Why does it seem, that when someone creates anything on the topic of "fantasy" that takes place in a medieval environment, that they always include "the usual" things in their creation? Elves and Dwarves are a big thing, at least 90% of the "medieval fantasy" creations I've seen always use Elves and Dwarves. Why? Why do people always need to use common things like Elves and Dwarves?
What I think of as the generic fantasy world is the world of rolling plains and forests, with dragons hidden deep within forbidden caves, and dwarves inhabiting the distant mountains. Forests filled with elves and woodland creatures, while any dark and dingy place is filled with Orcs and Goblins. Humans are, of course, the dominant race, with great castles and towers and vast cities that cross the landscape as far as one can see, while the "good" races, the elves and dwarves, always seem to have perhaps one or two major cities and a few small villages. Dragons always live alone, alone in their caves. And the evil orcs and goblins always have endless hordes of their own species for the "good" races to kill. Why do most fantasy creators stick to this?
Some creators have tried to get away from the usual, sometimes they even take out elves and dwarves. These creators tend to put in things like maybe the "Lar'suth lizard men" or somesuch, usually any kind of "men" based on some common animal. Wolf men, lizard men, cat men, fish men, whatever, and of course they all have their on name to make them sound more interesting than lizardmen. This is pretty much the extent of what I see on the "creative" side of the fantasy worlds.
Here are those semi-creative new races:
Lizard men = the Muthemar
Cat men = the Nathuwyr
Fish men = the Nyvyan
Wolf men = the Kholten
There, now they're more original, because they have funny names.
But, I've never seen anything that goes beyond this in any substantial way.
Humans are always the dominant race. The other races are always somehow "mysterious" or secluded from the main world, like elves are hidden in the forest and dwarves are hidden in the mountains. Only the "evil" races make themselves generally obvious.
Still, at least some funny named animal people races is better than using the same old Elves and Dwarves over and over again. But really, I'd like to see some real creativity happening, where the creators actually get away from having races that always end up being other races with a new race or name. The Muthemar are still lizard people, the Nathuwyr are still cat people, the Nyvyan are still fish people, and the Kholten are still wolf people. How often do you see a new species that cannot be related to anything you know of?
The original point of this post was that the concept of "medieval fantasy" seems to be restricted, for no reason, to using these things. This is fantasy people, fantasy can be whatever you want. Fantasy can mean that all humans are slaves to a race of giant worm-like-things that build crystal castles to the sky with their secretions. You could make many interesting things from that. According to Encarta, Medieval means "old-fashioned, especially because lacking modern enlightened attitudes". It doesn't mean that everyone in your world has to wear armor, wield sword and spear and kill every nasty thing that crosses their path. That's not medieval. Medieval is basically the lack of advanced technology; you won't find laser cannons and hand grenades in a medieval world. It doesn't mean that the world has to be warlike. So you could very well have a race of humans that lives in perfect harmony with a race of giant worm-like-things that build crystal castles to the sky with their secretions.
The point is, all these limits people seem to put on "medieval fantasy" are non-existent. Most people only stick with elves and dwarves because they like what they know, and they're familiar with it. But people think so much more highly of an original world, with new things to discover; something that really is a fantasy, not just a rerun. Who these days walking into a forest in a medieval fantasy world and doesn't expect to see elves? Or explore the mountain caves and expect to find dwarves? It's not exciting anymore, because everyone knows what elves and dwarves are like!
I'd really like to see some real creativity. People put all that effort into creating a beautiful world, but it their effort is mostly in vain when they make their world just like everyone elses.
Most of you are familiar with what's going on with DBZ right now on Byond? There are a lot of arguments about that. When one person puts out a lot of effort to make their DBZ game, then makes it just like someone else's DBZ game, where's the benefit? What's the point? Why not just copy the original game to begin with? The same thing applies to what's going on with medieval fantasy.
ID:154356
 Dec 6 2001, 10:22 am
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Dec 6 2001, 10:42 am
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Deadman Walking
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i'm finding that quite boring,but true. i am amking a game but not on DBZ, i'm thinking of making a game based on ours ancestors like in Walking with Beasts
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Eh... I'd argue that "medieval fantasy" as a genre should be somewhat limited to the more mundane stuff more resembling medieval Earth, simply as a useful distinction from other subgenres of fantasy. Sure, by all means it's nice to see some unique, alien creation or at least a new spin on the old stuff, and it fully qualifies as "fantasy" to do so, but if you over-extend the label "medieval fantasy" it loses what little usefulness it does have.
