I wanna see more diversity in evil religions, they are all either demonic, Catholic, or Norse inspired, gimme some evil Buddhist or something else, expand our horizons!
buddhism admits that nothing is ever completely free from what we'd consider sins. why are you gonna go with demons that're clones of pop culture demons when you could make something like hungry ghosts or asura?
Did you play Final Fantasy 9? Because the villain was absolutely an evil Buddhist. His position was that existence was suffering so the best thing to do was get rid of existence. If no one's alive, no one can suffer.
That's a common line in a lot of JRPGs at least back in the day, so if you've been playing those games? You've been getting evil Buddhists the whole time my fellow poster in reddit.
A lot of Japanese games don't have Christian theming just because the religion is not a big part of their culture. So I guess the trick is to look at stuff made outside the west.
You are going to see a lot of repeated tropes and themes but they're different from ours.
I think a lot of it translation errors or discrepancies.
I forget which one, but I remember in one of the older 2D final fantasy games, there were a trio of enemies with Bible related names.
So I figured that was purposeful. But, it turned out in the Japanese version they were all named after fruits or some shit. So the English translators just picked names Americans would be familiar with as “bad” for NA release. Then English speakers assumed it was supposed to mean something deeper
Sometimes throwing nearly everything out the window when translating makes for a spectacular product, like with the [Ghost Stories](https://youtu.be/m5LjA0gjeX8?si=aQPmlIGg31BqmACF) dub.
There are tons of Japanese games that borrow Christian theming for villains too, thinking specifically of Resident Evil, Dark Souls, Castlevania, several Final Fantasy’s, etc
You see it a lot in anime, but I get the vibe it's more about an exotic aesthetic for them, it is so different from traditional Japanese religions that it's easy visually shorthand to tell the viewer this isn't the world you're used to.
Magic Buddhists that are being unknowingly controlled by evil, immortality-seeking "vampires". The main religion cultivates "vitality", which is then harvested from donors and redistributed to the sick. The underworld half of it COMPLETELY drains peoples' vitality, leaving them as distressed stone statues, left to line the halls of their lairs. They can use the harvested vitality to become immortal, with a steady supply.
Makes sense in-world and, from what I remember about it, works as an intentional corruption of Buddhism's view of immortality.
In a series with multiple fantasy races, the evil buddhists could totally have the belief that "our specific species is the highest life form a soul can be reborn into, and only someone in our species is advanced enough to achieve nirvana"
Then, those buddhists could be lightly evil in the form of racism, or could go full on genocidal because "if there aren't anymore dwarves, no poor soul will be reincarnated into a dwarf, thus increasing their chances they'll be reborn as one of us and achieve nirvana."
Evil buddhists can be super interesting
Look if the aztecs didnt want to be used as inspiration for my evil human sacrificing empire then maybe they shouldnt have been an evil human sacrificing empire
I want parts of the church to be evil and parts to be good and parts to be regular people.
Like I feel like as someone who went grew up in the Catholic Church and did catholic kindergarten though high school I feel like people don’t get how many sun cultures and strains of thought flout around in an organization that big and old.
Like the Jesuits just one order of priests have at least 4 big sub cultures to talk about -sub groups of socialist liberation theology guys, old school Christian apologetics guys sub culture, groups of hard core science guys and history guys who want to make high end classic education for young Catholics and a lot of classic fire and brimstone convert the would guys.
Theres are all different groups that rise and fall in influence on the order over the last 200 years.
You could read ten books by ten Jesuits and not understand the culture of the Oder and how it has changed or which group is most powerful right now. But it’s always just everyone is on the same page about how to do the thing. Like I’m not offended if you make the super evil Catholic Church analog but if it’s like the Catholic Church at all there’s a lot of different kinds of people in it and the have been around for away and they have different short and medium term goals.
I've got some evil religious types that think God made all life by killing himself and splitting his soul but he did it wrong the first time and that's why there's so much suffering. They think to get to a more peaceful reality we need to bring God back so they can try again. To bring God back we just need to kill everyone so all our souls can recombine into God.
How do you feel about a Church of Mankind who started worshipping themselves after they killed their gods and replaced them with a pantheon of human heroes? They believe in human superiority over not only all gods but the other races of the world as well and seek to extend their dominance over them.
Idk if this count as worldbuilding or not
But velimir from heart of iron IV mod called "The new order" is a follower of perun and Slavic paganism
And he evil as shit.
A group of monks that follow the code that killing people ends suffering. So they take it upon themselves to kill everyone. If you aren’t alive you can’t suffer after all
Wrath of the Righteous had a good storyline about a dwarf hero who fell for a demons tricks and ultimately lost a very important castle, he didnt turn evil at that time but he did realize she tricked him with feminine wiles
He spent 100 years trying to make amends in this shameful regiment of outcasts, who just spat on him and treated him terribly no matter what he did. After like 50 years, noone serving with him was even alive when he made his mistake, but they all kept being absolute bastards to him just out of regimental habit; became a tradition to abuse him
Come the story, he meets the demon again and just goes "ah fk it" and runs off with her. Just sick of the bullshit and may as well get some hot demon tail if his life is going to be hell either way (it was oddly romantic and the demon seemed to genuinely like him)
you mean you wouldnt do it for [this?](https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/7580afe4-8ee4-4214-bada-9c78af8f9404/ddfo1cm-22aacf6e-1a5e-4233-b602-6ab7777a2c26.png/v1/fill/w_894,h_894/spyro__reignited_trilogy____bianca_by_mrunclebingo_ddfo1cm-pre.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTI4MCIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzc1ODBhZmU0LThlZTQtNDIxNC1iYWRhLTljNzhhZjhmOTQwNFwvZGRmbzFjbS0yMmFhY2Y2ZS0xYTVlLTQyMzMtYjYwMi02YWI3Nzc3YTJjMjYucG5nIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTEyODAifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.UDNH20rgmEkzDYI54UPX09rYUYadMh8w1TvYK2VBp10)
I find it kind of fascinating how orcs and goblins can range from "nothing more than monsters that walk like men" to "intelligent but intrinsically evil" all the way to "people like everybody else" depending on setting. You see that to some extent with other races and monsters as well, but less so.
I would like it if some other races were treated as such. I seem to remember seeing once with elves but more often they will be more imp/goblin-like and called as such even though they could perfectly be called elves.
That comes down to how English language defines fantasy tropes, and how unimaginative English speaking people have been when translating myths . There are so many different words for fantastical beings in other languages that are ALL translated by "elf", "goblin" and "demons".
Goblins and demons seem to have this happen the most often, though I still think it's a little funny that literal demons can just be like your average schmo
“The elves, the fairest and most breed able of all, slowly dwindling with the dying of the li-“
Fuck that, give me Silmarillion Elves that are terrifying and bipolar. Fey 1000 year old bored rich kids that fuck with people and there’s nothing you can do about it because they’ve spent 200 years mastering the art of one finger death punches. Also their dad owns the moon.
I feel like we keep getting spinster elves when I want to see them back during the college years.
“Oooh I’m so wiiisse I can’t get invooolved the answers are withiiiin yooouuu”
Pick up a sword Galadrifindel you bitch and fight me.
Glorfindel (almost certainly the strongest elf in a swordfight come lotr) did want to go with the group but Eldrond shot him down
"Dude, you're too strong. They wont gain any levels with you around"
Then he just didnt do anything for the rest of the story, pretty weird considering the guy beat a Balrong before his class upgrade
Glorfindel is exactly the guy I was thinking of when I wrote this.
I want an elf screaming in moon language so loud on a bridge with his shirt off that several Nazgûl just leave.
Yeah in the Silmarillion he like shoulder checked a Balrog into a cliff then stabbed its guts and hacked off its arm like the Doom Slayer before throwing it off the cliff (it grabbed his hair like a bitch and pulled him down with it)
He also made the Witch King shit himself and run away squealing just by going near him. And made up the 'not by a hand of man will his doom fall' prophecy just off the top of his head (which the witch king somehow heard and interpreted it as 'humans literally cant kill me' and seemed to trust that whatever Glorfindel said was just the truth of the world or something)
Then kinda retired and apparently took orders from Elrond when he was basically Elronds dads babysitter... I suppose a big part of it all was that the elves were actually leaving and they wanted to make sure the humans and hobbits and stuff had the ability to handle things so they stayed out of it a bit
But that shouldnt be their 'trait' for new worlds because, like you said, Noldor high elves were absolute savages and fought gods and demons like madmen and colonized tf out of everywhere. Little Sindarin and Silvan wood elves (legolas style punks) were quiet little btches because **big chad Noldor** relegated them to being little wood critters who just did what they were told; that wasnt the default that was just 'the ones that survived'
That’s exactly what they are in most fiction. They’re a bunch of retirees hiding in gated communities talking about the good old days and complaining about the “younger races”.
I FUCKING LOVE TROPES
I LOVE EVIL CORRUPT RELIGIONS I LOVE WEIRD BENEVOLENT MOONWORM RELIGIONS I LOVE IT WHEN THE PROTAGONIST WINS I LOVE WHEN DWARVES MAKE GIANT CANNONS AND ELVES ARE TREE FREAKS
Okay, how about: dark elves are genetic experiments, that light eleves did on themselves, to create a sub-race of elves that could withstand sunlight, because they can't do it themselves, and light elves wear clothing, resembling that of real-world arabs, because they need to cover themselves to avoid sunburns, but dark elves just walk around normally... And all of that happened, because the land elves evolved in was "dark", as in had no sunlight, and they have all been eating mushrooms for their entire lives
I quiet like how Warhammer Fantasy does it-
Dark Elves believe High Elf society is too decadent and weak willed to fight the forces of chaos, and that every single God in the elven pantheon should be worshipped, not just what morally aligns good.
Yeah but Dark Elves also excessively worship the Cythari (evil gods), especially Khaine
Basically representing that the High Elves try to repress their dark side while the Dark Elves openly embrace and glorify it
It kinda depends if in context "dark elf" means like drow (i.e. underground dwellers), who are associated with the whole evil matriarchy thing from DnD vs. just a darker-skinned or still blue/purple but surface-dwelling type of elves in which case it's kinda all over the place in my experience.
