Does anyone else feel like fantasy has been so thoroughly deconstructed that playing every trope straight and completely seriously would make for a cool, fresh setting?
>>43910084
Yes.
>>43910084
Going back to the basics is always a good thing. Although I can imagine it backfiring hilariously when people try to play it like a more modern game.
>The fighter is a knight out to save the king's daughter from a dragon
>The knight is noble
>The dragon is evil
>The princess wants to be saved
>There is no twist
No one will ever expect this.
>>43910213
What about the trusted vizier of the king who is the princess' father? Does it depend on whether or not his beard is obviously evil?
>>43910213
Except when you players decide that they want to be fresh and original and interesting, and you end up with a party of 2 drow fencers, a strong womyn barbarian, a loli sorceress, and a dragonborn thief, and a mindflayer bard who plays the ukelele.
>>43910084
>playing every trope straight and completely seriously
...I always played like this
>>43910259
Uk'a-li-li is the best bard.
>>43910259
To be fair strong womyn barbarians are also a classic trope. Red Sonja and all.
Fresh yes
Cool, no. Classic fantasy tropes are boring as fuck honestly.
>>43910343
Well, that depends on how seriously you take them. If you put them in an otherwise realistic ye olde medieval East Angle and treat things like people from the era would there's a lot of potential.
>>43910371
Yeah, but I find generic !Ye Old Europe boring. Worst way to do fantasy in my opinion. Stuff like that is a matter of personal taste, though.
>>43910259
>mindflayer bard
SOLD!
>>43910084
See, that's assuming fantasy is a single genre. It's not, there are loads of different subgenres of fantasy taking inspiration from folklores from all over the world. If you're talking fairy tale, chivalric romance, Arthurian legend stuff, then yeah, it might be fresh if you decided to play absolutely everything super straight. Especially if you play up the real old-school Celtic pagan mythology elements.
If we're talking fantasy in general, then probably not, because fantasy is so broad and has so many subgenres that if you tried to stick to every convention it ever had, you'd just get a giant fantasy mishmash, which is a setting type all of its own that is most definitely _not_ fresh and new.Also why are you coming back to haunt me, TV Tropes, I quit you cold turkey two and a half years ago and I've been clean of you since, go away
Also, read Neil Gaiman's Stardust; I think you might find it interesting.
>>43910655
go home, NiceDaemonette, you're drunk
>>43910812
>See, that's assuming fantasy is a single genre. It's not, there are loads of different subgenres of fantasy taking inspiration from folklores from all over the world. If you're talking fairy tale, chivalric romance, Arthurian legend stuff, then yeah, it might be fresh if you decided to play absolutely everything super straight. Especially if you play up the real old-school Celtic pagan mythology elements.
Yeah's exactly what I had in mind, yeah. Play up Celtic and Christian elements.
>>43910863
If handled well, then yes, that would make a fresh and original setting.
But that's not a small 'if'.
>>43910164
>Going back to the basics is always a good thing.
One might even call it revolutionary.
>>43910259
Doesn't sound like a half bad party.
I once played with a guy who played as a dragonborn thief. He chose poison as his breath weapon and would always try to stealthily spit poison into people's drinks. Good times
>>43910259
>a mindflayer bard who plays the ukelele
I like that.
>>43910084
>Does anyone else feel like fantasy has been so thoroughly deconstructed that playing every trope straight and completely seriously would make for a cool, fresh setting?
Yup. I once had the players investigate a murder mystery, where the butler was actually the culprit.
It sure got my players by surprise. The butler was able to kill a couple more people before they accepted that it was, in fact, the butler who did it.
Question is, where is the line drawn on what counts as original fantasy?
Tolkien, Anderson, Lieber, Lewis and Howard were all writing in reaction to victorian fairytales.
Victorian fairytales were a reaction to medieval folk tales. Those folk tales were mostly re-imagining old mythology through a christian lens.
That said, any one of those would be better than most modern day kitchen-sink shit.
>>43910655
I like it too, though I'd be more likely to take the mindflayer bloodline feats. If psionics aren't common, it's more powerful than people realize.
>>43911986
Dragonborn thief seems like a clever idea too.
>>43912123
I'd say "classic" fantasy is where there's a clear, inhuman, unredeemable evil, and it's clear to the reader from the start which is which. No shades of gray, no antiheroes, just justice and vengeance to be served to the deserving.
>>43910084
This more than anything else is what made Dark Souls really sing for me.
>>43912437
So C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien?
But not Fritz Leiber, Poul Anderson, Robert E. Howard, Lord Dunsany or Jack Vance?
>>43912437
Well, it really depends. A lot of fairy tale heroes are fairly underhanded and are not presented as wholly righteous. Many get punished for their misdeeds partway through the story.
>>43912793
I liked DS a lot, but it's more of an edgy surreal nightmare than any attempt to play classic tropes straight.
