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The biggest problem with high fantasy and the reason why Eberron is the worst D&D setting ever is this. For magic to feel magical, it needs to be rare, wondrous, mysterious, and miraculous. The more common magic is, the more banal it is. When magic is a science, it's a mundane commodity. When everything is magical, nothing is.

When you've got a party of aasimar, dragonborn, tabaxi, tieflings, etc. and everyone has some kind of magical powers, then everything is cocked up from the start. You can no longer have anything magical or mysterious because magic is an everyday thing. In Eberron, the worst D&D setting, it's even worse because magic is industrialized and there's basically nothing wondrous or mysterious, and everyone knows everything there is to know about magic.

Now picture the opposite. A setting that sets out to make magic feel wondrous and miraculous again. I'm talking low fantasy. Picture a setting inspired by medieval history. Life is tough, war and plague sweep through the lands, and peasants eat flavorless gruel. The party is a band of common bandits with no magic, and all grown, human men, no women. After raiding a village, they're covered in blood, piss, and shit, hauling loot and comely women back to their bandit fort. They get lost in the forest, and then they see her. A lady of unearthly beauty in a shimmering gown, right there in the middle of the woods. Her ears are long, pointed. She holds up a flower, and it glows, like nothing the party has ever seen before. They recall the tales of the Ancient Ones who dwell in the oldest woods...

What did they just encounter? An elven apprentice wizard with a Light cantrip, nothing more. But it's rare, wondrous, miraculous, and mysterious, because the rest of the world around them is gritty realism. And that's what magic should feel like it.

If you love magic, make it rare. Don't let PCs use magic, don't let PCs be anything other than human men. Stop all this high fantasy shit, stop this Eberron shit.

>>80949821
much texto

>>80949796
nerd culture has been a disaster for the fantastical

>>80949821
Sounds great. Except anyone that hasn't been isolated from the internet and fastasy tropes for the last year will see through the veil of your self-aggrandizing crap for what it is.
>"... so an elf then?"
>"No, a mysterious ancient lady of the wo-"
>"Yeah, we know what an elf is dude. Stop trying to draw us in as if we're eight years old and hearing it for the first time. It's infantalizing."

>>80949928
It's some retard's pasta.

>>80949928
you stupid

>>80949928
It's weird too because that anon clearly understands that sonething needs to be 'new' in some sense in order to feel mystical, that the more exposure one gets to magic the closer it becomes to shit like crystal healing and astrology rather than myth and folklore, but then he goes with the blandest, overtredded imagery in the genre as an example of what he wants.

>>80949821
I liked your first two paragraphs, the rest is shit though.

I agree magic should be rare but I don't give a fuck when it comes to beating around the bush describing a common element. If you want to detail describe a jabberwocky, catoblepas, or a fucking manticore I'm all years. For an elf dude? C'mon.

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>>80949796
We're not. Realismfags keep breaking in and trying to apply stuff to shit that doesn't make sense. If you can tell them to leave, that would be great.
I honestly think it'll end up win-win for all of us, OP.

>>80950022
>We're not
you are

>>80950031
Ya gotta read the whole post anon.

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>>80949821

High fantasy and high magic are valid. You can make magic wondrous without making it rare, you just have to fucking appreciate it.

What you're describing isn't love, it's sickness. It's starvation. Your gruel-eating peasants view a light cantrip with wonder for the same reason they view an apple tree with wonder, because they're starved, tormented creatures without light in life.

Low Magic can be wondrous, sure, but so can High Magic.

Imagine this, if you would. I'm begging you, please, for once, don't be some stupid baitposter, be someone better, who can genuinely see the bright sides of the thing you hate, and imagine this.

The party is a band of young men, going out into the world for the first time with their traveling merchant parents. They have eaten well, for the most part, but things are dull, they are boring in their village. The wizard who visits from time to time is happy to create enchanted stones that spark the hearth, and once, a goblin alchemist had been jailed for spiking the drink at the harvest festival with a potion of polymorph, but it was still a good time. Such things, however, grow dull quickly, and for the party, their days of pork from the pig ranchers, game from the forest, and fruits from the local trees are commonplace, the wizard who visits has only the same dull trinkets of magic to aid the farms.

They enter one of the cities, and sights abound! Knights in shining armor with smiling faces for the young newcomers, perhaps a noble arguing with a merchant, his clothing presumptuous and rich with decadence as he haggles with a dwarf, and of course the food! Fruits that look like oranges, glittering with some unknown light from within, glittering rings and necklaces of copper, that seem to zap your fingers as soon as you touch them. Sights, sounds, spectacle, outside of their small town there is such things to see! Your party should feel wonder because the world they explore is wondrous, not because it isn't.

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>>80949821
I enjoy fantasy as a subset of superhero fiction with a lot of wizards. I haven't experienced "wonder" at any fiction since I was a small child. I think that sentiment is mostly reserved for children under 8.

Like, sure. Sometimes I want some low magic fantasy. Just like sometimes I want to get drunk or sometimes I want to eat Japanese food. And then I'll go 4-12 months before I feel like doing it again.

>>80950229

To continue off of this, I'd like to elaborate.

You seem to believe that the abundance of magic cheapens it, but that simply isn't the case. It's a falsehood.

Only by not giving magic respect do you cheapen it. Make magic wondrous not by reducing it, but by making it larger than life. If players use it, all the more reason.

It is a travesty that Tabletop Culture doesn't encourage GMs to mix homebrew with chargen and existing settings more. Players having magic doesn't cheapen magic, but choosing from the same bog-standard out-of-the-book spell-list with no respect for their backstory or themes sure is. Making magic in player hands wondrous can be as simply as breaking its formula. Turn it from a tool into something more characterized.

The magic sword wasn't bought for 30 GP, it was found in the forest, when a player felt drawn into it in the middle of the night, at the center of a grove that seemed alight, even under the new moon.

The spell wasn't "Fireball", it was "The Fireball Spell that my master developed in his retirement. It's honestly not that different from the one taught at the acadamies, but it is quite spectacular to see, is it not? He was so fond of fireworks, you see, and his fireball spell embodies that part of him."

Your enchanted ring wasn't found in a chest, it was found in the hands of a dying adventurer, whose team abandoned him here, in this hellish mausoleum. He sees your party, and deems them worthy of claiming it from him, the only thing he was able to hide from his treacherous party. He begs the party not to fall to the same fate. He knows full well that his own team lay dead, a room away.

Magic is boring when the GM is a fuckhead. Do you want to be a fuckhead who covers your party in piss and blood and then they see an elf with a glowy flower? Or do you want to be a GM who tries, really tries, to respect his players and put real effort into presenting his world as something that sparks a bit of child in them?

>>80950436
This would all go against the common TG wisdom that homebrew is bad and that everything should be consumed as the authors intended it to be.

>>80950527

Fuck common /tg/ wisdom. That's what got us into this mess in the first place, where people are so inundated with "common wisdom" that they post twisted shit like this, things that don't expand upon the hobby and improve upon it, but seek to gut it and rip out its living heart and soul instead, or worse, newcomers who see this violent rejection of things that aren't inherently bad, and come to fear reprisal, ending what could have been a long journey of creating things, running or playing games, having their results critiqued, and growing as a GM or player as a result.

Once again, only the execution of a concept matters for running a game. Either vet your players or communicate with them. If your players are complaining, it's because they either don't like your concept and you should have known that before the game started and gotten different players, or you failed to communicate with your players and they came into the game with expectations that didn't match yours. Both are failures on the part of the GM.

>>80950580
You would think that the internet would create more shamelessness, not just increase it 10 fold. Who the fuck gives a shit about the opinions of someone who is likely fattier and smellier than you are.

>>80950580

People are so scared of producing shit that they refuse to produce anything at all.

It's resulted in a growing group of tabletop enthusiasts who refuse to eat or cook the vital fuel of the hobby, creativity itself, and instead choose to starve and join the growing pile of festering corpses that in their last moments before being totally unsalvagable members of the hobby, husks of their former selves, wish for a moment that they had something enjoyable to play, despite knowing deep down that, if they wanted it that bad, they should have tried to do it themselves, even if, ESPECIALLY IF they failed in the process.

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>>80950527
NOOOOO!!! NOOOOOOOO!!! NOOOOOOOO!!!!! ONLY CONSOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!

>>80949796
You'll have to be more specific. What exactly are we doing that makes fantasy boring for you?

>>80949821
>The party is a band of common bandits with no magic, and all grown, human men, no women. After raiding a village, they're covered in blood, piss, and shit, hauling loot and comely women back to their bandit fort.

Lmao hfy fags have legitimate autism

>>80950229
>The party is a band of young men, going out into the world for the first time with their traveling merchant parents. They have eaten well, for the most part, but things are dull, they are boring in their village.

Why would merchants be based out of a village? Villages aren't centers of commerce. Merchants are based out of towns, where they have large numbers of people to sell things to.

>The wizard who visits from time to time is happy to create enchanted stones that spark the hearth

How is that any different from a piece of flint and steel? Besides that, peasants kept their fires smoldering all the time, so you wouldn't need to relight them.

>>80949821
I know it's pasta, but is a bad one
>Continent full of zombies
>Once there was hundreds of giants there are some now
>Once there was hundreds of dragons, there are some now

>>80950600

You don't have to be poisoned by someone else's opinions for your peers to be poisoned by them.

That's honestly why I've been posting more here lately. I will kick and scream and insist that Tabletop's problems are solved with maturity and communication instead of buzzwords and blind hatred as long as I'm able. Maybe a few players, or better, a few GMs new to the hobby will see one of my posts, and believe ever so slightly that they are capable of running what they want to run, playing what they want to play, getting called out for furry bullshit or fetish bullshit or whatever other retarded shit they bring to the table.

They'll play, they'll fuckup, people will complain, and then, maybe, just maybe, they'll improve and bring something wonderful to the hobby.

That's why shit like realismfags, "freakshit" screamers, and more have made me so pissed. They say "Don't do this! Don't even try it!", but if you don't do experiment, do things you want to do, and fuck up the execution, you never learn the lessons that let you run games or play characters that are genuinely a treat for your group.

If you don't understand that, then you're worse than people who don't play games. You're someone who plays games in fear.

>>80950688

Good questions. Maybe the presence of magic allows smaller villages and groups to have proportionally more incentive for merchantry in them.

Likewise, if a wizard passes through your town selling the equivalent of lighters, you might not feel the need to keep your fires lit all the time, if it were a waste of fuel. Anyone who has lit a fire with flint and steel knows that it can be a pain, and as a peasant, being wasteful with fuel isn't something I personally would want to do, if it were as simple as starting a new fire with my igniting stone.

Questions like those are fine, because I can tell at least that you're engaging honestly with the scenario. I respect that.

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Most fantasy Westerners are exposed to is "committee fantasy."
Movies, television, even books are mostly done via committee now, and you're not going to see anything without at least 20 executives chiming in with their opinions and ideas and surveys and market polls and all that other madness, because unless a committee oversees it, it's not going to be publicized at all.