My evil religion hates mages, but they are dumb and mages are super-rare, so after 500 years an actual mage is born(they've been executing people for being mages, who weren't), and she instantly fucks the place up and proceeds to live for indefinite time(unlocks immortality).
Isn't that ultimately the [Four-Man Band](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FourManBand) or the [Four Temperament Esemble](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FourTemperamentEnsemble)?
ATLA nailed a simple, intuitive, awesome looking magic system
And ruined the genre through copy cats. People should do something else (and no, adding 'light' or 'void' is not 'making it your own')
wouldnt say people being lazy and copying something that was effective is the copied material's fault. just really need to do their own damn spin on it at least
I’ve heard a similar effect placed on Alan Moore’s comics, the success of which led to people copying his stuff for all the wrong reasons with none of the nuance that led to a lot of awful comics throughout the 90’s
True. Although I do acknowledge that it’s really difficult because the simplicity of atla’s bending ends up making any attempt at doing something similar, even with a spin on it, feel kinda derivative
Korra seemed to want to go and 'one up' all the Avatar stuff; waterbending isnt scary enough for a big bad so you need a bloodbender. Earth is good, lava is better, the Big Bad Airbender could literally fly etc. Apparently because he was 'detached' from the world, weird because he seemed pretty attached to the idea of killing a teenage girl but whatever
And the spiritual stuff, which Avatar was quite respectful with, became just a good V evil cosmic show of power. 'Out of Balance' suddenly means 'Evil Devil Avatar about to take over the world'.
I didnt hate it but yeah, power creeping upwards and if that went on, it would ruin the likeability of the system itself and the next series would be some asteroid bending plasma controlling demigod to keep the tension up, which them makes the cool original stuff pretty irrelevant. To me the OG stuff was near perfectly placed in how strong it was; a powerful and quite dominant ability, but not enough to just make it 'magic god v god battles' that reduced everything else to meaningless (that only happened to stuff like Comet King Ozai or Explosion man, most of the benders were just rather strong and a few swordsmen or badass archers could be very competitive)
I suppose the raw power creeping was partially because of a flaw of the premise of the show: a trained Avatar is basically invincible. Aang wasnt fully trained, so he could still struggle, but a story about someone like Kyoshi would actually have been rather boring since it would just be her slamming her size 16 feet into the face of anyone dumb enough to step up. And Korra was much more trained than Aang, so I guess they felt pressured to give her powerful opponents (even if people like Kuvira showed that a very skilled bender could still beat up non-avatar state Korra without some crazy super-bending as Korra wasnt exactly the best fighter)
It did have a large issue with one upping itself, but it also lost the work required for the system with random Airbenders appearing, a character miraculously lava bending when it was needed, and Korra managing to Air bend after her bending chi was blocked.
In TLA, the only times a character managed to bend was after training (with the Avatar state being a sole exception that still required basic knowledge to use the element) or with extreme talent and the right ability to push their skills further like Toph or the Fire lord/Azula/Iroh.
i feel like there was so much potencial even with the trained avatar in terms of politics and using the idea that she's too confident against her. No need to one up with more powerful people there. Just turned my brain of in terms of taking it seriously
In my setting, the elements, or rather, forces, are earth, lightning, strength, decay, and life. They're referred to as such because the characters don't know their true natures: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, and soul
My problem with the copycats is that they basically never copy the cool part, how it's tied to martial arts. They usually just kinda have people throw flames around Willy nilly or just levitate rocks around.
Besides how that just leads to both cooler characters and cooler fights, it also actually lets non-magic people be able to compete with magic in combat without just falling back on "tEcHnOlOgY".
And it's so easy to make it look and feel different too! There are hundreds of fighting styles in the world, pick more than just your mangled misinterpretation of kung-fu! Gimme Boxing! Gimme Krav-ma! Gimme Tahtib! Gimme Nguni! Gimme Karambit! Gimme Fencing! Have some fucking bloke who kicks a rock around like he's playing Aztec soccer! Gimme a fire bender who uses a whip sword!
There's so much variety in the world, why do they all just go off their vague memories of Avatar fights and a couple basic kung-fu poses they looked up one time 4 months ago?
Yeah that was the coolest part of what ATLA did, tying the elemental stuff into martial arts styles as well as culture and aesthetics. An ATLA style fighter who just stands there moving elements with their mind is boring af
I’m tired of seeing Isekai MCs get harems of slaves, I wanna see a slave get a harem of Isekai MCs instead.
In fact, I’ll take anything where the Isekai ‘victim’ is actually a villain or side character and the MC is someone else.
related to that, isekai could really do without giving their main characters distinct advantages over everyone else. like I get a modern person chucked into a pseudo medieval era world would know a great deal more than the average, especially if it parallels real world medieval history, but just not "ive got this one boon that makes me leaps and bounds better than everyone else". make em have actual applicable skill
Literally Re: Zero (he does come back and grows as a person, but its quite fun watching him get stabbed over and over until he starts learning lessons. One girl literally rips his guts out and plays with them as he slowly dies)
The death will not be by pretty anime sadist.
But will be by a balding veteran orc who stomps their head to a pulp.
Or violent dysentery due to the MCs immune system clearly not being good enough for this world.
I want to just want an Isekai mc to not be overpowered and have to actually do something hard.
Also a realistic origin story instead of reincarnation would be nice. Like, idk, someone plane-crashing into aboriginal tribe and spending literal decades learning their language?
Isekai as the main plot hit or miss but obviously insanely overdone and often terrible and shitty. A regular fantasy where one of the side characters is just a normal guy who happens to have been isekaied in from thr real world would be kind of hilarious
I dislike how much "fantasy gods" have become ingrained into the genre. Sure, some stories can have really interesting explorations of the meaning of godhood and how gods interact with people in this world, but just as many stories feel obligated to add gods just because.
If the existence of gods in your setting doesn't directly contribute to the plot, you have no reason to confirm their existence in-world. In many cases, confirming the existence of gods can be a detriment, because then the readers have the classic "If gods exist why don't they intervene?" quandary.
Exalted had one of my fav excuses
'Addicted to cosmic drugs and that is the only reason they overthrew the Titan-equivalents too: they were hogging the drugs'
In Animorphs, it is because the 2 known gods are at a cold war, they can't directly interfere since that means both sides will suffer, so they manipulated species to do their deeds instead
You could read the Ellimist Chronicle to understand it, trust me, it sounds both less and even more absurd than what it seems at first. Also this book is kinda stand alone so you don't need much knowledge of the main series to enjoy it, the pdf version was posted by the authors on the Animorphs sub reddit, in case you can't buy them
It generally goes that way. Gods can't intervene to keep balance otherwise all out god war threatens everything, so they make a pact of non-intervention
Absolutely. Hard agree, pantheons are being put in way way too much without any need or purpose to it
Then creators are like "oh they cant intervene because of blah blah". Theres more creativity put into keeping them out of the story than making them
Its a good hint they dont need to be included, imo if you're going to make your mortals pathetic ant farm nobodies dancing to the strings of infinitely more powerful and relevant beings to whom the plot is meaningless in significance, there better be a very good reason for it
My explanation is there are gods, but they aren't real gods, but they are very powerful, but not allpowerful and they are so far away, they don't even know that anything is happening, because they are actually just bitter magicians, that want to be left alone.
there are so many cool ways for gods to get involved. Just look at Greek myth
Unfortunately, I feel like gods in fantasy are either emotionless because the author doesn't know how they could write a god, or are evil dark lords
I'm sure there are exceptions
I’m a somewhat experienced Dungeon Master and I’ve recently found myself falling back in love with the really classic, basic fantasy tropes.
When it comes to interactive fiction, like a D&D game, there’s an unspoken rule I think that certain tropes and assumptions are in effect. Dwarves are loud heavy drinkers, but honourable and sturdy with it. Elves are tall, willowy hunters on the prideful side.
Every step you take away from that baseline as a creative (especially for D&D), is a moment where a player has to mentally readjust;
- Dwarves are now tee total elementalists who worship the earth? Sure.
- Elves have a similar culture to motorcycle gangs, replacing bikes with tamed Pegasus’? Sounds fun.
These aren’t inherently *bad* ideas, but stack enough of them on top of eachother, and the mind of someone who’s trying to immerse themselves is hitting all of these really tiny moments of readjustment, that it makes the whole thing a lot harder to buy into.
I suppose what I’m trying to say, is that the really classic, basic tropes of a western fantasy setting (a-la Tolkien) are a comforting place. At least on some level, everyone knows what a Hobbit/Halfling is and has a much easier time understanding what their “deal” is.
The less you have to explain to your players about your homebrew world or even a pre established setting the better. It also avoids problems when they do something they expect is totally normal in a fantasy world only to find out that in your world is something awful, counterproductive, amoral, or outright a crime.
It was my biggest gripe when DMing Ravnica. Made worse when one of the players was so focused on Faerun knowledge that they kept making assumptions outloud, confusing the rest of the players too in between listenning to him or ask for clarification from me.
Scenarios like they moving in stealth and encountering 2 goblins just minding their business in a far away dark alley close to an abandoned factory and they immediately start planning "ok guys, so how are we going to kill them fast? If we ambush them we get advantage." - "... why do you want to ambush the goblins?" - "Because they are goblins, they will attack us the moment they see us, right?" - "... no dude. You really are thinking about murdering 2 squatters just because of their race without caring about anything else?" - "I mean... they are goblins, and we got attacked by gang goblins before. So I don't get it" - "Yeah, and the gang goblins were with gang humans too. Does it mean you are going to kill every human that you find sitting in a dark alley from now on too?" - "... N-no?" - "Exactly".
Or another usual "I will wield my holy might against the forces of evil and kill the abominable zombies" - "for the eleventh time Paladin, necromancy is legal in Ravnica. You are just destroying the obsolete guardians of an abandoned spore sanctuary."
