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[Flaede]

Refuting Tolkien

This article brought right to the forefront of my mind the awesomeness of Dwarf Fortress. It is rather subtle, sometimes, but simulating everything with as good an approximation as we can lets the fantasy worlds that Dwarf Fortress creates subvert all of that silly froofy stuff. All of the bits that are overlooked are forced in your face "what effect did all that evil demon-blood have on the regular citizens who participated in the battle. What of the PTSD suffered by veterans. Healthcare? What healthcare?"

And the best of all:

Elves are presented as amoral corrupters of men, their immortality gained at the price of passion (and it makes perfect sense once stated that of course the elves don’t like sex, otherwise Middle Earth would be full of the immortal buggers).

HAH! Welcome to Dwarf Fortress!

[TheIcelandicManiac]

Elves are presented as amoral corrupters of men, their immortality gained at the price of passion (and it makes perfect sense once stated that of course the elves don’t like sex, otherwise Middle Earth would be full of the immortal buggers).

well its a good thing then that we have magma

[Megaman3321]

Because it's our Armok-given duty to kill as many elves as possible to prevent them from overrunning us.

[obeliab]

To me, a relatively inexperienced fantasy fan (LotR and Silmarillion I know, and maybe some C.S. Lewis when I was a kid), high fantasy worlds have always had the gritty-gritty medieval disgusting factor, but they are rarely discussed in most of the media because, well, rampant disease, brutal face-to-face warfare, and inhuman atrocities actually occurred in human history.  I don't know a lot of "froofy" fantasy, unless Disney is counted, because it seems like most fantasy I see focuses on battles, or corruption, or some good-vs-evil power struggle, or the history of worlds and people.

DF's simulation of so many frequently ignored factors, which would reasonably exist in any alternate fantasy world, is definitely a step up in making fantasy more interesting.  I'm a big fan of complex mythologies, as well as the sort of legend-history in stuff like Herodotus, because you can get a lot out of it that isn't "orcs are big and green and strong" or "elves are pretty and have pointy ears."  The emergent storytelling of dwarf mode does this, I think, even if legends mode is a bit more traditional.

[Flaede]

legends mode is a bit more traditional.

I agree with a bunch of what you said, although I'd argue that a lot of high fantasy has glaring omissions and blatant simplifications. With Tolkien, The Souring Of The Shire makes up for a bunch of this, I think. Although others think differently.

As for Legends Mode being more traditional, I'd argue that. The format may be traditional, but the content, ah, the content is absolutely precious. Elven armies 3000 strong throw themselves uselessly agains 30 dwarves in steel kit. Year after Year after Year. Kobolds die of starvation :S due to not having powerful neighbours to steal food from. Titans wipe out civilizations still aborning. Goblins come to be led by the humans they kidnap, who rise through the ranks quicly despite their (comparatively) brief candleflicker lives.

...that last one actually lines up with a lot of changeling stories I've come across. The Raven King, for instance, in Jonathan Norrel and Mr. Strange fits the bill exactly.

[Cotes]

To me, a relatively inexperienced fantasy fan (LotR and Silmarillion I know, and maybe some C.S. Lewis when I was a kid), high fantasy worlds have always had the gritty-gritty medieval disgusting factor, but they are rarely discussed in most of the media because, well, rampant disease, brutal face-to-face warfare, and inhuman atrocities actually occurred in human history.  I don't know a lot of "froofy" fantasy, unless Disney is counted, because it seems like most fantasy I see focuses on battles, or corruption, or some good-vs-evil power struggle, or the history of worlds and people.

When it comes to the whole sword and sorcery genre (i.e. the thing people often mistake to be the only genre of fantasy), I can't really agree with this - Just because they aren't all elves dancing on roses doesn't mean the writers of the genre don't tend to have a pretty clumsy grip on grittiness or realism. Probably has to do with good fantasy authors generally not ripping off Tolkien or their DnD sessions. There are couple writers of pseudo-medieval fantasy that do it right (George R.R.Martin must be mentioned here), but overall the sub-genre is full of pretty childish books. Books that seem anything but less childish due to their attempts to be dark and gritty.

[Dwarf Fortress] is definitely a step up in making fantasy more interesting.

Again, not really. DF is in many ways a step up in making games more interesting, but the setting has nearly all its elements taken from your standard high-fantasy box. The simulated reality aspect does a lot of interesting things with them, but so it would with pretty much any setting.

Just shaking a box of clichés and having some of them stick to each other in slightly new or interesting ways isn't really originality. And with fantasy, it's really, really not what the genre needs right now.

[Flaede]

[Dwarf Fortress] is definitely a step up in making fantasy more interesting.

