As someone who's just had the absolute pleasure of playing and finishing a CoC campaign (with another rogue trader one running on the back) with my playgroup over drinks after we collectivly decided DnD was kinda boring and bland I can't help but ask myself what makes fantasy the most popular type of setting for ttrpgs. Personally I never really got much of the appeal of fantasy settings in general ever since I was a little kid because they generally felt too trope driven for me to really see a difference in them as opposed to other types of settings like sci fi where at least you have the illusion it's not all just derivative from Frank Herbert, Asimov and PKD. >There are dwarves because...>WELL THERE JUST ARESo what is it about fantasy in particular that makes it resonate with so many people and makes it so tabletop apt? In my experience DnD always ended up as a roving knights have to defeat the evil sorcerer bad guy type band no matter how hard me and my friends tried to make it silly or out there or how much we pissed off the like 2 people who volunteered to DM
Fantasy is usually a good mirror. I won’t elaborate.
>>96677336Lots of people enjoy familiar things. Fantasy is full of familiar things, with occasional twists. That's basically what it boils down to. Being Trope-driven is the point, because it makes it more familiar and recognizable.
>>96677336Seems like you have a stimulation problem unique to all coomers. My suggestion is to kill yourself.
>>96677336I know this is a coomer thread but there's multiple reasons even beyond the idea that Dungeons and Dragons is the one that started it off in the first place.>Fantasy brings itself well to a diverse variety of classes that focus on different things (bows, swords, magic, stealth) without feeling like you need to suspend your disbelief too much (making a swordsman in d20 modern)>There is a clear sense of growth in your character. Your fighter may move from a breastplate and a sword to magical full plate and a flaming blade named "Hellfire". Your mage is researching obscure spells from the past that suddenly click together.>A diverse amount of enemies. There is only so many unique battles for encounters with cultists, humanoid xenos, etc. The otyugh, basilisk, and mindflayer are all going to have different types of attacking styles.>Fantasy is iterative and is built up from ancient mythos. Everyone knows elves and dwarves. You don't have to sell them on the glorbyoids from the planet Dingletron. You can also take what you like from other settings and easily mix it together in your own with real world representation.>Scale. It's easier to justify being big damn heroes of some small backwater kingdom or of the world than of a solar system and have it mean something. Especially when armies like those in fantasy are often merely thousands strong.>Variety of aesthetics. You have anything from generic Tolkien fantasy to catgirl weebshit to Tumblr coffee shop aesthetic to grungy early Warcraft. All of them have their audiences and they tend to be bigger than Star Trek or 40k or Call of Cthulhu.
>>96677336> As someone who's just had the absolute pleasure of playing and finishing a CoC campaignDoubt.
>>96677336Truly great fantasy harkens to the mythological and ancestral roots of your blood and people. IE, Lord of the Rings, an attempt to create a new mythology for the British and British Isles people.Good fantasy is pulpy, see Robert E. Howard. It awakens something primal within you. Blood, evil wizards, cleaving muscle-men. This is what early D&D is about. "High fantasy" like late D&D, Brandon Sanderson, Robert Jordan is trash.
>>96677901>It awakens something primal within you>muscle-men
>>96677336The first TTRPG was a fantasy game, ergo most of its competitors and copycats tried to be fantasy games. Personally, I don't really understand the appeal of medieval/tolkein fantasy. It does nothing for me.I think, largely, the issue is that nobody wants to innovate. Everyone wants to copy Tolkein and/or D&D in terms of how their fantasy setting works. Elves, dwarves, humans, halflings (hobbits), dragons and wizards. And while the faggot autists on this board might insist nothing should ever change because change scares them, I disagree. The Fantasy genre needs innovation. We need people who aren't afraid to slaughter some sacred cows for the sake of innovation and freshness because the genre is stale.Sci-Fi doesn't have this issue. Sci-Fi has all sorts of unique shit because sci-fi authors and game devs aren't afraid to do whatever because there is no one established convention for Science Fiction. There was never a Sci-Fi Tolkein that every sci-fi TTRPG dev copied.