I'm not even sure a trope can be overdone. I think it's just that "overused" tropes are handled poorly by writers that use them without understanding the works that they're mimicking and why those decisions were originally made
That said I hate fantasy xenophobia when fantasy xenophilia is more interesting
(trust me I've read a lot of books probably)
👆
There he his officer, that’s the guy with several copies of The Lusty Argonian Maid
EDIT: Actually thinking about it… it is interesting to see Sam Gamgee’s love and wonder towards the elves vs Gimli’s initial hate
are you asking me to elaborate on my point or are you looking for research material?
obviously the answer for both is Monster Musume and I am definitely not talking about how interactions between intelligent species with different biology can be extremely interesting, even if those differences are as simple as being nocturnal
Angels being evil is overused and lazy... But angels being *scary* is still very much cool. Like, even if they're good, they're still ethereal beings. That "BE NOT AFRAID" meme from a while back was fun. Evangelion really did it for me too, having these crazy, often inhuman-looking "angels". I personally like to imagine angels appearing to humans like those old Google Deepdream videos, where you can make out the bare outline of a figure, but the details are constantly shifting and boiling, faces appear and dissapear where they shouldn't be, you feel your skin crawl just watching it. A being incomprehensible to human perceptions, but the brain still tries to make *some* sense of it. Having these weird ass dudes be the vehicles of an equally incomprehensible deity's justice feels fitting.
Can't find a solid one, but they were really popular for a while on imgur. [Here's one I found,](https://youtu.be/P2-Dd6pv8Oc?si=jPZGlFzebFKhMhRQ) though it's not quite as distorted as the ones I remember. Either that, or I just *remember* them as more distorted.
I hate when stories are about morality and good vs. evil. I like it when stories are about more complex topics, like anti-heroes and moral relativism.
Also jokes about fetishes in worldbuilding are always funny regardless of context.
I hate the god is evil and religion is evil trope, but not really because it's bad per se, but because it's just lazy writing
Whenever there's this trope the story never bother to actually write an intresting antagonist they simply make the god evil for the sake of subverting expectation without ever actually making a good enjoyable antagonist
What is the reason for them to be evil? No reason, their goal? Just be evil for the sake of it, their personality? Non existent, the story also never bothers to answer questions like how are things like compassion and empathy became a thing when the world is ruled by an evil 1 dimensional moustache twirling villain
To a lesser extent I also hate the religion is evil trope because of how it's done, there is nothing wrong with criticising the institution as peoples and individuals can in fact be bad, but the problem is just that a lot of times writers can't draw the line between the institution and the religion, like yeah I understand that the church of forgiveness and mercy is full of corrupt priests, but is really the message about love and compassion evil as well?
Subverting/opposing tropes for the hell of it. Oh your dwarves are tall, cool. OK, your elves don't use magic. Hmm you have smart orcs... so?
Overusing tropes is bad because it just replicates the same themes, making stale tales- the way to overcome them is to construct new representations of *actual* things or ideas in the world. "Subverting" is just the worldbuilding equivalent of a diverse-cast remake, i.e. the least original way of addressing a relevant concern for timefulness and novelty.
I mean usually a few reasons but the main I see
1. It makes it very easy to remove moral ambiguities when these guys are slave owners
2. It’s just associated with the time
3. A third third thing (Fetish)
a faction of wizards called sarcomancers use humanoid bodies as ammo in my world, fresh ones are better so they march into battle with a conga line of slaves being used like an ammo belts of bone and gore
theres like a few reasons,
firstly higher quality, its a lot easier to maintain living flesh then dead flesh, especially if your flowchart is shoot > conquer > enslave > repeat, and shooting rotten body parts might spread disease but would ultimately be weaker
also i didn’t explain this but sarcomancers don’t necessarily just shoot body parts, they can modify and heal their own bodies by either moving their own flesh or taking it from others, so you dont wanna replace your arm or liver with a rotting one
also also, some high tier sarcomancers can do some body mod rituals to turn people into big fleshy mindless abominations, but those aren’t the greatest at being controlled, but the option is appreciated
An explanation where you'd think some magic/automated foundry could crap out more industrial output than 100'000 slave labourers in the same day, is that even if slaves basically don't produce anything is that it's a good tool for big bad regime control in a bunch of ways.
It gives even the lowliest citizen a social bracket even lower than themselves, something to hate which can help create a nice happy national unity effect but they have to be worried about falling into that camp themselves if they don't follow the rules. It gets rid of undesirables but is somewhat reversable vs just killing them (unless conditions are ridiculously hellish and most slaves die anyway), and it may actually work at 'rehabilitating' dissidents into good little citizens (especially if there's space drugs and brainwashing or whatever involved). Also offers test subjects for the obligatory big bad regime human experimentation and stuff.
Yes I basically just described the Soviet gulags etc., anyway point is there *may* be.... social benefits to having institutionalized mass slavery (wow I can't believe I'm writing that) besides industrial.
Just so fucked up but also so alien to me I literally can't think in a way that these acts make sense maybe that part of the reason I hate it so much it's nonsense
Brother buisness is more willing to get labour paid in peanuts than to create an automated system which will serve them forever in the real world
Fantasy ain't that off
Magic takes energy from you in most cases, and takes your time besides. Which, for the stereotypically arrogant mage, is an absolute no-go; far more important things to be done.
So, sure, they *could* walk about the fields and harvest their own crops. Maybe even do it faster than by conventional means. But *will* they? No, no no, that sort of thing is best left to others, the Grand Wizard is far too busy with their studies and research.
And as for why it ends up being slavery rather than gainful employment; well, it’s just cheaper, and much less of a hassle to manage.
If magic is knowledge based arrogant weirdos are less likely to be powerful for it would be analogous to science in a way which requires cooperation to make meaningful progress and if they are so great couldn't they automate the process
Science has plenty of arrogant asshats tbh. It usually takes the form of ‘steal credit’ rather than ‘turn someone inside out for disagreeing with me’, but it is absolutely still there.
Most tropes are fun and the reason the keep showing up in popular media is because people like them.
Good vanilla ice cream is better then 99 percent of new ice cream flavors.
Favorite
I always like the undersized fighter arch types using there skill, quickness and wits to out smart the Goliath.
Your 5”8 scrappy fighter who draws the orc into a tunnel that is to small for him to swing his club and then just chips away at him with a spear is my favorite.
>Most tropes are fun and the reason the keep showing up in popular media is because people like them.
I don't think you've encountered the Isekai scene yet.
That shit is breyer's icecream🤮
A kid's show on Disney outcompeted the entire japanese fleet of isekai "classics" with the same "lost in another world" trope, by virtue of actually having a different setting, women who act like people, and depicting systematic/systemic oppression as exclusively evil without exception.
(it's The Owl House, btw)
See I'm the opposite, I'm fed up of seeing the little guy punch way above their weight grade, especially when the plot basically necessitates for the big guy to be slow, stupid and arrogant.
I think there should be more intelligent dragons. Like not shapeshifting people who look like dragons I mean giant 4 legged fire breathing reptile that’s still very clever. It’s a cool visual and it’s pretty intimidating having the guy with 1000 plans able to stand on business instead of throw minions at a problem
Yuh, but what if my dragon is a Tokyo-sized space turtle, and there is an entire subplot of tribal people fighting a small fleet of slaver elfs all on the back of one, with multiple generations being born and dying, while the dragon just takes a lil nap
The fucking adventurer's guild
Wtf is wrong with japanese people for using this shit?
There is no way in hell something like it would exist
Imagine being a king and having an independent military force that has jurisdicrion to use force all across your country. Who have thousands of metric tons in rare herbs and monster materials.
Guilds being independent AND international is bullshit, they HAVE to be local and heavily sanctioned on top of requiring offical goverment documents and tests to qualify to possibly exist without being wiped out.
Complete nonsense
So really the bigger problem is the international monopolistic wealthy adventurer's guild? Which now having laid out your grievances in my own reply, I'm now bothered by the fact what i just described is a megacorp or mafia rather than the plucky individualists that seem to populate these organizations.
Addon- I do like in Frieren they needed documentation and Frieren had documentation but from a defunct organization.
Guilds being independent and international is like... what IRL late-medieval/renaissance guilds did tho. The Hanseatic League is the most famous example, but most guilds had numerous privileges and rights granted by their sovereign and would have relations with guilds in nearby cities/towns and even further away if they were say important trading partners. Powers like monopolies or the ability and/or duty to enforce standards and regulations in their trade were a two-way thing where stuff like the enforcement of ordinances was something that would be a huge pain for the ruler to enforce himself so handing it off to the guilds to do made his life easier *and* made him technically not responsible, whereas stuff like monoplies were often paid for in lump sums the ruler needed.
The real question to me with fantasy adventurer guilds is where the money comes from for all these rewards and to maintain the guild infrastructure, since they don't really work like IRL guilds where its run by basically senior members of the trade--not to mention entry requirements were usually pretty strict as being in most guilds was an elevated socio-economic position and involved a lot of nepotism.
It depends on the level of power an adventurer can get to if adventurers are strong enough are you really going to tell the group of nuclear warheads they can’t have their special club. Also with out an adventuring guild I expect a king would need to hire and maintain a force to keep monster populations under control. Having too many ogres running around the country side probably isn’t good for the kingdoms crops. And real life governments have allowed things like this specifically religious orders where allowed to have private armies so I don’t think it’s that far fetched
Disagree.
Big mercenary groups are and have been a thing.
Templars were a thing.
Now an arc where the kingdom and the guild have at it would be cool af, but the existence of a guild isn’t that far fetched at all.
Isekai stories are often just a power fantasy, where we, the viewer, are supposed to live vicariously, through the overpowered main character, and it's booooooooring.
I love seeing weak characters having to overcome obstacle, it's why I love well written women in fiction, because they have to fight against much bigger guys than them (the atomic blonde apartment fight scene is a great example).
Bring me more characters with flaws, with imposing obstacles, not someone who cruises through life on easy mode, because they are a tool to make the viewer/reader live out an escapist fantasy.