Advertising costs money, production costs money, and most people in the west will never hear or see anything that isn't a "safe bet."

>>80950600
>You would think that the internet would create more shamelessness, not just increase it 10 fold.

Look at the state of this board these days.

Constantly simpering and begging for affirmation from your "betters", like a dickless coward tugging on everyone else's sleeve if making your elves blue is cringe or not.

They're so indecisive, you really have to wonder how these people even manage to choose between two breakfast cereals each morning without breaking down in tears and begging mommy to choose for them. Always desperately searching for validation over the most trivial things, constantly placating for conformity. Makes me fucking sick.

This period of "shamelessness" only existed in the early 2000s. Come the mid tens, the culture began to change, and now people come here to ensure that they conform enough to be liked by people who don't give a shit about them.

These people aren't normal, per se. They're obsessed with the idea of being normal, which is why they're constantly reliving a mean girls fantasy of whining and bitching and snarking at everything they see that they don't like: >>80767771

This would be tolerable if they actually had any tastes of their own aside from "hating absolutely everything", because all their tastes are likely derived from dreary, bitter memes about how stupid other people are for transgressing some arbitrary rule they came up with in their heads. Their experience with gaming culture is limited to regurgitating memes in a human centipede of half remembered statements.

>>80950749

You're so fucking based man, it gives me hope for tabletop yet.

>>80950734
>Likewise, if a wizard passes through your town selling the equivalent of lighters, you might not feel the need to keep your fires lit all the time, if it were a waste of fuel. Anyone who has lit a fire with flint and steel knows that it can be a pain, and as a peasant, being wasteful with fuel isn't something I personally would want to do, if it were as simple as starting a new fire with my igniting stone.

How is that any different from it being a merchant selling lighters? It seems like an attempt to create wonder from nothing.

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>>80950229
I like your idea anon. The essence of wonder isn't beating the party down but getting them excited for what's around the corner. What's new, what's next, get them hype and give them something special to see.

>>80950749
>This would be tolerable if they actually had any tastes of their own aside from "hating absolutely everything", because all their tastes are likely derived from dreary, bitter memes about how stupid other people are for transgressing some arbitrary rule they came up with in their heads.

I dig it.

>>80949796
They don't care whether zoomers have their ADHD catered to or not and just do what they like. Go watch TikTok .

I find generic high magic D&D to have plenty of a sense of wonder, regardless if the PCs are elf wizards or not.

The fact that some forms of magic are controlled or tamed does not detract, for me anyway, that some forms of magic are mostly or totally uncontrollable.

A celestial or metallic dragon, for example, goes where she pleases, and doesn't really fit into either the usual magical paradigm of humanoid races nor do they fit into the usual paradigm of monster encountered = must fight. Potent magic items, likewise, can trigger a strong response.

Basically any reminder of that there exists magic beyond the ken of mortals, I think, is going to trigger a sense of wonder. But so can nonmagical people and sites. One of my friends does a good job making nonmagical (but exceptional) architecture and mortals seem amazing.

>>80950781

The wizard isn't meant to be wonderous, though. The wizard is dull and mundane. He sells magic flaming stones because the village enjoys a simpler way of lighting their fires.

The merchant selling lighters is far more intriguing. He claims to have made an artifact, a self-sparking lamp of sorts, whose wick never burns away fully, and which can be refilled with plain oil. The artifact is cheap steel, but he claims that, should you wish it, he could engrave your heraldry on the side. You have no heraldry, and yet the thought of having one, even if it were false... Perhaps it's worth paying the bit extra for something like this. You see a child who bought one, and who has immediately began showing the engraved lighter to their parents excitedly. So much simpler than a flame stone, and so much safer than an item which simply bursts into flames whenever someone says the keyword. The parents are indulgent, but they nod at all the right places, and have considered for some time that owning a stone that ignites when the word "rabbit" is spoken was perhaps a risk they could better do without, having something like this.

Once again, wonder IS created from nothing. There's nothing that inherently produces wonder, it's up to the GM's execution. Even a mundane lighter can be portrayed as wondrous, even over something magical.

Whether it's magic or not is meaningless, in the context of whether you can make your players enjoy having encountered it.

>>80950688
It's a village on the road to Abernthi, itself on the edge of the Mother Sea, so what for many merchants is simply a stopping spot on their journey from Duain or Kursk, for others is a place they can settle, barter with the traveling merchants for road supplies, and live a comfortable life surrounded by farms and rolling hills instead of being battered by rains or attacked by gnolls, raise a family. Sometimes they take the road to Abernthi again as well, to get special presents for growing children and grandchildren or to visit old friends that settled at the end of the trade route instead so their siblings and nephews could have family to stay with at the end of their trip - and smooth foreign business.

Flint and steel take effort and occasionally get lost. Stones to light hearths is a sign of the relative luxury of these retired merchants, who want to warm their legs by the fireplace without so much bother. These merchant children might not even realize how good they have it and could equally be struck by poverty, beggars and sickness too. Maybe that's what motives one to become a cleric to heal the world's ills, or their sister takes a darker path in realizing that suffering can bring profit, eager customers giving all they can for anything to make their lives more bearable.

>>80950916

This post is a balm on my soul.

I love the idea of "middle class woes" driving someone to clericdom. They in youth knew not of the world's problems, living in slight luxury, but in their older age, were not in such luxury that they could not see how others suffered.

>>80950935
I think that is what was the initial appeal of Buddhism at the time too.

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>>80949796
Have you considered that maybe you just don't like fantasy?

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>>80950229
>>80950436
>>80950580
>>80950624
>>80950734
>>80950749
>>80950887

Holy shit. I'm at a loss. As a DM that's slowly been becoming more and more jaded over 18 years as the forever DM, and the increasingly worsening players that sit at my table, I have to say that you are a breath a fresh air. No really, you have such a refreshing, revitalizing point of view that I cold lumps of ash lingering in my chest, now feel the kindling warmth of hope once again. A feeling I haven't felt in... years.

I had become that person you despise. The person too afraid to do anything for myself. Too concerned with appeasing the players at my table that I would ritualistically slaughter my own principles in order to satisfy them. My worlds and games were bereft of soul and wit, clearly the passion of the craft had burnt out. But now I see the light.

Thank you based, Wonder-Anon. I will study your examples and teachings and continue to shelter this newly rekindled flame within me so that I may create vibrant worlds, where I host soulful games again.

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>>80951006

Here's to you, anon. I hope you make something wonderful someday. If you do, there's a lot of players waiting for you to do it!

>>80950935
My favorite part was the Mother Sea because you can instantly get a feel for it just from the name - it's big, it's calm, it has a lot of smaller seas or gulfs surrounding it.

There's good and bad sides to being suddenly exposed to a much wider world after living such a sheltered life. And encouraging players to pick what they find interesting as they find it, instead of starting out with a premade idea, instead of starting out that way is a great idea in my mind. Are you enchanted by seeing exotic races, fancy architecture or rare goods? Instantly awed by flashy knights and pretty ladies that are nothing like caravan guards and homely peasant girls? Curious about new magics? Since I'm a small town lad it's a relatable feeling to visit the big city and be awed by the new and shocked by the ugly. And for players, you should try to make them interested instead of hoping they will be. Here's all sorts of cool shit, pick what you like/discover what you hate and build yourself around it! It might not come up right now but we can pursue your new herbology hobby later with a trip to the Elee Bay and its rare flowers. And we can be righteous and save that unfairly beaten carpenter from injustice too.

If I could convince anyone to do it I'd have a prequel session with no character sheets, you're just visiting the city and deciding who you are from your experiences.

>>80951078
Wait, are you Original Setting Anon as well?

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>>80951108

Damn straight I am! Tbh, I haven't been on /tg/ for so long, coming back to see the state of the board really made me want to put some some posts down to see if I can lighten things up a bit in some of these threads.

>>80951147
Damn, you're like a time capsule. Love the settling you've thrown out there. It's a bit too avant-garde for my palate, but I can recognize the stupid amounts of character and passion oozing out of it. Ngl, I'd really really appreciate if you'd be willing to lend some of perspective and help a bitter DM like me find my stride again.

>>80949796
The reason why fantasy in gaming is shit is people don’t read actual non-gaming books anymore.

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>>80951209

Yeah man, whatever questions you've got, I can answer, though, obviously, I'm not the arbiter on all things good, I mostly just do my own thing, and clean up what fuckups I make along the way.

One big thing is, I hate to say it, but a lot of my advice doesn't work well for GMs who like to have a lot of prep. In my own games, prep tends to inhibit my own personal style of running things. I've got a system of "Milestones", and I mostly improvise things between those milestones. Like a railroad, but I let players go off it as long as they want, trying to subtly guide them to the train stations.

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You want to know what makes players appreciate magic? When they just recently got damn near killed by 5 ghouls and now there's 7 of them but the mage turned level 5 since then and she fireballs them all to death - and because I advised her to be an evocation specialist she edits them out of the area of effect.

Now THAT'S fucking magical.

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>>80951261

As a correlary to this, this is again, probably just me, but I find that a lot of my spontaneously started games work a lot better than concepts I muddle over for a very long time.

I'm about to say something that will probably get people telling me to go to /v/, but honestly, a lot of what I learned about game design for making good systems and stories didn't come from tabletop shit, but videogame shit. It's not 1-1, and you have to use your brain to pick through what's useful and what doesn't apply as well, but a grounding in videogame game theory can translate to a grounding in tabletop game theory.

If you're the type who can stomach it, I'd watch the Sequelitis series by Egoraptor. It's old as fuck, but it has a lot of big gems that I incorporate into my games, things like establishing your theme early on, not wasting your player's time, and "Conveyance", which is to say, making your game's elements self-evident. Stuff like that can definitely be plugged quite nicely into tabletop.

Another vid that is fantastic for horror specifically is one called "How Metroid Fusion Creates Fear". It talks about the idea of how it's impossible to make your players genuinely afraid of something with just a scary monster of some kind, but you can "trick" players using tense situations. A monster that looks scary might scare some people, but fear is subjective, and tension is objective. Disarming a bomb is tense, and you can use that to manufacture fear. By combining a tense situation, like a locked door, with a scary monster that slowly approaches, tension from the door can become disguised as fear towards the monster in the player's mind. This is absolutely a concept that tabletop GMs can use.

Broadening your horizons is a great way to get your stride. Rekindle your other interests, if you have them, or, if you don't, find some. The best tabletop comes from what you know, not like history-buffs or running a fry-cook tabletop game (cont)

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>>80951343

What I mean by "run what you know" is using concepts you personally are familiar with, and finding ways to turn those into fun situations for your players to encounter. For me, I grew up as a child on three things, Videogames, Cartoons, and Bay12's Illustrated Suggestion Games. Those bleed into all my GMming, and I let them!