>>96677901>Truly great fantasy harkens to the mythological and ancestral roots of your blood and peopleThere is nothing exceptional about anyone's DNA. We are all homo sapiens. As for people, I assume you mean nationality and not something as meaningless as skin tone. Even then, we live in a world where legends no longer exist, and many countries in the world just don't have any sort of modern mythos that is compatible with Fantasy as a genre.>Blood, evil wizards, cleaving muscle-men. That's incredibly boring and very, very homosexual. Those things awaken nothing in me, and I find it hilarious that "cleaving muscle-men" awakens something in you given the fact you seem to think bloodline matters at all since your faggot ass will never reproduce.>"High fantasy" like late D&D, Brandon Sanderson, Robert Jordan is trash.High Fantasy at least feels exciting. It allows for the most possible things to happen because it throws off the shackles of "realism" and "historical accuracy" for fun and whatever is interesting or cool, because a setting with lots of magic can have way more shit happen than mudcore slop #2346246.
>>96677336I am too tired to make jokes. It's because we live in the worst timeline and obviously fantasy allows you to escape to a better world where you have a chance to slay evil.
>>96677336>>96677961You write like a pretentious faggot. Thread dismissed.
>>96677336I'm autistic what the fuck is this even trying to represent?
>>96678038He horn breaking.Relax, you are not autistic, just retarded.
>>96678038He's breaking her mind/will via arousal. The horn rubbing is insinuated to be a sexual sensation by the context of the picture. I don't know how you missed it, her face is literally an orgasm face.>>96678052Lol. Get yourself checked anon.
>>96677336
>>96678038Figure it out>>96677901Personally I just thought LOTR was a neat little story with it's high points being the human knightly characters and the hobbits, hell as someone who's read a lot of old chivalry novels it's quite refreshing seeing protagonists who aren't chosen by destiny and mow dow 100 man with a big cleaver while stepping on giants because a lot of old knightly tales were just that even if they are somewhat entertaining.High Fantasy is garbage because it insists too hard on worldbuilding over character. Worldbuilding only works if it's a sandbox setting like DnD and Warhammer Fantasy but Sanderson's books just go on and on about useless shit with the most dry autistic stale prose imaginable.>>96677946
>>96678112No idea how that would feel good. I feel like it would be uncomfortable for someone to mess with the horns.
>>96677961>I assume you mean nationality and not something as meaningless as skin toneI mean spiritual race, the soul in the blood. The fact that you brought up "nationality" and "skin tone" shows that you have no understanding of something as high as this.>High Fantasy at least feels exciting. It allows for the most possible things to happenImpossible things happen in myth and legend (Lord of the Rings is myth) and pulp too, so this feels like a completely moot point.And if you honestly think that Conan cleaving through monsters on his way up tower to kill his local wizard and rob him of his treasures and to steal away into the night with a curvy woman clad in figure-hugging silks is boring, you are both a retard, and a fag.
>>96678317Sanderson's biggest problem is his tryhard character shit lmao. This isn't media illiteracy, this is blatant misinformation.
>>96677336I think I love fantasy because it reflects the culture and values of its creators; it's very allegorical. The only followable logic is that which serves the setting or story, and it can at times be neat to see how people might work around shit that can't happen in our world, or how people might interpret mysterious facts they have few hard sources on. I like sci-fi and modern settings, but those require some base logic to work off of.
>>96677961Conan the barbarian is a far more interesting character and the hyborian age is a far more interesting setting then anything any high fantasy author has put out.
>>96677961>We are all homo sapiensActually there is a lot of evidence for our ancestral trees being varied wildly with only a hint of homo sapiens in some. There's several major species of human with distinct evolutionary variations, which actually goes a long way to explain the various rates of social and technological development amongst various peoples.
