Most people don't even know what the real world is.

Quote from: Elfdart;909110I disagree.

Yeah, I got that the first time.

Your belief that the Star Wars galaxy is full of Collie Dogs, Morgan Quarter Horses, Rhode Island Red Hens, Parakeets, Black Angus Cattle, and Siamese Cats despite us never seeing any domesticated earth animals on screen is strange. Earth snakes somehow swam to the swamps of Degoabah, but somehow everybody forgot to bring their pets and the edible animals along with them....right. :rolleyes:

Straw man much?

I only pointed out that some Earth animals appear in the Star Wars movies, as do a number of Earth plants. Why some made it to another galaxy while other didn't could make for an interesting story.

Quote from: Elfdart;909165I only pointed out that some Earth animals appear in the Star Wars movies, as do a number of Earth plants.

Overly literal much?

Your point seemed to be that since they used a few real earth plants and animals in one scene that they intended that those were real earth plants and animals instead of convenient stand-ins. And as I already said, since they made the films in this galaxy, maybe it was too expensive to ship the real animals and plants in from Dagobah so they used cheap earth substitutes. :rolleyes:

Actually, the real world animals were (mostly) an accident.  The building the Dagobah set was built in was a typical hangar-sized structure with lots of open entrance points. The set was so realistic and contained so much organic material that insects, birds frogs and snakes just moved in from the surrounding countryside.

What the fuck are you smoking? King snakes and monitor lizards don't live in the UK. In fact, snakes in general are very rare in the British Isles.

Quote from: CRKrueger;907801As far as Martin goes, he stole from War of the Roses, Moorcock, sure, but let's not forget Dune.  The noble lord gets pulled into a political trap he can't avoid surrounded by enemies while his bastard son (or son that shouldn't have been conceived) is the Kwisatz Haderach/Azor Azhai the Prince that was Promised and said son's abilities only manifest after he dwells with the exiled Fremen/Wildlings and dies to be reborn...and don't forget the Otherworldly mother and magical little sister.

Well, Robert Jordan plundered Dune before Martin for his WoT, unless I'm mixing up the dates;). (He just mixed it with LotR).
And then Dune is based on real world analogues, too:).

Quote from: daniel_ream;907922I'll be bloody, bold and resolute and take a stab at this.

To some extent it's a positive feedback loop.  Once it gets popular it's going to get more popular because people want to be on the bandwagon.  There's certainly an element of faddishness to this.

Second, fantasy as mainstream was primed by the zeitgeist.  Geek culture was mainstreaming already by the end of the 90's, and children's fantasy has always been much more popular than adult fantasy.  The early Harry Potter books are just slightly magicified British boarding school fiction, which has been popular for British kids since forever.  Add to that that Harry is both a male Cinderella and a cipher - he has no real personality or initiative - and you have a main character that appeals to both boys and girls and who any reader can project themselves on to.  I could get sociological and point out that a) there are no permanent strong positive male role models in the Harry Potter books and 2) they hit at a time when children being raised by single mothers was an exploding phenomenon meant kids were going to empathize even more with Harry's life, but I'm sure some fedora-wearing hipster will lose his shit if I do, so I'll move on.

Isn't that a pretty good reason to point it out:D?

Quote from: daniel_ream;907953The overwhelming majority of people I know who watch/read GoT have no idea what the War of the Roses or Hadrian's Wall is.

And most people that I know who watch or read GoT did know that, and the references just get a nod. So? I'm not sure what your point is, here.

Quote from: daniel_ream;907953The overwhelming majority of people I know who watch/read GoT have no idea what the War of the Roses or Hadrian's Wall is.

You need a better quality of players.

Anyway, it doesn't matter that much.  If you tell them that your game is set in medieval times, and that the style of it is a lot like Game of Thrones, that will do it.

Quote from: RPGPundit;909553You need a better quality of players.

Who said anything about players?

Quote from: daniel_ream;909571Who said anything about players?

I'm assuming he includes GMs and fantasy fans?  I could be wrong.