There's concepts from all three that I was able to test out, the good ones, I kept, and the bad ones, I shelved until I learned more about how to be a good GM, and tried them again. Usually, when a concept doesn't work, I shelf it for a while, and try other things, and eventually, I understand why it didn't work, and I've learned to read my audience better to decide what to use in games I run for them.

Shit like interesting environments to explore is a key element of my games, establishing that players have to navigate creatively, is a big thing I love to do, as well as using puns for my monster names. Hell, a lot of the time, when creating a monster for my players to make, I either start with the pixel art, or I start with the name.

Ringwerfen were a huge example of this. I drew a deer with a ring-shaped set of antlers, and everything grew from that. They had the power to fire rings of magic from those horns, and players loved messing with em.

This pic is shit, because it's from WAY back then, when I still ran a lot of shit on Bay12 exclusively, but it's a sign of how making shitty stuff helps you become better.

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>>80951408

Also, depending on your means, it's pretty darn important to prowl around and look for potential bases of players to draw from. Every community is different, and by slowly slurping in new blood from different forums, I was able to get a really solid set of players who are always up for what I'm running, and a lot of them have gone on to run shit set in my own setting for god's sake.

That came from me getting off my ass and exploring places like Spacebattles, SV, Bay12, and of course, sometimes fucking around IRL to see if any of my friends are interested.

A lot of the time, what ends up happening is that I'll run silly stuff on forums, then, when I see a player who is just REALLY fucking amazing, I'll try to poach them into my discord, and see how they do there. I also join some weird shit too, from time to time. There's a Multiverse game I'm in that's pretty out there, and running homebrew too, and it's shit, of course, but we all work on it together and iron out the flaws, and that game is HUGE! I've been able to get some of my best players by poaching from that group of like 30 people.

>>80951408
Anon, I read some of your magic insanity in that other thread. How can you keep up when you run that stuff? Do you play games in person, online with voice, online with chat, or pbp? I guess maybe you just have a lot of experience, but I dunno, when I think about going mostly improv and handling crazy player driven magic systems I freeze up.

>>80951078
I'm glad you managed to do what I couldn't, anon. You've managed to inspire someone. I had given up on that kind of venture. Good luck out there.

>>80949796
Sturgeon's Law, nothing more.

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>>80951533

Well, one thing worth considering is that it didn't start that way. My backstory as a GM is some serious capeshit, I basically fell into a vat of crafting and it turned me into a monster.

Back on Bay12 Forums, when Illustrated Suggestion Games (And Bay12) was cool, I ran something called Darkness Redeemed. I was just a dumb kid back then, but my two main players were total craftwhores. They wanted manufacturing, enchanting, the works, and I was using a simple node-based system of magic where the idea was that players could plug together nodes or webs of nodes to get magic effects. It was pretty simple, but cool. That game fucking died, because the bloat grew out of control and I literally couldn't keep up with the sheer volume of crafting and experimenting they wanted to.

Naturally, I didn't learn my lesson, and a while later, started an improved NEW Game under the same title, only this time, I was ready for them, I made the system more refined, and the lore for the magic more broad and loose, open ended so I could give vaguer answers.

That game fucking died too because the bloat caught up to me, (but it took longer this time!)

Now, years later, here I am, with probably tens of thousands of hours in Google Spreadsheets Experience, and I'm like a machine, pumping out new mana experiment results inbetween generating wacky new locations and events for players. Eventually, I moved on from running ISGs, (Like Quests, but on Bay12), and started running proper tabletop games set in the setting. By that point, My poor child-mind had already been forged into an engine of crafting and intricate magical systems, to the point where it fucks me up as a player because I have a hard time getting interested in games that lack a lot of basebuilding, crafting, and granular magic systems.

I run mostly play-by-post games, in fact, I run them pretty much exclusively. If you want to do that kind of improv stuff, I'd start with something extremely simple. (cont)

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>>80951653

If you want to do shit on the same insane level that I do, you basically want to learn to use Google Spreadsheets. Learn to use it until you're a fucking master, use it for maps, inventory, character sheets, everything. Learn all the functions, run shit using it, keep lore in one, the works.

If you just want to get into improv in general, what I do whenever I want to learn improv is, I hate to say it here, since there's this weird anti-quest meme on /tg/, but I'd go to a forum like SV and run something shitty and improvisory there. No system, just an idea and a dream. It's like training wheels for the sort of homebrew shit that I eventually got into, because you're basically playing a tabletop game with:

1. No system, or a very rules-lite one
2. A shit ton of players who will critique or praise you very frantically
3. One character to worry about, making plot design easy.

If you don't want to do that, I'd still go for something on a forum. Cobble together a system you think is good, recruit some players from some backwater forum, and have some fun with it. By running games in these various communities, you'll eventually start to find players who want to come back to you whenever you quit a game and run something new. If they're keepers, then by god they're keepers, and eventually, you'll at minimum have a decent sized group of online friends who you can tap for tabletop games.

(If the art seems shit, it's because I'm posting the old stuff from the games I'm talking about)

>>80951701
I've been using spreadsheets for math in the homebrew D&D 4E retroclone I'm working on. I have no idea how you would use it for maps but everything else makes sense. I really appreciate the advice; I hadn't thought of doing quests for practice. Maybe I'll try one out in between mania-fueled homebrewing episodes. I'll sleep on it. Thanks.

PS Even your old art is way better than anything I can do.

>>80951701
Would you be willing to have private discussions about this over discord? I've given up the idea of soectsting a game given your presumably long list of candidates, but I figured I'd shoot my shot for my tailored advice that doesn't take place in a Ukrainian Glass Blowing forum. If not, I understand. I appreciate the advice you've given thus far.

Generic Knight#6092

>>80951801
Spectating*

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>>80951765

Yeah, one last word of advice, if you do want to get into making pixel art... Don't ask people for advice. The problem with the pixel art community I tried to be a humble little boy in asking for help is that everyone has a different way of doing things and everyone thinks everyone else's way is wrong.

Here, let me dig up a map I made in Google Spreadsheets for you:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oYguOnyDfINV07YtT723y0HzYNS8y8VcTVGH_WmIYkA/edit?usp=sharing

This is a copy of the one I'm using in my current game. By using all of Google Spreadsheets's trickery, I can make some pretty convincing maps, though they aren't fit for use in combat, they're great for dungeons and establishing a continent of unexplored things. Using notes, you can add quick asides on the various tiles, and while you can't include a beefy description, it's useful to players as a reminder of what they encountered there.

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>>80949821
>mud and pisscore aesthetics
No thanks, give me some brightly colored chivalrous slaying orcs and dragons and generally being wicked chivalrous. Magic was also fairly common in myths and legends, so I have no idea what you're on about there. You couldn't go five steps without tripping over a witch or a fairy or a god back in those days.

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>>80951801

Yeah man, sent over the invite. we're good to go.

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>>80949796
Because the people who only want fantasy in their RPGs ARE boring. They're either braindead anime masturbators who want to play some generic JRPG sex game or mega-newbs who think that D&D is the be-all and end-all of all RPGs, that D&D can be used to simulate ANYTHING with enough homebrewing and that every form of roleplaying is about yelling "LIGHTENING BOLT" while you all dress up like your character a la Le Big Bang Theory.
You can't expect anything good to come from the mind of someone like that. They eat cliches and spit out cliches. Frankly it's tedious just to share a board with them.

>>80949821
>They get lost in the forest, and then they see her. A lady of unearthly beauty in a shimmering gown, right there in the middle of the woods. Her ears are long, pointed.
Everyone who watched LOTR will know that's an elf, genius. You don't need to be intimately familiar with all fantasy cliches to recognize an elf.
If this is pasta, I don't care. It's still stupid.

>>80950768
Use this copypasta at your disposal:
Not only do I have a vague pile of ideas which I don't know what to do with, I haven't been able to write a single paragraph of lore. I hope that my setting will become something big one day, like wh40k or D&D, or one of the many settings that this board has brought into existence.

nothing in my life is more important than a constant stream of validation and affirmation. since my parents have recently kicked me out of their house, there has been nobody to approve of every single action I do. since then, I have not been able to leave my bed, because my mental state is one of constant indecision.

since the only thing I derive enjoyment from is ingratiating myself to complete anonymous strangers online, I firmly believe that my ability to perform even the slightest acts of creativity or critical thinking is so atrophied that I must beg you for ideas like a homeless child pleading for breadcrumbs. I will do this in the most submissive fashion imaginable, spraying vague setting details and implicitly beg you for approval.

Or, since I have no ability to suspend my disbelief, I will pester you every time you post your lore with passive, inoffensive questions about "how would X work?" instead of filling the blanks with my own imagination.

Either that, or I will tug at your sleeve for easily googleable information because I have a homoerotic fixation for getting big strong brainy men to do things that I can easily do myself. I want you anons to FLEX allllll your knowledge for me, because it's the only way I can get off. I want to become so obese that I cannot move, with an army of buff burly men spoonfeeding me and changing my diaper and reading scholarly articles for me. I want my brain to degenerate into a nonexistent nubbin capable of only surface level questions, which the glorious overmind that is /tg/ will invariably spin into untold masterpieces.

>>80951006
Samefag

>>80952182
Holy autism.

>>80952182
I honestly don't get what you're on about. Nobody has a problem with people who come up with interesting and creative ideas that lend themselves well to sitting down and rolling dice with some chaps for a couple of hours each week.
What people get pissy over is bad ideas, especially of the anime furry variety that gets spammed across this board under the guise of being "le generic fantasy game" prompt. That thread linked earlier was just an example of bad communication between players and the GM, there's no need to get so fucking pissy when people don't jump on a homebrewed setting from the get go.

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>>80952353
Damn, should have explained better. Every so often, you see a post begging for ideas with no input of their own, or a person angrily lashing out at an actually well written prompt, claiming that the OP wants them to "make a setting for them".

The most egregrious examples, however, are the people who treat this board like a google search bar, asking people to "tell me more" about things you can easily find on wikipedia. I find them absolutely intolerable, like adult babies begging to be spoonfed, i.e. the anon in pic related. It repulses me to the core.

I should have linked to the various posters in the thread who did nothing but bitch about how shitty his setting was, before insulting the people who liked it. I wonder what drives people to be so bitter and vindictive about these kinds of things.

>>80768761

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>>80952429

In all fairness, I had a guy like that in my lore thread, and I dunno if he was just reciting talking points, but sometimes a guy posts his lore because he wants people to ask him questions.

I certainly didn't mind answering them, but that might just be because I have an ego the size of mars and love bloviating on about my setting, desu.

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>>80952530

To clarify, he was constantly asking inoffensive questions, not being a dickhead.

