are low fantasy settings necessarily less interesting than high fantasy ones?
It just requires more skill to pull off. In these settings, magic is rare, frighting and mysterious. High Fantasy ones are usually theme parks.
>>46766281
Nah. Both have their merits.
No, magic and monsters are much more interesting when they're rare and mysterious.
>>46766281
That's really a matter of opinion. Ultra extreme fantasy often requires too much suspension of disbelief for me.
>>46766281
no
it just changes what is interesting or challenging.
for example, in low fantasy settings, walls are challenging, while in a high fantasy setting they are a sidenote
>>46766281
I've generally found low and medium fantasy settings to be a lot more interesting and fun, because it feels like your choices actually matter. The higher the fantasy level past a certain point, the more it feels like being a background character in someone else's fairytale, and the less we're able to predict cause and effect or use logic to understand the world, so planning anything out starts to become pointless.
I actually find them more interesting.
High Magic is usually energy/power with no cost, which removes most problems.
Interest comes from tension and conflict. Adversity and relatability create dramatic tension.
>>46766420
>I've generally found low and medium fantasy settings to be a lot more interesting and fun, because it feels like your choices actually matter
Explain further
>>46766322
This. Low fantasy is best because it forces you to actually be good and prevents you from just warcrafting everything.
I'm way into low fantasy.
Help hook me into high fantasy and give my players a real fun time.
>>46766281
I get enough High Fantasy from videogames. There's no point to doing it in roleplaying games when I can just boot up Skyrim and run around in my super demon-armor killing everything with dragon super-powers. When I set aside the time to actually start a roleplay, I'd rather it not be a shameless power fantasy, and rather it be something tense, challenging, and require actual roleplay beyond just being the biggest badass to ever exist.
>>46766281
Yes. High fantasy is basically endless possibilities.
Low fantasy are humans struggling with rats and shit, nobody have time for things like that.
>>46767188
Endless possibilities quickly becomes endless WTF RANDUMB and total asspulls, in my experience.
>>46766281
Which part of Game of Thrones do you find more interesting?
The personal & political intrigue?
or muh dragons, muh zombies?
Low fantasy is intrinsically more interesting than high fantasy, but anyone actually capable of creating interesting plotlines has way better things to do with their time than DM.
>>46767256
It's not that I have better things to do than DM.
It's that I have better things to do than sit there and try to filter out the shit players when game applicants are literally a sea of shit and the few pearls I think I've found also end up up being shit. No point in making a complex and interesting plotline when 99% of people looking to roleplay just want a power-fantasy, dugeon-crawl, or murder-hobo adventure.
Not really, I'm currently in a low tech, extremely low magic campaign. We've encountered a grand total of 4 casters the entire game so far and two of those are our village druids.
The game has a strong village community element to it and our characters have regular dealings with their families and other villagers. Such as when we go adventuring and return with trade goods for our village to share out as our village is small and we want it to grow but the merchants only come twice a year so we're hoping to travel to wherever they're from some time soon.
We are given mysterious quests from a mysterious mage who lives in an old ruined tower about an hours walk from the village where kids go to play, just not go inside.
Village dynamics are cool, our chief is happy with us, some villagers are angry because we might draw danger near the village, my character's father is trying to marry off my character's sisters and is strongly urging my characer to find a wife and provide grand children, we know of dangers not too far from the village now so we're trying to convince the chief to train some militiamen and stock up on weapons and maybe improve the palisade.
>>46767299
Fair enough.
Good actors are rarer than good writers.
Acting is probably the harder of the two.
>>46766281
I like my low fantasy with complex and difficult magic, rare monster weaknesses, rich problem-solving lore and lethal combat. I can't name a single high fantasy campaign where I've really been forced to think about and put effort into my every action, instead of just coming up with a short plan and rolling dice.
>>46767322
It's not even a matter of acting, it's a matter of what the players want. They can act fine... but the only roles they're interested in playing that of total badasses. As strange as it is to say, I honestly feel like alot of them are CAPABLE of playing something else, they just don't seem to WANT to.
>>46766281
High fantasy is in constant danger of kitchen sink syndrome.
Low fantasy is in constant danger of real-world history but with different names syndrome.
>>46767256
Obviously if GoT isn't cancelled it's because of the sex, the khaleesi, dragons and Jon Snow desu senpai.
And not "Muh false political intrigue and everybody die anyway, muh originality, muh murder."
Nobody gives shit about the political fillers that cost less.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVaD8rouJn0
>>46767302
What do merchants bring when they come?
>tfw your setting was a high fantasy then a series of event turned it into a low fantasy one
Thank god my player love archeology
>>46767333
Can you give an example of when you would think out your every action?
>>46767493
I'm not the guy that commented that but he is right. For example, in a high fantasy campaign you could charge the dragon because the cleric can res you if you die, whereas in low fantasy death is often permanent and easy to receive against powerful enemies.
>>46767470
>>46766281
why would game of thrones be so popular if this was the case?
>>46767560
Because the high fantasy element and sex keep people watching it.
see >>46767470
Also murder =! low fantasy.
If anything dragon and ice vampire, shadow deamons born out of blood and murder : are high fantasy.
>>46767493
A party of 4 come across 5 bandits and one of them looks to be a witch of some kind. You MIGHT be able to kill 5 between you, with the element of surprise, but that witch could do fucking anything. Even if they can just curse you with boils, it isn't worth the risk.
Being honorable, you choose not to poison their water or kill them while they sleep, so instead go back to town and rally some fighting men to help you fight them for a few day's wages. You don't have the money, so you concoct a plan to swindle a corrupt lumber mill's owner out of the money by paying a competitor to act as though he's expanding his business. You go back to the mark and offer him new equipment for a small price. The party pulls it off together, cleaning up old saws with the help of the blacksmith, promising him work after you've cleared the bandits.
