Fantasy lets you do ANYTHING! -- except that. And that.

[athelind]

Over on Second Life, a friend of silkspider's was helping another friend work up an RP sim.

She checked it out, and described it to me.

It's the most utterly generic fantasy I could think of.

Humans and Elves and Dwarves and Halflings are Good, Orcs and Goblins and Trolls are Evil, no, you can't play a noble, no, you can't be a Furry, no, you can't do this, that or the other thing.

If the appeal of Fantasy over Science Fiction is supposedly that you can do anything with Fantasy, why do people keep doing the same damned thing, over and over?

That's not a rhetorical question. I know some of you out there in Your Obedient Serpent's LJ Friends Sphere have used exactly that excuse to explain your preference for Fantasy over SF, in literature, game settings, or both. Explain yourselves!!

Comments

[cargoweasel.livejournal.com]

Because generic fantasy is reassuring, takes no risks and is immediately graspable. Fantasy is a genre of ritual and things rather than ideas. fantasy, with very minor exceptions and genre-spin such as steampunk and street elves and so forth, is the most hidebound and conservative of all literary genres except perhaps romances. If fantasy is innovative and worldbuilding or ideas become more important, it becomes soft SF.

I blame Tolkien. If all of SF was overshadowed by HG Wells and authors labored their entire careers trying to either recapture the greatness of HG Wells or get out from under the shadow of HG Wells it might be similar.

[snobahr.livejournal.com]

Because Good is Pretty, and they want to be the pretty pretty princess.

Even the guys.

[returntonull.livejournal.com]

In the worst case I'm willing to posit that while people -enjoy- fantasy settings, creativity isn't something you find in abundance.

A less dour view though...

They want to emulate a setting that they've enjoyed such as D&D or Middle Earth, seeing as they are most well known settings and the progenitors of a good deal of fantasy tropes, and stupidities. Thus people coming in will know the setting well enough to get started without pages of material to read.

Also doing the same thing is safe, the chance for failure is low if you're doing something that people are familiar and comfortable with. Of course you're giving up wildly successful when you do this too, unless of course you can take the same ol' and do something astounding with it, which automatically segues into something different.

I'm rambling now though, as such.

[silussa.livejournal.com]

I tend to concur with the view that originality is not found in abundance, and people do tend to want to stick with the "standard view".

I had an occasion, many years ago, running an AD&D Game, where I actually applied the description in the Monster Manual to Orcs.

For those who may not be aware of it, Orcs are slightly less intelligent then humans, and they're LAWFUL evil. (lawful as in organized)

So, when a character group encountered a group of 5 orcs in a dungeon, three of them acted to try to pin them down while the other 2 circled around to attack from behind. (they live there, after all; they know the layout of the public areas, certainly)

The players did NOT take this well, although they mostly survived the encounter. Apparently, the Orcs were supposed to scream and charge, not use cover to avoid getting killed and think to try to kill THEM.

[hafoc.livejournal.com]

I tried something different, however well I did or didn't do. It didn't sell to the publishers. I may be hopelessly vain, but I think the fact that the bean counters couldn't figure out which shelf it would go on has had a lot to do with that.

[tombfyre.livejournal.com]

Sounds like people like having limits. :p Perhaps its how they remain comfortable.

[purrzah.livejournal.com]

I think people do it because a certain RPG set the norm, and the others started mimicing, so it's become the baseline.

I, however, have rarely left things "in the norm".

[wy.livejournal.com]

What does it matter? It's just a backdrop for the stories.

[baxil.livejournal.com]

Personally, I think the main difference between fantasy and SF is in the construction of the world's rules: In fantasy, they must primarily make narrative sense; in SF, they must primarily make rational sense. Even there, the lines blur; because (unless one has an incredibly restrictive view of SF) a sci-fi story can include fantastic elements simply by injecting sufficient technobabble to rationalize them; and a fantasy story can dabble in as much rationalization as it deigns to include.

... And to directly answer your question in this thread, I think I'll just cite Sturgeon's Law. ];=8)