Low Fantasy My Ass

[Anonymous]

By and large we quite intentionally give the world a low-fantasy, gritty feel.

The two main centers of civilization in game are ruled by powerful, immortal beings that have lived for centuries and are no longer fully human.  Their templars wield magick (well, not always but still).  Even Red Storm is ruled by a seemingly immortal persona.  Anyone who is anyone uses or has access, whether publicly or otherwise, to magick (with a few notable exceptions, such as Tuluk -- but even then you can't be sure!)  When magick is absent, you will often find psychics in its place; worse still, sometimes magick and psionicists go hand in hand!  One half of the Known World is bordered by a sea of silt where mythical giants are rumored to dwell.  And if that rumor isn't enough to go on, there are still gigantic monsters who will eat a dozen men in one bite in the Sea of Dust, not to mention elsewhere in the game, including demons and fabled elemental creatures.  The city-states have been known to suffer attack from undead creatures, insect-men, mutants, and more.

And you're trying to tell me Armageddon MUD is low fantasy?

[PantoufleCan'tLogin]

...er, that was me.  And sorry I botched your name, Savak .  Can't edit.

-Pantoufle

[Bestatte]

High fantasy refers to a certain type of fantasy - not a quantity of fantasy. Tolkein's world is considered "high fantasy" while the world of Dune is "low fantasy." George R.R. Martins is "low fantasy" compared with Mercedes Lackey's "high fantasy." Terry Goodkind might be considered somewhat of a hybrid between the two, and the high-Magic, human-only world of Sharon Green would be more of a low-fantasy genre, even though the entire series she wrote revolves around magic.

Fantasy doesn't require magic to be fantasy, and it doesn't require halflings or elves to be fantasy. And, just because it has one or the other, (or even both) doesn't make it high fantasy.

Armageddon is considered low fantasy because of its overall structure. "Low" does not equate with "lack of." It's the difference between a Bugs Bunny cartoon and a Three Stooges movie. Both are fiction. One is high, the other low, even though both are comedy and include some of the exact same kinds of jokes.

[Bakha]

Here's a thread from the past that discusses this very thing (what is meant by low fantasy vs. high fantasy).

http://www.zalanthas.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=10340&highlight=low+fantasy

[Larrath]

I'm an experienced mudder with several years of playing under my belt.

When I first ran across a magicker with the BadNasty spell, my eyes went wide.  "Holy fucking shit, he can cast BN!".  At ANY instance of magick, assuming I play a mundane PC, I normally freak out.  So do most other PCs.


When a player walks around and suddenly see a magicker PC, they usually gasp, I'd think.  The player, not the PC.  For most players, magick is still a rare thing, even if there are relatively many forces that can use it.  Magick is still mysterious and kinda scary.


Yes, Zalanthas has magick and supernatural things.  A lot of them.  But it's still without gods.  It's still without black magick and white magick and afterlife and the power of love and souls and destiny.

Zalanthas has all these powers, but it's also much more chaotic than any standard high-fantasy game I can think about.

To be perfectly honest, though, I don't care whether it's high fantasy or low fantasy.  I care if it's good fantasy, and Arm is good fantansy.

[Bestatte]

Wow I just read the link Bakha provided and saw my own post there in that thread.

Amazing how my opinion can do a complete turnaround in just a few short months.

I stand by my -current- opinion at the moment though. If it changes again I'll letcha know

[Bakha]

I really like JGG's definition from that thread:

I disagree with Avril completely, but in the absence of the existence of a formal definition, I can do that with impunity.

High fantasy relies heavily on archetypes and archetypal stories. Read some of Joseph Campbell's discussions of archetypes, such as Hero of a Thousand Faces, and you'll see that many books which are considered High Fantasy fall squarely into the archetypal patterns. The reluctant hero, the wise mentor, the villain bent on conquest. Break High fantasy down into its most generic components, and each hero, and each hero's journey, is more or less the same. The Lord of the Rings, for example, is heavily archetypal. There is no doubt that this is deliberate; mythology is largely archetypal and Tolkien's goal in creating the world of Middle Earth was to create a mythos.