You swindle the corrupt business man, make back your pay off to the competitor, give the old saws the blacksmith, pay the fighting men and head out, all the while your magic-y characters have been gathering materials for some potions to increase your adrenaline rush in combat and building camouflage so you can get in close and launch a more effective surprise attack.
You attack at dusk, killing the witch and two others. The two others consider fighting, but with a number of armed villagers on your side, they run instead, allowing you to claim their weapons, which will be given to the blacksmith, gold and a cauldron, which you disguise and drag on a wagon all the way to the next city, where you sell it for an incredible amount of gold, enough to keep your fed, housed and clothed for months to come.
High fantasy, it's just bandits and a mage, rush and kill them, the cleric has heals if you need it. No need to interact with anyone, gain friends, make enemies, worldbuild or advance your characters in any way beyond a handful of xp and some gold.
>>46767641
High fantasy is magic everywhere, unexplored dungeons dotting the countryside, and "adventurer" being a legitimate occupation.
Having a dragon or an ice vampire exist doesn't instantly make something high fantasy until those things start showing up everywhere and become common or mundane.
Is Berserk low or high fantasy?
>>46767672
that's quite a nice definition you got there, too bad it's your definitions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_fantasy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fantasy
you just don't know what you are talking about
>>46767687
It's anime, and thus probably garbage as an RP setting.
>>46767694
Oh look, a grammar nazi. Thanks for the unwanted dictionary definitions or whatever. Do you feel smug now?
>>46767671
When you put it that way, it sounds way more interesting.
>>46767697
Hold your tongue you tar lipped miscreant!
>>46767697
im not a robot
>>46766281
Yes.
Low fantasy is easy to make compelling, because of it's more grounded nature conflict can be developed that is relatable for the players.
High fantasy is much more difficult to make compelling, because it's totally seperated by any facet of reality. In these situations it's best to ground the content by exploring particular concepts or facets, otherwise it's just a flash in the pain silver age comic book story with no consequence, just banal entertainment.
>>46767671
Almost got it. Just replace "low fantasy" and "high fantasy" with "low powered PCs" and "high powered PCs" and you'd be correct.
>>46767671
Isn't this just a case of known information?
The low fantasy example you provides assumes the party knows what's in the town and what danger a witch is. They know what's possible in that world and what isn't and are therefore able to make better decisions than the high fantasy example which is plain and simple.
>>46767302
What setting anon ? It sounds comfy as fuck.
>>46767687
Low fantasy slowly becoming high fantasy.
>>46767790
That's literally the exact opposite. The party has no idea what the witch OR the bandits are capable of. They know what's in and around the town because they rely on the services and products they provide to sustain them. The high fantasy example know for sure what witches and mere bandits are capable of, and have no need for towns outside of restocking food and spell reagents.
>>46767697
Every non-anime setting is trash. Kill yourself, you retarded manchild.
>>46766281
that's a case by case sort of thing, some are fairly interesting, others are boring as hell, same with High Fantasy(for example Forgotten Realms is fairly High Fantasy, but it's dull as dirt)
>>46767687
Golden arc is low fantasy and everything after is high.
>>46767832
>The high fantasy example know for sure what witches and mere bandits are capable of, and have no need for towns outside of restocking food and spell reagents.
In high fantasy it can turn out that the "mere bandits" are actually werewolves, the witch is a striga, and they have a bound earth elemental that helps them set up the ambushes. Also, they all know magic kung-fu.
It goes both ways.
>>46766281
If a setting is good, it will be because of the intelligence and effort of the creators.
They can spend that on creating entirely new, high fantasy concepts or they can spend it on exploring concepts that could conceivably exist in reality (so low fantasy) but are made more interesting with the addition of fantastic elements.
It's very, very easy for high fantasy stories or settings to really gloss over potentially interesting things by hand-waving it with magic etc.
But high fantasy theatrics are even worse than modern day CGI spectacles: uninteresting and uninspired due to the lack of effort it takes to create.
>>46767256
Muh dragons and muh zombies, fucking duh.
I don't wanna make a new thread for this, but I'm a new DM. How do I make High Fantasy interesting?
>>46767832
You look to be comparing Low Fantasy to D&D played RAW.
You can play high fantasy and still invoke that same atmosphere of uncertainty. The issue is you need to keep a firm lid on the metagaming.
The Night Angel books show this difference well. A bit grimdark honestly, but magic is everywhere. Wytch armies and mage schools traipsing around. The perspective of the leads, however, is limited and doesn't directly encounter those elements too much at the start.
>>46768010
The truth is, there's absolutely no difference between how to make high fantasy and low fantasy engaging. The key in either case is internal consistency. Things need to work the same way every time, and whatever the rules of the universe are, it needs to follow those rules 100% of the time.
People have the mis-conception that High Fantasy makes this impossible... and to some extent, high Fantasy DOES work against it because it gives the players alot more options for breaking the world... but it's nothing a good GM can't keep in check.
>>46768010
Basically, you don't let the players metagame it to shit.
"High fantasy" is often known to use obvious tropes, familiar creatures, and familiar races.
To make it compelling, try to cut metagaming. Don't tell your players the NAME of what's attacking them, describe it and see if they or their characters can remember what fits the description. Play off the cliche if you can, and build on it to make notable characters.
Remember, your PCs aren't the only magic users in the world (usually) and aren't the only adventurers out there (usually). If a PC starts abusing a broken tactic to avoid having to plan, then have enemies show up that abuse the same tactic.
>>46768010
You don't. Grow up and make a real setting instead of trying to make that childish crap work.
>>46768010
Read the manga Dungeon Meshi. It's a tropey as hell generic fantasy story about dungeon delving, but it actually manages to develop a pretty engaging plot and still stay fun.