>>43910084
It would be cool. That being said these things run in cycles. First the standard heroic fantasy where heroes are good and villains are bad, then each side gets a bit of gray added in usually focusing on the means and ends of both sides, then the world goes to being a complete sack of shit before the cycle starts again.
>>43912608
>J. R. R. Tolkien
While it's true that Tolkien's writings feature clear evil, there is plenty of shades of grey and anti-heroes in Tolkien's stories, so he wouldn't qualify either.
>>43912866
I'm not sure what you're talking about. The Andersen fairy tales are full of tricksters. The Arabian Nights stories are full of tricksters. Eastern European fairy tales are full of tricksters. That pretty much covers everyone in the region beside Britain.
>>43912608
I would make the case that Robert E. Howard and Lord Dunsany were writing weird fantasy over classic fantasy.
>>43912608
>>43912956
More like C.S. Lewis and George MacDonald, I'd say, those are more clean-cut. Oooh, for added spice Stephen Lawhead. And Brian Jacques, of course, not even Lewis was as bright and colorful as Redwall, and I say that as someone who truly, deeply loves the Chronicles of Narnia.
>>43912530
Dark Souls only works as a classical fantasy portrayal if Dark Souls 3 has a "happy" ending.
And by happy I mean 'the world becomes not such a crapshot mess at the end', not 'everyone gets a fairy tale ending'. I fully expect everyone and everything you meet to die by the time it's over, but it'll be paid for with the world itself being born anew or something.
It's got ember and ashes as primary symbols. That's phoenixy as shit.
>>43912996
The hero is a walking corpse. The princess is the size of a house, and also not real. The quest is something weird about linking a fire to your soul- or not- and you get it from one of two giant grinning worms. This isn't bog standard, save the kingdom type fantasy. It's something else.
>>43913486
Granted it just makes me curious what the age of Dark would have been like in the Souls verse.
The past two games have always been stagnant in that the age of Fire is fading but hasn't faded completely even in DSII where Vendrick never linked the fire and it's implied the world has been that way for a long time.
A game where I can finally save the princess and kill the evil dragon would really hit the spot right about now.
Too bad I only really know Pathfinder, which is like the opposite of traditional.
>>43912530
>Weird Japanese dark fantasy about a bunch of zombies raging against the decay of the world where the closest thing to an actual antagonist is the very concept of entropy.
>Conventional played straight fantasy.
I don't follow.
>>43910084
No.
Go into New Weird and drop the clones.
This is why Noblebright as a setting is so appealing to me I think.
Shit's nice and comfy to have a clear set of right and wrong 'defeat the bad guys' vibe.
>>43911986
Not bad, but it's also become cookie cutter at this point. All those have been used enough to become archetypes which are increasingly difficult to escape.
Sometimes, you want something new, eh?
>>43912530
Dark Souls has some of the meat of it in that it remembers that knights are supposed to typically be good or at least honorable guys, even when they're opposing one another, but it's hard to call it an example of standard fantasy, cause' they're also all revenants.
>>43910084
I don't actually think you could do EVERY trope. I think they'd conflict.
>>43910084
You don't do this already?
>>43912996
British folktales are also full of tricksters. Usually named Jack.
>>43915255
>tfw Brit named Jack
>>43910084
See the problem with fantasy is that a lot of the original tropes were bad and dumb in the first place, it wasn't just that we got sick of them and wanted to do something else.
I really like the Japanese concept of a Maou. Not sure how "classical" that is though, since it blends traditional Japanese folklore with generic western fantasy and Mao Tsetung.
>>43915291
Congratulations, all those folktales about some tricksy asshole are about you.
>>43912530
What?
>>43914907
Just looked up NobleBright after not coming across the term before. I like it, the grim/noble, dark/bright split makes a lot of sense.
I disagree with whoever edited the 1d4chan page though. Gundam and Dark Souls are NobleDark going by that page's definitions, not GrimDark.
>>43910084
No.
I've read Ivanhoe and I've read fantasy heartbreakers.
They're not the same thing.
>>43914907
>>43915430
Lord of the Rings is Nobledark, not Noblebright.
Nobledark is when there is a clear differentiation between good and bad, and the bad is making gains but the good can rally if the heroes reveal themselves. Noblebright is the same, only good has prevailed and bad hides in the dark corners of the land.
>>43915377
And yet I'm know to friends and family as an honest and trustworthy man.
>>43915516
Then you must be quite good at what you do.
>>43915516
We're onto you, Jack.
One of these days the accumulated sin and deceit will slow you down enough for the truth to catch up.
>>43915596
Apparently so.
Now I'm off to swindle some rube out of his wages and knock up his sister.
>>43912026
You're DMing God's work, Anon.
>>43915615
Not a rube, a giant. Remember, he needs to be a giant so your actions are morally unambiguous.
>>43915604
I'm sure velocity won't be an issue.
>>43915790
>Remember, he needs to be a giant so your actions are morally unambiguous.