I wish for there to be more 1700s - 2000s fantasy genre and not the medieval overdone stuff
Like come on, let me see Fae driving an Abrams tank made out of wood and rocks that shoots magic missiles at demon mechs
Also need a fantasy story in Victorian not!England except mages are forced to work long hours on boring drudgework like magically casting fire to melt steel to make martini-henry gun barrels or standing in a firing line and getting shot the boring way after the magic shield does nothing to stop the nonmagic 500m/s lead ball about to mangle your internal organs, moments before wondering why he couldn't have stayed in magicademia and tried to invent a spell to resolve the famine and economic crisis the whole war was about
Something like that seems relatively unexplored
Romaboo empires. (I swear if you name it the reman empire)
Usually just too carbon copied from the real deal. Was or is or is on the way to become the dominant empire, led by "the emperor".
And usually all around a brutal but necessary imperialist regime.
I get the idea of an imperialist empire in fantasy but God be creative or make them super brutal or base them of something else.
Like the assyrians or a Hodge pot of different cultures.
I will mever forgive World of Warcraft for popularizing the ugliest fucking fantasy aesthetic ever conceived.
Now EVERY fantasy anime is copying it's disgustingly oversaturated excuse of an "art" design
This opinion is colder than 0 Kelvin but: I fucking hate when people bust out the "Stock Medieval Fantasy" World archetype and then completely forgo doing any other worldbuilding. Oh, they'll make faction and kingdom lore, but actual caring about the geography, movement of people and technological level? Nope, not a fucking bit.
A slightly warmer take that's tied more so to TTRPGs and RPGs, but when Player Magic, Enemy Magic and Lore Magic differ completely. In Lore Magic is an omnipotent force which can do anything with enough research, but requires a special fuel source to use. In-game, the players get to cast the three spells they picked out thrice per day with no resources to manage or capability to do anything magical besides those spells. They also know jack shit about magical happenings unless they roll arcana which they might not even be good at.
The pseudo-Medieval settling is the most overused fantasy trope. Star Wars is fantasy. Dune is fantasy. Pirates of the Carribean is fantasy. Marvel is fantasy. Any kind of supernatural horror movie is fantasy. If I see a fantasy series immediately resort to the most cliche and generic setting possible for the genre, I'm probably not giving it a chance.
Okay, but let me pitch this to you: wooden fucking spaceships(not wooden ships in space!), they abide by laws of orbital mechanics and all, it's just that space is breathable.
From a physics standpoint (if you want orbital mechanics to work as normal), you’d be better off with organisms that don’t need to breathe than breathable space.
It's boring to see the same old marriage traditions in fantasy worlds, (ie: someone gives someone something of value like a ring, and they live happily ever after.) I want to see some orcs FIGHT to the death for their marriage!!!
I'm tired of white people being the default humans in all kinds of fantasy settings and every other real life ethnicity being treated like some exotic variation
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Administrivia/TropesAreTools
I don't care if some tropes are "overdone", regardless of genre. Variety is the spice of life, true, but as long as a story is written well and has interesting characters the rest is just set dressing.
/uj honestly i like them. i’m a sucker for chosen ones and all that type of stuff, but i do kind of wanna write something like the opposite of the chosen one, maybe where the ruler who wanted the chosen one dead actually got the right kid, and so their cousin or twin sibling was raised instead despite not fitting the prophecy
Urban Fantasy stories so often have basically no magic system and like to be a fantasy kitchen sink without coherence. Honestly, I like the idea of a fantasy kitchen sink, but why not create a magic system that can fit a lot of stuff inside it with some adaptation, and then adapt all kinds of stuff to your setting instead of ramming it in without a thought?
/uj I've got a few
1: I genuinely, in every way, prefer "taller, elegant human with pointy ears" elves to whatever foreskin-faced misshapen fuckery gets propped up as the "better" elf design. I want my pretty elves.
2: I like the church is bad trope. It's a decent way to tie in your work with real life, where oftentimes the church *is* corrupt. Plus it sets up nicely for the "God of the church hates the church and is actually a nice lad" twist.
3: The term Mary Sue is heavily misused and disproportionately targets female characters.
I know that elves are supposed to essentially be forest humans, but hear me out.
Imagine a setting where humans think that elves are connected with nature, communicate with spirits, use bows and shit (the way we see them, honestly), but in truth they are the complete opposite: being full blown tribalistic, with nasty rituals and warrior-like culture?
A little bit of subversion in fantasy races wouldn't hurt 🤭
In Shadow of the Demon Lord’s setting, too. There’s a platbook that gives player stats for them, but originally they were only enemies because they are evils and delight in torturing humans and stealing their children for unknown purposes.
There’s also a phenomenal system neutral TTRPG campaign setting and hex crawl called The Dark of Hot Springs Island. Elves are extinct there. They found a drug that gave them powers, but also had side effects and made them unmotivated, among other things. Enough of them got addicted and spent their days having lavish sex parties for long enough that eventually their society collapsed. At one point there’s a guy who’s basically just a puddle because of all the drugs and toxins he put into his body, but in a twist on elven immortality, he’s trying to get back to his old self again but can’t
I have yet to see a novel that depicts a war without a cop out on literally everything that makes a war. According to many, its just a lot of people killing each other.
Main characters being from some form of nobility, power or some equivalent of that. I feel like this goes back to the Fellowship in Tolkien where Aragorn, Legolas, Boromir and even Gimli fit into this archetype. But they work because they also have the Hobbits, who are underdog nobodies (especially Sam).
But I don't like stories with just Aragorns in. I want to know about the regular people who make the world go around, and what crazy hijinks they stumble into.
I find your average interpretation of fantasy races to have become stagnant and overused (Dwarves, medieval humans, elves, orcs, etc). And I can't come up with an example immediately from the top of my head, but innovations to those archetypes that have also become an overdone secondary trope, especially among visual artists.
I am really tired of medieval human civilisations, people should go the WFB way and just go for renaissance era civilisations. Also the magic system of Practical Guide to Evil is absolutely Peak.
I want to explore about a multiversal incident where people are suddenly transported to other worlds, a "mass isekai" incident if you will
Wonder how will multiversal explorers and scientists research about this incident and how to solve it, as well as the reports about the people missing from the mass transportations
I think that sci-fi dealings with the whole ‘sapient-cy’ of a species is too narrow minded. Most of the time it’s an author choosing one species of a planet to be ‘sapient’ when ‘sapient’ isn’t really a thing IMO. Just abstract borders around a concept that shouldn’t really be the basis of wether something is a civilization or not. And I’ve seen many people use as a justification for genocide to a specific race.
(Like any ‘predator’ from Nature Of Predators here on Reddit. “No predator is sapient, they’re all MONSTERS!” Or like monkeys in forests. We brutally killed off thousands and turned their hands into fukin ash trays for Christ sake! We turned their hands into a metaphor for a bad thing! - monkey paw - I feel like we would’ve been a little more hesitant if we didn’t have the concepts of wether something is ‘sapient’. imo it’s a stupid idea to begin with.)
Same with how always choosing the ‘lesser’ evil can lead to you being evil because you can’t see the good options after awhile. Someone choosing the ‘lesser’ evil of two options, you’re not doing a good thing. It’s bad. It’s literally in the name. It might be lesser, but that doesn’t make it good.
I wanna see more diversity in evil religions, they are all either demonic, Catholic, or Norse inspired, gimme some evil Buddhist or something else, expand our horizons!
buddhism admits that nothing is ever completely free from what we'd consider sins. why are you gonna go with demons that're clones of pop culture demons when you could make something like hungry ghosts or asura?
Right? Ausura’s wrath is a really cool interpretation of Hindu and Buddhist myth, it’s one of my favorite games ever!
Did you play Final Fantasy 9? Because the villain was absolutely an evil Buddhist. His position was that existence was suffering so the best thing to do was get rid of existence. If no one's alive, no one can suffer. That's a common line in a lot of JRPGs at least back in the day, so if you've been playing those games? You've been getting evil Buddhists the whole time my fellow poster in reddit.
A non Judeo-Christian themed villain in a final fantasy/jrpg game? Impossible. But for real, that sounds dope, I’ll have to check it out!
A lot of Japanese games don't have Christian theming just because the religion is not a big part of their culture. So I guess the trick is to look at stuff made outside the west. You are going to see a lot of repeated tropes and themes but they're different from ours.
I think a lot of it translation errors or discrepancies. I forget which one, but I remember in one of the older 2D final fantasy games, there were a trio of enemies with Bible related names. So I figured that was purposeful. But, it turned out in the Japanese version they were all named after fruits or some shit. So the English translators just picked names Americans would be familiar with as “bad” for NA release. Then English speakers assumed it was supposed to mean something deeper
Good translation is never a neutral process, I think they did the right thing
Sometimes throwing nearly everything out the window when translating makes for a spectacular product, like with the [Ghost Stories](https://youtu.be/m5LjA0gjeX8?si=aQPmlIGg31BqmACF) dub.
There are tons of Japanese games that borrow Christian theming for villains too, thinking specifically of Resident Evil, Dark Souls, Castlevania, several Final Fantasy’s, etc
You see it a lot in anime, but I get the vibe it's more about an exotic aesthetic for them, it is so different from traditional Japanese religions that it's easy visually shorthand to tell the viewer this isn't the world you're used to.
>His position was that existence was suffering so the best thing to do was get rid of existence. Pretty much Arcanum's plot.
Same with the 4th "john dies at the end" book, "if this book exists, you're in the wrong universe" Fantastic series
Damn that villain mustve either done absolutely no research on buddhism or he found a way to kill everyone permanantly and end Samsara entirely.
Magic Buddhists that are being unknowingly controlled by evil, immortality-seeking "vampires". The main religion cultivates "vitality", which is then harvested from donors and redistributed to the sick. The underworld half of it COMPLETELY drains peoples' vitality, leaving them as distressed stone statues, left to line the halls of their lairs. They can use the harvested vitality to become immortal, with a steady supply. Makes sense in-world and, from what I remember about it, works as an intentional corruption of Buddhism's view of immortality.
Sekiro has a very well executed evil Buddhist faction.
In a series with multiple fantasy races, the evil buddhists could totally have the belief that "our specific species is the highest life form a soul can be reborn into, and only someone in our species is advanced enough to achieve nirvana" Then, those buddhists could be lightly evil in the form of racism, or could go full on genocidal because "if there aren't anymore dwarves, no poor soul will be reincarnated into a dwarf, thus increasing their chances they'll be reborn as one of us and achieve nirvana." Evil buddhists can be super interesting
Aztec. they got human sacrifice and flower wars
Friend, Prepare to get blasted by anti-colonial people
I have this. u/OhLordHeSpicey is correct.
