Exactly... angst is characterisation for people who don't know how to write.  Instead of spending time thinking about the relationships between the characters and how they unfold you just have people who are generically unhappy and who brood a lot.

It gives the characters something to do when they're not fighting.

Actually I edited out a few names of people who I'd class as good fantasy.

Robert E. Howard (less so the phenomenally racist Solomon Kane books), Michael Moorcock, Fritz Leiber, Roger Zelazny and Poul Anderson.

Actually Poul Anderson's my silver bullett in this debate because he was a contemporary of Tolkien's and his Broken Sword came out, I think, the same year as the first full edition of the Lord of the Rings.

While Tolkien gave hundreds of idiots an excuse to come up with alternate names for days of the week and months, Broken Sword's world is minimalist with the onus being less on the backdrops and more on the characters and the action.  Broken Sword has troll-blooded Viking Berserks butchering people... LotR has maps.

It is to my eternal torment that Broken Sword didn't sell more than LotR.  That period was a cross-road for fantasy and Tolkien's success effectively killed the pulp fantasy tradition that gave us Leiber and Howard and replaced it with arseholes like Robert Jordan.

Edit: Mieville's great if lazy and Vandermeer's okay if you like that whole New Weird thing ditto Diana Wynn Jones who is a bit more traditional but hardly trad fantasy.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalRobert E. Howard (less so the phenomenally racist Solomon Kane books), Michael Moorcock, Fritz Leiber, Roger Zelazny and Poul Anderson.

Sadly in the minority as far as modern fantasy goes. Zelazny is just phenomenal both in terms of sci-fi and fantasy. Highly underappreciated author that directly inspired Neil Gaiman to write Sandman.

(noob) Hey, Sojourner, how do I post my tables to your charts o' plenty project?
I have a bunch of stuff I want to share.
Matt (/noob)

Quote from: droogHey, Punani – if you don't like mere angst, we have much more for you in the indie games camp. Come by and look at our wares some time. We can offer you erotica, romantic comedy, dark comedy, high-fantasy tragedy, violent judgement, the master-slave dialectic, the Faustian bargain, and much much more. Going cheap....

If anything, my experience is that indie gaming is even more emotionally shut down than regular gaming, and that's saying a lot.
Indie gaming doesn't just want to ignore emotional expression or complexity, it wants to reduce it to mechanics, where you have to spend points or have certain attributes or roll dice to determine how your character feels about something/someone or how they do about you.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Sojourner JudasSadly in the minority as far as modern fantasy goes. Zelazny is just phenomenal both in terms of sci-fi and fantasy. Highly underappreciated author that directly inspired Neil Gaiman to write Sandman.

Zelazny was one of the last true actual authors who happened to write fantasy, rather than the far lesser breed of "fantasy author".

RPGPundit

It's a fear of feeling. Of being afraid, of loving, of hating. We have this irrational fear of losing control, which is what emotions are all about. You hate enough, you fear enough, you love enough you lose yourself, and we must always be in control.

Whether you're talking religion or science, it's all about staying in control. Of rising above our animal nature to become something transcendent. Ignoring the possibility we may come closer to transcendence by letting go.

As a rabbi from Nazareth said back around 30AD, "To conquer death you only have to die."

As a lady by the name of Alison Lonsdale once told me, "An orgasm is the only sure way of touching God, but you have to lose yourself."

That's our problem, we're afraid of losing ourselves, afraid of letting ourselves feel. Until we trust ourselves enough to lose ourselves our games will suffer, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalMeh... I wasn't convinced by a Game of Thrones.  I bought it prior to going away last Xmas as part of my attempt to leave my confort zone and try and disprove my running theory that fat fantasy is invariably shit.

I chose a Game of Thrones not because of its popularity within the gaming community but because people like Gary Wolfe had really rated it and said it was all about plotting and politics and intrigue.

What I actually discovered though was about 900 pages of sprawling world building where really not very much happens at all and just when things start getting interesting it turns out to be part of a series... of 7 books.

NO story a human can devise could possibly warrant 6300 pages-worth of text.  No tale is going to be interesting enough to make me want to crawl through that much text in order to find out what happens.

There is some good fantasy kicking around (China Mieville and Terry Pratchett most notably) but fat fantasy can fuck right off... RA Salvatore's books might be shit but at least they're 300 pages and not 6300.  Even the lord of the rings is three books of 300 or so pages.

As a general rule of thumb never read fantasy that's longer than 400 pages.  Once you do it ceases to be about plot and characterisation and starts to be about the self-indulgent wankery that is world-building with the maps and the other words for days of the week and the stupid names with a'postr'rophes in them.

Odd. I've read through the 4 books out three times now, and not encountered any of the complaints you mention. I don't see anywhere near the worldbuilding text in Martin's books as I do in many others I've read... if anything, he trickles it out a bit at a time. At the same time, AGOT contains characters that don't come across to me as cartoonish or underdeveloped, but as living breathing people. He doesn't shove his own ideas of right and wrong at me through his story, or parade his own personal idea of heroes and "cool" characters around, but shows me the "good" and "bad" in all the characters and lets me form my own opinions about them. He surprises me and keeps me interested.