Are you saying giants don't have rights? You need to check your privilege, shitlord! I'm a giantkin, my pronouns are Fe/Fi/Fo/Fum and my triggers are the blood of an Englishman.
To be honest, no. It's not about an inversion - I care a lot more about execution than overall theme - but if I had to select elements for a fantasy setting that appealed to me most it'd have a lot of weird fantasy. I don't see that as disingenuous to the origins of the genre either: many earlier popular fantasy writers wrote weird stuff (like The Night Lands or Lord Dunsany) and even in folklore there's plenty of stuff that functions in a weird fantasy world (particular in like Grimm Brothers' tales, and pretty much any actual pagan myth system).
I think the absolute, purehearted fantasy adventure is more of a modern convenience than people realise. Even your established Matter of Britain stuff isn't quite that, although I suppose The Song of Roland is closer.
>>43910084
Probably because fantasy clichés are deconstructed not because they create a more interesting story, but deconstructed for the sake of deconstruction itself. Because of this, people forget that clichés exist because they work, and because people love them.
>it comes full circle
yes
>>43912530
>>43914568
>>43915392
more like >>43915119
Let the fluff out, and focus on the main thing that you do in the dark/demon souls series :
You are a knight in armor, alone, going on a quest and defeating monsters. No talking with monsters, monsters just want to kill you. They range from zombie to dragon, with magical beast such as an hydra, giant spiders and weirds shit.
Look at the protag armor for each game. Aren't them appropriate for a basic "knight savior of princess" feel ?
that reminds me
when the fuck are we getting an open world fantasy game that isnt european medieval fantasy
jade empire was so long ago
fucking oblivion ruined the fantasy open world genre
>"Deconstruction" of the genre
>Not a single story where the monster saves the knight from the princess
>>43916506
is the princess an evil princess?
or is this some political marriage that the knight doesnt want and wants to be with his dragon waifu?
>>43916561
>or is this some political marriage that the knight doesnt want and wants to be with his dragon waifu?
Idea:
>Knight has to marry a princess as part of a political marriage that he really doesn't want to.
>Makes a deal with a monster: he can fuck shit up and the Knight will 'pursue' him, but let him go in the end with his haul.
>This is done as an excuse so the Knight can go off on a quest to fight the monster and avoid the wedding.
And then the two of them team up and wreck shit. I dunno.
>>43916561
Why not both? An evil princess forces the king to wed her to his heir so she can control both kingdoms and initiate a new age of darkness. Only the prince's monster waifu can save the day and at the same time improve human-monster relations. When the adventure is over and sheprincess carriesher prince to safety, the king grants amnesty to all monsters and gives the two lovebirds his blessing.
And they livedand snu snu'dhappily ever after.
>>43916622
Tio best MON.
>>43916650
>not Polt or Zombina
Anon Irespect your opinion but disagree with it
>>43916683
Zombina is second best by a very close margin. Polt is cute too.
I just want to save a princess in a tower.
That's all I've ever wanted to do. But no, there always has to be some goddamn "clever" twist. Why can't I just get chivalrous in peace, damn it
>>43916739
yer getting too chivalrous for this shit
>>43916506
>implyingMAN IS THE REAL MONSTERYOU WERE PLAYING THE DECONSTRUCTION ALL ALONG!
>>43916417
>Dude walking around and fighting things
I see every video RPG ever is classical fantasy played straight.
Oversimplifications aside, the reason Dark Souls appears like a old heroic tale is because it goes for mythic-y feel. Due to how the story is shown to us what happens feels very "told", as if someone shares a tale given by his father, who got it from his father, who got it from his fater, etc.
I'd elaborate on this but I have hickup that might actually kill me.
>>43916813
>as if someone shares a tale given by his father, who got it from his father, who got it from his fater, etc.
Oh THAT EXPLAINS the retarded psychics breaking elevator in Dark Souls 2
>>43916683
>>43916622
please
>>43916417
To me this thing is pretty clear.
You saw Excalibur 1982 ? from the moment where King Arthur fell sick, the land became as blighted as he was dying, and most of the knight went to search the grail, who would cure Arthur as well as the land.
Then we follow Perseval, whose armor have gone from chrome bling to rusted, looking for the Graal all over a dead kingdom and finding others knights dead, dying or mad. Others knights have turned traitor and himself is tempted by morgana to break his covenant for her.
Well the feeling and ambiance are really the same that are conveyed on those game.
Fuck, in dark souls your main mission is to get a big cup and fill it up to save the world, in demon souls to save boletaria from it's curse. DS2 is becoming worthy of be the king. The most visible fluff is about kings, their knights and kingdom and curses uppon them of each games. It's really has this classic fantasy theme running, albeit with the post appo feel and japan weird stuff.