>>80950527
As a Forever GM of 10 years I really play. It is hard to find a GM that can hold my attention past session one. My biggest red flag is a GM that runs module and a GM that uses a system "as written". If they are so unimaginative, they need a a book to tell them what adventure to run (which is the most fun part of being GM - creating your world and adventure). And if they do not have the basic GMing understanding that each group is unique and rules MUST be tweeted to accommodate the most fun experience for sayed group - Then I just politlelly refuse, happy I will not be wasting my time with the equivalent of ttRPG fast food.
Not playing is ALSWAYS better then playing a shitty game that saps your passion for the hobby.

>>80952582
I don't understand this attitude when there are a lot of great published one-shots and longer modules.

>>80950653
wow. Normies were a disaster for the hobby...

>>80952597
I think anon's issue is when the GM plays it too straight, when part of the fun of TTRPGS is when things don't go perfectly to the script. Those small ripples can turn even a bog standard dragon slaying into something interesting with decent twists.

>>80951147
You can't. /tg/ is cancer infested destaring wound. It might as well be /pol/ of ttgames at this point. But instead a "jew" or a "nigger" the keyboard monkeys scream "nogame" and "freakshit". Zoomers have too much content and too little imagination. You can't fix retardation. But you can lbring the flame of hope to the rest of us, even be for a breed blissful moment. Thank you anon. I too rearlly come here now.

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>>80952680

Currently, my crusade is just to present an alternate opinion when I can.

Newcomers deserve to see at least a few posts saying something other than the usual drek. I've noticed a lot of the times when I post my stuff in threads filled with the shitposters, they don't even bother to engage with what I say.

Maybe it's a bit naive, but I like to think that it's because what I say can't be fought with their incessant buzzword spamming and shitposting.

All I express is that problems are solved by choosing what players to allow into your games, and then communicating with them to determine how to make a good experience for them all.

Everything else, "Freakshit", "Realism", "Storyshitters" is falsehood. I'll post when I feel up to it, if only to say that in the bait threads, and maybe talk about my setting and post some neat little pixel art pics from it.

>>80951006

Responses like this anon really make it so fucking worth it, in my opinion. People seem to like what I'm doing, and I guess I like it too!

>>80950229
>>80950436
>>80951006
Thats a real mass of wordvomit you have there so let me counter it with a single quote that proves you wrong:
>If everyone is special no one is.

Done.

>>80952680
>>80952747
Yeah thats nice leftypol, that said tho why do you come here to shit up /tg/ when you have 6 gorillion subreddits that agree with you would easily eat up your safe-space approved "wholesome" with the consistence of bland gray goo?
If your setting was good and your ideas interesting then why has no one heard of it?
Why are you here instead of marketing it to the usual consoomers?

Oh I know, because you are full of shit.

>>80952597
I will elaborate:
Using modules means the GM can't improvise. And once my foreverGM ass tries to join his BBG ot create a spy network to overthrow the king, for example, they freeze and can't react. "B-back to the railroad you?!" They scream in fear of actually GMing.
I run 95% no prerp sandbox and do 100% emergent storytelling based on player actions. Over the years no two stores were alike. My players are balls to the wall exited when game night comes even after all these years. I run three groups currently. Gaming twice a week. I have moved on to freestyle for my old groups. Most are veteran players and are bored of leveling and xp grind. Plus we are all 30+yo so character and emerging story is why we play. Had my fill of gundeoncrawling for 10 yeas form 15 to 25. Not that we don't do a OSR one shot once in a bloomoon. It is good fun in moderation.

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>>80952762

Execution is more important than Concept.

If you have no choice but to withhold magic and fantasy to make them seem special, it means you're using rarity because you don't believe in your ability to supply quality, or you believe your players lack the ability to appreciate quality unless you make them suffer first.

I hope you grow as a GM through running games, and that you don't have to feel that way anymore someday, if I'm correct. You don't have to admit it either, this is 4Chan we're talking about, so it's not a problem if you deny that you feel that way about your abilities or your player's dispositions. The sentiment is still there.

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>>80952762
That's a really generic dismissal that shows you haven't read either of their posts. It's easier to look smart by not answering the question and assuming they said something else entirely.

>If the baseline for what's considered special is higher, then that means you have to try harder to create something to evoke wonder in a setting that's already fantastical.

Done.

>>80952797
>leftypol
I am hard core balcan slav racist. 10 years on /pol/. Blue eyes and all. But I don't want this shit in my games. It is called escapism for a reason.

>>80952797
>If your setting was good and your ideas interesting then why has no one heard of it?
I assume you don't speak Bulgarian then. I have two fentasy novels published in my world writing a third. Pretty well received of I might add.
I am here because I am drinking my morning coffee with my cigar, watching wagies wait for the tram and thought to myself: "Hey, let's check 4chan for 30min before I start working."

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>>80952797

Why would I want to market something that I made for me and my group's games to have fun in? It wasn't meant for that.

I'm here to enjoy a few good threads that seem entertaining, and post some of my stuff. Admittedly, I haven't been here on 4Chan for years, so I don't really know the board culture anymore. I do know that people are spamming dogshit memes about problems that don't exist in tabletop, so I decided to post too with my own opinions.

And yeah, I am full of shit. The advice I give isn't meant to be taken as gospel. I guess that makes me more vulnerable to posters that want to argue against my advice, but unlike some, I'd rather lose an argument than portray myself as some kind of authority on tabletop. That would cause more problems than it solves.

If you've genuinely got a better point to be made, make it. I already said which parts of the internet shat me out. Sadly, /pol/ wasn't one of them. At least have the decency to call me a forum tourist or something, since I spend most of my time on places like SV, and SB nowadays.

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>>80952859

That's a really fair argument. I won't deny it has some merit.

Honestly, my only argument against it is that I'd like to disjoint "special" from "wonder". The fact that things without magic or fantasy can evoke wonder is a point in my favor that magic does not change that. Even in a setting with no light cantrips cast by elves in the woods, you can still evoke that feeling.

A fantastical setting just gives you a wider base to build upon. Execution is the key, magic is irrelevant, if you're able to evoke wonder through other methods, like places, people, and events.

Earlier, I offered an example, of how you could make a mundane lighter salesman more wonderous than a wizard selling enchanted flame-stones.

>>80950235
>I haven't experienced "wonder" at any fiction since I was a small child. I think that sentiment is mostly reserved for children under 8.

You are a truly sad excuse for human being.

>>80952823
>Using modules means the GM can't improvise.
Or maybe they just like the module and want to run it. If you've never had a good experience with a scenario then something is wrong with you.

>>80952920
You get it. But I presume you are functioning adult and you ideas will fall on deaf ears here.
/tg/ is /pol/ with extra steps and "less" trannyposting nowdays. This is why I also really visit. "Too busy playing games as newfags fashionably say, smerking at their amazing wittines."

>>80952960
So profound. A truly inlightening post.
No. I had. But I am experienced enought to see what a GM is worth by just listening to how he pitches me his game. And after a frew well placed questions of "What if?" scenarios I can make a call if he is a noob and he will waist my time. If he is a GM with potential to learn how to actually GM, having to forget all the bad advice he/she red online. Or if they are a keeper.
Good job of being an uppety edgelord there anon.

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>>80952961

Not always. I've gotten a fair share of (You)s that were pretty positive.

If a few people got something out of my posts, and their games improved as a result, I'm ecstatic man. I can handle some shitflinging in-between those moments.

I'll probably drop off posting on /tg/ in a few days, once I run out of pics and lore for my setting to talk about, but so far, I've been really pleased with the response. There's still a few people with some enthusiasm left for the hobby buried here on /tg/, so if nothing else, posting here over this last week has at least let me know that much.

After that, I'll probably go back to running my games and playing in a few. See what the board looks like in another few years.

>>80952986
The only fool here is the one that thinks his experience applies to the entirety of gaming.

>>80953018
Good for you man. I am happy to hear you are getting through. I once the same approach as you. But I guess I just don't care enough for this place anymore to bother with constructive thread building.
Must say meeting normal people here once in a while is refreshing. Too many parrots.

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>>80953053

Yeah. It's been pretty neat coming back here after so long. The more things change, the more they stay the same, I suppose.

Good luck with games and whatnot, anon. You're another refreshing response to my own posts to remember when I fuck off after a while, lmao.

>>80953035
Please, explain how my post led you to the conclusion my experiences apply to the entire gaming. I even explicitly stated in the original post you commeted that each group is unique and requires not only quique approach but also unique rules to maximize fun for the different types of players.
I personally hate sociall skills because I like RPing.
Some of my players however are very shy. Sometimes they freeze and I just ask them for a (God forbit) CHA roll. In fact those two players are the only ones with such stat and social skills. But they are great problem solvers and love hanging out with the group. So why should I be a uptite asswhole and just tell them to "Suck it up?" when they came to have a good time? In time they started RPing more and at some point they themselves will drop the helping wheels of social skills.
A good GM reads his group and works with his players. Communication is key. This is the main point I am trying to communicate all be it in a salty manner. Most GMs think slapping a system and a pre write adventure is all they need. They are wrong. It may work for a campaign or two but it will get old fast. And at some point they will encounter a group that will kill their passion for GMing before they have had the chance to improve. In dear of this happening most people here scream endless platitudes of how the game "shoul be". Stagnating in a safe space of certainty. It is sad at most. Play for another decade and we will talk again. You will see more to my points the you might think. Or you will have be burned out and moved on to a different hobby.

>>80953069
You seem cool anon I wish the worldbuilding general people were more like you I might've stuck around for longer if they were.

>>80952797
>subreddits
Why are you obsessed with Reddit?

>>80952859
>>80952936
But you didn't provide a solution at all.
Because it doesn't fix the issue: If everything is special, nothing is.
Claiming that "OH WELL WE WILL MAKE IT JUST MORE SPECIAL SPECIAL WITH CHERRY ON TOP" is a non-answer.

For someone who claims I didn't read the posts I responded to I would like to counter to to me it looks like you didn't even understand the post you responded to.
Your answer is so tone-deaf it rivals telling people to eat cake if they cant afford bread.

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>>80952919
>>80952860
No, you are just some discordfaggots.
You even suck at larping.

>>80952920
>>80952961
>>80953018
>>80953053
>>80953069
>>80953166
See this this proves to me that you are part of the cancer that is killing /tg/.
Discordfaggotery, screeching about /pol/ and linking threads to your discord so you can pretend that there is a consensus going on.
Seriously, fuck off back to r.eddit.

The shit you faggots are doing is completely transparent to anyone like who has been here eve since it was a containment-board for warhammer-faggotery.

>>80953321
Not him, but Magic by itself is not inherently special unless there's no soft power ceiling for the shit it can do. I mean this is basic shit, anon- set the rules of magic, then show how characters bend or exploit those rules.

>>80953362
I literally have never opened discord. Misses me with your zoomer gay shit. Keep kveching in your mamas basement while we play games with our friends. It is amusing really. Also take a shower. I can smell you from your posts.

>>80953321
Then easy: it's all about execution. Just treat certain things as if they are normal, and others as if they are special.