>>46768050
>>46768056
Alright, thank you. Luckily, my players are either weebs, sci-fi nerds, or Warcraft nerds.
>>46768073
Thanks. I'll play a serious setting like Ironclaw :)
You fagnuts DO realise that, like, 90% of "merits of low fantasy" you laud is not actually inherent to low fantasy? That high fantasy settings can be well-thought-out and not be just shallow D&D or JRPG powerwanks? that high-powered PCs and power fantasies are in no way restricted to high fantasy? That you faggots think every high-fantasy setting is D&D retardation and apply its tropes to an entire subset of different settings?
Have you guys ever considered you are just a bunch of biased meme-spouting retards?
>>46768106
The words of someone who doesn't actually play traditional games. You're not wrong... but high fantasy/low fantasy is a pretty good metric for judging what kind of players or GM will be attracted to a certain game. Generally low-fantasy tends to bore the kiddies and That Guys who wana show off their SUPER SPECIAL HALF-DRAGON VAMPIRE DEMON SWORDSMEN characters and the GMs who wana their blatant-ripoff anime-settings.
>>46767474
Normally boring shit but now that we are picking up in wealth they're sure to come back with better goods.
>>46767809
Homebrew setting, rolemaster system.
>>46768131
Low fantasy is also trash so you will always get literal retards as the only people that will ever play something like that.
It gets to the point that stuff like Dragon Age (high fantasy) calls itself "dark fantasy" or "low fantasy" to avoid being associated with the typical depiction of high fantasy.
Seriously that game is all about ancient gods and terrible demons and magic and spirits and dragons and ancient curses.
The catch is to portray characters with a motivation the audience can relate to. "Protect my family from demonspawn" and "protect my family from bandits" aren't that far removed as motives go , honestly.
>>46768106
That's what half the thread's been saying but if you need some extra time to figure out what all the big words mean that's okay.
>>46768142
Now you're just baiting. Please go find another thread to shit up, thanks.
>>46768160
Kill yourself.
>>46768148
>Dragon Age
>Dark
If you want a real example how to do High Fantasy well, get away from Bioware's fairytales and go play Witcher 3.
>>46768131
You probably never actually played a consistent high fantasy game, never played anything other than D&D or are a fucking retard. Probably all three.
Every time i see a "high fantasy" setting where super-special snowflakeness is reserved only to select few, with rest of population living in literal shithovels, i die a little inside. Making high fantasy engaging is a literally one-step process. Look, i'm even gonna spoiler it because i do not want to blow everyone's mind at once. Ready?
The key to making high fantasy setting engaging isto not make forces that oppose PCs retards who do not use same tools readily available to them.
And you know the best part in all this? This is also applicable to any setting! Like, seriously, it's amazing how it works.
>>46768239
Dat projection.
>>46768148
>That's what half the thread's been saying but if you need some extra time to figure out what all the big words mean that's okay.
Well, i'm not calling that half fagnuts. It's just some of the hot opinions in this thread come from people so far up their own ass, they can see what they swallow.
>>46768256
>i have no ground to stand on and i must meme
Most popular low fantasy settings tend to be boring (ie. Game of Thrones or Conan Barbarian, what makes them good isn't the setting at all), but there are plenty of ways to make such settings interesting. If you're willing to go for science fantasy then there is Nausicaa with very low magic (spiritual and psionic things that are very rare) dying earth type setting with extremely interesting world of alien biology. Then there is also Wings of Honneamise that is being set on fantasy world with absolutely no magic and realistic laws of physics, but it's still very fantastical and interesting.
>>46768341
>Conan Barbarian
>Boring
Nigger get out of my /tg/.
>>46768367
Conan Barbarian is fucking awesome, but not because of the setting which isn't very interesting to be honest.
>>46768392
>I've only watched the movies
>>46768341
So basically you're weaboo garbage, is what you're saying.
>>46768392
>weird shamanic shit
>spooky-ass monsters
>elder gods
>lots of different neat countries
>snek cultists
>barbarians doing barbarian things
>not interesting
>>46768237
Witcher is high fantasy?
Sure there are magical creatures/etc, but it isn't balls-to-the-wall mad with it's....
Oh right. Subtlety.
>>46767671
>High fantasy, it's just bandits and a mage, rush and kill them
Yeah, and that would be a vastly better story than running a buch of retarded fetch quests to solve a minor problem because otherwise you would invoke "low magic for PCs only!" clause and make an enemy spellcaster fuck them up.
If "The Three Musqeteers" characters were not intimidated by a 4 on 5 fight despite suffering a handicap, then your PCs being intimidated by such is not a matter of low magic, but of the game just generally not allowing people to be competent.
>>46766281
Filthy Frank is Urban Fantasy
>>46767694
Language is fluid. Nothing means only one thing, especially in different contexts. Tolkien's Hobbit would have been considered the highest of fantasies at its inception, but compared to many modern works it's undeniably on the lower end.
>>46768587
>Filthy Frank
>not cosmic horror
>>46768010
By considering the implications of there being magic everywhere, whether that means zombie armies tending fields, anti-gravity crystals powering enormous airships, or the anti-mind control circlets the king and all his advisers wear.
>>46766281
Maybe once you define what "low fantasy" means
>>46768813
I'll hazard a guess that high fantasy means super clerics in every hamlet handing out resurrection spells and low means you'll meet three or four magic-capable NPCs tops in your character's life.
To raise the stakes a bit. Can you make low fantasy setting interesting if you stay firmly within bounds of what is considered medieval fantasy? No pirates, industrial revolutions, pre-medieval stuff like Rome or things like that allowed.
>>46768835
Of course. Heathens and heretics to the North, West, and South, the vast unknown to the West, and petty politics given new life by a religious reformation is exciting enough even without dragons n shit.
>>46768827
>you'll meet three or four magic-capable NPCs tops in your character's life.