>>43916844
MONOEYES ARE FOR BULLYING
>>43916838
>Oh THAT EXPLAINS the retarded psychics breaking elevator in Dark Souls 2
Nah, that's just where they had to cut the area of the old iron king dlc. Never wondered why the castle had a sudden jump in soul gain?
>>43910655
All he sings is Brains! by Voltaire
>>43916739
Are you positive you wouldn't enjoy a cynical, edgy twist anon? After all, morality isn't black and white.
>>43910084
You've just become jaded and are just now realizing that you don't have to be.
Most everybody gets there at some point, if they stick with it long enough.
>>43917039
>tfw le fat knockoff war of the roses man is legit starting to trigger you
>>43916850
which makes sense since the Director of dark souls has said that he used to read fantasy but because it was in english and was young he would only understand about 20% of the story (the main hook) and everything else was him trying to fill in the story
>>43917039
The act of looking at the world in terms of black and white is and has always been more revolutionary and more radical than looking at it in relative shades of gray.
>>43916927
The on I know is the Tower of Flame to Fisherman's Wharf elevator.
>>43916813
Nah, not just mythological.
Most fight, you do it alone. Compare that to the squad of talkative pompom-girl that you carry arround in dragon dogma or whatever.
That don't fit with the "knight trying to best alone a dragon in his lair",
Also, the "not overpowered" may add to the feeling of a more "classical" fantasy.
You aren't winning by having superpower but with endeavor and ruses.
The dead world make it also a more "far from home" touch.
I'm not sure it it a classical fantasy element but being far from a city is what make a long quest. Classic quest tend to send you to the corner of the world, and having a city nearby kinda diminish for me this. Most enemy are from the far-countryside in a fantasy classic.
>>43916927
add to that that the game was planned to be more open before everything was cut.
>>43910084
Right now our group is playing The One Ring and that's as close to "traditional" fantasy as you can get, and we're loving it.
It takes the right kind group.
>>43917380
>add to that that the game was planned to be more open before everything was cut.
Didn't they completely change direction around midway through development?
No, not particularly. Fantasy outside of places like /tg/ largely remains bog-standard. It's only in places like this that you see this overwhelming drive to be as contrarian as possible.
>>43917380
I thought Dragon's Dogma was really good, though the lack of fast-travel and the repetitive dialogue did become super annoying.
>>43916506
That's not a deconstruction, that's an inversion.
>>43917380
While there are some shared elements I still think that the core themes are very different and not every trope is played the same way in both cases. But given how we're comparing a single game to an entire genre, we would need to get more specific on what "classic" fantasy is and were we cut the line. And I admit I am not very well read on the subject.
>Compare that to the squad of talkative pompom-girl that you carry arround in dragon dogma or whatever.
In a way Dragon's Dogma is also heavily isolating for the player because it's main conflict ends up being about the nature of free will and individuality.
And then it's more or less a love story in the expansion, but a good one at least.
>>43910084
>fantasy thoroughly deconstructed
Yes
>trope dogmatic setting cool
Classics are classic for a reason
>trope dogmatic setting fresh
Nope. It'll never be fresh. You can't have fresh grape juice that is also aged wine. Good cheese is not fresh milk.
It can be excellent, but it will never again be new.
The word you are looking for is Retro.
Or possibly hipster if you liked it before it came back into vogue.
>>43911935
I see what you did there. . .
>>43913821
It's so opposite of traditional that all the Good-aligned societies in Golarion cannot possibly sustain themselves for more than one more generation.
>>43918929
Explain.
>>43917039
>that guy who called Tolkien (WW1 veteran) dishonest in his depiction of war because not enough rape
>>43919041
One of the devs described having more than 2 children as being a "breeding sow", and said that the average woman in Golarion's Good-aligned societies has only one child.
I don't try to run edgy games but I don't necessarily set up the game so that heroics are required or even easy, they are something you'd have to go out of the way for to be a hero.
Like if a group of adventurers goes into a dungeon to find treasure, that's not really being heroic, that's just their extremely dangerous job. Now of course if they protect a town being attacked by orcs then that is pretty heroic, but to preserve the player's freedom of choice they could just leave instead of help, you know?
>>43919111
>has only one child
That doesn't mean they'll die in one generation, what's the birth:death ratio?
>>43917380
I don't get you. DD was meant to be like the most bare bones boldfaced recreation of old school fantasy like the earliest editions of D&D, the game doesn't force you to have an entire team of loli pawns. I also don't get why there being one town and one city bothers you so much, go look at the Arthurian stuff and you'll see those guys don't go a stone's throw from a city, village, church or hermitage where they hang out. In DD you still crawl into forbidding places out end up in the ass backwards end of the woods fighting classic fantasy monsters.
>>43919079
What?
>>43919194
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3110466/Game-Thrones-creator-defends-rape-scenes-Author-says-dishonest-boring-leave-sexual-violence.html
>>43919111
lol
Sounds like that one guy who went on a tirade about how siring your own children instead of adopting is abhorrent and logically unjustifiable
>>43919280
Adopting from where? The same society that produces only one child per couple?