Suppose you have a science fantasy setting, and expect your players to expect the usual high fantasy fare. Then have them unwittingly stumble into the insides of a crashed spaceship, and describe everything in the most vague possible way until they only figure the sci fi elements out halfway through.

>>80953362
>The shit you faggots are doing

Like what? Actually contributing content to this board?

>>80953396
Next he'll be calling you a tranny or a tumblrina for not being constantly bitter and cynical and smug and insincere with every post. If being 4chan in the past few years has taught me anything, people who are ostensibly right wing and haven't mentally left 2016 are just as inarticulate and obnoxious as the average twitter SJW.

Because being "right wing" here means being a left wing caricature of a bush era fundie. Same virulent hatred of creativity, same hair trigger tempers, and same entitled expectation that everyone should cater to their sensibilities first and foremost without any input of their own. And not actually believing in any right wing principles.

>>80949821
Great b8. The misogyny adds a classic /tg/ feel I don't see often. Well done.

>>80951147
I don't know who you are, and I've never seen you post here before, but i'd like to thank you for injecting a substantial number of IQ points into this thread. Hopefully now it'll break even at 100, because not long ago we almost dipped below 80, as you can see here >>80953362.

>>80949821
My suggestion to you is to get rid of the generic fantasy horseshit. Make a kobold or goblin in your setting a completely different creature than the generic goblin or kobold. The same can be said for the Tolkien fantasy races and any generic fantasy trope. Make fantasy magical again God damn it.

>>80952797
According to the Newfag Historical Revisionist Squad, this board was STRICTLY about traditional games before the pandemic. And by traditional games, I mean nothing but dry discussion about crunch and dice mechanics. No storyshitting, no freakshit, and especially no fetishposting ever existed before today, and it was GOOD.

Ignore the archives, ignore the incredible amounts of creativity back then, and especially ignore 1d4chan. Those don't exist, and if they try to convince you with their "links", then they're dirty liars who probably believe the earth is flat.

so STOP NOTICING THINGS.

>>80952797
"bland gray goo?" Then tell me, what exactly have you contributed to this board? No, vitriol and saltiness doesn't count, I'm afraid.

>>80953477
What the fuck are you talking about. It was about Warhammer. Sure everything is shit now, but at least there's less Warhammer.

>>80949821
based pasta poster

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>>80953321

Magic isn't inherently special though. Nothing is. A magical setting can be as dull as can be, until you include something special in it. You can even make the mundane evoke awe and wonder from a player, if you just write it with gravitas.

Do you really think the majesty of something like the grand canyon would be diminished in a setting like Shadowrun, if the GM executed its portrayal well?

You assume magic is inherently special. It isn't. You don't need to make things "even more special." you just have to portray things well. The spell you use to light your campfire isn't special. The fireworks show that happens at the festival can be expressed to players as something delightful by a skilled GM. The amount of magic in the setting doesn't affect it.

>>80953493
>It was about Warhammer.
Where?

>>80953521
Here, there, everywhere

>>80950229
>>80950436
>>80950580
>>80950624
>>80950734
>>80950749
well shit anon you made me actually change my view. thanks for posting here

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>>80949796
>why do people make me dislike a genre I already don't like even more?
You are the problem clearly

>>80951974
it would be nice if you mentioned what you prefer to anime and fantasy, and exposed yourself as a gigantic faggot you are

>>80953639
>I already don't like
nice projection

>>80950527
>This would all go against the common TG wisdom
Shocking that a fucking newfag like yourself would mouth off about common wisdom, while also getting it completely wrong.

Maybe you should consider going back to wherever the fuck you came from?

>>80952182
>nothing in my life is more important than a constant stream of validation and affirmation
Unironically yes, there are also physical needs, but they don't deserve a mention. If I knew I was the last person alive, I'd do myself in on the count of 3

>>80953658
You like it some much you show up on the internet for confirmation that it's shit, nice one chap

>>80950229
Post of the year

>>80953362

>See this this proves to me that you are part of the cancer that is killing /tg/.

All you've done ITT is bitch like a woman. You don't lecture anyone of the merits of their contribution.

>>80949796
They like tolkien and view any deviations from his work as gay and “freakshit”. So what you end up with is bunch of writers ripping of Tolkien and each other leaving creating a half baked middle earth with more magishit

Fantasy, just like any other genre or insert_thing_here has had a huge influx of new material during the last two decades. It's so easy to get your "work" out there nowadays thanks to the internet, but the bad part of this is the absolutely gigantic proportions of pure shit out there in the wild. So nowadays you just must wade through heaps of literal excrement to get to the good stuff. It's just the way the world works now. The good stuff is still in there but it's buried deep.

>>80950229
>>80950436
>>80950580
>>80950624
>>80950734
>>80950749
>>80950887
>>80951006
extremely shallow and empty take hidden under a pretense depth. Also samefag.

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>>80954212
>"samefag"
This is how people who lose arguments "argue".

>>80954347
there's nothing to argue against as none of those people were saying anything of value except giving themselves an excuse to write baseless assumptions and statements about the people that don't really like their settings

>>80949796
stop giving a shit about fantasyfags and continue making your own stuff. If you make a thread here ignore their incomprehensible schreeching.

>>80954407
Guess how I know you didn't read any of them.

They are perfectly calling out the toxic, anti creative attitudes that shitposters have tried to spread around this board. If you were here for more than a week, then you would know what I mean.

>>80953718
>while also getting it completely wrong.
Then what is tg's common wisdom anyways

>>80954407

>none of those people were saying anything of value

Well, now that is ironic.

>>80954492
A miserable pile of lies and forgotten secrets.

>>80949821
I like to smash the two together with no regard for any issues it may cause. Dropping homebrewed half-whatevers (got a naga and one of those half-spiders in my campaign) into a setting populated by miserable vaguely-English human peasants is a lot of fun.

Let's make this thread a bit...happier...what's a cool fantasy thing you plopped in a game or even just a trope or idea you found cool?

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>>80953362
you are soulless anon

>>80954161
most of them have only watched the movies
>>80954209
got any recommendations regarding fantasy and scifi? have pretty much run out of fantasy to read and don't know anything about scifi

>>80954407
>there's nothing to argue against
And yet you still decided to say something. Interesting. What, did you feel an urge to have the last word?

>>80954407
>baseless assumptions and statements about the people that don't really like their settings
Imagine being such an imbecile you go and strawman the people who disagree with you while accusing them of strawmanning. Unreal.

Nobody is making any assumptions about "people who don't like their settings", they are just pissed at the blatantly anti-creative attitude which is being circulated by secondaries with opinions they received from each other and not based off personal experience.

That, and people who blindly enforce their arbitrary taboos on others like they own the place. Like woketards, they expect everyone else to adhere to their sensibilities otherwise they're Bad Just Because. That I fucking despise.

They're not people who "don't like their settings", they're people who hate absolutely everything because it gives them a sense of power. They have no integrity, just a desire for other people to fellate them for how intelligent and mature they look.

Nobody mentioned anything at all about people "not liking their setting". You delude yourself, warping your own perception of reality to fit your narrative of being the only mature and smart person in a sea of drooling spastics you've made everyone else to be.

And you're the one who's accusing them of strawmanning. Just look at you. If you had any self awareness at all, you'd realized you contradicted yourself in the same sentence. Go get yourself some amnesia medication before you forget how to breathe.

If you really wanted to believe they're "empty and shallow takes" then explain why, for each post, or else nobody will believe you.

Because yours, out of all of them, is the shallowest. Chances are you won't reply when I wake up.

>>80954943
In order to make yourself feel like you've "won", all you need to do is say whatever bullshit makes you look smartest and biggest and refuse to explain. This creates the illusion that your "point" is self evident, so self evident that everybody else should have figured it out by now because it's just That Obvious.

This is the kind of faggot who thinks he's above everyone and everything. The only reason he thinks there's "nothing of value" in those posts was because he never fucking read them in the first place. He saw an actual, logical objection to the typical vague, buzzword laden insinuationfests and recoiled like a vampire burned by sunlight.

That, and his embarrassing attempt at accusing 4 separate posters of samefagging. That's how you know someone can't argue, when they can't cope with the idea of multiple people disagreeing with them so they have to create this delusion that it's just one guy replugging his modem.

Chances are he's too much of a coward or a moron to explain his reasoning, and has likely fled the thread. All he can do here is endlessly signal his nonexistent intellect with hollow insults and nebulous opinions he can't back up.

>>80954407
You don't have to have the same copy and pasted image board personality, you can actually like things and even experiment from time to time. Who knows, maybe you will actually find something of a core and soul to your own person instead of acting either out of conformism or contrarianism.

>>80951836
Finally, someone who enjoys the use of good spreads for mapping as well, though I use it for online gaming, battle maps, town maps, etc. Here are some pretty old but fun examples of my work. I've also started utilizing pixel art for the game pieces I've made.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DF56PjyviitmEwI-V9rlFBUPoWFuwNfGDnajc5IysnU/edit?usp=sharing

Pictured: Astrals / OC race shit I made.

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>>80956077
I got distracted by the new captcha system and forgot the picture. Here.

>>80952942
There's really not much in fiction that's sufficiently novel to evoke wonder.

Growing up, as a child in the 90s with the 1970s Hobbit film on and the last unicorn on vhs? Definitely.
Maybe a half remembered children's fantasy book about someone who had a tiny dragon.
First time seeing Fellowship of the Ring in theatres at age 11 or so? *Maybe*.

If you're filled with awe at things you've seen many times over the years, but in a somewhat new configuration? I would think that puts you in a small minority of the population.

>>80956240
Maybe you are the kind of person who can only experience the wonder of things once then just suffer melancholy due to their inability to conect with similar experiences the older they get. Sucks to be you.

>>80956418
>Experience wonder only the first time.
As an adult, yes. The older I get the fewer things give me that feeling. Mostly when I hear about a new life changing invention for the first time. As a small child, I got the same experience from those fantasy movies again and again. Pretty sure most people grow out of that though.

>Constant melancholy.
No. I can enjoy things just fine without being filled with a sense of wonder. I can't imagine how miserable someone obsessed with chasing novelty would be when they're not experiencing it.

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>>80949821
I am getting an odd deja vu here from years back.

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The real trick is to abandon fantasy altogether and embrace much rarer settings. Run a Pokemon Mystery Dungeon campaign or Digimon campaign. Use all the minor lore from those series with regards to specific monsters to create interesting encounters.

>>80956735
> Pretty sure most people grow out of that though.
No, they don't. Yes, it gets less frequent due to life experiences over the years, that is a given. But if you no longer can gaze in awe at something, stand still and just enjoy what you're doing for the sake of doing it; then I pity you. And don't give me some crap about 'not going through (whatever)', for people that really went through really shitty experiences are also the ones to find wonder and happiness in the simplest of things.