Sorry you didn't have the same experience I (and many others) did in reading Martin's books, I hope you can find a story that is as entertaining for you as this one is for me. I still would recommend it to anyone who is interested in reading fantasy that's not so shallow, weak, or cliche as many of the stories on the shelves.

Quote from: RPGPunditIf anything, my experience is that indie gaming is even more emotionally shut down than regular gaming, and that's saying a lot.
Indie gaming doesn't just want to ignore emotional expression or complexity, it wants to reduce it to mechanics, where you have to spend points or have certain attributes or roll dice to determine how your character feels about something/someone or how they do about you.

Your experience seems quite limited.

Anyway, I agree with King of Old School. The gaming style you so ferociously defend as 'true roleplaying' is quite devoid of emotions.

Variety is good.

Quote from: SigmundOdd. I've read through the 4 books out three times now, and not encountered any of the complaints you mention. I don't see anywhere near the worldbuilding text in Martin's books as I do in many others I've read...

  He does it in a more subtle fashion but he does it nonethless.  I actually found it problematic that he didn't discuss what his views on marality were because the world splits quite nicely into heroic characters, evil characters and intentionally or misguidedly neutral ones.

  I'm all for morality being a central part of fiction but Martin doesn't really engage with the morals of his characters.  The only difference is that the goodies are nice and the the evil ones cackle when they kill people inbetween shagging their sibblings.

  I don't doubt that Martin's one of, if not THE premier purveyor of fat fantasy but he does nonetheless produce fat fantasy which is practically a genre in itself and a genre with a number of irritating characteristics at that.

I really enjoyed the first two books of Martin's saga. I bailed about two-thirds of the way through the third one. All that happy crappy about opening up your "third eye" and having "green dreams" seemed suspiciously new-agey for what is otherwise a pseudo-medieval, quasi-European setting.

I kept half expecting to hear one of those creepy swamp kids to tell Bran to "Free your mind".

I seem to recall that Martin wrote those books explicitly because he was disgusted by fat fantasy and wanted to show how it could be done better.

I enjoyed them initially, but the prospect of seven in total drains my soul.  I have oceans of great literature to read, I don't have the lifespan for seven volume fantasy epics.

Quote from: ImperatorYour experience seems quite limited.

Anyway, I agree with King of Old School. The gaming style you so ferociously defend as 'true roleplaying' is quite devoid of emotions.

Variety is good.

When emotion is turned into the "stake" for a fight in DiTV or the check to see if you still love your Master in My Life With Master, you're being even more of a fucking emotional automaton than anyone playing D&D.  At least they aren't actually rolling to see how they feel...

Its like the joke they did on futurama. Except it shouldn't have been Gary Gygax, it should have been Ron Edwards or Vince Baker "I'm (rolls)... Pleased! to meet you!".

In D&D, something like Henry V's speech an Agincourt, or Claudius' speech before the senators is only a question of one roleplay away.  In indie games, its impossible, because instead of a speech you'd be rolling a die or flipping a token or spinning a wheel or whatever else is the gimmick mechanic of the week with you people.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPunditIn D&D, something like Henry V's speech an Agincourt, or Claudius' speech before the senators is only a question of one roleplay away.  In indie games, its impossible, because instead of a speech you'd be rolling a die or flipping a token or spinning a wheel or whatever else is the gimmick mechanic of the week with you people.

That's untrue: you're making the assumption that having personality mechanics == not roleplaying. That's a big mistake.

In D&D you can roleplay the speech, roll some dice against some DC or against another character roll (using the skill at hand, whatever it is), and be done with it. In any indie game, you roleplay your speech, roll some dice and be done with it.

The main difference is that, in some indie games, the information provided by the dice roll is different than the info provided by the roll in D&D, due to the difference in perspective that the games may (or may not) have.

Saying that you can't have that situations in an indie game because they have rules to determine what happens with more precission, is as usual when you talk about anything outside Amber or D20, a misrepresentation.

Okay... coupla things to say:

Teenage does not equal angsty. Why? I do not equal angsty. And not pretensious either... I went to a fucking art school. It was by far the most angstless, easygoing group of people I've ever met.

It's the current generation of forty-somethings and ex-gen-exers that had the angsty youth back in the 60s, 70s, and even the eighties. I hate to say this, but angst isn't about making the young feel older. To the contrary it's about making the old feel younger. You might not have roleplayed angst as kids, but you certainly played the part in real life. And that's your foundation right there. That's the lens through which you view the world. Like when a 19 year old poster is defending the religious establishment against 30-40 year olds. It's because "hating the establishment" is dead. Because the establishment is not to blame for the overall deadness of life. If Christians croaked, you'd still be cynics. The same goes for Republicans, Muslims, and that asshole who cut you off on your way to work.

Wait... how did I get on to my "self-absorbed generation" rant on a roleplaying forum?

Oh, right, angst.

That said, if you want a certain kind of game all you really need is the right players. Get yourself some noobs and teach them how to play. Subject them to response-provoking stimuli and whatever you do, act interested. They'll catch on. Also, don't worry about killing them. Fear is the most basic and primal of all emotions.

As for the games and settings themselves: Written by angsty oldsters like yourselves. You can bitch and moan and get all angsty or you can write your own RPG.