>>43919308
Those poor Evil societies Anon!
>>43919308
Oh, no he was talking about IRL. And from anywhere to anywhere.
![Age-of-Wushu-screenshot-2[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/UxA7duZ.jpg "Age-of-Wushu-screenshot-2[1].jpg")
>>43916468
>Best gameplay in an MMO I have ever played
>Amazingly cool aesthetic and world
>The nature of open world PvP causes you to literally create your own scenes straight out of a wuxia novel
Seriously, Age of Wushu was the tightest shit ever. I remember so many moments where I just had to sit back and say "Literally just like muh wuxia novels"
>Be in a guild
>During one of the many crazy political arcs our server went through, our particular guild has to help crush a weaker, neutral guild purely to solidify an alliance with another guild
>They literally didn du nuffin, and I personally felt awful about it, but politics are politics, enemies of our allies have to be our enemies and all that
>Our guild leader goes to visit an old friend of his at the friend's house
>It turns out the leader of the weaker guild we crushed was a friend of *his* friend's, and said leader is simply sitting there, presumably also waiting to talk to their mutual friend
>The two guild leaders proceed to have a civil discussion about the necessity of our attack, with an undercurrent of remorse and commentary on the cruel nature of politics
>The enemy guild leader recognizes his defeat and remarks on how unfortunate the circumstances were
I swear to shit this game was full of moments like that. I literally have tons of stories of ridiculously cool moments with shifting alliances, unlikely friends, sworn enemies, and intricate storylines like that. Fuck that game was fun sometimes.Shame it's run by greedy chinks and we will never get another game with that level of wuxia goodness that is free of the shekel loving slant-eyes.
>>43917077
Well tp be fair vidya was like this with Blizzard. Their pre 7th gen games were grimdark as hell for video game storytelling. Suddenly with SC2. Your faction becomes good guys compared to SC1's backstabbing and shittiness
Fuck metzen.
>>43919779
Moar?
>>43919779
Whyboner.jpg
>>43919779
You're mixing past and present tense there.
Is it still a thing?
>>43920981
>Be out and about in the Main City zone, the place where pretty much everyone congregated, like your EC Commons tunnel in EQ1
>Just killing mobs, doing some random bullshit
>Suddenly two guys race past me at the speed of sanicfast and leap off a mountain
>Wonder what the fug is going on and run after them
>Catch up, see them fighting to the death at the base of this mountain
>Survey the scene from a tree above the two, one of them is a dude from an enemy guild, the other is just some random guildless guy
>"FUCK that enemy guild faggot"
>Leap down and proceed to help the guildless guy, he pauses for a second like he's confused but then works together with me and we beat the enemy guild guy
>Let the guildless guy finish the nerd off, and after the dust settles we start chatting eachother up
>Turns out the guildless guy was an ex member of the enemy guild whose member we had just killed. Guildless guy quit because of various bullshit going on in that guild, and one of his old guildies came to grief him for "betraying" them
>We chat for a long while and I get all sorts of insight as to the enemy guild's politics, frustration within the membership, and all sorts of exploitable stuff
>We add eachother to friends list and proceed to help eachother in various ways in the future
>All because one day, I decided to butt in when I saw a random guy getting his ass kicked by another random guy
Seriously this game helped me realize that wuxia characters are literally just the ancient version of faggots on the internet griefing eachother
>>43910259
I like them all besides the 2 drow fencers, as that's overlap. Still, maybe they're sacred flank buddies?
>>43921166
Age of Wushu is still a thing yes, but it's a time-devouring P2W game that will suck your free time out of you like a hungry hooker to the point where it feels like more work than fun to play it. Also, the server I was on (Golden Panda) is basically dead, maybe only 200~ people actively play it
It made for a LOT of good memories, though
Another story
>Hanging around Main City zone, not really doing anything special
>Random guy comes up to me and says "hey"
>To this day I have no idea why I did it, but I just start running like crazy through the city to get away from him
>"hey wait"
>He starts following me
>Use lightfoot skills to leap up to building roofs, dash through the air towards the city wall, run up said wall to climb on top of it, jump down and start racing across the surface of the water that forms the moat, like Jesus prancing around to Benny Hill music
>In this game, lightfoot skills are a have/don't have type thing, either you have them and you can take advantage of the movement properties they give you or you don't and the dudes who have em can run around you like you're a chump
>I had more lightfoot skills than this dude
>Every time I get out of sight, I stop for a moment, wait, and within 30 seconds, there he is, awkwardly trying to catch up
>As he comes into vision range I resume fleeing
>"hang on stop"
>This continues for like 7 minutes
>He won't give up
>Finally stop on the shore of a lake and ask him what he wants as he swims over to me
>He asks me some random game mechanic question that I can't even fucking remember anymore and I laughingly give him the answer and we add eachother to friends list and occasionally chat in the future
>dat feel when the most famous work of a genre IS THE DECONSTRUCTION
>>43921610
Honestly, still kinda interested.
