They shoot elves, don't they?

[fable]

After Gary Gygas institutionalized fantasy with hard-and-fast rules in the 1970s, we've had tons of readymade books built around Tolkien spinoff universes. Elves, dwarves, halflings, wizards, sorceresses (with our without black-lace garters) and such are found everywhere. Recognizing a good thing, film and game producers have followed suit. Some of this stuff is pretty good, but even when it is, originality is frequently missing. Divine Divinity, a new CRPG I happen to like, suffers from this. It's really got a lot to offer, but it's been lambasted in the press (rightly, I think) for having endless fantasy cliches.

So what do you think? How do you feel about the endless parade of elves, halflings, etc?

[der Moench]

Originally posted by fable
After Gary Gygas institutionalized fantasy ...

Gary Gygax wasn't it?

Peace.

[Nippy]

Huh? What? Someone corrected Fable? Ye Gods!

[Robnark]

guh. unoriginality is right. i mean, it put me off PC RPGs for a year or so at least because i couldn't face the endless cliche. andthe annoying thing with the games - and with some of few fantasy books that i've read - is that they're often good, and it just infuriates me that a decent author or team of programmers can so often just settle with such a generic recycled background and set of ideas for what may well be a damn good game/book/whatever.

whether it is aimed at a target audience or whatever, i don't know, but it really annoys me, especially since i love the free-roaming style of PC RPGs compared to the linearity of the console titles, yet the console RPGs can bring so much more to the background, game system and characters. considering how excellent the BG series is on a technical level, i still find it compares poorly to PS:T due to the fantasy cliches. it's just personal preference, but i'd rather not buy many different RPGs that have horribly similar systems, plots and characters, even if they're very good. when the only difference between games is the names of the magic items, i find it annoying to say the least.

[frogus]

I agree with Robnark completely.

I am amazed by the fantasy genre more than any other supposedly creative market (even teen pop etc) for it's apparent inability to think for itself. RPGs are guilty, as are the (very few) fantasy novels I have ever attempted to read. Elves, orcs and goblins are not real, so why the hell do they appear in every single fantasy RPG? Why not put in some Squobs, Rints and Swalbs? I ask you .

I excused BGII because it was phonomenally detailed and excellent game, but it was rife with awful cliches (though admittedly it was a D&D game).

I now never read fantasy, and never buy fantasy games other than Warcraft, BG etc (big names).

The genre is very almost dead.

[dragon wench]

@Frogus,
if you haven't already played it, I highly recommend Planecape Torment, it is probably the most original RPG I have ever played, both in terms of extensive dialogue and NPC "racial" characteristics.

[Gwalchmai]

Yet, isn’t the fantasy genre (today) defined by those very attributes that are considered repetitive clichés? In order to write something new, or to think ‘outside of the box’ as it were, it would require writing something that would not be considered ‘fantasy’ per se. It would be come a new genre at best, mere ‘fiction’ at worse.

[Nightmare]

Originally posted by dragon wench
@Frogus,
if you haven't already played it, I highly recommend Planecape Torment, it is probably the most original RPG I have ever played, both in terms of extensive dialogue and NPC "racial" characteristics.

Yes...none of the NPCs are the "normal" races you would normally play.

[fable]

Originally posted by Gwalchmai
Yet, isn’t the fantasy genre (today) defined by those very attributes that are considered repetitive clichés? In order to write something new, or to think ‘outside of the box’ as it were, it would require writing something that would not be considered ‘fantasy’ per se. It would be come a new genre at best, mere ‘fiction’ at worse.

There are good authors who have written fantasy without using the whole "elves and dwarves oh my" thing at all, and others who at least used it intelligently--though I agree, the considerable majority do neither. In the first category, I'd put the first freat modern author to include elves, turn-of-the-20th-century writer, Lord Dunsany. (I understand that his vast estates are now a hotel.) A fairly recent example is Jack Vance, but that's deceptive--Vance was writing excellent fiction of that kind back in the late 1940's and early 1950's, long before Tolkien's work became known in the US, then switched to other fields, and returned to fantasy in the late 1980's. He may use elves, but he goes back to much older myths about the spirits of air, and he invents his entire world.

As for fantasy authors who avoid the cliches, I suppose the first one who comes to mind for me (I've mentioned him before) is Fletcher Pratt. He's generally thought of as a great historian, and his Well of the Unicorn is set in a medieval Denmark around the time of the reallife King Valdemar Atterdag, only magic works. Everyone's human, and there are no easy divisions into classes. (Except possibly for one character, the extremely memorable scholar-mage Melniboe, who mixes genuine kindness and a philosophical willingness to resort to the blackest of magics.)

Among games, I can only think of three fantasy-based CRPGs that have avoided the cliches. First, there's Darklands, set in a Germany based upon medieval folklore. Then, there's the Ultima series. It's got some of the Arthurian cliches, but not enough to really produce a cookie cutter product. Finally, there's Planescape: Torment. It does use the unimaginative mage/fighter/priest/thief system, but otherwise, everything is fresh and different. I remember speaking with its producer, Guido Henkel, around the time it came out, and he told me that the game's designer had referred to the world's inhabitants as "philosophers with clubs."

[Mr Flibble]

Shoot the Elves!

Why can't there be a game (or anything) where the elves are the bad guys? Or just plain uncivilised and nasty, perhaps the AD&D Darksun campaign?

Sitting here thinking about it, every book/movie/game that has involved elves from one world or another, they've always been exactly the same. No one has changed from the stereotypical elf that was created by either Gygax or Tolkein, ever. Same with orcs.

[Aegis]

Originally posted by Mr Flibble
Sitting here thinking about it, every book/movie/game that has involved elves from one world or another, they've always been exactly the same. No one has changed from the stereotypical elf that was created by either Gygax or Tolkein, ever. Same with orcs.

Actually, I feel that the WarCraft Mythos has started to stray from the stereotyupe orc (both in games, and novels). While most orcs are considered, dumb savage unintelligent creatures, in the WarCraft mythos, they are more intelligent, have a sense of honour, coupled with a powerful sense of warfare. They are cultured enough to coexist with the Human Alliance (consisting of stereotype elves and dwarves). while the orcs in this particular mythos are somehwat savage, unlike in most fantasy tales, the savage nature of these orcs are not their fault. I think real issue with fantasy these days is the Elves, as has been stated. People, for somereason, no longer see humans as a noble sect, instead it must always be the elves that are the higher class, civilized peoples in the tales. So, I'm with fable. shoot them.

[Beldin]

Originally posted by Mr Flibble

Why can't there be a game (or anything) where the elves are the bad guys?

Try Terry Pratchetts "Lords and Ladies".

THAT's what I call innovative...

No worries,

Beldin

[RandomThug]

read Salamandrastron.

[Tybaltus]

Hmmm...Well I dont go out and read many of RPG books. If my brother returns to SYM, Im sure hed respond to this, as he has read both good and bad series of RPG books. And I dont go out and see many RPG movies. But I hear about all this stuff, and unoriginality, copy cats, replicas, whatever you want to call them...it just gets very old very fast with the overkill that is done. I wish if somthing got popular, people wouldnt jump all over the oppurtunity to make a similar thing and hope the popularity extends over to their own production of a similar story to that. I mean is nothing sacred anymore? Let classics come and go. Theres no need to have replicas.

Maybe a little off topic, but if there was a Baldurs Gate movie that would come out, would you all go and see it? Its interesting to think about such things...

[Beldin]

Originally posted by Tybaltus
if there was a Baldurs Gate movie that would come out, would you all go and see it? Its interesting to think about such things...

.....Look here.


Enjoy !

No worries,

Beldin