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I have no aversion to using elves and dwarves... what bothers me is when people make their races (any races) basically just funny-looking humans.
In most "generic" fantasy games and books, there's nothing about elves and dwarves and whatever to set them distinctly apart from humanity. Elves are usually either somewhat shorter or taller than humans... but there's short humans and tall humans. Elves usually have either a very mischievous or very grave nature... but there's grave and mischievous humans. Elves are usually good at magic and have respect for nature... just like human wizards and rangers. So what's the point of having them as a distinct race? To interest me, there has to be something distinctly alien about a race. Whenever I put elves in something that isn't generic by design (like WOLQ is), I try to make them otherworldly, drastically different from humanity. For instance, lots of games make elves immortal, in the sense that they're long-lived. Another common gimmick is to have the elves come from a mysterious, magical land, that may be physically isolated or even on a different plane of existence. Both of these are fine... but no one carries them out to any interesting conclusions. If elves do not die from natural causes, and have nothing to menace them in their native land, why would the average elf even be aware of death? It's one thing to make elves reluctant to kill (something that's not unheard of among humans), but to make them unaware of the meaning or implications of the concept of "kill" is completely different. This would obviously work best in a role-playing intensive setting, but could also be simulated in a MUD where most players can specify intent in combat (subdue, wound, kill). A mortal could work to subdue an opponent without inflicting serious injuries, or could go directly for vital points... an unworldly elf might be just as good at swinging a weapon, but wouldn't be able to make the distinction between "lethal" and "nonlethal" attacks. | |
AUURGGG >.<i just typed a reply on this thread, and before I could post it, my browser crashed ;; I was liking my reply too..
<br/> Oh well.. Guess that means I get to start again >.<; K, to start off, I personally have no problem with elves, dwarves, lizard people, cat people or whatever. If I could be, Id much rather be a elf then a human (a tolkien elf of course ^_~ for those who dont get that reference, tolkien elves are the more common ones writen about nowadays. Thier long lived, tall, skiny, and generaly good with magic. Traditional elves are the 2 inch - 3 foot tall things that live in your rose garden and work with santa in the off-season) Anyways, back to my point ^_^ I think that other races should be used, if thier used -well-. Why stick a new race in when all they are is a stereotype? Why include something when it has no -depth-. Take my fav book series for instance. "Dragonlance". Read any of the book by the main authors (and most of those that arent) and all the races come across as having faults, and strong points. (Well, cept goblins, but goblins are a pain anyways >:P and they smell funny) The elves in that series are very, -very- arrogant people. they cant stand anythign thats not -them-. And by -them- I dont mean an elf. I mean anyone that isnt of thier kingdom. They might try to sound like thier all the best in the world, but throughout most of the series thier the ones that screw everyone up. They try to put -all- the blame on mankind, and live off in thier forests trying to be alone. Why use a stereotype when its so much more fun to (sorry for the expression here) make your races more -human-. The whole point of having other species' is to be able to exagurate human tendencies without loosing credibility. Im not discounting the post before, where they said to do things with the races that -arent- human, because even if they -arent- human, they can still be related to something that -is-. To use thier example, Make the elf so they dont know what death -is-, and then use that plot device to better define death as a human value. And if you can work it into play mechanics, then more power too you! >:P I just personally hate stereotypes. 2 dimensional groups of beings tend to bug me too. One last example to concrete my thoughts ^^; Take star-trek for instance. Now the elves... er.. Vulcans.. in star trek, in all the earlier series' were always portrayed as the logical, 'we know everything, but will help you in any way we can' kinda race. Thier often portrayed as a mystical parent-figure. Now go watch a few episodes of Enterprise (the new series) and see how the vulcans come across there! *L* In enterprise sure, thier the logical race that always 'seems' to try to help, but more often then not thier also seen as meddlesome, a little evasive, and more often then not very controlling ( again, the parent-figure, but this time -not- in a good way.) Kinda long post I know.. but I like fantasy discussions ^_^ Oh yea, btw: There -is- a mythological cat-people race. From european mythology too if I can remember right. Half-cat, half-woman creatures were called "Furies" (not furies as in covered with fur, but furies as in -always- pissed off) Think harpies, but just as cat instead of vultures.. I dunno why but a lot of eurpoean mythology was really dark, dirty, and depressing ;; Oh well ^_^ time for bed! Visual basic final in the morning! Altho I could sleep through it and still pass @.@ oh well *L* Elorien | |
"European" doesn't really narrow it down a whole lot... the only furies I've ever heard of were Greek... they were a cthonic presence that tormented the perpetrators of the worst classes of crime. I don't recall that they were ever portrayed as feline, but a lot of the Greco-Romans did take on animal aspects.