Maybe we could get some fa/tg/uys on there and start fucking with people.
Are there any examples of a good and fleshed out traditional generic fantasy setting?
>>43921710
yes
a traditional generic fantasy setting
>>43921700
ironically didnt Don Quixote actually revive interest in medieval works/stories?
>>43910084
While I would normally agree with you because I am not a fan of edge for the sake of edge
Many of the people who I have seen also say this opinion want it only as an excuse to not play tabletop games in general. Or rather, they 'play' the game but they complain when they aren't killing the obviously evil 1 dimensional orcs and play on their smart phones instead of paying attention to anything else going on.
It's pretty shit, honestly.
>>43921747
actually yes, real life knights who read it started challenging passerbys at bridges and roads
>>43921694
If you're interested you should probably check out Age of Wulin first, which is the EU version but is noted for having a much more populated server (there's only one, the Ameriburger servers are split to like 4 now)
Shittier ping though if you're a burger so your mileage may vary. Definitely either get some friends or make some friends if you're going to play it, though. Lots of crazy stuff can happen to solo players if you're good but much like wuxia in general, it's about webs of intricate social ties more than some lone nerdling going around being the strong silent type
>>43910259
>a strong womyn barbarian
I did that. Barbarian wanted a strong husband to give her children. Primarily became an adventurer so she could find a man worthy of siring her children. Once kidnapped a nobleman because he was supposedly a great duellist, his father sent some people to retrieve him, eventually she realized he was a pussy and left him in the middle of a forest.
>>43910291
Have an cookie, son. You earned it.
>>43910117
/thread
>>43912530
>be noble knight
>encounter hideous and vile dragon
>can't slay it because that one specific part of the game is bullshit
>tfw can't play Knight v. Dragon straight in DaSat least until you hit Kalameet
>>43910243
Bullshit, even cliché viziers were traitors. If they weren't they wouldn't be called "viziers," they'd just be "advisors"
>>43917077
>it's bad because it was based on historical events
>implying anyone knew anything about the War of the Roses before the story referencing it got popular
>>43917380
>You aren't winning by having superpower but with endeavor and ruses.
You are winning entirely through having the superpower of not dying combined with protag immunity to hollowing.
>>43915854
Fuckin' lelled
>>43915455
No.
Nobledark is when the people are good, but the world they inhabit is made of suffering.
Noblebright is when good people live in a good world.
>>43923370
Also there's a pretty good chance you're a wizard of some description.
>>43923397
Question.
What the fuck would Grimbright be?
>>43923931
Brave New World.
>>43923931
The world itself is basically nice but the people who inhabit it are trash.
>>43923965
So real life?
>>43913176
Agreed.
>>43924080
Real life is fairly close, but it's also in a state of constant flux. Most modern interpretations of cyberpunk end up on the Grimbright side of things.
Dragon Age did this.
It worked out pretty well for them (the first anyway).
>>43924158
>Most modern interpretations of cyberpunk end up on the Grimbright side of things.
Not really cyberpunk anymore, then.
I wish Netrunner was still set in an 80's/early 90's dystopian future-vision rather than "the whole world is an Apple store!"
PAYPHONES!
>>43910259
What about a loli bard that plays the ukelele?
She'd be a...uke-loli.
>>43924729
i want to punch you
>>43913780
The narrations we've heard so far from 3 imply that no matter what, some "Lord of Cinders" has arisen just in time to prolong the age of fire just a bit longer. What it seems like is in Dark Souls 3, there just might not even be enough left in the world to continue the age even if you tried.
Vati put up an interesting theory that perhaps the former lords of cinder are rising once more in a desperate attempt to light the first flame again. In that respect while the other games have taken place as the light is fading and the world is turning to shit, Dark Souls 3 might be one minute to the metaphorical midnight
>>43912530
For what it's worth, I was thinking of the games lack of fourth wall breaking humour, genre awareness or self deprecation more than anything else. CRPGs have been winking at the camera essentially since the beginning and it was great to find one which didn't indulge in camp at all.
That, and it mixes but its stock characters just enough that they're not instantly recognisable, so there's a sense of recognition once you do see that i.e the Taurus Demon is a Minotaur.
![1423958469279[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/DlSigqf.jpg "1423958469279[1].jpg")
>>43921757
Imagine a world famous author writing a book glorifying the fight against the Saracens, leading to a massive spike in young Western men leaving to Syria to fight ISIS. The war would be over in days, and Assad deposed in lieu of the Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller, who would rule the newly established Principality of Antioch.
>>43917039
According to you, my dear fattie, morality is all shades of black. People can be placed somewhere between "asshole" and "genocidal dickhead".
Did a politician rape your dog?
Martin is a grade B writer and all that hype is so fake. Also, why a book with his short stories have a cover like that? I bought it hoping for some wacky retro sci-fi and got pages so full of angst it made me sick.