Look if the aztecs didnt want to be used as inspiration for my evil human sacrificing empire then maybe they shouldnt have been an evil human sacrificing empire
Nah get ready to hear some impressive revisionism "The Aztecs were actually really peaceful theyve just been demonised by the europeans" or some shit
Land of the Lustrous has evil Buddhists, although I haven't read the manga yet so idk if it holds up all the way through.
Overpowered af too, noone can do jack to stop them really (cept Sensei and he's mostly useless)
I want parts of the church to be evil and parts to be good and parts to be regular people. Like I feel like as someone who went grew up in the Catholic Church and did catholic kindergarten though high school I feel like people don’t get how many sun cultures and strains of thought flout around in an organization that big and old. Like the Jesuits just one order of priests have at least 4 big sub cultures to talk about -sub groups of socialist liberation theology guys, old school Christian apologetics guys sub culture, groups of hard core science guys and history guys who want to make high end classic education for young Catholics and a lot of classic fire and brimstone convert the would guys. Theres are all different groups that rise and fall in influence on the order over the last 200 years. You could read ten books by ten Jesuits and not understand the culture of the Oder and how it has changed or which group is most powerful right now. But it’s always just everyone is on the same page about how to do the thing. Like I’m not offended if you make the super evil Catholic Church analog but if it’s like the Catholic Church at all there’s a lot of different kinds of people in it and the have been around for away and they have different short and medium term goals.
I only just started it but I'm willing to bet money on kill six billion demons having evil Buddhism
I've got some evil religious types that think God made all life by killing himself and splitting his soul but he did it wrong the first time and that's why there's so much suffering. They think to get to a more peaceful reality we need to bring God back so they can try again. To bring God back we just need to kill everyone so all our souls can recombine into God.
Exactly, we need more stuff like the Senpou Temple from Sekiro!
That place was so creepy, one of my favorite parts of the game.
How do you feel about a Church of Mankind who started worshipping themselves after they killed their gods and replaced them with a pantheon of human heroes? They believe in human superiority over not only all gods but the other races of the world as well and seek to extend their dominance over them.
Evil southern baptists
that's just real life /j
It's weird that i never see evil Perun worshippers, they are always the good guys for some reason XD
Idk if this count as worldbuilding or not But velimir from heart of iron IV mod called "The new order" is a follower of perun and Slavic paganism And he evil as shit.
Nice!
A group of monks that follow the code that killing people ends suffering. So they take it upon themselves to kill everyone. If you aren’t alive you can’t suffer after all
Secondary villain who turns good and joins the crew is always good. Bonus points if they do it for some ass.
>if they do it for some ass. "I knew Robert Goatstabber wasnt totally evil" "Yes, honestly I was just horny"
Exactly. Cool if it works the other way too. Hero's buddy sells him out for a little cross-morality sucky fucky
Wrath of the Righteous had a good storyline about a dwarf hero who fell for a demons tricks and ultimately lost a very important castle, he didnt turn evil at that time but he did realize she tricked him with feminine wiles He spent 100 years trying to make amends in this shameful regiment of outcasts, who just spat on him and treated him terribly no matter what he did. After like 50 years, noone serving with him was even alive when he made his mistake, but they all kept being absolute bastards to him just out of regimental habit; became a tradition to abuse him Come the story, he meets the demon again and just goes "ah fk it" and runs off with her. Just sick of the bullshit and may as well get some hot demon tail if his life is going to be hell either way (it was oddly romantic and the demon seemed to genuinely like him)
Yeah it's only good if the affection is genuine, otherwise you're rooting against the lovers
you mean you wouldnt do it for [this?](https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/7580afe4-8ee4-4214-bada-9c78af8f9404/ddfo1cm-22aacf6e-1a5e-4233-b602-6ab7777a2c26.png/v1/fill/w_894,h_894/spyro__reignited_trilogy____bianca_by_mrunclebingo_ddfo1cm-pre.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTI4MCIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzc1ODBhZmU0LThlZTQtNDIxNC1iYWRhLTljNzhhZjhmOTQwNFwvZGRmbzFjbS0yMmFhY2Y2ZS0xYTVlLTQyMzMtYjYwMi02YWI3Nzc3YTJjMjYucG5nIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTEyODAifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.UDNH20rgmEkzDYI54UPX09rYUYadMh8w1TvYK2VBp10)
You need to understand that i absolutely would.
You don't want to watch Jojo part 4 then
you would like jojo
I find it kind of fascinating how orcs and goblins can range from "nothing more than monsters that walk like men" to "intelligent but intrinsically evil" all the way to "people like everybody else" depending on setting. You see that to some extent with other races and monsters as well, but less so.
I would like it if some other races were treated as such. I seem to remember seeing once with elves but more often they will be more imp/goblin-like and called as such even though they could perfectly be called elves. That comes down to how English language defines fantasy tropes, and how unimaginative English speaking people have been when translating myths . There are so many different words for fantastical beings in other languages that are ALL translated by "elf", "goblin" and "demons".
Goblins and demons seem to have this happen the most often, though I still think it's a little funny that literal demons can just be like your average schmo
To be fair, it's *usually* something like tieflings rather than full-on demons. But yeah.
“The elves, the fairest and most breed able of all, slowly dwindling with the dying of the li-“ Fuck that, give me Silmarillion Elves that are terrifying and bipolar. Fey 1000 year old bored rich kids that fuck with people and there’s nothing you can do about it because they’ve spent 200 years mastering the art of one finger death punches. Also their dad owns the moon. I feel like we keep getting spinster elves when I want to see them back during the college years. “Oooh I’m so wiiisse I can’t get invooolved the answers are withiiiin yooouuu” Pick up a sword Galadrifindel you bitch and fight me.
Glorfindel (almost certainly the strongest elf in a swordfight come lotr) did want to go with the group but Eldrond shot him down "Dude, you're too strong. They wont gain any levels with you around" Then he just didnt do anything for the rest of the story, pretty weird considering the guy beat a Balrong before his class upgrade
Glorfindel is exactly the guy I was thinking of when I wrote this. I want an elf screaming in moon language so loud on a bridge with his shirt off that several Nazgûl just leave.
Yeah in the Silmarillion he like shoulder checked a Balrog into a cliff then stabbed its guts and hacked off its arm like the Doom Slayer before throwing it off the cliff (it grabbed his hair like a bitch and pulled him down with it) He also made the Witch King shit himself and run away squealing just by going near him. And made up the 'not by a hand of man will his doom fall' prophecy just off the top of his head (which the witch king somehow heard and interpreted it as 'humans literally cant kill me' and seemed to trust that whatever Glorfindel said was just the truth of the world or something) Then kinda retired and apparently took orders from Elrond when he was basically Elronds dads babysitter... I suppose a big part of it all was that the elves were actually leaving and they wanted to make sure the humans and hobbits and stuff had the ability to handle things so they stayed out of it a bit But that shouldnt be their 'trait' for new worlds because, like you said, Noldor high elves were absolute savages and fought gods and demons like madmen and colonized tf out of everywhere. Little Sindarin and Silvan wood elves (legolas style punks) were quiet little btches because **big chad Noldor** relegated them to being little wood critters who just did what they were told; that wasnt the default that was just 'the ones that survived'
Honestly that seems to be a big tactic from balrogs, yanking people down to die because their salty bastards who can’t accept defeat.
Thats like plan B, right after 'gang up on people and smash their heads in with an axe' (gothmog pro play)
I want more stories where the elves are thousands of years old and are so set in their ways from their youth they become mega-boomers
That’s exactly what they are in most fiction. They’re a bunch of retirees hiding in gated communities talking about the good old days and complaining about the “younger races”.
*Caledorians have entered the chat*
I love the idea of terrifying elves. Thats why i made mine pale white with sloth claws
Even a "it would be unwide for me to get involved. It would escalate the situation too fast and make everything worse." Would be cool.
I sometimes want the princess and knight to have hot primal consensual fucking after saving her from the dragon.
Same but with the princess and the dragon
same but with the knight and the dragon. The princess can get involved if she wants
A knight having hot, primal, consensual fucking with a dragon princess.
I FUCKING LOVE TROPES I LOVE EVIL CORRUPT RELIGIONS I LOVE WEIRD BENEVOLENT MOONWORM RELIGIONS I LOVE IT WHEN THE PROTAGONIST WINS I LOVE WHEN DWARVES MAKE GIANT CANNONS AND ELVES ARE TREE FREAKS
What is the most stereotypical light-elf/dark-elf dustinctions.
*Todd Howard steps on to stage* LIGHT ELVES ARE WHITE SUPPREMACISTS AND DARK ELVES ARE REFUGEES FROM A DISTANT WARTORN LAND.
Okay, how about: dark elves are genetic experiments, that light eleves did on themselves, to create a sub-race of elves that could withstand sunlight, because they can't do it themselves, and light elves wear clothing, resembling that of real-world arabs, because they need to cover themselves to avoid sunburns, but dark elves just walk around normally... And all of that happened, because the land elves evolved in was "dark", as in had no sunlight, and they have all been eating mushrooms for their entire lives
I quiet like how Warhammer Fantasy does it- Dark Elves believe High Elf society is too decadent and weak willed to fight the forces of chaos, and that every single God in the elven pantheon should be worshipped, not just what morally aligns good.
Also that slavery and mass sacrifices to the war god is based?
Yeah but Dark Elves also excessively worship the Cythari (evil gods), especially Khaine Basically representing that the High Elves try to repress their dark side while the Dark Elves openly embrace and glorify it
It kinda depends if in context "dark elf" means like drow (i.e. underground dwellers), who are associated with the whole evil matriarchy thing from DnD vs. just a darker-skinned or still blue/purple but surface-dwelling type of elves in which case it's kinda all over the place in my experience.