Low fantasy tends to eschew archetypes and the archetypal stories, instead having more in common with science fiction. Where High fantasy appeals to the emotions, low fantasy appeals to the intellect. Stories revolve around ideas and extrapolations, driven by characters and histories. Science fiction writers thus tend to write very good low fantasy novels - the Earthsea series by Le Guin, the Coldfire trilogy by C.S. Friedman, and so on. Low fantasy is often driven by the same questions that science fiction revolves around. What is human? What is intelligence? And the ever popular What if?

[PantoufleCan'tLogin]

Informative link, Bakha.  Thanks.

I guess there's a misconception about magic and the supernatural pertaining to high or low fantasy.  ArmageddonMUD has just as much "magic" as the Lord of the Rings does, it's just more tightly controlled I suppose (and a bit more sensible).

[flurry]

Can we not mention specific spells?   Thanks.

[Agent_137]

If you think about it, magic in LOTR was pretty tightly controlled. More so than in armageddon.

Wizards had it. Some elves that had minor gods in their lineage had it. A minor god used all he had to make a ring with it. That's it. Everything else is swords and metal and arrows.

There were seven wizards, i think. And only three were in middle earth. The rest were in the east and whatever. And only two mattered. Further, these wizards weren't humans. They didn't "learn" their magic. They were minor gods incarnated into human bodies to safe guard middle earth against the evil minor god who was trying to take it over.

So, if you want to get down to the nitty gritty, there was no "magic" in LOTR. It was all godly powers. That's it.

BTW, i'm an LOTR dork. Read the series about four times. Read the simarillion about 5 times. Read all the other works by Tolkien I could get my hands on at least once.

Does that make LOTR low fantasy? Hell no. I'm inclined to agree with JGG, as quoted by Bakha.

[Rhyden]

Fantasy's components don't only focus around magic(k). There are several other aspects that make up a fantasy world. Races, environments, languages, weapons, creatures, life-styles, religions, towns/villages/cities are only a few of the other elements that create a fantasy world.

[creeper386]

I think one of the things seperating high fantasy and low fantasy is the world itself. Discluding magick and races. High fantasy tends to be more happy, cleaner, everything is fairly well cut. Good/evil. Rich/poor. So on and so forth.

Low fantasy tends to be much more grungy. Nearly everything is in the grey areas as opposed to everything in high fantasy being black and white.

Like someone said, low fantasy tends to be less fantastic as well. Not EVERYONE has magic. Not everyone is some odd race. There isn't mighty weapons, great artifacts, uber wizards or whatever. High fantasy tends to have huge epic world changing events. Everything hinges on the actions of one person/group. Low fantasy, well even the main characters don't have that much effect on the world.

High Fantasy: Epic world changing events. The characters DO make a difference in the world. Great magic, fantastic beasts, artifacts of immense power.


Low Fantasy: They tell the lives of people living in the world, not of the heros changing it. Less based in magic. Magic might exist and be powerful but the world doesn't rely on it. Overall the world goes on with little difference no matter what happens.

Most likely everyone will disagree with me like always. Quite alright. Just my opinion.

Creeper

[fearwig]

I don't think all those rules are applicable. Dune tells stories of great things and happenings, and centers on the people most involved in that historical pivot.

The difference is all in the mentality. High fantasy is generally fantasy with very little sense of limitation. The world is your oyster, and everything that's cool or neat is played up to an extreme. It's the Monty Haul, to use D&D terminology. You get it all.

Low fantasy, on the other hand, is more focused on realism--but an *alternate* realism. It's full of limitations, and it's generally much more adult than high fantasy. That doesn't mean it's necessarily better, though if often is.

People often cite LOTR as high fantasy, but I'd like to disagree. It's probably somewhere in the middle. However, most of the crap that is based on LOTR (however loosely)--Dragonlance, SparklyFairyElfOrgy, and WhatHaveYou--"high" fantasy, for sure. A first glance would probably tell someone that Armageddon is high fantasy--you've got elves, dwarves, humans, and magic users. It's the implementation of these principles, which is both rather original and rather realistic (yet still in an 'alternate reality', so to speak), that makes it "low".

