Settings and their lack of differentiation

[Telengard]

For setting, it's not the monsters themselves or the weapons or the level of grit (that's the level of reality in old designer terms). It's how those and everything else are used to evoke time and place. To get to a place other than Lord of the Rings, you need locale names, locale landscape and artwork, locale mythological mini-stories, unique rules design that feeds on the locale mythos, and (just a few) unique monsters who have a non-bog standard look and philosophy of life.

Translation: setting is a sense of style, more than it is anything else. A unique setting is thus something with a unique style, instead of wearing what's popular.

All things fantasy will have lots of similarities with one another, because they are still fantasy. But even though Arthurian legends and Lord of the Rings have lots and lots of similarities, someone could port over Pendragon and make a crpg with its setting, give the look of the game an Arthurian touch, then use all the usual monsters, and it would still feel unique simply because it wouldn't be Lord of the Rings for once.

 

[Jaesun]

You know what I would actually like, is for someone to finally do something *actually* different/unique with the fucking fucking boring generic fantasy setting. Seriously, stir this tired shit up and do something new and unique. Like hell, the Dwarves and Elves are in a genocidal war against the Humans. There are a million things you could do with this but all we ever get is the same tired old rehashed shit (see Bioware and Obsidian). Troika at least tried to do something a bit different though.

 

[Infinitron]

They do different things, but then the different things become a cliche too. "Elves as second class citizens instead of noble lords in crystal towers" is now a cliche. Fantasy cliche-ifies everything!

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

I think the idea is not to repeat the same thing enough times for it to become a cliche. Besides, it's not really a cliche. ASAIK only The Witcher and Dragon Age do this.

 

[Mustawd]

Zombies...now that has become a cliche through repeated use in movies, books, and games.

 

[Telengard]

I would enjoy seeing the Xtreme butthurt if they ever did port Pendragon over, though.

Wait. I don't understand. Why am I only seeing knight classes? Where are all the other classes hiding?!?
See, in this game you're playing a knight in an Arthurian legend, so of course there are only knight classes. But look at the variety of knight-

What!?! Why are there only humans?!?
Well, you are playing an Arthruian knight, so-

But I wanna be a half-drow/half-dhampir fighter/warlock/rogue/monk! Why aren't you letting me play what I wanna play?!?
See, this game is about a knight and your noble family, which is why you choose family traits and-

This game is fucking shit! You have no fucking clue what FUN is!!!

 

[prodigydancer]

They do different things, but then the different things become a cliche too. "Elves as second class citizens instead of noble lords in crystal towers" is now a cliche. Fantasy cliche-ifies everything!

Because it's just a flavor of "elves were once nearly all-powerful rulers of the world but <insert something bad> happened and made them lose their immortality and omnipotence" - one of the most common fantasy clichés. Not to mention that classic fantasy races - elves and dwarves first and foremost - have been tragically overused in CRPGs. You simply cannot make them feel fresh anymore.

If you paint a brick wall green it's still a brick wall.

In literature the situation is a bit better - e.g. Malazan Book of the Fallen has some attributes of traditional fantasy such as swords and magic but it doesn't have classic races and magic itself is different.

 

[V_K]

But even though Arthurian legends and Lord of the Rings have lots and lots of similarities, someone could port over Pendragon and make a crpg with its setting, give the look of the game an Arthurian touch, then use all the usual monsters, and it would still feel unique simply because it wouldn't be Lord of the Rings for once

Actually, there's Spirit of Excalibur and its sequel. They don't use Pendragon system, but otherwise are fairly nerdy adaptations of Arthurian myth.

 

[Beastro]

Because realistic is used to denote an actual historical setting and there were no clockwork soldiers in real life.

"Realistic" is used by gamers to denote a desire for a grounded feeling to aid immersion in a game without it crossing into un-fun territory. It ultimately is a matter of taste and seems to lean more in the direction of those that are interested in imitating real warfare in games while keeping said games easy to pick up and play, at least compared to something like Harpoon.

We encountered this disconnect in the words use in the new Battletech game thread. It's why I feel a different word should be use, like pseudo-realism.

What it comes down to it more of a feel of "realism" injected into games than anything actually realistic being added to them.

 

[Beastro]

They do different things, but then the different things become a cliche too. "Elves as second class citizens instead of noble lords in crystal towers" is now a cliche. Fantasy cliche-ifies everything!