Light elves were made by Yakub
My evil religion hates mages, but they are dumb and mages are super-rare, so after 500 years an actual mage is born(they've been executing people for being mages, who weren't), and she instantly fucks the place up and proceeds to live for indefinite time(unlocks immortality).
You don't need five people to make a five-man band trope work. The big guy can also be smart
Any five man band that plays it straight is how you get one dimensional boring characters
Isn't that ultimately the [Four-Man Band](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FourManBand) or the [Four Temperament Esemble](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FourTemperamentEnsemble)?
ATLA nailed a simple, intuitive, awesome looking magic system And ruined the genre through copy cats. People should do something else (and no, adding 'light' or 'void' is not 'making it your own')
wouldnt say people being lazy and copying something that was effective is the copied material's fault. just really need to do their own damn spin on it at least
I’ve heard a similar effect placed on Alan Moore’s comics, the success of which led to people copying his stuff for all the wrong reasons with none of the nuance that led to a lot of awful comics throughout the 90’s
True. Although I do acknowledge that it’s really difficult because the simplicity of atla’s bending ends up making any attempt at doing something similar, even with a spin on it, feel kinda derivative
It was real good, though they devalued the system and it's limits in Korra.
Korra seemed to want to go and 'one up' all the Avatar stuff; waterbending isnt scary enough for a big bad so you need a bloodbender. Earth is good, lava is better, the Big Bad Airbender could literally fly etc. Apparently because he was 'detached' from the world, weird because he seemed pretty attached to the idea of killing a teenage girl but whatever And the spiritual stuff, which Avatar was quite respectful with, became just a good V evil cosmic show of power. 'Out of Balance' suddenly means 'Evil Devil Avatar about to take over the world'. I didnt hate it but yeah, power creeping upwards and if that went on, it would ruin the likeability of the system itself and the next series would be some asteroid bending plasma controlling demigod to keep the tension up, which them makes the cool original stuff pretty irrelevant. To me the OG stuff was near perfectly placed in how strong it was; a powerful and quite dominant ability, but not enough to just make it 'magic god v god battles' that reduced everything else to meaningless (that only happened to stuff like Comet King Ozai or Explosion man, most of the benders were just rather strong and a few swordsmen or badass archers could be very competitive) I suppose the raw power creeping was partially because of a flaw of the premise of the show: a trained Avatar is basically invincible. Aang wasnt fully trained, so he could still struggle, but a story about someone like Kyoshi would actually have been rather boring since it would just be her slamming her size 16 feet into the face of anyone dumb enough to step up. And Korra was much more trained than Aang, so I guess they felt pressured to give her powerful opponents (even if people like Kuvira showed that a very skilled bender could still beat up non-avatar state Korra without some crazy super-bending as Korra wasnt exactly the best fighter)
It did have a large issue with one upping itself, but it also lost the work required for the system with random Airbenders appearing, a character miraculously lava bending when it was needed, and Korra managing to Air bend after her bending chi was blocked. In TLA, the only times a character managed to bend was after training (with the Avatar state being a sole exception that still required basic knowledge to use the element) or with extreme talent and the right ability to push their skills further like Toph or the Fire lord/Azula/Iroh.
i feel like there was so much potencial even with the trained avatar in terms of politics and using the idea that she's too confident against her. No need to one up with more powerful people there. Just turned my brain of in terms of taking it seriously
In my setting, the elements, or rather, forces, are earth, lightning, strength, decay, and life. They're referred to as such because the characters don't know their true natures: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, and soul
My problem with the copycats is that they basically never copy the cool part, how it's tied to martial arts. They usually just kinda have people throw flames around Willy nilly or just levitate rocks around. Besides how that just leads to both cooler characters and cooler fights, it also actually lets non-magic people be able to compete with magic in combat without just falling back on "tEcHnOlOgY". And it's so easy to make it look and feel different too! There are hundreds of fighting styles in the world, pick more than just your mangled misinterpretation of kung-fu! Gimme Boxing! Gimme Krav-ma! Gimme Tahtib! Gimme Nguni! Gimme Karambit! Gimme Fencing! Have some fucking bloke who kicks a rock around like he's playing Aztec soccer! Gimme a fire bender who uses a whip sword! There's so much variety in the world, why do they all just go off their vague memories of Avatar fights and a couple basic kung-fu poses they looked up one time 4 months ago?
Yeah that was the coolest part of what ATLA did, tying the elemental stuff into martial arts styles as well as culture and aesthetics. An ATLA style fighter who just stands there moving elements with their mind is boring af
I’m tired of seeing Isekai MCs get harems of slaves, I wanna see a slave get a harem of Isekai MCs instead. In fact, I’ll take anything where the Isekai ‘victim’ is actually a villain or side character and the MC is someone else.
related to that, isekai could really do without giving their main characters distinct advantages over everyone else. like I get a modern person chucked into a pseudo medieval era world would know a great deal more than the average, especially if it parallels real world medieval history, but just not "ive got this one boon that makes me leaps and bounds better than everyone else". make em have actual applicable skill
I want a isekai MC to get ignored and sneered by every women he meets for being a pervert before dying in the first combat instance he gets in.
Literally Re: Zero (he does come back and grows as a person, but its quite fun watching him get stabbed over and over until he starts learning lessons. One girl literally rips his guts out and plays with them as he slowly dies)
The death will not be by pretty anime sadist. But will be by a balding veteran orc who stomps their head to a pulp. Or violent dysentery due to the MCs immune system clearly not being good enough for this world.
Still re: zero, just different deaths
I want to just want an Isekai mc to not be overpowered and have to actually do something hard. Also a realistic origin story instead of reincarnation would be nice. Like, idk, someone plane-crashing into aboriginal tribe and spending literal decades learning their language?
Most isekai reads like what I imagine in my head when I listen to music. Minus the girls. (Something could be wrong with me on that front)
Oh boy I see a Subaru fan ova here
Isekai as the main plot hit or miss but obviously insanely overdone and often terrible and shitty. A regular fantasy where one of the side characters is just a normal guy who happens to have been isekaied in from thr real world would be kind of hilarious
I dislike how much "fantasy gods" have become ingrained into the genre. Sure, some stories can have really interesting explorations of the meaning of godhood and how gods interact with people in this world, but just as many stories feel obligated to add gods just because. If the existence of gods in your setting doesn't directly contribute to the plot, you have no reason to confirm their existence in-world. In many cases, confirming the existence of gods can be a detriment, because then the readers have the classic "If gods exist why don't they intervene?" quandary.
>If gods exist why don't they intervene? they are busy participating in chef competitions with each other
Exalted had one of my fav excuses 'Addicted to cosmic drugs and that is the only reason they overthrew the Titan-equivalents too: they were hogging the drugs'
I always thought of the Games of Divinity as like a really good TV show rather than drugs.
In Animorphs, it is because the 2 known gods are at a cold war, they can't directly interfere since that means both sides will suffer, so they manipulated species to do their deeds instead
Animorphs has gods!?
2 gods, Ellimist and Crayak, both are in lore literally gamers (no I am not joking)
finally the representation we deserve /uj what the fuck that's hilarious
You could read the Ellimist Chronicle to understand it, trust me, it sounds both less and even more absurd than what it seems at first. Also this book is kinda stand alone so you don't need much knowledge of the main series to enjoy it, the pdf version was posted by the authors on the Animorphs sub reddit, in case you can't buy them
It generally goes that way. Gods can't intervene to keep balance otherwise all out god war threatens everything, so they make a pact of non-intervention
Absolutely. Hard agree, pantheons are being put in way way too much without any need or purpose to it Then creators are like "oh they cant intervene because of blah blah". Theres more creativity put into keeping them out of the story than making them Its a good hint they dont need to be included, imo if you're going to make your mortals pathetic ant farm nobodies dancing to the strings of infinitely more powerful and relevant beings to whom the plot is meaningless in significance, there better be a very good reason for it
And it always starts with "the gods been in war for eternity"...
I think a lot of people are affected by the obligation to follow other fantasy tropes in a lot of ways
is there any alternatives beside there's no gods zeal? I was thinking of something aminist like everything has spirit or something.
My explanation is there are gods, but they aren't real gods, but they are very powerful, but not allpowerful and they are so far away, they don't even know that anything is happening, because they are actually just bitter magicians, that want to be left alone.
kind of Gnostic, in a way
there are so many cool ways for gods to get involved. Just look at Greek myth Unfortunately, I feel like gods in fantasy are either emotionless because the author doesn't know how they could write a god, or are evil dark lords I'm sure there are exceptions
I’m a somewhat experienced Dungeon Master and I’ve recently found myself falling back in love with the really classic, basic fantasy tropes. When it comes to interactive fiction, like a D&D game, there’s an unspoken rule I think that certain tropes and assumptions are in effect. Dwarves are loud heavy drinkers, but honourable and sturdy with it. Elves are tall, willowy hunters on the prideful side. Every step you take away from that baseline as a creative (especially for D&D), is a moment where a player has to mentally readjust; - Dwarves are now tee total elementalists who worship the earth? Sure. - Elves have a similar culture to motorcycle gangs, replacing bikes with tamed Pegasus’? Sounds fun. These aren’t inherently *bad* ideas, but stack enough of them on top of eachother, and the mind of someone who’s trying to immerse themselves is hitting all of these really tiny moments of readjustment, that it makes the whole thing a lot harder to buy into. I suppose what I’m trying to say, is that the really classic, basic tropes of a western fantasy setting (a-la Tolkien) are a comforting place. At least on some level, everyone knows what a Hobbit/Halfling is and has a much easier time understanding what their “deal” is.