Sounds like high fantasy with low magic to me. In low fantasy your character wouldn't likely find any magic capable NPC. In best case he would see someone doing something that could be called magic (and likely questions whether that was just coincidence or hallucination), but most likely magic is something he has only seen being mentioned occult books and fairy tales.
>>46768835
The Catholic Church was pretty much the Western Empire remnant, monopolizing a fair bit of the land, armies, technology and power.
We live in a grossly unheroic world. Most people over the age of ten can tell you that believing something is true does not make it so, and most people over the age of fifteen know that when someone offers you a hand, you’d better be prepared to give them a bit of cash or help them move a couch.
Traditional heroes don’t line up with our world on a good day. And this mismatch is all the more insulting for those of us following the fantasy genre. Who among us has not thought about Aragorn’s coronation and let off a bitter laugh as we try to reverse an atomic wedgie?
We’re dorks. We get picked on, knocked down, tongue-tied, and most of the time, defeated. We do our own awkward battle in a world where cute boys stare past us and pretty girls forget we exist, which makes marrying them at the end of the story kind of difficult. We come in every color and shape, and according to society’s rather narrow standards, most of them aren’t ideal. We do the right thing and help one another, and get laughed at for it.
No, the problem with the classical heroes isn’t the heroes- it’s the stories they live in. The truth is we grew up with these do-gooders as our idols, and we try to live up to their ideals every day. But we know how their stories actually play out, and reading about their happy endings insults our intelligence and serves as an ugly reminder: We’re probably never going to come out looking that good.
We want the truth instead. The more we see the bad in the world, the more we need heroes who experience similar troubles and survive them. Forget triumphing over their challenges, or even meeting them – we just want someone who makes it to the next act without becoming a complete monster.
>>46768891
Support your claim. The wikipedia page someone else linked earlier counts V:tM as low fantasy, and PCs are pretty darn likely to encounter at least a few magic-capable NPCs. PCs are, of course, much more likely to encounter irregular things than any other characters.
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_fantasy#Gaming
>>46768914
I hope you didn't go through the trouble of typing that out yourself because it reads like a shitty pasta.
>>46768917
You said it yourself. Only reason PCs are encountering strange things is that PCs are strange things themselves. Average person in world of V:tM has never seen magic or monsters outside fiction.
And yes, you could have low fantasy game where magic is actively involved in your character's affairs, but in that case your character would have to be special snowflake like a vampire.
>>46768961
>Average person in world of V:tM has never seen magic or monsters outside fiction.
They very likely did, just didn't realize.
>>46768410
Not him, and not a weeb but both of those are pretty good examples. Quit being so salty, you're on a Japanese owned image board, of course anime is going to be mentioned.
>>46768961
It sounds like you agree that in low fantasy your PC is likely to meet no more than three or four magic-capable NPCs in their life, then.
>>46768937
it's true though
I've always had more fun with High Fantasy ridiculousness than with more serious lower-fantasy ones, although I think that comes down to personal experience. The players I always end up with don't want to be anything other than socially incompetant murder-hobo's who solve every problem with the application of death. Acting like a social retard who pisses off everyone they meet is fine in a High Fantasy game, where you can easily get away with being a dick, as long as you're a dick who saves the day. In a low fantasy game, where saving the day is much rarer, and instead most of your activities are about self-interest, acting like a dick is no longer acceptable.
They have difficulty accepting ideas like
>"smashing someone over the head with the bottle unprovoked with the explicit intention of starting a comedy bar fight does not result in a comedy bar fight, but rather a tavern full of angry men with weapons who are demanding that you leave the village or die".
>"When an npc asks you not to do something, immediately going to do it will make them dislike you".
>"Going up to a city official and badgering them for five minutes at a time with pointless and repeated questions, as well as ignoring their requests to be left alone, will result in them calling the guards to remove you by force".
>"If you steal from criminals, quite often they come looking for revenge".
Playing a low-fantasy game requires a shift in mindset that many can't or don't want to make. Those that try usually go too far. "This is a low-fantasy game so I am going to act like a morally bankrupt arsehole who cares for nobody but himself".
Hell, at least in High Fantasy, most players will act like 'the good guys' even if they're dicks about it. In low fantasy games they drop the pretense of doing good deeds and just be dicks.
>>46769030
>The more we see the bad in the world, the more we need heroes who experience similar troubles and survive them. Forget triumphing over their challenges, or even meeting them – we just want someone who makes it to the next act without becoming a complete monster.
This isn't true at all. Games don't need to be wish fulfillment. Slowly becoming a monster as you only barely overcome trials is way more fun that sweeping through unchallenged because "lawl im the good guy! :^DDD"
>>46769047
This has fucking nothing to do with high and low fantasy and more about how serious the tone is.
>>46768410
Better than your western garbage at least.
>>46768736
He's RomCom
>>46769153
>Not postmodernist mongolian throat singing performance
What is a good system for running a low fantasy game?
>>46769063
Yeah, but one could argue that many low fantasy RPGs tend to be less silly than their high fantasy counterparts due to low fantasy usually being more grounded on realism. That doesn't mean you can't have low fantasy with (silly) high adventure though. You only need to look at Savage Worlds.
>>46769203
Riddle of Steel
>>46767671
so a party of four takes several days and very little action to prepare for a combat that will last only one round, that they probably could've won anyway
the most exciting thing that happens to them is a fetch quest that makes it so that the encounter before them is won by the dm who is now playing against himself, and not actually won by any effort on the players' part
this sounds really unsatisfying and slow, especially if you have to do this every single fight
how does this help your case at all?
>>46768917
>wikipedia
>low fantasy
>I can take my players/characters on my ebin political integrue rollercoaster or they get killed by a guy with a rusty iron dagger when I DM/write so it's good
Low fantasy and hard scifi are for boring faggots who don't actually like fantasy or scifi.