>>43919215
>If you portray a utopia, then you probably wrote a pretty boring book
Could this fatass be any more full of himself and edgy?
>>43923269
>>implying anyone knew anything about the War of the Roses before the story referencing it got popular
I recognize I am baited as fuck but this triggers me to no end.
>>43925058
George the Hedgehog.
>>43924984
>Grade B writer
Wrote a series that's been on every fantasy fiction top list since, praised for plot and characters.
>All that hype is so fake
6th best selling fantasy series of all time if you go by average per released book, including Harry potter and Lord of the Rings.
Like, I get that there are other criteria to judge stuff by, but wouldn't it just be a lot easier to have whether or not people enjoy something be one of them?
Like, isn't it okay to just say "I'm part of the group that doesn't care for it because our subjective tastes run in other directions" do you HAVE to go the extra mile and decide that stuff you don't like must by definition be bad?
>>43925430
Would you argue that Fifty Shades of Gray or Twilight are not bad because they are some of the best selling books ever written?
>>43910084
I'd fucking kill for a campaign consisting of a group of heroes who met in a tavern setting out to save the world from an ancient evil for the sake of justice and good.
I'm so fucking sick of speshul noflake edgy bullshit campaigns with oh so "original" twists and settings.
>>43925476
Note that you are going dangerously close to the edgy opposite end.
There's a time and place for both games, and people are allowed to like both. If you start hating on gray morality games you will sound just as obnoxious and stupid as edgelords who think that games as you described are 'kenshiro tier' or whatever the fuck bullshit terms they use.
You're allowed to like both, but don't be hater.
>>43923370
>protag immunity to hollowing.
To be fair, people only hollow when they lose purpose, deleting a save or never playing a character again counts as that character holllowing.
>>43925494
You can still like pizza but still get sick to death of it if you eat it for every single meal.
>>43925507
True, but you're going down the road of yelling at other people for enjoying the pizza. "GOD AREN'T YOU GUYS SICK OF PIZZA YET". I've played tabletop for like 3 months bro, I haven't had time to get tired of anything yet.
>>43923370
>superpower of not dying
Which pretty much everyone else in the setting has too.
>protag immunity to hollowing.
You don't have that. As long as you're playing, you still have a purpose, you still struggle. When you abbandon the game, your character goes hollow.
And that happening is inevitable.
>>43910117
Agreed.
>>43914907
That's why I tend to play paladins, I think - good and evil are a bit more rigorously defined for them.
I may not be able to make the world good, but I can make the world around me good.
>>43925504
Now I realize how cool it would have been to have your cancelled characters reappear as hollows at random in the game
>>43925637
>get as far as the Belltower with a classic knight
>decide he's not really fun for you, start playing a dexterity-based character instead
>work your way to the Belltower, enjoying yourself
>see someone in knightly armor sitting at the foot of the tower
>what? the guide didn't say there'd be an enemy here
>the knight gets up, and you realize he's wielding the weapons that you used
>he raises them in a salute before charging at you, the AI replicating your fighting style to the best of its ability
>>43925665
Reminds me of dungeon crawl stone soup.
It's a rougelike where you can find and fight your old now dead characters. They can become ghosts that have the same stats, weapons, and special stuff that you had when you died.
>>43925430
m8, it's just I've read better written debuts in a goddamn zine.
He has one big hit. You know who else does? Christopher Paolini. His book was also one of the bestsellers at the time. And you know what it means? Nothing. Nothing at all.
>>43910655
>>43910291
Uk'a-li-li the Mindflayer bard left his people because he was born with a genetic defect that made him appreciate the rhythm of plucky upbeat music. Unable to live in a society that rejected his art and could not appreciate music, he traveled to the surface. He uses his awesome mental powers to supplement his music, and sometimes goes on sick tentacle jams.
Chaotic Neutral.
>>43924879
The new principality would then be bombed to shit by the russians while Obama calls for dialogue.
>>43910084
>when people think d&d is playing fantasy straight
>when people think other cultures, tech levels or races is "deconstructing" fantasy
>>43914907
>Shit's nice and comfy to have a clear set of right and wrong 'defeat the bad guys' vibe.
I dunno. I get enough of that from the SJW hate mobs nowadays, I'm kind of sick of moral objectivism in any of its form.
>>43929113
The real problem with modern day moral objectivism is that it's not always clear, and so many groups have so many different ideas of what's right and wrong in a variety of different directions.
With a high fantasy noblebright deal, the good guys are obviously good, and the bad guys are obviously bad. No one has to try and convince you that this is so, it just is.
>>43929377
That's been the real problem with moral objectivism since the dawn of time, dude.
It only works in stories, because it's not possible to establish something as an objective moral good without just abitrarily declaring it so.
>>43929434
But if that's true, isn't fictional moral objectivism better, something that we can express in fantasy and fiction that we wish we could have in reality?