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Elorien wrote:
Why use a stereotype when its so much more fun to (sorry for the expression here) make your races more -human-. The whole point of having other species' is to be able to exagurate human tendencies without loosing credibility. Weighing in on stereotypes here, I have some agreements and disagreements. I agree with Lexy that fantasy RPGs employing elves and dwarves and such tend to make them too human. I also agree with you that stereotypes can be taken too far. However, here I have to break off a little bit. Stereotypes do exist for a reason. When we hear the word "stereotype" we're inclined to think of the nastier racial ones of the 1950s and earlier; I don't mean those. I mean generalized attributes applied to a group of people that have been observed to be more or less true of most of the group. The important thing with stereotypes, however, is not to take them too seriously because people do vary immensely; where I think fantasy RPGs fail in this aspect is that they don't take a race's core traits and make them stand out a lot, and players who play one of these races may well try to make their character a big exception to the stereotype, to the point where their character could barely be called an elf/dwarf/giant/troll/etc. A player playing a cat person may still want their character to act like a human, which might be magnified more by the fact that the player themself thinks like a human. Where games could counteract this would be to alter each race's perceptions and to exaggerate their strengths and relative advantages or disadvantages. Perhaps a cat person would have an ultra-strong sense of lurking danger and extra curiosity (useful for finding things), but a lack of initiative to venture into a dungeon so strong that a degree of fear would kick in (interfering with battle and dimming all other stats) unless they had a significant reason to go down there, like a must-do quest or a feeling of intense rage against something that lives inside. Players will ultimately end up playing more or less as humans who just look a lot different from regular humans--unless this is counteracted by traits of the character. I do think it's right to apply stereotypes partially in this sense, because it gives each character a baseline. Three-dimensional characters are defined in part by that baseline, and in part by how they deviate from it--not either-or. If all your characters fail to act in any way that's characteristic of their race or culture or religion or family background, then you're trying too hard to break stereotypes and the characters take on a 2-dimensionality of another kind. Different races (I mean species and genii, here) will tend to have different backgrounds and patterns of thought, for reasons of both culture and biochemistry; the types of thought that emerge, however, may range all across the spectrum. For this same reason empirical studies constantly confirm that men and women really do think differently, and yet we know that both are equally capable of the full range of human emotions and intellect; we just tend to drift in certain directions, and this too is both cultural and biochemical. Lummox JR | |
Eh, my main pet peeve for fantasy races is humans. Why must 98% of fantasy games feature humans as a completely arbitrary standard against which every other race is compared? It's like the ultimate in evolutionary convergence--not only will tall, erect primates evolve on any given fantasy world, but they'll also evolve to be exactly average in strength, stamina, and intelligence as compared to the other civilized races (and possibly some of the uncivilized ones). And universes in which humans from "our" world have somehow traveled to fantasy worlds and propagated there are even worse--why aren't there ever any worlds, say, full of traditional elves, dwarves, and gnomes, where the next largest intelligent race on the planet is only 2 feet tall and humans are these huge lumbering hulks?
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Suggesting that the races on everyone's world "evolved" is a bit much. While no one here knows anything about the things I've created, almost all of my worlds began as a barren chunk of rock somewhere in the universe that was modified by powers beyond general human understanding, after which humans were "imported" some way or another from Earth. A little modification by that same power could produce humans that act different or even live forever. I've probably got the only fantasy worlds around where you'll never find an old, shaggy human with a long white beard hanging around somewhere, because all my humans stop aging at about 20-25 years.