Because different races in fantasy are metaphors for different human people in history. In classic fantasy they take the place of the idealised human Ancients in a Greek view of the world with ever degrading ages across history. Today they ape Star Trek and other sci-fi where they're replacements for ethnic minorities with humans as stand ins for white people, and ethnic minorities are never powerful and always oppressed by white people, so there you have the ghetto elf.

 

[Mastermind]

You know what I would actually like, is for someone to finally do something *actually* different/unique with the fucking fucking boring generic fantasy setting. Seriously, stir this tired shit up and do something new and unique. Like hell, the Dwarves and Elves are in a genocidal war against the Humans.

You might want to look into this company called Bioware. Elves are and mages oppressed and discriminated against and ogres are buddhist turks. That's new and unique.

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

The greatest fantasy writer of all time, George R.R. Martin,

Dafuq did I just read? The world would be much better off without all the gotfaggery. Expecially that blood&boobs softcore soap opera that made it popular.

 

[Jedi Exile]

Elves are and mages oppressed and discriminated against and ogres are buddhist turks. That's new and unique.

And north is actually south (DA world is in southern hemisphere so tropics are to the north and ice fields are to the south). This is so original that even PoE imitated it.

 

[Athelas]

The Fallout games in the 90's sold abysmally compared to their traditional fantasy counterparts - the Baldur's Gates, whereas the newer Fallout games were a smashing success. This clearly proves today's audience is more monocled and far more appreciative of original RPG settings.

All kidding aside, the fact that today's budding game developers haven't grown up with D&D and its tropes to the same extent as the 'older generation' may actually mean we could see more diverse RPG settings in the future.

I think the idea is not to repeat the same thing enough times for it to become a cliche. Besides, it's not really a cliche. ASAIK only The Witcher and Dragon Age do this.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EnslavedElves

 

[Damned Registrations]

"Realistic" is used by gamers to denote a desire for a grounded feeling to aid immersion in a game without it crossing into un-fun territory. It ultimately is a matter of taste and seems to lean more in the direction of those that are interested in imitating real warfare in games while keeping said games easy to pick up and play, at least compared to something like Harpoon.

We encountered this disconnect in the words use in the new Battletech game thread. It's why I feel a different word should be use, like pseudo-realism.

What it comes down to it more of a feel of "realism" injected into games than anything actually realistic being added to them.

The word you're looking for is verisimilitude: the sense that something has it's own, internally consistent logic, even if it isn't consistent with the real world.

 

[Beastro]

The word you're looking for is verisimilitude: the sense that something has it's own, internally consistent logic, even if it isn't consistent with the real world.

Yeah but you start using that word every time this topic comes up and you'll get everyone on your ass for being a pretentious douche.

 

[Mustawd]

verisimilitude: the sense that something has it's own, internally consistent logic, even if it isn't consistent with the real world.

 

[Gord]

How about "plausibility"?

As long as a setting is internally consistent and motivations and inner workings are comprehensible, it is plausible.
However, a fantasy world can be plausible as well, whereas a "realistic" setting is usually one that is refraining from the use of supernatural or overly futuristic elements and thus modelled more closely to mundane reality.

 

[mondblut]

Seriously, stir this tired shit up and do something new and unique. Like hell, the Dwarves and Elves are in a genocidal war against the Humans.

The Witcher did it. Birthright did it. Fucking Perumov did it, lol. Nowadays you'll have a harder time finding a fantasy setting where humans and "good" demihumans are happily and peacefully coexisting. You're really out of the loop.

Even the most generic settings always feature elves purposefully exterminating humans, they are just filed under "the bad kind of elves". More often than not, for this reason alone.

 

[JarlFrank]

You know what I would actually like, is for someone to finally do something *actually* different/unique with the fucking fucking boring generic fantasy setting. Seriously, stir this tired shit up and do something new and unique. Like hell, the Dwarves and Elves are in a genocidal war against the Humans. There are a million things you could do with this but all we ever get is the same tired old rehashed shit (see Bioware and Obsidian). Troika at least tried to do something a bit different though.

Yeah, honestly. I haven't read the entire thread but when people say "well, fantasy has so many possibilities so that's why it's chosen" I just think, yeah, okay, sure, then why is 90% of what we get generic fantasy that is hard to differentiate from each other?