>>80954480
>They are perfectly calling out the toxic, anti creative attitudes that shitposters have tried to spread around this board
Try ignoring them. I mean, do you honestly think they're going to go away when you bump their threads? But what I mostly see in threads that I visit when people here talk about "realistic"(I prefer saying logically coherent but that's a mouthful) setting is spergs who think that someone who doesn't prefer the generic taste of DnD style fantasy aesthetic is somehow insulting them or shitposting. And honestly why is /tg/ the most sensitive board when it comes to shitposting? I mean, of course people are going to make fun of the ocassional logical leaps in settings like DnD or any other high fantasy setting. Sure it's easy to say that magic will solve it but when it comes to things like the structure of society or just laws, I don't think a mage is going to make that any easier or simpler.
respond please and ask me something else to reply to.

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>>80951861
NO, it wasn't. Magic was exceptional and it was encountered by exceptional people. It was also almost always used by villains or ne'er-do-well. If the supernatural was on the hero's side, it was godly aid. Shut the fuck up.

>>80949821
>Picture a setting inspired by medieval history. Life is tough, war and plague sweep through the lands, and peasants eat flavorless gruel.
that's mostly just not true. You are making shit up

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>>80956735
>The older I get the fewer things give me that feeling. Mostly when I hear about a new life changing invention for the first time.
Want to know how you can tell someone is trying to be grownup?

>>80955559
>And you're the one who's accusing them of strawmanning
people were calling each other soulless and such. People are calling me soulless now. I honestly don't even know why this thread currently has so many replies as it does considering the vagueness of the OP. Like what is he even implying? Are the fantasyfags the ones who want to make their fantasy more "realistic" thereby stripping out the magic and making it boring or the people who don't like that and want fantasy to be more generic? Who knows, I don't, this board doesn't have IDs. This thread, along with others get to much attention imo. Because it seems to me that people forget that at the end of the day, you guys are arguing about skub

>>80952554
It was probably Bumpfag. I was the guy answering Shinto and philosophy questions for a bit until I realized that he was just intentionally wasting my time with questions whose answers he already knew or could easily find himself. It hit me when he asked me to "tell us more about Plato" after already having described his idea as Platonic.

>>80950229
>>80950436
>>80950580
>>80950624
>>80950749
>>80950734
>>80950887
>>80950916
>>80951085
>>80951261
>>80951343
>>80951408
>>80951517
>>80951653


i love you man

>>80958767
>pic
Someone was actually butthurt enough to write all of that.

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>>80949796
could you be a tad more specific.
who is making it boring? how are they making it boring? why are you a faggot (beyond being OP)? what exactly is boring? when did you start sucking cocks?

>>80960558
The worst part is it's been five years. He might have regretted his opinion or moved on with his life, but more likely he's still angry about magic.

>>80949796
Fantasy, as a genre,, is fine. The problem is generational. On one hand, oversaturration of the genre to the point where kitchen sink lists of tropes are the only thing you get anymore from video games and movies, with mobile games and anime being the worst offenders. Settings barely exist anymore and are just an amalgamation of by-the-book biomes that exist everywhere else, which would be fine if the societies that inhabited them weren't done a thousand times over.

Combined with a distinct lack of artistic talent for the medium, which I feel is the biggest factor at play, personally. Digital art works great for sci-fi, because the medium used to make the art itself, in a way, is part of the setting (or at the very least fits on theme). Inversly, digital art for fantasy comes off as grating for the same reason, but doubly so when juxapposed with physical pieces of professional artwork of old.

>>80962338
It's almost as if once you create a genre, there's only so far you can expand before every trope and idea becomes well known. Maybe eventually old things become classic, or new twists are added in, but there's always going to be a ton of genre staples that you can't avoid. They're just doing it all again for the audience of their time - there's no point in stopping now that we've "done everything."

>>80950229
>>80950436
>>80950580
>>80950624
>>80950749
>>80950734
>>80950887
>>80950916
>>80951085
>>80951261
>>80951343
>>80951408
>>80951517
>>80951653

/Board

>>80959984
When they have hobbies that center around playing games, homebrewing, and art?
Fuck "trying to be an adult". Like yes, don't bankrupt yourself. Plan to manage your own survival as much as possible. But still. You're only young once. Enjoy what you can while you have your health.

But that doesn't mean I feel a sense of awe and wonder for routine activities, even if I enjoy them. (For me, at least) That comes from totally unexpected pleasant surprises / novelty. I don't know how you're filled with awe at things you've seen a dozen or more times, but if you really are, that's good for you.

>>80959194
>Stand still and just enjoy what you're doing.
I can do that every time (maybe 3x a year) I have cheesecake, play a videogame I like (even ones I've beaten a dozen times), get immersed in writing or sculpting or painting, let alone often in game moments. Sitting there and being in the moment is like being in a state of flow or the like... Is that *all* you meant by "wonder"? Because I definitely interpret "wonder" as when I feel like something has "blown my mind" or shown me something I had never thought of before, or gives me that same feeling.

>"Not going through... (Some negative shit)
Nope. No pity party. I'm just not filled with shock and awe and wonder at things that aren't new and amazing to me.

>>80950229
Wow this shit bait thread turned into something interesting to read

>>80963894

I think the one-two punch of being a bunch of seasoned nerds who delved into a lot of the relevant literature and being overly protective gatekeeping types has made a bunch of folk here bitter. Even among their peers, you end up with a situation in which everyone is bored by classic tropes, but viciously opposed to trying to make new things. Particularly because it seems some folks here want things to emerge fully fleshed out, any idea that kind sucks at first brush is doomed to be horrible forever.

>>80960002
Explain how they were

> "baseless assumptions and statements about the people that don't really like their settings"

and

> "extremely shallow and empty take hidden under a pretense depth. Also samefag."

Otherwise i'll assume you pulled it right out your ass.

>>80964357
>a bunch of seasoned nerds who delved into a lot of the relevant literature
You mean tourists who see memes and pretend they've read the relevant literature.

>>80959984
When they make a dumb post like yours?

>>80964430
That, too.

>>80949821
Barf

>>80952762
Amazing middle school rebuttal

>>80953518
>You assume magic is inherently special. It isn't.
But it is, though. Just look at how the words magic and magical are used in the real world.

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>>80954407
>there's nothing to argue against as none of those people were saying anything of value
This is how I know you didn't read any of them. You pulled it out of your ass, and expect everyone to believe you while providing no takes of your own.

All you do is insinuate, act *as if* your warped version of reality is playing out in other people's heads, but never explain why.

>>80950229
Daily reminder that:

Shitposters who bitch about freakshit daily don't actually care about making interesting or compelling characters. They are just as boring as than the freakshitters they despise, but they are even worse in that they want others to be as boring and unimaginative as they are.

They live in a fantasy world in which Dragon Magazine or Mystara never existed, and only 4 races existed in tabletop roleplaying until pathfinder came along, as well as the anime boom. Kind of like the conservatards who believe homosexuality was invented in the sixties.

Realismfags don't really care about realism or verisimilitude. What they really care about is the feeling of seniority, authority and self assumed intelligence from arrogantly browbeating others into making their settings the equivalent of an american high school dropout's idea of what the middle ages were like.

They do not know anything about history outside of half remembered trivia from youtube videos, which they somehow manage to misconstrue in ways that create the most banal, cretinous misery fests imaginable.

They derive self worth from this, because their greatest fear is being seen as childish. So when they play pretend, they've got to make sure everybody knows all their tastes are grown up. Like Patrick Bateman, everything they do is for the sake of being seen as more intelligent and cultured by their peers.

The moral of the story is that you don't let other people tell you how to play your games. Do what makes you happy.

>>80950734
Daily reminder that most, if not all, the problems that people who unironically believe in freakshit complain about can be easily solved at your very table with better communication.

Freakshit itself? Ban overly quirky races and ask your players to write a backstory that meshes well with the setting. Better yet, write several example characters and hand them out to give them an idea.

Overlong backstories? Politely tell them to limit their characters' backstories to ten sentences or below. Discuss them at the table, form an agreement with everyone else you're playing with.

There, freakshit problem solved. Now you don't have to rage about how le ebin tiefling kitsune bard rolled a nat twenty when trying to seduce the castle for an awsummm 4chin greentext. It was that easy. Enjoy your nobledark low fantasy game, you're welcome.

Woke shit being included and encouraged in official TTRPG material?

Well, just as I say to the tards who complain about there being not enough trannies and niggers in their games, go and make your own material.

Don't expect a company that caters for twitter trannies to suddenly capitulate to your demands, when there is an opportunity for you to create something in which you have full creative control.

As the history of this board would have it, homebrewing isn't that hard. It's way more satisfying to make your own thing than cling to brand loyalty for a company that you admit you hate.

>>80954212
Why don't explain your reasoning? Oh wait, you just trotted those words out without thinking. Can't expect people like you to communicate in any other way but bitching and crying whenever somebody questions the incredibly dreary narrative you expect everyone to adhere to.

When there's even the tiniest implication that people could be anything more than dogmatic soursops whining about everything in existence, you lash out, fucking pavlovian response and hallucinate something that isn't there.

And I bet you won't elaborate, because you're too much of a coward to back up your points.

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>>80964924

If magic were inherently special, then people wouldn't complain that it's mundane and trite in fiction, because the context and execution wouldn't take away from it if it were "Inherent"

People use the word magical in the real world to refer to things that feel impossible. In a fictional world, where the supernatural exists, magic quite literally has a different connotation.

Something can't be both inherently special, but also mundane and dull. The existence of magic in fiction that doesn't feel wondrous precludes magic as being a concept with inviolable properties of awe and amazement.

>>80960002
>changing the topic

>>80965057
Notice how you said people complain about it? That's because it is universally understood that magic is special and that settings where it isn't are doing it wrong.
And a fictional setting using a word wrong doesn't change what that word means. If I decide to call some group of mortal people in my setting "immortals" that doesn't change the definition of the word.

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>>80965445

If it were universally understood that magic is special, and that settings where it isn't were doing it wrong, then popular high fantasy settings wouldn't exist, or if they did, they wouldn't be beloved by many.

You're speaking in generalizations that hurt your argument. My only stance is that High Fantasy can be just as enjoyable and wondrous as Low Fantasy.

There are arguments you can make against my point, but using terms like "universally understood", and playing with single definitions of words that cover a much broader range of things than that single definition is disingenuous.

"What kind of immortal?" "What kind of magic?" Those questions aren't nonsensical to ask. There are multiple kinds.

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>>80954723
I love giant ass tower of babel shit so I ran a one-shot that took place inside of a massive tower-city that was in the eye of a massive, never ending storm cloud full of other worldly monsters that constantly infight.
As a result the "storm" is constantly raining the corpses of these monsters.
The players were cops that were busting a crime family making drugs out of monster corpse dust.

It was fun!

>>80965562
High fantasy =/= magic being mundane. Tolkien shit is pretty high fantasy and yet magic and magic items are still treated as being special. Even in harry potter, where magic is no big deal to the wizards themselves, it has a whole secret society built around it. Really the only time magic ends up being mundane is when it's actually technology/science, in which case it's really just sci-fi masquerading as fantasy, and as a result of power creep in games.
Magic being special is an inherent part of its very definition and this is absolutely universally understood.