>>46769340
>hard sci-fi
>boring
Someone hasn't read Alastair Reynolds.
No setting is inherently more or less interesting than any other. It's the content of the setting that makes it interesting, not the genre.
>>46769340
>I can have mile tall fighting robots and a completely nonsensical world because a wizard did it!
High fantasy and space fantasy are for unimaginative faggots who don't actually like fantasy or scifi.
Hey look, I can make sweeping over-generalizations too!
>>46769330
They did specify a witch. In a low fantasy setting they might be as common as adult dragons, potentially.
Also in the campaign I'm writing, I fully expect combat to be over within a round or two in most cases. Trail cloaks don't stop musket balls or spears, and waterproofing them just makes them burn faster.
So of course, if my PCs see bandits on the road, I want to make sure that they don't charge headfirst into a roadblock and a handful of crossbowmen.
Not every setting assumes PCs are combat masters, even if most settings are combat based. My rules ARE mostly combat, but that's because I'm going to have them roleplay the fuck out of other stuff. They're extroverted types.
>>46769409
Heed this wisdom, anons.
>>46769442
Genre does limit what kind of content setting can have. This is why science fantasy is arguably objectively best genre because it is practically limitless, but that also makes it easiest genre to fail and fuck up.
I would say that it had more to do with the execution.
I have seen people turn turnip farmer stimulator into a fun game. I have also seen someone run high fantasy so insuffrabley boring that I started bringing material to write my own campaign to the table.
Blaming one for your success and enjoying one is great, blaming the other for your failures and personal misgivings is bad form.
>>46769508
It makes it really easy to Deus ex machina shit away. You don't need to give as much detail on your setting, because magic! You don't need to explain a character's choices, because science!
Plus, hard limits on what's possible can keep things in tighter focus.
>>46766613
>warcrafting everything
You mean just kill everything?
>dat feel when you actually enjoy low-level AD&D the most
I feel so bad for my players.
>>46769508
>Genre does limit what kind of content setting can have.
Technically no.
>>46769552
while RNG is a bitch it mainly comes down to expecting your players to play intelligently and I'm not talking about pumping their intelligence. from my experience that's sadly rarely true.
>>46767302
>strong village community element
Man that sounds great, could you elaborate on your game, because I doubt I'll ever find a group which would be up for something grounded like that.
Last game I was in we were saviors of the world in less than a week of adventuring at level 5.
>>46768237
Elric RPG when?
On second thought, maybe not. Gamers will call Elric a Witcher ripoff if it's adapted into an AAA vidya today.
>>46769552
To be honest I have had my most fun with D&D on lower levels. Really low levels (like 1-3) can be a bitch, but 5-10 is the sweet spot and much better than what starts to gradually happen post 10th level. Not so much shit to keep track on, not many magic weapons beyond some simple +swords, not insane amount of loot accumulated yet (players can't even consider buying some crazy shit) and so on.
>>46766281
No. Lower fantasy is harder to write because it's necessarily limiting, but I don't think either is more interesting inherently.
Plus, it's not just low and high, it's a sliding scale, and not everything fits neatly into one or the other.
>>46769744
Sliding Fantasy
I like it.
>>46769509
>turnip farmer stimulator
tell me more...
>>46766339
There's only so many demigods you can kill before it stops being impressive
>>46766650
Read 'The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth'. Takes less than an hour.
>>46770849
Adding to this,
>Low fantasy opens up the prospect of Thaumaturgy
>Have to quest for valuable ingredients from various parts of the world
>End up empowering a guy to the level of continent-killer, and he nukes the whole landmass, teleporting away with all the leftover magical essence
>In the next adventure, you get to quest to beat him
>>46770629
Multi-genre Drifting!!
nah, you need both, i've been running low fantasy campaigns for 3 years and now we're working on a high fantasy campaign, i have to say that my players and i are pretty fucking hyped
>>46769509
>Turnip farmer simulator
But that's already a really fun game.
>>46768518
then , by this logic , someone one-punching through an army of 20m high demons like it is nothing would be even better?
then tell me , if we have "realistic" powerlevels and a trained soldier is as strong as a trained PC at average , and the players are still struggling because they dive headfirst into a group of equal strength, who's fault is this?
first-arc Grimgar levels of incompetence are still annoying , though , but mostly caused by the players themselves and little knowledge about tactics or rules
>>46766322
Tolkien is High Fanasy- and magic is subdued and hardly visible except in exceptional circumstances- like fallen angels (the balrog/Sauron) using their power
>>46767256
The most popular character is the crazy spoiled-brat princess.
Why?
Because she's riding around in weird countries with her motherfucking dragons.
So...you may be a little off.
>>46766281
Is your mom necessarily on my dick?
>>46767672
This kinda shows why a fantasy series is different than a fantasy setting.
In the books of ASOIAF, there is plenty of action with the dragons and the zombies; even if large parts of the plot don't revolve around them, the audience is aware they exist.
In a roleplaying game set in that world, it becomes much less likely the party will run into them (unless you're specifically doing that as the premise of the campaign), which changes the feel.
High fantasy books, low fantasy setting.
>>46766281
No. Sometimes less is more. Sometimes more is fun.
It's like how you can have nice food made with really simple and ordinary ingredients, or you can have nice food made with all kinds of exotic herbs and spices. Both can be nice, plenty of people will prefer one over the other nomatter how well you do, neither opinion is strictly better than the other, and nomatter how good your ingredients are an unskilled cook can make them into disgusting trash pretty easily.
>>46769692
Dude, if anyone makes a game in which Elric is wandering around places that look anything like the Medieval Fantasy Europe of Geralt, they have fucking failed.
(That said....no, we're never getting it, anon.)