Again, not really. DF is in many ways a step up in making games more interesting, but the setting has nearly all its elements taken from your standard high-fantasy setting box. The simulated reality aspect does a lot of interesting things with them, but so it would with pretty much any setting.

Just shaking a box of clichés and having some of them stick to each other in slightly new or interesting ways isn't really originality. And with fantasy, it's really, really not what the genre needs right now.

See, that's something I really disagree with. I don't see Dwarf Fortress as just having the cliches stick together in new ways. It has them follow on to their logical conclusions, in actual (sometimes gritty) detail. Every new bit of simulation makes things less clunky and smoother, and every time that happens the fail-points of a cliche is brought into better resoultion. Everything from the nonsense that is zombie whales, to famine-inducing immortal locust-elves. Then you, the player, are thrust into the middle of this and have to cope with the results.

I think that the global economy, and the tracking of world-gen food better will bring this to the forefront in a big way.

[Cotes]

[Dwarf Fortress] is definitely a step up in making fantasy more interesting.

Again, not really. DF is in many ways a step up in making games more interesting, but the setting has nearly all its elements taken from your standard high-fantasy setting box. The simulated reality aspect does a lot of interesting things with them, but so it would with pretty much any setting.

Just shaking a box of clichés and having some of them stick to each other in slightly new or interesting ways isn't really originality. And with fantasy, it's really, really not what the genre needs right now.

See, that's something I really disagree with. I don't see Dwarf Fortress as just having the cliches stick together in new ways. It has them follow on to their logical conclusions, in actual (sometimes gritty) detail. Every new bit of simulation makes things less clunky and smoother, and every time that happens the fail-points of a cliche is brought into better resoultion. Everything from the nonsense that is zombie whales, to famine-inducing immortal locust-elves. Then you, the player, are thrust into the middle of this and have to cope with the results.

I think that the global economy, and the tracking of world-gen food better will bring this to the forefront in a big way.

Which is not step up for fantasy but a deconstruction of a very specific sub-genre of fantasy.

[G-Flex]

It's a fair point that DF is actually moving further from cliche as time goes on. At one point, elves didn't even eat people, for instance!


I agree that realistic fantasy (e.g. a world with fantastical elements that is treated in a natural, realistic sense) is a whole lot more interesting than your typical folklore kind of fantasy, or at least interesting in different ways. To me, if a fantastical element is introduced into a setting, the most interesting thing to do is ask what sort of actual implications it would have on the setting, its people, politicals, culture, and so forth.

I guess that's one reason I liked Morrowind so much: It's fantasy, but the setting is treated in a way that makes it very believable.

[Cotes]

It's a fair point that DF is actually moving further from cliche as time goes on. At one point, elves didn't even eat people, for instance!

Yet it's rooted on the idea that a fantasy setting needs to have elves or any fantasy races.

I once again quote The Fantasy Novelist's Exam, question 26:

Did you make the elves and the dwarves great friends, just to be different?

[G-Flex]

To be fair, Toady doesn't really assume the need for those creatures; they're just common stock. He fully supports the idea that eventually it can get more diverse, or even procedurally generated.

Yeah, I'd probably prefer if it didn't have the Typical Fantasy Races as such, but I guess my point is that it started off more cliche/less serious than it is now, and is likely to continue moving in that direction. Keep in mind that DF had rather humble beginnings compared to where it is and where it's going.

[Gatleos]

According to the list of long-term goals, Toady is eventually letting you embark as a tribe of trolls or amphibious lobstermen. And possibly totally procedurally-generated fantasy races.

[Nikov]

Hey, elves hating dwarves wasn't a Tolkien trope. In spite of the Firebeards and general mistrust after Moria and the rings, dwarves and elves always held a general respect for one another. This was particularly true in the old days of Beleriand, and in the fourth age we saw a return to normalcy. For comparison, houses within even the elves waged war with one another. DnD and other come-lately settings made dwarves and elves hate eachother as a way to generate racial and political tension in oft-shallow worlds.

[G-Flex]

Dwarves and elves hating each other isn't even that present in DF compared to what people on the forums seem to think. I don't remember that much from ThreeToe's stories, so I could be mistaken, but it's very much an overplayed cliche within the DF community itself.

[Nikov]

I'm inclined to beleive so. Compare:

"Hey guys, I totally just traded a lead bin full of jewel-encrusted golden goblets for like, ITS WEIGHT IN ROPE REED FIBER."

*Speculative discussion about mass and density ensues*

With...

"Hey guys, I just murdered all the elves and took their stuff!"

*Skulls for the skull totem industry!*

It becomes clear which thread is more popular. Or at least, more entertaining.