>>80966318
medieval fantasy flavored sci fi sounds pretty based.

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>>80966318

Tokien shit isn't stingy with magic though. It just portrays the magic well. While obviously, Harry Potter is a mixed bag to some, it also used its portrayal of magic to evoke wonder, rather than the existence of it.

Harry being a wizard wasn't wonderful because he now had access to a spell list and could operate magic items. It was wonderful because the way it was portrayed evoked that sense.

Magic can absolutely seem mundane, and Harry Potter is a great example of that divide. There are two parts to its portrayal of magic, the whimsical, but ultimately dull ways they use it constantly in their day to day lives, and the parts that are written in an attempt to be more than that, like Harry's awe at seeing parts of wizarding society for the first time, or Dumbledore's explanations of Love, and its power that goes beyond mere spellcraft.

Harry Potter is a point against your argument, it absolutely has parts of it meant to show its magic as something that "Isn't special". It uses this idea of there being the "magic that just replaces technology", and the magic that seems dangerous, mysterious, wondrous, or beyond understanding, only wielded through genuine feelings and familial bonds.

At this point, you're just agreeing with my sentiment (That the portrayal is more important than the amount) and arguing over the semantics of it.

Magic isn't inherently special. Tolkien made it special in parts of his story, and Harry Potter did too, they didn't do it by riding off of magic's inherent qualities, but by, when the time came, writing things that tried to evoke emotions in the reader.

You know why Tokien's magic items were treated as special? It wasn't because they were rare. It was because they had history, they had heart behind them. I even said so much in one of my earlier posts. You don't make a sword fantastic by making it have supernatural properties, you make it fantastic by giving it passion and character in the ways it is written.

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>>80949821
Love Based pastas

>>80965736
Cute and beat the devil

>>80966528
Much of the backlash against 'high magic' and 'magic as technology' was originally backlash against a particular mindset and view of magic's place within a setting, which then had the essence and the trappings confused through the tumult of chan-discourse.

The Brandon Sanderson mindset, the LitRPG mindset, the 'why are there armies in D&D when three teleporting wizards could erase them in seconds' mindset. It exists, and it is harmful to wonder through its necessarily limited portrayals of magic.
Magic as toolkit. Magic as circuitry. Third Tier Fireballs use up 5.78 Magi-watts. ('Magic as science' is inaccurate, and only leads to semantic arguments.)

It's harder for novice storytellers to fall into traps like these in low-magic settings, where an individual instance of magic needs to be infused with some personality and passion almost by design, so these were brought up as alternatives.
Then the aforementioned confusion happened, and it was then tumbled together with unrelated backlashes to other mindsets (Critical-Role levity, fantasy multiculturalism, sometimes even having a story to begin with), leading to 'freakshit' and mud-and-piss humans-only grim n' gritty mercenary bandits.
So as bizarre as some of the arguments might seem, I think that they have their origin in something useful.

>>80967657
This guy has it.

Magic as science like ebberon is cancer. You want magic to feel like magic, it needs to be like poetry, not science.

This thread has inspired me greatly to dig up the homebrew RPG system that I made back in highschool to keep working on it. I played one test session, got relentlessly mocked for thinking any mechanic made sense, then just dumped the thing into the dark depths of my school laptop hard drive.
Luckily I still have that thing still around. Thanks /tg/.

>>80949796
Blame Warhammer Fantasy.

>>80964214
You need to be 18 to post on this board, kid.

>>80967760
>tfw your gm didn't like your limerick so you blow your dick off instead of casting spark

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>>80967657
The irony in my mind is that already "mud-and-piss humans-only grim n' gritty mercenary bandits" has become something that people have started to dislike and meme about. None of this stuff is clear cut, ideas like that were around before Critical Role and accusations of freakshit, so for some people mud-and-piss has already become a tired trope, or they had an experience with it that was woefully unfun. So now they're stuck between the two extremes and don't really like either, but a middle ground hasn't arisen yet. I think most of those people head off in more niche directions or get out of fantasy all together with enough disillusionment.

>>80969536
the middle ground is just sci fi.. Where you can have big bang explosions and have it be justified.

>>80969536
>but a middle ground hasn't arisen yet
The middle ground is games run in real life instead of hypotheticals constructed for internet arguments

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>>80949796
>doesn’t post his own much superior fantasy setting

>>80969536
I'm in that situation right now. Our group rotates DMs and our most recent DM wanted to do a humans-only, "down to Earth" campaign. I agreed because I thought it would be interesting to try something like this. But for the first time in years our group has not played or even attempted to play for months. The issue is that none of us were really that interested in anything going on after a few sessions. There was a serious lack of excitement and most of the stuff in the campaign has been done better in other places like videogames.

>>80964996

> ban everything! add rules!

This is the shitty mindset. You can't force people into being good players.

Why not play with people who have the same preferences?

>>80970280

That's not what that post is saying at all.

>>80954212
t. Retarded faggot who wants everyone to be constantly terrified dickless basedboys begging for validation so they don't create anything out of fear of being ridiculed

>>80954407
>baseless assumptions and statements about the people that don't really like their settings
Where, dumbass, where? I don't see any "assumptions and statements" linked in the replies you linked to in your post >>80954212 . WHERE???

Fucking explain it to me and maybe I'll know where you're coming from, retard.

>>80964390
>> "baseless assumptions and statements about the people that don't really like their settings"
Because that's what they were. I cant really falsify what they are saying, really just speculating, about people who use the term freakshit or "realism" or such which in turn makes it shallow and empty. Then theres also the thing I mentioned about /tg/ in general being very sensetive to shitposting. As it seems to give people here who don't understand sarcasm the wrong idea.

>>80970694
>Then theres also the thing I mentioned about /tg/ in general being very sensetive to shitposting. As it seems to give people here who don't understand sarcasm the wrong idea.
>Lol I was just joking u mad bro epic fail

>>80970694
>Because that's what they were. I cant really falsify what they are saying, really just speculating, about people who use the term freakshit or "realism" or such which in turn makes it shallow and empty.
I really don't get what you're on about. You haven't tried to back up your claims that they are indeed bitching about people not liking their settings.

>>80952762
Why do people with bad opinions always paraphrase the literal supervillain who was blatantly wrong from a movie written so that even a child could understand he was wrong?

>>80949821
HOLY BASED SOI BEARDS AND TWITTER NIGGERS ON SUICIDE WATCH
ABSOLUTELY BTFO THEY CANNOT EVEN/IM SHAKING RIGHT NOW

>>80950022
>we
Back to discord tranny

>>80970723
>>Lol I was just joking u mad bro epic fail
I didn't say that nor imply that. I'm talking about the various types of shitposting and bait threads inherent to most boards. Like local lord posting. Like, these people aren't arguing or debating with you like some people think. They're trolling you. But this has caused even harmless threads about "realism"(which again, I prefer to call logical consistency, mudcore is just pure aesthetic and not inherent to realism) and medievalism in their rpgs to be met with hostility. For me at least when it comes to critiques of the general high fantasy genre is it's treatment of magic as science and the great logical holes as others have mentioned here. Suspension of disbelief only goes so far.

>>80969550
But I don't really like sci fi. It's too weird and human condition for me.

>>80951006
Every post you responded to is so lowbrow and cringe I could only imagine you made them.
All of it is falsehoods stated as fact and than jerking off onto maccies tier taste of fantasy.
High fantasy is fun, but for 0 of the reasons stated in any of those posts, and the fact you try to cringe you way through every post with a shout of
>I’m trying to change board culture!
In EVERY POST just screams to me you’re estrogen dose is too high for your own good.
You posting your lame half baked ideas impresses no one, no matter how much you (you) yourself.
Cringing sage pilled.

>>80954212
>>80954407
Lol guess I was ninja’d.
Idk why discord troops feel the need to make threads like this and you themselves to oblivion.
Muh epic r green text submission!

>>80969536
You talk like a fag and your shits all retarded.
Literally, you talk like a no games who takes Twitter posts ways too seriously and every thing you say sounds low iq and estrogen pilled.

>>80949821
Counterpoint: The Fate franchise has some of the most wonderous magic I have seen in over a decade, and they are up to their fucking eyeballs in magical bullshit.

For magic to instill a feeling of wonder it doesn't need to be rare and weak. It needs to be awe-inspiring and feel like its use has cost and weight to it rather than be treated as a mundane skill. DnD magic isn't wet cardboard tier of bland because it is common, it is bland because the only cost it has is "You had to read, like, 5 whole books in your life before you could use magic". It is a cost we are told, but never have to deal with and by the time the game actually starts has zero impact on the events that follow.

Fate's magecraft is weird and complicated and you can pull off really awesome stuff with it but it feels earned because of all of the meaningful sacrifices you have to make and hoops you have to jump through to get it to work. A dnd wizard generically casting a 5d6 fireball is boring, and will never not be boring. A mage with a focus in transmutation turning a nearby object directly into fire and thus creating an explosion is cool shit.

>>80970880
To fix: maybe not science per se as I understand wizards would want to study it methodologically bit it's general over-saturation to the point where very powerful beings are part of the mundane and not the exceptional. This might not be bad but it is very hard to pull of to impress at least me.

>>80964968
>freaks hit and anti freak shit is the same
>freak shit good, non freak shit boring
Did you format this on Twitter or tumbler before you posted it here?

>>80970937
Are you still clinging to the delusion that it was one person? Quit lying to yourself, you saw that screenshot, >>80954347
you know it wasn't samefagging.

>>80970937
>muh discord boogeyman

>>80971084
>They are just as boring as than the freakshitters they despise
Can you read?

>>80960674
That would be to sensical for someone so deep in the hrt bottle.
Better to just rile and seethe generally impotently with discord open like you learned to do on Twitter.

>>80971119
>Lol I'll insinuate you are a tranny ha ha win

Two problems exist with fantasy right now.

Lack of real world experience means writers are designing based on shadows instead of reality. Modern designers are all children with little to no real world experience, they are interested in fiction so their experiences pull from others experiences shadows. Men who went through WWI and WWII can offer real depth to what they suffered through. They can wish for Elvish safe havens and horrifying caverns where the dead taunt you in your dreams. What can some soft pudgy nerd offer you except his book reading and at worse some general childhood bullying he can't get over? With all the corners of life rounded to play safe foam curves there's nothing to build a world from. You're living in the super market era so what can someone who has never slaughtered an animal or run through the woods tell you about being a ranger?

Secondly the hobby is hyper commercial now and as with all commercial produces it has to appeal to as broad an audience as possible. It creates generic blobs which everyone can enjoy but no one can ever love. Marvel movies, Mario video games and Walmart are your civilization to pull from and to create for. Putting in any effort of decision towards something people may like will upset people who don't like it. So more corners are rounded off, all the edge is taken away and you can have your generic elves, dwarves and demons but this time... They're steam punk and ones in a wheelchair to try and grab the cripple market for a few bucks too.