>>46766503
he did numbnuts
>>46771612
Fighting giant demons sounds more interesting than playing as an average train passanger joe trying to cheat a corrupt windmill so they can pay someone else to go kill a bunch of bandits for them, to be honest fammaflam.
>>46768084
CULINARY CONQUEST!
Good read. I do approve.
More of a slice of life dungeon crawl.
>>46768430
Yeah, I fucking love all of this.
>>46771612
>someone one-punching through an army of 20m high demons like it is nothing would be even better?
Better than a good adventure novel? Most likely no.
Better than the dreck I responded to? Of course yes.
>if we have "realistic" powerlevels and a trained soldier is as strong as a trained PC at average , and the players are still struggling because they dive headfirst into a group of equal strength, who's fault is this?
GM's. He forced PCs to play Joe Schmoes who are only good as average trained soldiers (for that matter, average soldiers in a "realistic" medieval settings would not be trained for one-on-one or small group combat at all) instead of people who actually can end up in stories.
>>46768392
Alright then. What does a setting have to include to be objectively interesting?
both can be interesting and uninteresting depending on how the magic is formed
funny enough in high fantasy one usually has to nerf the magic for balance reason, otherwise why would you choose anything else BUT a fucking wizard?
whereas low fantasy magic is rare but naturally can give you an edge over others
>>46767256
Fuck you, I'll have personal and political intrigue ABOUT dragons and zombies. The only limit is your imagination!
>>46773929
This.
Content of creatures is always less important when held up against what is good for the tone of the story and setting.
>>46772568
Boobs and violence. Lots of boobs and violence.
Talking about Conan, you can't find a better scene in the history of movies than this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWG-nHuuCRc
>that strange feel when I have a gonzo, mythological themed setting but the adventures and power levels, even of casters, is very low fantasy.
The idea is you're doing your little swords and sorcery shit, pacifying tribes if ab humans, trying not to get stabbed by a flesh sniffer or getting alive by a river snapper and it's all terribly gritty until you come across that guy who swam to the bottom of the ocean to talk to God and you're like 'Woah, that guy is Real.'
What would you call this? High, low, middle fantasy?
>>46774425
That scenes is one of the best bonding scenes I have seen in a genre movie.
>>46767687
Yea it starts off very low fantasy, but exponentially increases around the end of the Golden Age forward.
One of the few things I've read/watched that has a dynamic setting like that
>>46766650
High fantasy can create an interesting dynamic where mundane and magical forces are constantly in an arms race to protect themselves against one another.
Mages invent magic missile, mundane create a shield that diverts M.M. to hit it instead, mages invent missiles that pierce shields, mundanes produce shields that absorb magic.
It requires a bit of world building and some attention to what can and cannot be produced using magic and technology (or even, a combination of both) but when it works, it can create a world where there's a ton of options in defending yourself but no one path is better than the other.
>>46766420
From my experience that has more to do with the adventure you and your group are playing and less to do with the setting.
>>46773929
And whether you can remember the plot you came up with.
>>46774522
A low power level game.
>>46776513
Explain.
>>46766281
It's actually more interesting. It's just harder to pull off. Think of all the low-key magic shit in LotR.
>>46775786
Cant anyway. Too busy being dead.
>>46768437
I mean, it's either middle-of-the-road fantasy or just dark High Fantasy
Personally, I've been playing and reading the shit out of The Witcher franchise and I'm about to look into the RPG they came up with a while back
>>46766281
Here is some nice low fantasy setting that includes Elves, Orcs, Goblins, Dwarves and some Middle Age Humans.
http://shabazik.deviantart.com/
>>46766281
Real life is a low fantasy setting.
>>46781989
Too much fetish bullshit with his demon chick army.
>>46766281
It's not the scale that makes a good story.
A chilli cookoff can easily be more gripping and engaging that a epic war for the fate of the mortal realm.
>>46769552
The tension of running low on arrows or digging up a cockroach for a spell component is way more engaging than deciding what epic level spell to cleave a mountain with
>>46766281
Low fantasy is harder to pull off because you can't just say "Lol the hero is magic" and call it a day.
Actual thought has to be put into it
>>46767671
If they are too honorable to attack bandits in their sleep, why wouldn't they be too honorable to swindle corrupt business men?
>>46772136
>corrupt windmill
post-modernist Don Quixote?
>>46777459
The power level of the immediate setting is lower than the power level of the setting as a whole. LoTR is relatively low power, though the most powerful people in the setting are very powerful. Some would argue that because most of the world is in a lower fantasy state, the setting is lower fantasy, and I would agree with that, but there's also the case that if powerful magic exists at all, whether or not the vast majority of people can access or are aware of it, it's High Fantasy. This is mincing of terms and doesn't further the argument much, so the best you can definitively say is whether a story or immediate setting is low or high power.
>>46783083
That's dishonest though. It's just as easy to write bad low fantasy as it is to write bad high fantasy. Any high fantasy story that resolved a plot with "the hero is magic and everyone else isn't lol" would be a badly written story. High fantasy requires more balancing because you need to make sure that you don't just have a low fantasy world with magic added, it needs to feel like the presence of high fantasy shit has shaped the world and had an impact, the more powerful the magic the bigger the impact. One of the few things I liked about the Inheritance cycle was that the presence and limitations of magic actually shaped the way things were done, though it could have been better.
>>46785222
>>46785363
Are either of you (assuming you're different people) even surprised at any of this? "High fantasy v. Low fantasy" has been an arena for championing semantics and fighting straw men since the terms entered the lexicon.
Nobody knows what they mean, and everybody has a team.
Is high fantasy with low magic (or equivalent) possible?
>>46766650
that is a really beautiful dragon
>>46771757
The fight with the Balrog is actually not that flashy, on the books it's essentially just grappling. Which on itself would put Gandalf above most of the greatest Elven heroes in sheer martial prowess.
