. Jordan is on how many Wheel of Time novels now? How many would it actually take to tell that story? He'd do better to write the darned arc, close it off, and then write a new one. Or to move on to something fresh. That story had a beginning, but its become a middle without an end. Its odd because his conan pastiches were strongly plotted and well written, and he obvious understood how to do it. Now it drones...

 

I'm a gamer who enjoys developed worlds and character driven stories, and I like characters with more than one story in them. That requires some different assumptions, and to really sustain it, generally requires that stories be told on a different scale. Which takes me back to killer shrikes comment that I'm stuck in the crime novel paradigm.

[Mister E]

Re: Fantasy Rant

 

I'm fairly burnt-out, too... as a consumer.

 

Jordan's Wheel of Time series is awful. I got stuck in the middle of book 5, and just quit a few years ago. I respect what I think he was doing (trying to tell a story where the fate-smacked protagonist somehow defies his own inevitability)... I just don't see it working out.

 

But, yeah, his Conan books were great. It's funny, I see the same "nexus-of-plot" type elements in Conan... but he wears it naturally. He's a real hero in the classic sense; while the Wheel of Time series lacks this treasure. There are no great characters in the Wheel of Time series... everyone is either a psychic clone, or incorporeal.

 

Great characters/settings/plots have new/unique shticks; and most current fantasy lacks real genius behind it. I think this is a result of the state of modern existence... but of course Solomon was the one who coined the phrase, "nothing new under the sun," I believe.

[Markdoc]

Re: Fantasy Rant

 

I'm a gamer who enjoys developed worlds and character driven stories' date=' and I like characters with more than one story in them. That requires some different assumptions, and to really sustain it, generally requires that stories be told on a different scale. Which takes me back to killer shrikes comment that I'm stuck in the crime novel paradigm.[/quote']

 

One possibility then, is to look at the characters through the lens of *different* paradigms. To take a flimsy example, my current game uses the standard "newbie heroes" getting in over their heads trope, with the unspoken - but shared - assumption that eventually they will mature into true heroes and that this will lead to "greater things".

 

If things go as planned, the scope of the game will shift over time from "mystery with killing" - the detective/gritty crime paradigm, if you will, to "politics with killing". In both cases, there's an element of mystery and clue gathering, but as time passes it goes from finding out who's responsible to to a situation where the major factions are well known, but the emphasis is on finding out what they are up to and/or what their motives are. If the full story arc plays out, I'm looking at a further 2-3 years of gaming, but I am already starting to think in a vague sort of way of where we go from there.

 

You're right, players often like to keep their PCs going long-term, but by the end of this story arc I think I will have scripted the mystery/intrigue angle into the ground. If the game continues past that point, I'm going to need fresh challenges for me, if not the players. Like you, I'm slightly fixated on mysteries, but one simply can't play Columbo with Swords for ever. I'm thinking epic war as the famous heroes get drawn into the conflict raging on the continent to the north and to that end am already planting a few ideas so the players *know* that there's a particularly nasty war going on "over there" - but not enough to make them want to give up their current quest to check it out.

 

It should be enough of a change in focus that it will (hopefully) seem fresh to both the players and me and pose interesting challenges. Characters developed over a few years of fighting, investigating and infiltrating will haveto deal with a whole new set of challenges when it comes to leading armies and making (or breaking) political alliances, but not so far from their earlier adventures as to be untenable.

 

So - to go back to your earlier comments about being unable to read fantasy, after years of being an omnivorous devourer of fantasy, I'm the same way. There are a few things that hold my interest though, and almost none of them involve the stalwart hero(es) undertaking a hazardous quest on which hangs the fate of the world. One author who currently holds my interest, you have already mentioned - GRR Martin. It would not, I think, be difficult to translate from the gritty mystery style to the gritty high politics of something like a Game of Thrones and the Harn'ish setting you have already used would suit well. The difference is in seeing the players as the major movers and shakers - the heads of the noble familiess from whom the potential kings will be drawn - instead of characters playing out a story against that backdrop. It might be even more fun if the players headed different and competing (but not hostile) factions. Only one of them gets to be king (or queen).

 

cheers, Mark

[Cancer]

Re: Fantasy Rant

 

After my last experience GMing, which was a controlled-flight-into-ground explosive fireball of a disaster, I took stock and realized something. I too had been thinking too much like an author and not enough like a GM. It was an interesting world to create, but it -- or at least the section of it in which I'd chosen to open -- was a lousy one to play in. There was no room for "free will" for the characters, and therefore nothing for the players to do. I had a story I wanted to tell, a world I wanted to show off, and the players got bored with just reading that script. This was because they were put into a spot that was crucial for the development of the game-world, and I wasn't willing to allow them to mess with its general development. That yields an overconstrained situation that strangles opportunities for roleplaying.

 

Game worlds must be incomplete in important ways, and they must have room for the characters to try, at least, to fulfil whatever ambitions they have. It's easiest to do this by keeping PCs away from what are obviously, at the time, world-shaking events. It can turn out after the fact that the PCs altered the course of world history, but you cannot enter such a situation with a planned outcome for such events.