You live in a soulless civilization devoid of the human condition. It's idea of suffering is the internet connection causing their Netflix tv series to buffer. What the fuck could any of these people tell me let alone create that would be worth hearing? Absolutely nothing.

>>80971000
No you

>>80971150
You post like a bitch yet you have no womb.
You are not only a fag but a retard, as was stated by the original post
>haha lol.

>>80971117
The joke is that whoever posted that weird twitter coded autism take in defense of freakshit obviously can’t keep a coherent thought going even when confined to one post.
Are you retarded?

>>80971088
>Are you still
>you saw
Only one clinging to delusion is you. I just caught here and it reeks of (you) faggot

>>80970805

Usually it has to do with all the clashing flavors in the Anglosphere stew-pot. You're taught to conform, you're taught to hate conformists, you're sold narcissism and told to consume, you're sold heroism and told to save the world. Everyone reacts differently, but a lot of people admire the villains in older/retro media, because they're self-made redpilled supergeniuses, who understand that the heroic written-so-that-even-a-child-could-understand narrative is just government propaganda designed to discredit their genius.

In this case, though, Syndrome was completely right and makes a relevant point. It's easier to inspire wonder with something that the characters haven't seen before, and when you do use something familiar it's all about getting them to see it with fresh eyes. Not that anon, by the way, that anon seems like a real shitter.

>>80970805
>paraphrase the literal supervillain
I was going to correct you by saying that Dash said that, not Syndrome, but only after googling it did I realize both of them said their own version of this line.
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmSO2cz2ozQ
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gXCCBmTvBI

>>80949796
to keep you out

>>80967657

Novice Storytellers need to fall into those traps and fail in order to grow as storytellers.

Trying to dissuade gamemasters from attempting things beyond their grasp is a toxin that poisons the hobby. Inexperienced gamemasters won't know that they should try things like that as they grow more experienced, they're too inexperienced to know that. They'll just absorb "Don't do X Y and Z" and then never try.

"Freakshit", "Storyshitters", "Realismfags", All these concepts poison the hobby, no matter what their origins are, because they make game masters less ambitious, less willing to take risks.

The inability to take risks in a creative medium can poison any creative medium.

Music has consolidated, and now formula music is the only profitable music from a label's perspective.

Videogaming has consolidated, and now the major game companies do not take as many risks as they used to, pumping out duplicate games with visual rehashing or minor adjustments yearly.

Movies and cartoons have consolidated, and now you have situations as idiotic as "The Lorax" cutting the only song in it that genuinely critiqued corporations, due to the risks involved.

Let shitty things be made and run. It's the only way a game master can learn that he's shit at being a GM, and either leave the hobby, put in the effort to improve, or stumble onto something amazing.

>>80950653

> developed and tested by actual real writers and professional game designers

This idiot probably trusts fact checkers and le science

>>80953321
You are just another empty soul with no understanding or appreciation of the sublime.

>>80964240
This is how /tg/ threads were like years ago. They would regularly be derailed into some interesting and fun.

>>80950235
>Greg
Based gif

>>80973153
People like you poison the hobby where you think everything is some generic blob of a game. If people hate freakshit let them hate freakshit. It's healthy to have camps dedicated to different styles then your officially sanctioned bullshit

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>>80975496

I've literally been telling people to communicate their intentions to their players and only let people into their games that mesh with it, rather than making bait threads and complaining about problems that don't exist.

Those camps only become a problem when they try to eradicate other camps. Like this latest shit with trying to make high fantasy seem like it "takes the wonder out of magic".

If you hate "freakshit", then keep it out of the games you play and the games you run, instead of whatever this is.

>>80975646
People have always fought over this sort of thing and always will. It's a healthy form of gatekeeping.

Don't be a fag.

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>>80976393

Then it shouldn't be a problem that I'm fighting over it too.

>>80974359
I make bait threads in the hope it turns into something good, because if you come into 4chan thinking you'll have a nice fun topic to talk about, it'll get derailed with boring ass political takes quickly.

>>80949928
>the dryad calls you a faggot and casts polymorph homo on you, save versus your own cumshot.

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I really wish I could stir some wonder in my players because they just don't seem to care and it's pretty depressing at times. I try to be evocative but they don't seem to listen to descriptions or are just waiting for me to finish so they can run ahead. But at the same time, they don't really have much of initiative. I usually have to break their options down to a bullet point list and even then getting a decision on what to do next is like pulling teeth.

>They want money to resurrect an NPC so I dropped them in ancient temple uncovered by a recent earthquake.
>They immediately almost turn around and leave
>There's a big stone statue head that knows the history of these ancient sacred grounds, but my attempts to RP are met with some sassy lines and they barge into the dungeon.
>They immediately split up, fucking up puzzles and triggering combat without each other.
>One tries to take a magic item set down on the floor by another, who responds by lying down at the entrance of the dungeon and pouting.
>Yet another person slips off and solves a puzzle without the rest of the party and stashes an item the party needs for himself.

Everything I make is a joke and I hate everything I create.

>>80977502

Remove your entire party. Look around various communities and assemble a new one.

It'll take time, and it'll suck, but it sounds like you've got no other choice, if you want to run a game for people that give a shit.

>>80949796
Because fantasy ultimately stems from folklore from times that we consider less enlightened and more ignorant, when elves and dragons and gods served as valid explanations for even natural phenomena. These stories are rooted in wonder at the natural world, and the very human impulse of exploring a strange yet familiar land.
When fantasy tries to get bizarre, weird, and "creative", it loses its connection to the simple human aspect of fantasy. Traversing treacherous bogs, dark forests, and damp caves can inspire more wonder than a multidimensional war in space against eldritch beings, simply because one is rooted in the human experience and the other is not.

Unfortunately, many realismfags and low fantasy fags forget this simple fact. For example, this anon >>80949821 says that
>Life is tough, war and plague sweep through the lands, and peasants eat flavorless gruel
and uses the Elf casting light as an example of a beautiful event. Ultimately, the magic is not wondrous because it's magic, but because it's a beautiful sight in an otherwise hideous world. Such a setting ignores the simple beauty that exists in a realistic world - the flowers still bloom, and people still smile.

Even the magical and fantastical ultimately works by appealing to the human spirit, not by being rare or bizarre. An excellent fantasy setting is likewise grounded in reality, but different enough to have its own personality and rules that make it fantastical.

>>80977587
I know I probably should but it's hard to walk away from a game I've been running weekly for 3 years. It's also the only way I keep in contact with some of them. I've tried to get other groups going but it's the usual commitment problems that keep anything from getting off the ground.

Even if it was just running something new, something different, just for a while...

>>80971179
Pretty much this. Applies to all genres.

>>80978387

Well, you could try having a sit-down with your players. Ask em if there is anything you can do that would get them invested in your game and world.

Were they once interested in things, but the magic died? Maybe they can be salvaged, if you really believe.

Something has to change, though. Either on the GM side or the Player side. If you can't change your game, you can't change your players' behaviors, and you can't change which players you run things for, then there's no hope. You have to pick one of those three options and pursue it.

It won't be easy, but if you succeed... It's always worth it when you succeed.

>>80950653
That's some good bait right there.

>>80949821
As much as I hate HOW u said it. I agree with the spirit. U nasty ass grognard

>>80949821
How could you turn Eberron into this setting?

>>80978497
I did have a brief sitdown at the end of a session a couple weeks ago. The last adventure felt like it was about as fun as a wet fart so I tried to get some feedback and ask what they wanted to get out of the campaign next. I didn't really get any answers so I asked them to think on it and have something for me the next session. Still nothing. Now the rogue suddenly starts talking about wanting to do a bank heist last session before they started this dungeon. I'm thinking maybe I can work it into the trip to the Underdark that's been a long time coming, heist a temple of Lolth or something, but I don't know if we're going to get that far anymore.

I think things were more fun at the start, for that first year, but maybe it's just wishful thinking. We've had some good times and memorable moments, but it's been downhill for awhile. And some of it is my fault as well. After enough encounters and adventures fail miserably to get any investment from them I lose the drive to plan things as in-depth for a while. I really do try to make things fun but now I think I stopped trying as hard as I used to somewhere along the way.

>>80979580
He can't because he's a shitposter.

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>>80979814

Yeah, if you think they're salvageable, I'd try to rush through the rest of this temple, they don't give a shit anyway, so they won't really notice or care that it's been shortened.

Try to come up with a fun bank heist. If you've got a really good idea, go for it, but otherwise, I could probably give some advice on what I think would make for a fun heist in general. I think I posted it in a different thread already, though.

>>80979966

>the rest of this temple

Fuck, sorry, I meant dungeon. If they're as apathetic as you say, they won't care if you gut half of it behind the GM screen and rush em through it.

>>80949821
I hate this kind of mentality because it's operating off of a fucked premise from the start.

The first fucking question you need to ask yourself when creating a setting, or looking at a created setting, is what is trying to be done.
Do you want grimdark realism where everyone is fucking miserable? Then maybe a low fantasy setting, with little to no magic, and constantly warring factions is warranted.
Do you want a more lighthearted and fantastical romp through a topsy turvy land? Go apeshit with magic then.
The elements present in the world should reflect what you're attempting to accomplish. Just because something doesn't align with your personal tastes doesn't mean it's not meeting it's own goals.

>>80949821
>The mudcore faggots that OP is talking about

>>80980046

Based as fuck.

>>80949796
If you've ever played an MMO, you'll notice something very quickly - most people play humans or human-lite races such as elves. Even when other exotic options are available, the majority of players will default to these choices.
By why is this?
Simple - normalfags cannot abide the unknown or the alien. The foreign makes them feel profoundly uncomfortable and out of place. Their ability to empathize and relate are ereased in an instant.

Ask anyone actively working in a creative media. They'll tell you how difficult it is to sell nonhumans to the masses.

>>80973440
Surprised you're still conscious after you ODed on Ivermectin

>>80970317
It is what the post is saying at all.

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>>80950653
My oversaturated psyche can no longer determine what is genuine and what isn't, so i can't tell if that poster believes what he wrote.
But i know that it makes me sad.

These games are unique among all forms of entertainment. The creativity and oppurtunities that you can find in tabletop is just incredible. Depression was really bad for me in high school, but once i found DnD and other games, i found that all of these little skills and interests that had no way to be...useful, not way to be expressed in any meaningful way, could be brought to the table and enjoyed by a group of people.
To create wondrous things that you and others would talk about the rest of thier lives, experiences you created with your imagination alone.
Fuck that guy for writing it, if isn't bait.

>>80980141
That's not my impression looking at WoW.

>>80983592
>That's not my impression looking at WoW.
The most popular races by long shots are Blood Elves and Humans.

>>80973153

Quality post.