In fantasy literature, there are a lot of writers who put a little twist to the traditional fantasy, or go all-out bonkers with it to create something new. Brandon Sanderson is known for creating unique magic systems for each of his settings. China Mieville's Bas-Lag is a weird as fuck fantasy world with lots of interesting stuff. Even the more generic fantasy books tend to have at least one unique thing that is slightly intesting - one of my favourite straight fantasy adventures is the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy by Martha Wells, where a fantasy world that is technologically in the early 20th century is attacked by people from another dimension with airships, and they manage to travel to a traditional sword and sorcery fantasy world which those attackers use as a harbor to launch attacks from, and then the story basically is about a WW1 cruise ship retrofitted to be a warship traveling through a traditional medieval fantasy world and it's awesome. Then there's the other fantasy school - sword and sorcery, spawned from Howard's works rather than Tolkien's. We don't see that style all too often in PC RPGs.

Heck, even the pen and paper RPGs out there have so many more interesting settings, and it's seldom that one of them is turned into a CRPG. Why not? We even have the fucking rulesystem there for the taking, no need to make up your own rules. Even D&D has some cool subsettings, but the places we get to see are usually just the most generic areas of the Forgotten Realms. NWN2's expansions went into more interesting regions - but the base game didn't, the base game played it safe and didn't stray much from the well-known generic regions everyone has travelled through 500 times already. And many new "unique" fantasy settings in RPGs are just Forgotten Realms with different names. Pillars of Eternity? Forgotten Realms with some stuff about souls tacked on that doesn't affect the gameplay at all, it's just a bit of story fluff. Dragon Age? Lol yeah, pretty much straight FR clone with some edgy twists like racism that is pulled off less convincingly than in Witcher. MEH.

I guess it's all about developers trying to play it safe, which is why minor differences are only story fluff that don't affect gameplay, making it all feel similar to every RPG ever. Many generic fantasy books at least play around with how magic works to add a little flavor of their own, but no, that almost never happens in RPGs because the magic system should be familiar because players would be irritated if they couldn't use their precious traditional fireball.

 

[deuxhero]

I'd really like to see a Meiji era esqe setting with Arcanum style magic vs. technology.

 

[Trash]

To be completely honest, I'd love to see China Mieville's Bas-Lag world turned into an rpg. Now that would be something. Then again, so would an rpg set in a genuine Sword and Sorcery setting. Decadent city dwellers, evil priests, heroic barbarians and ape-men all thrown together. Tell me that wouldn't be awesome to quest through.

 

[laclongquan]

For games, the actual writings and world building is not that necessary, unlike novels. What it need is writings that support gameplay~

 

[JarlFrank]

Retards who want a wild west rpg are the type of disgusting storyfags who should stick to reading books and never be allowed touch another computer again.

So what would be wrong about having a turn based Desperados with stats, bro?

Imagine this game as an RPG with tactical TB combat and characters you can level up. It already has different chars with different abilities (the girl that can distract enemies and seduce them, the nigger with his rifle and dynamite, Doc with knock-out gas vials and a long-range gun, main char is a typical wild west revolver-slinging bounty hunter, there's a strong Mexican who's great at melee), now imagine you can gain XP and level the guys up to give them new abilities. And it doesn't have to be storyfaggy at all, just make it bounty hunters vs outlaw gangs and you have the typical spaghetti western storyline that has been published in over 9000 short stories in the pulp magazines already.

You can even put in some injun shaman magic to spice it all up.

 

[Mastermind]

So what would be wrong about having a turn based Desperados with stats, bro?

Imagine this game as an RPG with tactical TB combat and characters you can level up. It already has different chars with different abilities (the girl that can distract enemies and seduce them, the nigger with his rifle and dynamite, Doc with knock-out gas vials and a long-range gun, main char is a typical wild west revolver-slinging bounty hunter, there's a strong Mexican who's great at melee), now imagine you can gain XP and level the guys up to give them new abilities. And it doesn't have to be storyfaggy at all, just make it bounty hunters vs outlaw gangs and you have the typical spaghetti western storyline that has been published in over 9000 short stories in the pulp magazines already.

You can even put in some injun shaman magic to spice it all up.

I've never felt even the slightest compulsion to play Desperados.