 

Foreign or alien world flavor is something else ... it's difficult in a game-world to set up a Time Abyss or the realization that Things Are Not What They Appear, which are important fantasy features. The more so if your players are a bunch of butt-kickers, and what they really want out of their game is a regular (but varied) supply of adequately tough but beatable opponents that they can wade through every Sunday afternoon.

[Vondy]

Re: Fantasy Rant

 

One possibility then, is to look at the characters through the lens of *different* paradigms. To take a flimsy example, my current game uses the standard "newbie heroes" getting in over their heads trope, with the unspoken - but shared - assumption that eventually they will mature into true heroes and that this will lead to "greater things".

 

If things go as planned, the scope of the game will shift over time from "mystery with killing" - the detective/gritty crime paradigm, if you will, to "politics with killing". In both cases, there's an element of mystery and clue gathering, but as time passes it goes from finding out who's responsible to to a situation where the major factions are well known, but the emphasis is on finding out what they are up to and/or what their motives are. If the full story arc plays out, I'm looking at a further 2-3 years of gaming, but I am already starting to think in a vague sort of way of where we go from there.

 

You're right, players often like to keep their PCs going long-term, but by the end of this story arc I think I will have scripted the mystery/intrigue angle into the ground. If the game continues past that point, I'm going to need fresh challenges for me, if not the players. Like you, I'm slightly fixated on mysteries, but one simply can't play Columbo with Swords for ever. I'm thinking epic war as the famous heroes get drawn into the conflict raging on the continent to the north and to that end am already planting a few ideas so the players *know* that there's a particularly nasty war going on "over there" - but not enough to make them want to give up their current quest to check it out.

 

It should be enough of a change in focus that it will (hopefully) seem fresh to both the players and me and pose interesting challenges. Characters developed over a few years of fighting, investigating and infiltrating will haveto deal with a whole new set of challenges when it comes to leading armies and making (or breaking) political alliances, but not so far from their earlier adventures as to be untenable.

 

So - to go back to your earlier comments about being unable to read fantasy, after years of being an omnivorous devourer of fantasy, I'm the same way. There are a few things that hold my interest though, and almost none of them involve the stalwart hero(es) undertaking a hazardous quest on which hangs the fate of the world. One author who currently holds my interest, you have already mentioned - GRR Martin. It would not, I think, be difficult to translate from the gritty mystery style to the gritty high politics of something like a Game of Thrones and the Harn'ish setting you have already used would suit well. The difference is in seeing the players as the major movers and shakers - the heads of the noble familiess from whom the potential kings will be drawn - instead of characters playing out a story against that backdrop. It might be even more fun if the players headed different and competing (but not hostile) factions. Only one of them gets to be king (or queen).

 

cheers, Mark

 

All very good points and ideas. Thanks!

[Enforcer84]

Re: Fantasy Rant

 

My only rant is when ever I try to run a fantasy game, my players balk at being the cheerleaders or fashion models.

Sigh.

[SCUBA Hero]

Re: Fantasy Rant

 

Simply put: I'm not fun anymore.

As a former player in Van D-Man's Harn Hero PBEM game, SCUBA Hero respectfully disagrees.

 

I had a *lot* of fun in that game, in large part due to the fact that you are a fun GM.

[Old Man]

Re: Fantasy Rant

 

My only rant is when ever I try to run a fantasy game, my players balk at being the cheerleaders or fashion models.

Sigh.

 

You have it backwards. It is the GM's duty to cater to the players' fantasies. Here, put these shackles on.

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Fantasy Rant

 

Very good thread....

 

To the initial problem - no motivation to actually write the genre desired, the usual solution is to read the genre.

 

As has been ably pointed out, the genre as it has existed focuses in a undesirable place (for Von D Man) and the current existence is mostly a poor pastiche of past pleasures (though there are notable exceptions).

 

I think part of the problem is age. When I was a child, I wrote and played as a child.... As you get older and your current existence changes the creative process takes on different tropes to use and some of those are inconsistent with the genre you 'think' you want to write about - your subconscious is telling you that you want to write about something else....

 

There is also the fact that you may be thinking that you want to write epic fantasy and somehow your subconscious impression of epic fantasy (all of that euro-centred stuff) is blocking the truly innovative epic fantasy you are ready to write.

 

I think you already have the answer "....run the games, and write the stories, that I care about and not sweat it." You should also look to the fantastic elements that you want to incorporate and possibly highlight those to players. It does not take much change of emphasis in a fantasy game for players to see a real difference in look and feel.

 

Glorantha in 1978 felt like a huge paradigm shift but it was a very slight change of emphasis on the role of bog standard pantheism on the magic structure of the game.