[HardCarbon]

I consider the difference a matter of Scale

 Dune and LOTR  both were about world changing events.  That's high Fantasy

 Armageddon is about (for many)  getting your next meal.. paying off the loan raptors   That's low fantasy..   If 99% of the characters saw the one ring they'd grab its power before you could say Smegal..

[JollyGreenGiant]

Thanks, Bakha.  I kind of liked my definition too.  Since we're back on the topic, I'll even add to it.  Back in my college days, I had to take some humanities courses.  Since computer science fell in the college of engineering, one of my two requirements was knocked out by a required "ethics" class.  So I looked through the catalogue, and low and behold, there was a "Science Fiction as Literature" class.  Sweet.  Reading sci-fi and getting credit for it.  Sure enough, the class was a lot of fun.  The professor was the head of the English department, and this was what he considered his "fun" class.  We read assorted Asimov robot short stories, War of the Worlds, Left Hand of Darkness, Dune, Neuromancer, and other classic pieces of science fiction literature.

One distinction that my prof made very early on was that there is sci-fi, and then there's stuff that looks like sci-fi because it has futuristic sounding stuff in it, but really, it's more like fantasy.  Perhaps one of the best examples of this is Star Wars.  Star Wars is fantasy - or perhaps more accurately, it's "space opera."  (A genre perfected by E.E. "Doc" Smith for those of you who might recognize the name.)  The point is, it isn't science fiction, at least not as we defined it in class.  It is, however, heavily archetypal, and deliberately so.  That's part of its appeal as a story.

That was my original line of thought when I wrote up what I thought high and low fantasy were.  I thought of a few things when this thread came up that I should have added.  High fantasy almost always makes a clear distinction between good and evil, right and wrong.  Low fantasy might do so as well, but in the process of doing so, will question how such things fit with what it means to be human, and the nature of choice or free will.

Song of Ice and Fire (George R. R. Martin) - low fantasy.  The stories are focused not on an event, or even on several events, or on one person's archetypal journey, but instead focus on thematic elements, such as alienation.

Let's take another popular "epic" series, the Wheel of Time.  This is clearly high fantasy - it's focused on the archetypal journey of a very small number of characters.  The stories themselves are more interersted in exploring the mythos they create than exploring the characters that have been thrust into the story.  The main character is straight out of Hero of a Thousand Faces.

See?  It's easy.  Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett - low fantasy.  Everything written by Michael Stackpole that I've ever read - high fantasy.  Armageddon - low fantasy.

[Pantoufle]

By the by, to whom it may concern and all that... the title of my post was an attempt at humor.  It wasn't in any way, shape, or form a conscious effort to offend those affiliated with ArmageddonMUD or its subsidiaries.  Should the post or its title have distraught the aforementioned parties, it is with grief and humility that I extend my condolenses and aplogies.

For real.

I wasn't trying to be a "snarky" jackass or anything of the sort, rather, just being my usual goofball self.

Werd.  :lol:

[Sir Diealot]

I'd just like to point out that, yes.. 'magic' ie.. casting spells, was moderately low in Tolkien, however the use of 'magic' as innate personality traits (Elves had about a million and one cantrips that each Elf had, etc etc etc) to make weapons (Biter/Beater.. almost every weapon used by Dwarves..) armor, and all kinds of things was incredibly common.

(yeah, I haven't posted in a while.. >.> Thought you'd gotten rid of me didn't'cha?)

[Agent_137]

I'd just like to point out that, yes.. 'magic' ie.. casting spells, was moderately low in Tolkien, however the use of 'magic' as innate personality traits (Elves had about a million and one cantrips that each Elf had, etc etc etc) to make weapons (Biter/Beater.. almost every weapon used by Dwarves..) armor, and all kinds of things was incredibly common.

(yeah, I haven't posted in a while.. >.> Thought you'd gotten rid of me didn't'cha?)

I don't think "incredibly common" is quite correct. Compare the number of average denizens of middle earth to the number of magical artifacts at the time of the LOTR trilogy.

not much.