Given the success of D&D which is totally unrealistic- no evidence that adventurers exist nor a great deal of it otherwise and a great deal of TV programmes, how can you say real settings are more attractive than fantasy.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;904145Back in 2010 Kenneth Hite asserted this:

Quote from: Kenneth HiteThat's why, for the longest time (and still), my fundamental setting design policy was: "Use Earth." It's better mapped, better documented, and just plain weirder than anywhere else. At least start with Earth. But more importantly, as I've said on half a hundred panels and plenty of times in print, saying "Kragar the Liberator was secretly in the pay of the drow" is just not compelling. Nobody really cares, even if they dutifully read the forty pages on Kragar the Liberator earlier in the book. But saying "Abraham Lincoln was secretly in the pay of the drow" is compelling. The players (and GM) bring something to the table when I say "Abraham Lincoln" or "King Arthur" or "Hitler" that they don't when I say "Kragar the Liberator" or "Kragar the Lost" or "Kragar the Mad."

(Link for those who want to read the post this quote comes from: http://princeofcairo.livejournal.com/152308.html)

In 2012 he expanded on and firmed up this opinion with the first segment of this podcast:
http://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-4-purely-medicinal/

Now, this is obviously a controversial statement for a tabletop designer, but is he wrong? How do you feel about it?

It shows a lack of imagination, in that he assumes that players won't be able to grasp the concept of an alternate world.

Whist I am a very big fan of Alternate/Mythic Earth as a campaign setting and believe that there are many periods of earth history/mythology that can be used for gaming, I also believe that other Fantasy worlds are equally as good for gaming.

After all, Middle Earth and Glorantha are not versions of Earth but have a lot of committed gamers.

I think the problem here is that people are meaning different things by "interesting". Let me use a metaphor. Let's say I walk into a party and my attention is immediately caught by a woman in a flashy red dress. One might say that I found her the most interesting person at the party. But then when I talk to her, I find she is very superficial and incapable of sustaining a conversation and I find that she is no longer very interesting to me. This is why I assume the word "interesting" here is analogous to "being able to sustain interest long term" which generally necessitates some level of depth and coherence.

I certainly would not correlate "interesting" with "best for a role playing game" by any means. Some cultures and locations that I find very interesting in reality would not make for especially good RPG settings. And vice versa, some settings that are very superficial and incoherent make for perfectly enjoyable game settings.

Quote from: cloa513;909577Given the success of D&D which is totally unrealistic- no evidence that adventurers exist nor a great deal of it otherwise and a great deal of TV programmes, how can you say real settings are more attractive than fantasy.

You mean, apart from all the people in history that fit that label, right;)?

Quote from: soltakss;909582It shows a lack of imagination, in that he assumes that players won't be able to grasp the concept of an alternate world.

Whist I am a very big fan of Alternate/Mythic Earth as a campaign setting and believe that there are many periods of earth history/mythology that can be used for gaming, I also believe that other Fantasy worlds are equally as good for gaming.

After all, Middle Earth and Glorantha are not versions of Earth but have a lot of committed gamers.

It's not about inability to "grasp" a different world, it's about lacking resonance.

Villainous conspiracy kidnaps a sage? Standard fantasy adventure. In my Day After Ragnarok game, ODESSA kidnaps J. R. R. Tolkien.

Evil cult ressurects ancient general and his armies to cnquer a nation? Standard fantasy adventure. In my Day After Ragnarok Game, the Black Dragon Society ressurects Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg and hs White Russian army, to do battle with nascent Communist China on Imperial Japan's behalf.

This is not an indictment of fantasy worlds in and of itself, i.e. not a prescription to never, ever use an imaginary world. There are advantages to those too, even when they're a calque of history (e.g. WFRP's Old World, D&D's Known World/Mystara). But consider that every fantasy world has a "buy-in", a time and information tax — you have to learn and read "this much" to get involved.

Many, if not most gamers, know enough about Middle-Earth or the Hyborian Age or Lankhmar to be excited when Feänor or Bêlit or Ningauble of the Seven Eyes show up in a game. And of course, given enough time playing a game, people will react to Bargle the Infamous, or to Heinrich Kemmler, or to Jar-Eel the Razoress. But as a homebrewing GM it can be difficult to achieve this sort of recognition or involvement, so sometimes you gotta break out the Aristotle, and the Eleanor of Aquitaine, and of course, the motherfucking Nazis.