 

Doc

[AnotherSkip]

Re: Fantasy Rant

 

IF this hasn't been said then it needs to be, (sorry I have ADD) try running (or thinking/reading) some indo/asiatic/amerind stuff? AD&D had several good ideas for campaigns other than euro fantasy (yeah I know about the probs with AD&D so dont even bother, this is straight ripping off not selling the product)think about one of your favorite worlds and then think about how a stone age tribe would have influenced it.

Heck have the players be gods in a pantheon(and too busy squabbling to make the attentions of the priests matter). That should be high enough to aim for

 

IE Get out of the box.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Fantasy Rant

 

One thing you could try is to do a over-the-top Fantasy game, doing everything on broad scale, dialing in all the cliches to 11, to the point of near-parody.

 

Not good for a long term campaign, but such a tact can be fun as comic relief, a fun little mini-campaign.

 

Why? Because sometimes doing things over the top, no holds barred, helps you to break down barriers, overcome ennui, and realize how much room you have to manuever around in before you push the envelope when doing a "straight" implementation.

[The Monster]

Re: Fantasy Rant

 

If you're patient enough to read my blatherings...

 

I love Tolkein's work. I've read LotR more times than I can count, the Silmarillion cover-to-cover a couple times, and most other stuff I've stumbled on by the original author or his son(s). That alone puts my taste in a different place than several of the people who have been most involved in this thread. I'm aware of his limitations, and I certainly don't look down on anyone who doesn't share my taste. On the other hand, I gave up on the Deryni series after the first five or six books, and never went back, for various reasons.

 

I don't know that the cultural source material (mythos/religion/) for a game or novel is strongly relevant to the value or "interestingness" thereof. Of course it's easier to work with material you and your audience are already familiar with; but the (admittedly few) things I've come across drawing heavily on non-European-Christian/pseudo-European-pagan/Celtic stuff are neither stronger nor weaker as stories or gaming material than anything else.

 

My motto as a GM for the last several years has been: Players Want to Do Kewl Stuff. That, to me, is what makes a good GM - one who can spot what a player is trying to accomplish with their character and provide opportunities for that character to at least try to do just that. It's not so much a matter of deep, meaningful storytelling, nor of realistic world-building. Those things are great, and if it's what your strengths and interests point toward, that's super. But it's not what makes RPGs work - they are merely nice tools, basically in the same class with painted miniatures and pretty maps. It's all stuff which can enhance game play, and almost every game is better with than without, but they are secondary to the usual function of an RPG - that is, to have fun in a social setting.

 

The trick, then, is to figure out what the players want, and how to make it jibe with what the GM wants. No minor stunt that...

 

Not that I want to put anyone down. In fact, I think it's liberating to see things that way: a GM should be free to focus on what makes him or her most interested and interesting in running game, rather than bogged down with concerns over how "good" the world is, or how s/he knows the particular rules.

 

Von D-Man says (of himself), "I'm not fun any more." As far as I know, I've never played in one of his games, but I doubt the problem is really that he's not fun any more. It sounds to me like the problem is that *he* isn't having fun. Of course it is possible for a GM, especially a good one, to run a game which is satisfactory to everyone else and still feel like it was a bland or even boring session - I've done it myself, more than once.

 

The one time I've really wanted to save a campaign where I'd run out of creative steam, I ended up laying my cards on the table at the end of one session, and telling the players (all of whom very strongly wanted to see it keep going). Their response and input provided me the encouragement I needed, and at least as important, the seed for the next (current) phase of the campaign, which is fun enough to last me a while. But for a while there I was struggling with it.

 

I'm not even sure the issue is figuring out how to make fantasy fun again for anyone in particular, especially for someone who's been so heavily involved in that phase of the hobby. Maybe it's time to just let it lie for a while, maybe even for a long time. Maybe it's time to do something else entirely; maybe even get away from GMng for a time - and not worrying about it. I know that in my years of RPGing, my interests have certainly fluctuated, to where most fantasy games don't appeal to me all that much any more. It's not like there's nothing else to do to fill my time and stimulate my mind. To my limited sight, the issue is more about what VD-M needs to do to feel like he's having fun - and that is something I can't begin to answer without asking a whole lot of intrusive and personal questions.

 

I won't presume to offer any kind of magic bullet, or even suggest any particular books to read. I suppose my primary suggestion might be to not let this change in yourself (and I think it's primarily a change in yourself - expectations of yourself and your players, awareness of various issues, concerns over details that may not seem signifcant to others, whatever) be an anchor against further development. If you're done with fantasy, then you're done with fantasy. So be it. I don't mean to be flip - I don't mean cease to ponder what it means about you and what you do. But be willing to close the door and let it open when you hear more interesting noises issuing forth.

 

And find out just what Kewl Stuff you want to do now...

[CraterMaker]

Re: Fantasy Rant

 

And the winner is... The Monster!

 

Seriously, he's right. As GM's, we have enormous responsibility with regards to the fun level everyones having. And sometimes, it's not so fun anymore to be the one in charge. So let someone else do it, play something kewl, and have fun.

 

CraterMaker