Someone in the Tolkien thread that's currently up notes that the setting starts as extremely high fantasy, with shit like a elven princess going on a quest with his beloved and a demigodly talking wolf to steal magic jewels from the Devil's crown at his dungeon or dragons larger than mountains, but since one of the biggest themes in the legendarium is that the world is on a constant state of decay and diminishment from its divine origins, the "spark" slowly but surely goes away from the world until by the end of LotR even all the elves have fucked off to the Undying Lands and magic is all but nonexistent
>>46785534
Yes, Lord of the Rings fits the bill
>>46785413
It's just me.Yeah, I know. But if there's one thing I've learned from being stuck in the 40K containment board, it's that you can't stop fighting simply because you're going to loose.
>>46785534
See the post I replied to, "high" and "low" fantasy have very contextual meanings. Typically high fantasy means high magic, but LoTR (not Middle Earth, LoTR) is arguably low magic and still considered high fantasy. Sometimes.
Only definitive thing I can say is that Conan the Barbarian is low fantasy, Warcraft is high fantasy, and anything in between is a flame war I don't care to participate in. But ultimately the terms don't matter. At one point they may have meant something, low fantasy tending towards grimdark with low magic and high towards noblebright with high magic, but that time has passed. If your definition of "high fantasy" doesn't have a magic level criteria, then yes, low magic high fantasy is possible. If high magic is a requirement, then no, it's not possible. But again, it really doesn't matter what you call it.
>>46766281
Low fantasy as in not totally saturated with magic, or as in takes place on Earth regardless of how magical?
>>46785963
The first one I'd assume
>>46785758
interesting
>>46783163
Killing the defenseless is different than swindling corrupt business men with power and the ability to exert their power.
>>46769177
like kathy keknek?
>>46767687
Dark Fantasy. There's plentiful magic but it is almost entirely in the wrong hands and it makes the world suck.
>>46785882
What's the Witcher classified as? The story's constantly shifting between "POLITICS", "Interdimensional Alien Elves"
>>46787022
I think high fantasy. But I've never played it and don't really care about it, so idk. From what I know it's based on actual Polish folklore, and very few mythologies are what we might think of as high fantasy, so I'd guess sort of middle of the road, maybe leaning towards high, but again it depends on your definitions.
>>46781989
>>46782646
Like how it goes into space eventually, but yeah too much about demon boobs.
>>46766281
no they're just consistently poorer ran, because the DMs that style appeals to are always bad.
Go get a DM you actually like to run a low-fantasy game, instead of having a DM that wants to run a low-fantasy game come to you, and it'll be way better.
>>46767775
see, that's the thing. in low fantasy, there is no such thing as a high powered PC.
>>46787257
Yeah, that has nothing to do with setting and everything to do with system.
>>46787022
High end. Fantasic creatures are everywhere, everyone's heard of, if not met a magic-capable person, magic is openly involved with politics in a way that everyone knows about it.
>>46768239
>The key to making high fantasy setting engaging is
>to not make forces that oppose PCs retards who do not use same tools readily available to them.
Tuckers Kobolds.
>>46771252
quite a lot of them, actually. a whole genre one might even say.
>>46786070
Read the Silmarillion. Or go download Sil, if you like roguelike games.
>>46787320
Mechanics determine game feel. Any game dev will tell you that gameplay and story are linked.
For PnP RPGs it's not as set in stone, but its very hard to completely separate without using homebrew or house rules, which is to say, changing systems in some respect.
>>46769452
No, you can just yell "no u" like an unimaginative faggot.
>>46782891
Are you comparing shokugeki no soma and the ending of game of thrones?
[Spoiler] the tv series that gives tyrion/jon/dany each a dragon to ride and Sue it up[/spoiler]
>>46787794
>present date
>not just ctrl+S
>>46787536
Alternatively, all the dispel magic and counter-spell options. It's as though non-PC wizards only know fireball and animate dead.
>>46787527
>Fantasic creatures are everywhere
Only in the games though. In the books Geralt struggles to find any work, since monsters are either not that common any more, or because they have been adopted. Like a troll that guards a bridge and wants tolls paid from whoever crosses it. They don't want it to be killed, because it repairs the bridge, since he needs it as much as the villagers, so they leave it be.
In the books Monsters are not really common. It's just a gameism to make the game more interesting.
>>46789015
So it's kinda like Conan then?
Most of the bullshit Conan runs into between stories are just animals and people. The fantastical creatures are either treated as something that is rare, or the last of it's kind. They typically serve as a plothook or the highlight of the story. The creatures are typically even regarded as obscure myth and folklore in the setting, if people would even know about them. A lot of the time it's just forgotten ancient entities lurking in post-catsclysmic ruins that people would stay the fuck away from anyway, or they never come back after deciding to loot them. Even competent magic users are rare and it's not common for more than one at the time to be residing in a the same location. Hell, some of the things that are percieved as sorcerery are just technology way ahead of it's time or simply superstition. Most people in Hyborea would not live with these things in their daily life or even encounter them under a lifetime.
This is about how common I want fantastical creatures and magic elements to be to in a narrative setting.
>>46789600
Well I guess so. But magic users are somewhat common I'd say in the Witcher.
The monsters are rarer in Conan than they are in Witcher as I understand it, but I think it runs more along the line of Conan most of the time. But I've not read Conan yet desu.
Elves and Dorfs are quite common though.
>>46786245
Bandit's don't exert power? They kill people and take their stuff.
>>46789638
Well, the original Conan stories are all short stories except for one. So it's not like it would be a huge time investment to check them out.
I guess that magic users are uncommon in Hyborea because Conan ends up killing most of them that fucks with him, or they try some Lovecraftian pact that backfires horribly on them.