Now, if you compare Heroes vs. Artifacts, the ratio is higher, but even then everyone didn't go packin' magical swords that shoot glowing sword-like projectiles when their heart bar is full.

Of course, this is all a fine point, and not that relevant to the larger discussion. Please feel free to PM me and we can hash it out, if you like. :mrgreen:

[halfhuman]

Magick in Tolkein WAS more limited than on Arm. If an elf had it, it was in the form of alchemy, by norm. (except for that spell on that river by Rivendell, but Gandalf helped with that )

The reason Gandolf had such super-cool magick skills, is because Gandalf is a god. As is Sarumon and the rest of the council.  They were sent to middle-earth in human avatars. Gandalf is powerful enough to have single-handedly destroyed the entire orc army that seiged Gondor, but the gods sent to middle-earth were forbid to use there magick to help humans, or alter history and such.  Sarumon did, and it led him down the "path of the dark side." :twisted: (which doesn't explain the pine cone thing in The Hobbit, but hey, nothing DOES explain The Hobbit.

The fight between the Balrog and Gandalf started in an astral plane. He killed the sucker, so it was banished to the material plain. Then, ain't things a bitch, he ran into it again, and had to whip its ass again.  

So, Gandalf can kinda be considered a special exception, or on par with a Sorceror King, since those dudes are demigods anyhow.

[Cenghiz]

Low fantasy? ARM has more fantasies than a porn movie includes. :oops:  Just type "OOC I give you consent."

Not: Yey, I'm not a MUDsex virgin any more.

[HardCarbon]

Magick in Tolkein WAS more limited than on Arm. If an elf had it, it was in the form of alchemy, by norm. (except for that spell on that river by Rivendell, but Gandalf helped with that )

The reason Gandolf had such super-cool magick skills, is because Gandalf is a god. As is Sarumon and the rest of the council.  They were sent to middle-earth in human avatars. Gandalf is powerful enough to have single-handedly destroyed the entire orc army that seiged Gondor, but the gods sent to middle-earth were forbid to use there magick to help humans, or alter history and such.  Sarumon did, and it led him down the "path of the dark side." :twisted: (which doesn't explain the pine cone thing in The Hobbit, but hey, nothing DOES explain The Hobbit.

The fight between the Balrog and Gandalf started in an astral plane. He killed the sucker, so it was banished to the material plain. Then, ain't things a bitch, he ran into it again, and had to whip its ass again.  

So, Gandalf can kinda be considered a special exception, or on par with a Sorceror King, since those dudes are demigods anyhow.

Given that Galdalf was  'basicly' a demi-god (in D&D terms)  (on par with the sandlord, or the city rulers)  that's not fair.   None of the 'PCs'  ever had much magic skill though some did have some nice stuff...

[Nidhogg]

I don't remember the part about them being gods in the books. You guys making this stuff up?

[Agent_137]

I don't remember the part about them being gods in the books. You guys making this stuff up?

No, we've just read the simarillion.

Here's what it looked like for what Tolkien wrote, middle-earth timeline-wise:

Time
|--------------------------------------------------------------------\------/----|
The simarillion:_______________________________ LOTR____


You're missing out on a LOT of story if you haven't read the simarillion.

[SpyGuy]

I don't remember the part about them being gods in the books. You guys making this stuff up?

Yeah, pick up the simarillion.  I have no clue where what halfhuman was talking about the astral plane and the rules came from...but whatever.  I haven't read any of the stuff by Christopher Tolkein or Tolkein's letters.  In Tolkein magic -WAS- common but was mainly lost to the world.  I'd say in the first and second ages it was more common among some civilizations than it is currently in Arm.  Contrary to some peoples belief influenced by books and games that came after it though, Tolkeins work never really had wizards as a "class".  They were just unique beings, demi-gods basically.

As far as low-fantasy goes I like the description of it being archetypal.  And I also think theres a difference in the main characters (this chase PCs).  Low-fantasy much more often focuses on the out of the way thieves and the like, rather than that roaming band of great heroes.