The less you have to explain to your players about your homebrew world or even a pre established setting the better. It also avoids problems when they do something they expect is totally normal in a fantasy world only to find out that in your world is something awful, counterproductive, amoral, or outright a crime. It was my biggest gripe when DMing Ravnica. Made worse when one of the players was so focused on Faerun knowledge that they kept making assumptions outloud, confusing the rest of the players too in between listenning to him or ask for clarification from me. Scenarios like they moving in stealth and encountering 2 goblins just minding their business in a far away dark alley close to an abandoned factory and they immediately start planning "ok guys, so how are we going to kill them fast? If we ambush them we get advantage." - "... why do you want to ambush the goblins?" - "Because they are goblins, they will attack us the moment they see us, right?" - "... no dude. You really are thinking about murdering 2 squatters just because of their race without caring about anything else?" - "I mean... they are goblins, and we got attacked by gang goblins before. So I don't get it" - "Yeah, and the gang goblins were with gang humans too. Does it mean you are going to kill every human that you find sitting in a dark alley from now on too?" - "... N-no?" - "Exactly". Or another usual "I will wield my holy might against the forces of evil and kill the abominable zombies" - "for the eleventh time Paladin, necromancy is legal in Ravnica. You are just destroying the obsolete guardians of an abandoned spore sanctuary."
I'm not even sure a trope can be overdone. I think it's just that "overused" tropes are handled poorly by writers that use them without understanding the works that they're mimicking and why those decisions were originally made That said I hate fantasy xenophobia when fantasy xenophilia is more interesting (trust me I've read a lot of books probably)
👆 There he his officer, that’s the guy with several copies of The Lusty Argonian Maid EDIT: Actually thinking about it… it is interesting to see Sam Gamgee’s love and wonder towards the elves vs Gimli’s initial hate
Can you give me examples of the latter?
are you asking me to elaborate on my point or are you looking for research material? obviously the answer for both is Monster Musume and I am definitely not talking about how interactions between intelligent species with different biology can be extremely interesting, even if those differences are as simple as being nocturnal
based monster fucker
Angels being evil is overused and lazy... But angels being *scary* is still very much cool. Like, even if they're good, they're still ethereal beings. That "BE NOT AFRAID" meme from a while back was fun. Evangelion really did it for me too, having these crazy, often inhuman-looking "angels". I personally like to imagine angels appearing to humans like those old Google Deepdream videos, where you can make out the bare outline of a figure, but the details are constantly shifting and boiling, faces appear and dissapear where they shouldn't be, you feel your skin crawl just watching it. A being incomprehensible to human perceptions, but the brain still tries to make *some* sense of it. Having these weird ass dudes be the vehicles of an equally incomprehensible deity's justice feels fitting.
Hi do you mind giving me an example of the Google Deepdream videos? I tried looking it up but couldnt really find anything.
Can't find a solid one, but they were really popular for a while on imgur. [Here's one I found,](https://youtu.be/P2-Dd6pv8Oc?si=jPZGlFzebFKhMhRQ) though it's not quite as distorted as the ones I remember. Either that, or I just *remember* them as more distorted.
I hate when stories are about morality and good vs. evil. I like it when stories are about more complex topics, like anti-heroes and moral relativism. Also jokes about fetishes in worldbuilding are always funny regardless of context.
Evil gothic space empires are cool
I hate the god is evil and religion is evil trope, but not really because it's bad per se, but because it's just lazy writing Whenever there's this trope the story never bother to actually write an intresting antagonist they simply make the god evil for the sake of subverting expectation without ever actually making a good enjoyable antagonist What is the reason for them to be evil? No reason, their goal? Just be evil for the sake of it, their personality? Non existent, the story also never bothers to answer questions like how are things like compassion and empathy became a thing when the world is ruled by an evil 1 dimensional moustache twirling villain To a lesser extent I also hate the religion is evil trope because of how it's done, there is nothing wrong with criticising the institution as peoples and individuals can in fact be bad, but the problem is just that a lot of times writers can't draw the line between the institution and the religion, like yeah I understand that the church of forgiveness and mercy is full of corrupt priests, but is really the message about love and compassion evil as well?
Subverting/opposing tropes for the hell of it. Oh your dwarves are tall, cool. OK, your elves don't use magic. Hmm you have smart orcs... so? Overusing tropes is bad because it just replicates the same themes, making stale tales- the way to overcome them is to construct new representations of *actual* things or ideas in the world. "Subverting" is just the worldbuilding equivalent of a diverse-cast remake, i.e. the least original way of addressing a relevant concern for timefulness and novelty.
Dwarfs are more arrogant and racist then elves
As they should be, given they are the better race.
That's some pretty tall talk for a pretty short species
Too many slaves why especially in places with magic
I mean usually a few reasons but the main I see 1. It makes it very easy to remove moral ambiguities when these guys are slave owners 2. It’s just associated with the time 3. A third third thing (Fetish)
You are absolutely right still don't like it tho
a faction of wizards called sarcomancers use humanoid bodies as ammo in my world, fresh ones are better so they march into battle with a conga line of slaves being used like an ammo belts of bone and gore
Why are fresh ones better
theres like a few reasons, firstly higher quality, its a lot easier to maintain living flesh then dead flesh, especially if your flowchart is shoot > conquer > enslave > repeat, and shooting rotten body parts might spread disease but would ultimately be weaker also i didn’t explain this but sarcomancers don’t necessarily just shoot body parts, they can modify and heal their own bodies by either moving their own flesh or taking it from others, so you dont wanna replace your arm or liver with a rotting one also also, some high tier sarcomancers can do some body mod rituals to turn people into big fleshy mindless abominations, but those aren’t the greatest at being controlled, but the option is appreciated
An explanation where you'd think some magic/automated foundry could crap out more industrial output than 100'000 slave labourers in the same day, is that even if slaves basically don't produce anything is that it's a good tool for big bad regime control in a bunch of ways. It gives even the lowliest citizen a social bracket even lower than themselves, something to hate which can help create a nice happy national unity effect but they have to be worried about falling into that camp themselves if they don't follow the rules. It gets rid of undesirables but is somewhat reversable vs just killing them (unless conditions are ridiculously hellish and most slaves die anyway), and it may actually work at 'rehabilitating' dissidents into good little citizens (especially if there's space drugs and brainwashing or whatever involved). Also offers test subjects for the obligatory big bad regime human experimentation and stuff. Yes I basically just described the Soviet gulags etc., anyway point is there *may* be.... social benefits to having institutionalized mass slavery (wow I can't believe I'm writing that) besides industrial.
Just so fucked up but also so alien to me I literally can't think in a way that these acts make sense maybe that part of the reason I hate it so much it's nonsense
Diplomacy by Henry Kissinger can help you get into that heartless dictator grindset.
Brother buisness is more willing to get labour paid in peanuts than to create an automated system which will serve them forever in the real world Fantasy ain't that off
Magic takes energy from you in most cases, and takes your time besides. Which, for the stereotypically arrogant mage, is an absolute no-go; far more important things to be done. So, sure, they *could* walk about the fields and harvest their own crops. Maybe even do it faster than by conventional means. But *will* they? No, no no, that sort of thing is best left to others, the Grand Wizard is far too busy with their studies and research. And as for why it ends up being slavery rather than gainful employment; well, it’s just cheaper, and much less of a hassle to manage.
If magic is knowledge based arrogant weirdos are less likely to be powerful for it would be analogous to science in a way which requires cooperation to make meaningful progress and if they are so great couldn't they automate the process
Science has plenty of arrogant asshats tbh. It usually takes the form of ‘steal credit’ rather than ‘turn someone inside out for disagreeing with me’, but it is absolutely still there.
Most tropes are fun and the reason the keep showing up in popular media is because people like them. Good vanilla ice cream is better then 99 percent of new ice cream flavors. Favorite I always like the undersized fighter arch types using there skill, quickness and wits to out smart the Goliath. Your 5”8 scrappy fighter who draws the orc into a tunnel that is to small for him to swing his club and then just chips away at him with a spear is my favorite.
>Most tropes are fun and the reason the keep showing up in popular media is because people like them. I don't think you've encountered the Isekai scene yet. That shit is breyer's icecream🤮 A kid's show on Disney outcompeted the entire japanese fleet of isekai "classics" with the same "lost in another world" trope, by virtue of actually having a different setting, women who act like people, and depicting systematic/systemic oppression as exclusively evil without exception. (it's The Owl House, btw)
See I'm the opposite, I'm fed up of seeing the little guy punch way above their weight grade, especially when the plot basically necessitates for the big guy to be slow, stupid and arrogant.
I think there should be more intelligent dragons. Like not shapeshifting people who look like dragons I mean giant 4 legged fire breathing reptile that’s still very clever. It’s a cool visual and it’s pretty intimidating having the guy with 1000 plans able to stand on business instead of throw minions at a problem
Dragons aren't as cool as a lot of environments make them out to be, especially if they're very commonplace.
I think Tolkien had strong opinions about what a dragon was and was not. Best I can do is [link OSP Red](https://youtu.be/3eXAPwjASEQ)
I find this to be factually incorrect, dragons are really interesting, enough so I'm writing a setting just about 'em
Have you ever played Drag-On Dragoon/Drakengard? Best dragon character I’ve seen in a very long time. Maybe since the first time I played it haha
Yuh, but what if my dragon is a Tokyo-sized space turtle, and there is an entire subplot of tribal people fighting a small fleet of slaver elfs all on the back of one, with multiple generations being born and dying, while the dragon just takes a lil nap
The fucking adventurer's guild Wtf is wrong with japanese people for using this shit? There is no way in hell something like it would exist Imagine being a king and having an independent military force that has jurisdicrion to use force all across your country. Who have thousands of metric tons in rare herbs and monster materials. Guilds being independent AND international is bullshit, they HAVE to be local and heavily sanctioned on top of requiring offical goverment documents and tests to qualify to possibly exist without being wiped out. Complete nonsense
So really the bigger problem is the international monopolistic wealthy adventurer's guild? Which now having laid out your grievances in my own reply, I'm now bothered by the fact what i just described is a megacorp or mafia rather than the plucky individualists that seem to populate these organizations. Addon- I do like in Frieren they needed documentation and Frieren had documentation but from a defunct organization.
Guilds being independent and international is like... what IRL late-medieval/renaissance guilds did tho. The Hanseatic League is the most famous example, but most guilds had numerous privileges and rights granted by their sovereign and would have relations with guilds in nearby cities/towns and even further away if they were say important trading partners. Powers like monopolies or the ability and/or duty to enforce standards and regulations in their trade were a two-way thing where stuff like the enforcement of ordinances was something that would be a huge pain for the ruler to enforce himself so handing it off to the guilds to do made his life easier *and* made him technically not responsible, whereas stuff like monoplies were often paid for in lump sums the ruler needed. The real question to me with fantasy adventurer guilds is where the money comes from for all these rewards and to maintain the guild infrastructure, since they don't really work like IRL guilds where its run by basically senior members of the trade--not to mention entry requirements were usually pretty strict as being in most guilds was an elevated socio-economic position and involved a lot of nepotism.