Since Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft were actually buddies, there is a lot of Lovecraftian mythos elements in Hyborea. The different authors sort of ended up writing in what could be considered settings that overarched into eachother. However, Howard's stories are much less about anxiety, fear and despair than Lovecraft's stories ever were. The way the entities are presented like in the Conan stories have cosmic powerlevels be less relevant. So whenever Conan do meet some overwhelming Lovecraftian entity he knows it's typically a bad idea to stick around or even engage it in battle. However, unlike in Lovecraft's stories they can be injured or even killed, because Conan is not a meek anglophile gentleman from the early 20'th century that has never seen combat.
>>46785534Ironclaw
GURPS.
>>46766281
I'll say it's the exact opposite.
>>46787969
admittedly, those are some very versatile spells if used correctly.
I'm not saying I'd prepare EVERY slot to involve those. especially so if I'm already at skeleton HD limit and really only need it in case something really tasty gets croaked. But I don't think there's many days where I'd go wholly without them either. Unless I was using summon monster instead of Animate that day.
And of course, yeah, dispel is another every day prep.
>>46767560
The only reasons it is to begin with: sex and edginess.
>>46794474
Yeah, solving everything with magic is actually pretty boring, to be honest.
>>46794965
only if magic has no rules and just does whatever you want it to.
as the saying goes "Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating."
>>46795039
On the flipside magic becomes increadibly boring if you make to many narrative rules for it and suck all the mystery out of it with autism.
Personally I usually find the complete opposite. I've played in few truly unique High Fantasy settings, but more Low Fantasy settings required the creator to get a bit creative.
Usually I find original scifi settings to be more interesting than fantasy, but maybe that's just coincidence or personal preference because I've never played in a scifi setting that wasn't at least interesting in one way.
>>46795663
I've never seen enough autism applied to get that far. they always stop leagues and miles short, when they're not just saying "lolmagic, plot convenience, no consistency, I don't gotta explain nuthin"
Do you have an example of magic taken too autistic, or is that state purely a hypothetical one?
>>46796896
Not him, but the Fate/ series
>>46796896
I think most of my dislike for that comes from game systems.
in my homebrew setting there is no proof of magic existing to the PCs, but there are mythological creatures (that are physically possible, if perhaps not plausible) and lots of strange going-ons that -could- be magic, but sometimes are explained to be trickery and layered mind games.
In short magic is not available to the PCs and they'll never be sure if it exists or not.
>>46794965
It's fun you mean.
>>46767322
They don't pay you for playing games though.
>>46767333
I really want to play in a game like this. What's the best system for playing a game like this?
I'm currently stuck in 5e and it just feels like anime power wanking. We brute force our way through every fight and if the GM throws something at us that requires thought at least a couple people sperg out and fuck everyone else over. And even with that happening, nobody ever dies.
>>46768835
There's a spanish roleplaying game that is precisely about that. Medieval spain, but folkish myths and superstitions are real.
I suppose you can play it as high fantasy too but it doesn't really work.
>>46800659
No. Magic is for lazy people with no imagination.
>>46787022
The video games are actually quite different to the theme of the books. I believe the books are low fantasy, but the games sure aren't.
>>46785758
Doesn't sound like just grappling to me
>The sun shone fiercely, but all below was wrapped in cloud, so that anyone watching from below would think they saw flashes from lightning and heard thunder. A great smoke of vapor and steam rose about them, and ice fell like rain.
>>46766281
High fantasy is harder to get right, but more interesting when it is done right, simply because of the addition of enough magic do stuff and to handle that being a plot point.
If a king is assassinated in a high magic setting, you have all sorts of questions that need to be answered like "Why can't you just resurrect him." You either have to change the nature of the problem or give a reason why that you have already covered in world building like "On Pater's Eve all the worlds wandering souls are given guidance and a way home." And then the king has to be assassinated that night so his spirit is lost forever or something.
It can be easy to write poorly for, and the best example I have seen was probably Eberron, which at the very least blows the other published settings for D&D out of the water as far as being "interesting" goes.
>>46803178
Okay, checked again and he used a sword
>Deep is the abyss that is spanned by Durin’s Bridge, and none has measured it,’ said Gimli.
‘>Yet it has a bottom, beyond light and knowledge,’ said Gandalf. ‘Thither I came at last, to the uttermost foundations of stone. He was with me still. His fire was quenched, but now he was a thing of slime, stronger than a strangling snake.
>‘We fought far under the living earth, where time is not counted. Ever he clutched me, and ever I hewed him, till at last he fled into dark tunnels
There was definitely little to no magic involved. The Maiar are not exactly allowed to go I CAST FIREBALL whenever they want.
>>46767299
You. Are you me perhaps? Holy shit, this to the eleventh power.
>>46768142
I prefer "retards" who can do SOME personal, psychological or alike roleplay to the thousands and thousands of murderhobos, "me be cool no emotion derp kill evrythin!" cocksuckers.
>>46787899
Oh whoa, anon, you learn a new thing every day.
>>46766281
High fantasy vs low fantasy is a sliding scale, not a toggle.
But to answer your question, no.
>>46766420
It's weird how you say "X because Y", and I completely agree with you on X, but not in the least bit on Y.
>>46768237
But I hated the Witcher 1 and 2 and I don't wanna throw away more money.
>>46809227
Just pre-order it on piratebay
>>46768237
I actually liked how Guild Wars was doing their setting. Then they took retard pills and made it into just another setting with racial monocultures when they decided they wanted the WoW audience.
>>46766281
I prefer judging on a setting-by-setting basis.
>>46766322
>High Fantasy ones are usually theme parks.
Is that a good or a bad thing?
>>46809649
I suppose that it can be considered a bad thing if you're really into realism and grittiness.
I guess subjective doesn't exist in the world of fantasy settings.
>>46809227
Read the books fampai
