Quote from: AaronBrown99;919648What's wrong is that they're typically just male characters in girl costumes (see any Joss Whedon 90lb girl knocking out 200lb men with one hit).

OK.  I can't believe I'm actually defending Mr. Whedon, Mr. One Trick Pony with a Tortured Super Girl Fetish...  Which actually, ties into it.  All of Whedon's characters were super human girls, so in setting, they could in fact take out big tough guys.  Because Super Powers.

Quote from: AaronBrown99;919648GRRRRL POWER!

It gets old FAST.

It was very much a thing in the 90's.  Which doesn't excuse it, but that's where it rose to prominence and has yet to truly die off.

Quote from: yosemitemike;919696The other one was awful so my hopes are not high.

Same.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;919707OK.  I can't believe I'm actually defending Mr. Whedon, Mr. One Trick Pony with a Tortured Super Girl Fetish...  Which actually, ties into it.  All of Whedon's characters were super human girls, so in setting, they could in fact take out big tough guys.  Because Super Powers.

Dollhouse. Eliza Dushku and the others were just normal humans with new memories, but she regularly beat up and killed guys twice her size.

Quote from: TristramEvans;919667Because its a "language" all (Western European) gamers speak. D&D's success lies in it's quick and easy buy-in from players based on stereotypes and cliches everyone recognizes an understands.

Maybe, but it is the only shared language? Millions of people have read Lord of the Rings, but everyone has seen Star Wars, everyone knows who Superman is.

Quote from: Soylent Green;919750Maybe, but it is the only shared language? Millions of people have read Lord of the Rings, but everyone has seen Star Wars, everyone knows who Superman is.

No,its not the only shared language, but thread's question was not "why is the fantasy genre preferred over other genres?" it was "why is Tolkienesque [sic] fantasy preferred over other, more unusual fantasy milieus?"

Play Talislanta.

Because the "market" is American.
The folklore is absent in your genetical memory. So popular fiction is what fills that void.

Quote from: jux;919760Because the "market" is American.
The folklore is absent in your genetical memory. So popular fiction is what fills that void.

That's absurd.

Quote from: Soylent Green;919750Maybe, but it is the only shared language? Millions of people have read Lord of the Rings, but everyone has seen Star Wars, everyone knows who Superman is.

D&D is probably the easiest story to re-tell though. Any other game world is more difficult to get started reconstructing an "authentic" feeling story.

Quote from: Onix;919763D&D is probably the easiest story to re-tell though. Any other game world is more difficult to get started reconstructing an "authentic" feeling story.

Right! Most people THINK D&D is the same as Tolkien, but actually D&D is a generic fantasy sludge made up of a lot of different sources.  It's very popularity is from that it is the bastard child of a billion fathers; it contains elements of sources ranging from fairy tales to cheezy Hollywood costume films to hundreds of books to Disney movies to Princess Bride to Monty Python.  Star Wars and comic book superheroes have not been reduced to the same level of cultural bedtime story that "fantasy" has.  The Western never really took off as a RPG genre because in the US we still take the myth of the Western seriously.  Most people are way, way too stupid to recognize the "Hollywood western" elements in D&D.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;919707OK.  I can't believe I'm actually defending Mr. Whedon, Mr. One Trick Pony with a Tortured Super Girl Fetish...  Which actually, ties into it.  All of Whedon's characters were super human girls, so in setting, they could in fact take out big tough guys.  Because Super Powers.

Leading to one of the most hilarious Unfortunate Implications ever: William Ragsdale, Roddy McDowell, and the goddamn Two Coreys managed to kill vampires with nothing but pluck, sass, and improvised weapons.  Sarah Michelle Gellar needed superpowers and a support team of superpowered henchmen, and she still got killed twice.

Quote from: yosemitemike;919696The other [Wrinkle in Time] was awful so my hopes are not high.

Oh, come on.  It had a cross-dressing Sean Cullen.

Wait, you're not using the MST3K scale, are you?

Quote from: Onix;919763D&D is probably the easiest story to re-tell though. Any other game world is more difficult to get started reconstructing an "authentic" feeling story.

I am not sure I understand in what why it's the easiest story to re-tell or what makes an "authentic" feeling story.

Personally I don't think there is any inherent property of fantasy that makes it more suited to gaming than any other genre by a mind-blowing margin.  I think it is all down to D&D, the fact that it came in first and that it still has one of the strongest procedural forms of play. Combined this has helped it build a critical mass and with the that the momentum to stay ahead.

If you take D&D and associated spin-off and clones of the equation, the next tier of fantasy games like Runequest or WHFRP aren't vastly more popular that Call of Cthulhu, Vampire or Star Wars. It's D&D that is practically a hobby on its own.

Quote from: daniel_ream;919827Leading to one of the most hilarious Unfortunate Implications ever: William Ragsdale, Roddy McDowell, and the goddamn Two Coreys managed to kill vampires with nothing but pluck, sass, and improvised weapons.  Sarah Michelle Gellar needed superpowers and a support team of superpowered henchmen, and she still got killed twice.

Don't look at me, man, all I know in that most of his work, he loves to make the Tortured Super Girl the main lead and focus of his shows, if he can (And I stand corrected on Dollhouse.)


As for why Fantasy is so popular?  That's an easy question to answer.

Because for a lot of people, reality sucks.  We don't get much in the way of choices, and when we do, they don't really matter.  But in Fantasy, we get stories of a single hero(ine) or a small group of them saving a village, kingdom or even the world, and those people get recognition.  Even those that fail often get remembered.  People feel like their choices matter more than just to their own life, but to the lives of others.  To be more than what they are.

It's egoism and escapism, and even better, it's harmless.  No one really gets hurt (unless you're playing with dicks, but Fantasy games ain't to blame, it's the people), it's all for fun.

Quote from: The Butcher;919449That's an apt analogy and also a good insight into what makes D&D tick. Much like Turkish Captain America teams up with El Santo to fight a murderous, money-counterfeiting Spider-Man (I shit you not), D&D's "bootleg Tolkien" gets Gandalf and Bilbo to team up with Conan and Odo of Bayeux to defeat Dracula.

Now for contrast Turkish star was https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ww0k-80n-zI
And thrers that Russian star trek knock off that i cant find a clip of.  

Quote from: TristramEvans;919457Since when is reality based on majority consensus?

(besides in Mage: The Ascension...)

An overwhelming majority of the populace also thinks we only use 10% of our brains, Napoleon was a dwarf, the Great Wall of China can be seen from space, humans have 5 senses, and vikings had horned helmets. An argument based on the lowest common denominator of belief isn't worth much.

True that

Quote from: AaronBrown99;919607JUDGE: "Bren, you have been found guilty of driving 15mph over the limit in a construction zone...as punishment, you will be forced to read The Sword of Shannara three times and provide a book report to this court of no less than 1500 words."

DEFENSE ATTORNEY: "CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT, YOUR HONOR!"

ahahahahahaha

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;919612Woah, hey, what?
What's wrong with female heroes?

Nothing.

Quote from: AaronBrown99;919648What's wrong is that they're typically just male characters in girl costumes (see any Joss Whedon 90lb girl knocking out 200lb men with one hit).

GRRRRL POWER!

It gets old FAST.

Im going to call you on this because by default most characters in fiction there gender is irreverent.
There are exceptions to this rule but the majority of then could be gender flipped with no problem bad remakes with standing.