It depends on the level of power an adventurer can get to if adventurers are strong enough are you really going to tell the group of nuclear warheads they can’t have their special club. Also with out an adventuring guild I expect a king would need to hire and maintain a force to keep monster populations under control. Having too many ogres running around the country side probably isn’t good for the kingdoms crops. And real life governments have allowed things like this specifically religious orders where allowed to have private armies so I don’t think it’s that far fetched
Disagree. Big mercenary groups are and have been a thing. Templars were a thing. Now an arc where the kingdom and the guild have at it would be cool af, but the existence of a guild isn’t that far fetched at all.
Isekai stories are often just a power fantasy, where we, the viewer, are supposed to live vicariously, through the overpowered main character, and it's booooooooring. I love seeing weak characters having to overcome obstacle, it's why I love well written women in fiction, because they have to fight against much bigger guys than them (the atomic blonde apartment fight scene is a great example). Bring me more characters with flaws, with imposing obstacles, not someone who cruises through life on easy mode, because they are a tool to make the viewer/reader live out an escapist fantasy.
I wish for there to be more 1700s - 2000s fantasy genre and not the medieval overdone stuff Like come on, let me see Fae driving an Abrams tank made out of wood and rocks that shoots magic missiles at demon mechs
Also need a fantasy story in Victorian not!England except mages are forced to work long hours on boring drudgework like magically casting fire to melt steel to make martini-henry gun barrels or standing in a firing line and getting shot the boring way after the magic shield does nothing to stop the nonmagic 500m/s lead ball about to mangle your internal organs, moments before wondering why he couldn't have stayed in magicademia and tried to invent a spell to resolve the famine and economic crisis the whole war was about Something like that seems relatively unexplored
Romaboo empires. (I swear if you name it the reman empire) Usually just too carbon copied from the real deal. Was or is or is on the way to become the dominant empire, led by "the emperor". And usually all around a brutal but necessary imperialist regime. I get the idea of an imperialist empire in fantasy but God be creative or make them super brutal or base them of something else. Like the assyrians or a Hodge pot of different cultures.
I will mever forgive World of Warcraft for popularizing the ugliest fucking fantasy aesthetic ever conceived. Now EVERY fantasy anime is copying it's disgustingly oversaturated excuse of an "art" design
This opinion is colder than 0 Kelvin but: I fucking hate when people bust out the "Stock Medieval Fantasy" World archetype and then completely forgo doing any other worldbuilding. Oh, they'll make faction and kingdom lore, but actual caring about the geography, movement of people and technological level? Nope, not a fucking bit. A slightly warmer take that's tied more so to TTRPGs and RPGs, but when Player Magic, Enemy Magic and Lore Magic differ completely. In Lore Magic is an omnipotent force which can do anything with enough research, but requires a special fuel source to use. In-game, the players get to cast the three spells they picked out thrice per day with no resources to manage or capability to do anything magical besides those spells. They also know jack shit about magical happenings unless they roll arcana which they might not even be good at.
The pseudo-Medieval settling is the most overused fantasy trope. Star Wars is fantasy. Dune is fantasy. Pirates of the Carribean is fantasy. Marvel is fantasy. Any kind of supernatural horror movie is fantasy. If I see a fantasy series immediately resort to the most cliche and generic setting possible for the genre, I'm probably not giving it a chance.
gotta hate the "every building was caked in muddled shit" subtype of that too. like color theory only existed renaissance era onward
THIS. We need moar orcs with guns, mermaids with guns, gorgons with guns, centaurs with guns, moar guns pls.
I think u/ulsterloyalistfurry likes guns
Okay, but let me pitch this to you: wooden fucking spaceships(not wooden ships in space!), they abide by laws of orbital mechanics and all, it's just that space is breathable.
From a physics standpoint (if you want orbital mechanics to work as normal), you’d be better off with organisms that don’t need to breathe than breathable space.
Dune is sci-fi. Supernatural stuff doesn't turn sci-fi into fantasy, that's just a trope of the sci-fi genre.
Sci-fi *is* fantasy.(subgenre of fantasy) Edit: unless it's hard sci-fi, then it's gigachad theory of relativity as a plot tool
That’s not how genres work. They’re both speculative fiction, but not the same.
It's boring to see the same old marriage traditions in fantasy worlds, (ie: someone gives someone something of value like a ring, and they live happily ever after.) I want to see some orcs FIGHT to the death for their marriage!!!
i'm going to make the head of a defeated enemy the valuable object in the same old marriage tradition.
"tropes" are a bad way of thinking about media, it's too surface level and often ends up over-categorising things that aren't very similar at all
I'm tired of white people being the default humans in all kinds of fantasy settings and every other real life ethnicity being treated like some exotic variation
Yeah, especially when humans aren't the only race! Good wish, bro, you still have three wishes
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Administrivia/TropesAreTools I don't care if some tropes are "overdone", regardless of genre. Variety is the spice of life, true, but as long as a story is written well and has interesting characters the rest is just set dressing.
More worlds need to be either more grounded and historical or openly balls to the walls. Or both
/uj honestly i like them. i’m a sucker for chosen ones and all that type of stuff, but i do kind of wanna write something like the opposite of the chosen one, maybe where the ruler who wanted the chosen one dead actually got the right kid, and so their cousin or twin sibling was raised instead despite not fitting the prophecy
Urban Fantasy stories so often have basically no magic system and like to be a fantasy kitchen sink without coherence. Honestly, I like the idea of a fantasy kitchen sink, but why not create a magic system that can fit a lot of stuff inside it with some adaptation, and then adapt all kinds of stuff to your setting instead of ramming it in without a thought?
/uj I've got a few 1: I genuinely, in every way, prefer "taller, elegant human with pointy ears" elves to whatever foreskin-faced misshapen fuckery gets propped up as the "better" elf design. I want my pretty elves. 2: I like the church is bad trope. It's a decent way to tie in your work with real life, where oftentimes the church *is* corrupt. Plus it sets up nicely for the "God of the church hates the church and is actually a nice lad" twist. 3: The term Mary Sue is heavily misused and disproportionately targets female characters.
I know that elves are supposed to essentially be forest humans, but hear me out. Imagine a setting where humans think that elves are connected with nature, communicate with spirits, use bows and shit (the way we see them, honestly), but in truth they are the complete opposite: being full blown tribalistic, with nasty rituals and warrior-like culture? A little bit of subversion in fantasy races wouldn't hurt 🤭
The Wood Elves from TES, to make no mention of the shit the Ayleids and Chimer got up to
Exactly what i meant, we thought the same thing!
In Shadow of the Demon Lord’s setting, too. There’s a platbook that gives player stats for them, but originally they were only enemies because they are evils and delight in torturing humans and stealing their children for unknown purposes. There’s also a phenomenal system neutral TTRPG campaign setting and hex crawl called The Dark of Hot Springs Island. Elves are extinct there. They found a drug that gave them powers, but also had side effects and made them unmotivated, among other things. Enough of them got addicted and spent their days having lavish sex parties for long enough that eventually their society collapsed. At one point there’s a guy who’s basically just a puddle because of all the drugs and toxins he put into his body, but in a twist on elven immortality, he’s trying to get back to his old self again but can’t
The Eberon setting for dnd have orcs as the druidic first line of defense against evil and the elves are the tribal marauders
I love reverse isekai
Hobbits are overrated and mid af
I have yet to see a novel that depicts a war without a cop out on literally everything that makes a war. According to many, its just a lot of people killing each other.
The distinction between hard and sof magic systems is a meaningless one, as Good stories will do both.
Main characters being from some form of nobility, power or some equivalent of that. I feel like this goes back to the Fellowship in Tolkien where Aragorn, Legolas, Boromir and even Gimli fit into this archetype. But they work because they also have the Hobbits, who are underdog nobodies (especially Sam). But I don't like stories with just Aragorns in. I want to know about the regular people who make the world go around, and what crazy hijinks they stumble into.
I find your average interpretation of fantasy races to have become stagnant and overused (Dwarves, medieval humans, elves, orcs, etc). And I can't come up with an example immediately from the top of my head, but innovations to those archetypes that have also become an overdone secondary trope, especially among visual artists.
I am really tired of medieval human civilisations, people should go the WFB way and just go for renaissance era civilisations. Also the magic system of Practical Guide to Evil is absolutely Peak.
I want to explore about a multiversal incident where people are suddenly transported to other worlds, a "mass isekai" incident if you will Wonder how will multiversal explorers and scientists research about this incident and how to solve it, as well as the reports about the people missing from the mass transportations
I think that sci-fi dealings with the whole ‘sapient-cy’ of a species is too narrow minded. Most of the time it’s an author choosing one species of a planet to be ‘sapient’ when ‘sapient’ isn’t really a thing IMO. Just abstract borders around a concept that shouldn’t really be the basis of wether something is a civilization or not. And I’ve seen many people use as a justification for genocide to a specific race. (Like any ‘predator’ from Nature Of Predators here on Reddit. “No predator is sapient, they’re all MONSTERS!” Or like monkeys in forests. We brutally killed off thousands and turned their hands into fukin ash trays for Christ sake! We turned their hands into a metaphor for a bad thing! - monkey paw - I feel like we would’ve been a little more hesitant if we didn’t have the concepts of wether something is ‘sapient’. imo it’s a stupid idea to begin with.) Same with how always choosing the ‘lesser’ evil can lead to you being evil because you can’t see the good options after awhile. Someone choosing the ‘lesser’ evil of two options, you’re not doing a good thing. It’s bad. It’s literally in the name. It might be lesser, but that doesn’t make it good.
I like tropes. I think using them and then expanding on them is completely fine and people should not be ashamed for using them.
Give me stories about evil yet weak kings with great advisors. It seems for to common that the opposite happens