>>96678862I know what you mean but you are wrong.Besides the fact that the three Homo species (Sapien, Neanderthal and Longi [Denisovan]) split from the same root then recombined.Genetic signatures between them which are not shared are highest without rhyme or reason. With some agricultural people having higher genetic deviation than those who stayed mesolithic.
>>96677336>So what is it about fantasy in particular that makes it resonate with so many people Every single myth of every single culture in the world is fantasy. Every single human grew up with his cultures fantasy tales before anything else, so it has that inherently comfy and familiar feel to it. Hard Sci Fi and Cyberpunk and all that? It took years till i had my first exposure. But fantasy? Grimm fairy tales and arthurian legends and bible tales had been around me since kindergarden.
>>96677336Fantasy worlds are cosy. Who doesn't want to go back in time to some imagined era when the earth was unspoiled and full of unexplored frontiers, except with plenty of magical or modern conveniences so you don't actually have to live like some medieval person.
What makes fantasy so big is its potential; "the faculty or activity of imagining things, especially things that are impossible or improbable."It is perceivably infinite, limited only by the imagination of the creator. It is even bigger than non-fantasy fiction, because as many possibilities as there are with it, it is limited by plausibility.In fact, fantasy is so hard to escape from, that many people who claim to be above it or not enjoy it actually widely participate in or consume media of the fantasy genre. Its market is so widely saturated, that authors had to be snakey and try to coin a different name, in spite of creating nothing distinct from the fantasy they claim to be different from.D&D is boring and bland, but it is only one fraction of a facet of fantasy's true potential. I can't speak for those who only stick with D&D, only as someone who enjoys exploring some of the sheer potential of fantasy; the willingness to break as far beyond what I've seen as possible, to see what works and what doesn't for my own desires, not for some greater audience or for the sake of what's popular or for what popular writers latch onto or what fans of popular writers leech from.That's what fantasy is about, imagining, creating, and enjoying the craft. You, like many other fans of so-called "sci-fi" are busy trying to affect a greater sense of culture, importance, or knowledge just because your enjoyment comes from robots and lasers instead of dragons and fireballs, without the willingness to admit there have been profound messages and cautionary tales in the fantasy you claim to hate, and without the willingness to admit there have been just as many mindless, instant gratification shlock "sci-fi" tales.It is a distinction without a difference, made for fantasy writers to make money in a saturated market off of pretentious suckers who want to feel superior.
>>96677336>There are dwarves because...>WELL THERE JUST AREthis is your fault btw
>>96677336Intellectual lazinessUnwillingness to engage with meaningful questions raised (right of conquest, tension between cultures, respect for the dead, etc etc etc)Fetish fuelModern disbelief in a liveable future stealing the joy from sci-fiAmericans LARPing as a nation with a pastChristian fundie upbringing making fantasy more accessible (they're used to guys using swords to pacify the dungeon/Levant)>>96679493Anyone who understands sanitation and hygiene, dipshit. The past smells like an open sewer.
>>96680036>so you don't actually have to live like some medieval person.Finish reading the posts you're replying to
>>96677336People do Corruption of Champions campaigns? Weird.
>>96679041Good post. Fantasy is something that every generation touches. Sci-fi and modern settings usually only appeal to a single generation.
>>96677574>Seething that someone prefers CoC to fantasy
>>96678862You are ignoring terrain and weather. You can't mine for iron if there's no iron where you live.