>>43929520
Maybe, maybe not. If it's just simple fun, maybe, but if it leads people to think there are simple, objectively right answers in the real world, then it's lying to people and leading them to dangerous delusions.
(Something like this happens with women who read a lot of romance novels, clinical studies show it correlates strongly with unreasonably high romantic expectations.)
>>43929520
Can't speak for others, but my suspension of disbelief can't measure up to moral objectivism being for real. It reminds me too much of the extremist self-righteousness against which I struggle daily.
>>43929625
I don't know much about those studies, but personally I think people can be trusted to tell fiction from reality. Only reason I can think of for romance novels causing that affect is when you don't have many other references for what a romantic relationship should be like - and hey, everyone will have that problem, because we learn so much about the world works not just from real experience, but even from things like tv shows and anime. I think we all have unreasonably high romantic expectations, especially if we've never been in one.
Part of a noblebright universes's fun, at least in my mind, is how useful it is as an escape from the problems of reality. In the real world, sometimes bad things happen to people for no really good reason, or people might be punished for doing the morally good thing because it wasn't what was objectively best for them. Sure, it's not to grimdark levels, but it can make people feel that things are hopeless or cast doubt on what's the right thing to do.
In a noblebright universe, things make a lot more sense and are simpler. You don't have to worry that what you're doing is wrong, as long as you try to do the right thing. It's cathartic, a dose of healthy escapism to a world that makes sense from a world that doesn't always make sense. And things usually align with society's ideas of good and bad anyway, so it can teach people good values as long as they know that reality isn't always going to align with fantasy.
>>43925611
There are a lot of spells that make plants grow temporarily, then probably die out when the spell expires and the land can't support them. What if there were spells that did that for people? A bunch of naked mindless humans spring up from nowhere or bud out of an existing human, then they die slowly and painfully when the spell that controls them runs out.
>>43930009
No, those plants stay there, just like all burial mounds in Tolkien works had some flowers growing on them despite all other places being infected by evil.
>>43926604
He can also use his mind powers to harmonize with his own voice like Zoidberg
>>43925430
Popularity has zero impact on his grade. Besides that, whether or not people enjoy something doesn't matter along the rung of grading someone's writing chops. You could easily say, for instance, "I loved the first book but the rest are all shit."
Overall, the writing quality could've gone down or up, but it would still not have any bearing whatsoever. Besides utilizing death cheaply, he also goes too far on the edgy side of the equation and ends up coming off as lessly nuanced in its maturity and more immature and vulgar, at least recently.
The man's series comes off as an edgy take on fantasy that ends up being just as bad as your average R. A. Salvatore novel only with more rape. Not necessarily a bad thing, but if you read anything else of his, you'll see, quite quickly, that his recognition soley comes from his Ice and Fire series.
I read House of Worms. It's pretty fucking meh, overall, and of middling quality fiction.
>>43910084
Forcing tropes to happen is just as bad as forcing them to not happen.
Thinking about a story in terms of tropes limits what you can do with it.
>>43915854
Underrated post.
>>43915854
>my pronouns are Fe/Fi/Fo/Fum
KEK
>>43919079
GRRM wasn't necessarily wrong. Rape was commonplace in ancient warfare. Probably less, especially in "modern" times as we go forward.
However, Tolkien's depictions of a lot of things weren't honest, that doesn't make them bad. JRR had no reason to go into rape, his works very purposefully read like a complex fairy tale epic. GRRM wanted to go for something that feels more gritty and realistic, even if he only achieves it sometimes. Different things.
>>43936318
Then he should keep his mouth shut about other people's work.
>>43936469
Why? He's free to have an opinion and express it if he likes. Whether you want to like it or not is your freedom.
>>43910291
I'm using this
>>43936663
>Vass
Why is he so perfect, /tg/?
>>43915854
10/10
>>43910084
It's actually so engrained in modern players minds that every setting is a clone of Dragon Age or WoW, that when you present a traditional fantasy setting, and do it well, that get BLOWN THE FUCK OUT.
As an Anon of /tg/ once told me,
>Everyone tries so hard not to be LOTR, that we often miss the mark of what makes fantasy so great in the first place.
You'd be amazed how little details taken from tradition cam go a long way. One if the most rewarding adventure modules I ever ran, was "The party is hired to save a princess in a distant keep, that was taken by a princess".
>>43910084
If you make what interests you, you will put the most care into it, and it will therefor be better than if you try and do fantasy based on which tropes you hope to avoid/specifically include.
>>43938139
>"The party is hired to save a princess in a distant keep, that was taken by a princess".
god dammit you have reminded me of a shit ton of fetishy disney princess deviantart pieces now
>>43910084
I think that's part of why I keep coming back to this series. It plays straight with the characters, and you see every twist coming a mile off. And somehow I still end up reading it over again every year.
>>43938404
What a blast from the past