>>96680036>the past was le bad....for MATERIAL REASONS
>>96677336>they generally felt too trope drivengenres are made of tropes, so every genre is trope driventhe word you are looking for is cliche (tropes are not inherently cliche)hope this helps
>>96681787it really doesn't
>>96681166>>96679577To be honest Call of Cthulu and cosmic horror is just equally as tropey with the exact same problems but it still had a larger sense of wonder than playing DnD because it felt more like we were filling points on a checklist of a average fantasy adventure than really living anything. It really takes away from a sense of wonder when I keep running across the same couple very well defined estabilished races and how I already know how shit is gonna play out. Oooh I get to the wood elves that means they will all have birds and reindeer around them while hugging trees and shit oops I got to the dragon he's big and powerful and lives in a big castle filled with loot. Sci fi is just as tropey as fantasy most of the time too but at least it attempts to disguise itself and adapt tropes in a way that even something extremely derivative like stellaris or 40k feels somewhat original instead of just literally copy and pasting estabilished concepts without any changes whatsoever, except for most Cyberpunk that shit is usually copy and pasted as well.The worst part is that there is indeed a fuck load of potential as many anons pointed out but it just feels absolutely wasted even compared to other types of genrefic. It's insane how slept on ideas like magic, necromancy, gigantic myths, mysterious lands and evil fucking things like shadows and ogres are because they are reduced to tools and genre conventions instead of actual plot devices. You just accept they are there because it's a fantasy setting but it's barely elaborated upon.Also looking back on it my lack of enjoyment with DnD might have come from a complete lack of cooperation between the players and the DM alongside general lack of planning for it. I used to drink a lot every long session inspite being told not to and everyone on the table kept trying to do the most inane idiotic option imaginable as if it was a game of Quiplash where the funniest person wins the table
>>96677336Because fantasy is more flexible, it allows for a greater range of themes and aesthetics, from the current ultra diverse colorful DnD, to the gritty OSRs and you can easily integrate what most would consider sci fi elements
>>96681642Yes.
>>96681642Dying younger due to illness or plague is better than having perfecrly suitable healthcare meant to keep you enslaved working until you're 70 with increasingly less work opportunities
>>96677649Hats off to you for being the first person in the thread to give a legit and well put set of answersThat being said I only looked at your post because I’m an autist whose favourite Pokémon is Dragonite and the dragon in your pic looked like it in a small thumbnail
>>96677709Perhaps OP means "Jibbering nonsense while investigator is addicted to laudnum and totally insane." That's how most of my CoC campaigns finish.
>>96677961>There is nothing exceptional about anyone's DNA. We are all homo sapiens. As for people, I assume you mean nationality and not something as meaningless as skin tone. Even then, we live in a world where legends no longer exist, and many countries in the world just don't have any sort of modern mythos that is compatible with Fantasy as a genre.All you had to type was "nah, Im a queer" and we would have gotten the point, faggot
>>96677336Fantasy is familiar tropes with a twist.Even better, the majority of people like to think they know how things were back then because people are stupid and assume everything was simple in the olden days.Meanwhile thinking about contemporary or future settings, people tend to think of adult things because they inherently think things are far more complicated the closer you are to now than you are to their made up vision of medieval times.So in short: People dumb.
fantasy is big because all the girls have big tits and pointy nipples like pic >>96678317
>>96687694I'm sure that was of great comfort for all the people who died over the course of days or weeks from a small cut or a bad tooth.
>>96677336I like it because it takes stuff from a cool time period and opens up the world so you can do anything with it.
>>96677926Yep, you either want to be them or be with them. We don't judge either way.
>>96677336>>96677397Because fantasy is simple and approachable. You generally have at least some broad idea about how middle ages worked, and primitive survival is all but hardwired into humans.Fantasy also is generally open world, has vast free space to explore and claim. The terms of the settings usually do not require grand study, you have swords and sorcery and it's enough. There's no need for social contract to keep space age society, there's no need for hard science to roleplay educated people of the future.For the same reason people love the Urban Fantasy or Harry Potter so much. It's just reality, but better.
>>96677336Idk i like it that's allI like nature and swordfighting over concrete cities and gunfighting
>>96680036>Anyone who understands sanitation and hygiene, dipshit. The past smells like an open sewer.Nigger half of his post is about fantasy being magically not the open sewer of the past. Did you even read it?