I don't want to start talking about my stuff though; I just wanted to bring that out that not all humans have to be stereotypical. And I think that if you're going to make "Elves" that are substantially different from Tolkien's creations, and so long as they aren't related to Santa Clause either, then why call them elves at all? You're just stealing the name for something that it probably doesn't belong to. Taking some of those examples, suppose I had "Elves" in a world I created, only these "Elves" lived on another plane, one that was so filled with magical pixie dust or whatever that it caused a perpetual fog. These "Elves" lived in the center of an incredibly vast forest, where they had constructed an extraordinary citadel with towers that reached unimaginable heights. The walls these "Elves" built with were made from a luminous material that took away any need for light sources and in their little kingdom it was constantly light like day. These "Elves" lived forever, and had no concept of death among them. The only thing they knew of "death" was that the animals in their forest would die after time. But they did not believe this to be death as we know it, they believed that when the animals body wore out or was destroyed, then the life force went out and created a new body from the dust or fog. Now, why should I call them Elves? What if I decide to call them Elerewyn instead? Why should I give credit for someone else's idea of elves and use that name for a concept that is all mine? | |
You're right--it's silly to use the name "elves" for races which merely resemble traditional fantasy elves but have significant differences. While we're on the subject, why write your game in English, or any real-world language at all? The characters in the world aren't actually speaking it, so you might as well just make up an incomprehensible fantasy language and use that for all your game's text output.
Sure, by all means give them a formal fantasy name, but if they resemble elves, people are going to call them elves--and I fail to see what's wrong with that. It's as much a part of the fantasy-gamer vernacular as anything else, and if you're going to insist on purging that from your game, you might as well toss out the rest of it. Sure, you can write your fantastic Elerewyn world, and what will players do? Player: Hmm, what's an Elerewyn? *Player reads up on the world setting* Oh, they're like elves. That's the catch-22 here--the human mind tends to think in terms of the familiar. If you go to great lengths to create a race of creatures vastly differing from reptiles and humans both physiologically and philosophically, existing in a completely different world than the one we know, but still having a vague resemblance to anthropomorphic lizards... they're lizardmen. Period. They're unique lizardmen as opposed to the standard vanilla-flavor type lizardmen, but they're still lizardmen. | |
If that's the case, then why base them on anything at all? Which was the point of the original post in the first place. There's never anything original out there, it's always the same old things over and over that people decide belong in the "medieval fantasy" reference. I'd like to see some things that are original and not based off someone else's ideas for once.
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You act like Tolkien invented the word "elf."
The concept of "elf" is pretty close to a cultural universal concept... every race on earth has its own word for a folklore figure that could be translated into "elf." No, Tolkien wasn't the first one to imagine that elves might be tall and willowy. No, he wasn't the first one to ascribe longevity or mystical knowledge to them. He wasn't the first one to suppose that they held night-long revels of dance, and so on. He drew from the folklore. Your elves/Elewhatevers are actually closer to the source folklore than J.R.R.'s elves are, in many ways. That means you have as much right to the name "elf" as he does. | |
I talk about it that way because I'm refering to the Tolkien "elf", as opposed to the Santa Clause "elf", or just general "elf"-like persons. Tolkien elves are what you'll generally find in this type of fantasy world.
If you'd prefer to call them "Medieval Fantasy Elves" that can be arranged. But I'm refering to the elves that most people think of when you refer to elves in a medieval fantasy world. | |
For fantasy to be meaningful, it has to have some sort of framework. For the framework to be comprehensible, it has to touch upon something which we can relate to. One of the simplest ways to do this is by giving it a mythic subtext.
Life. Death. Fear. Hate. Love. The impossible dream, the holy grail, whatever. It needs to mean something, even if that meaning is not always intentional. If you don't sweep people in, no one will bother imagining it, and you will have no audience. You look at elves and dwarves and say, "Oh, great. Another Middle-earth derivative." That's giving Tolkien waaaaaay too much credit, though. I look at it, and say, "Oh great! Thousands of years of cultural evolution!" Little people, ethereal folk, the unseen world... these MEAN things to the human psyche. They represent things. Call them elves, call them dwarves, call them diplothatimuses, it doesn't matter what you call them... because if you were "actually" in the fantasy world, you wouldn't understand a word anybody said about anything, to say nothing about the names they give to their kind. You're reading (or writing) an English translation of a story that actually took place entirely in the Estylbrian dialect common to the region of Shikandrosh. You can bet that whatever word the Shikandroshians use to refer to their own race, it isn't "human", but that's what it translates to for us, so we call them humans in our stories, too. | |
I thought you were fairly intelligent... but you seem to be intentionally narrowing your worldview, which is not an intelligent trait.
I'm not objecting to using the phrase "Tolkein elves" to refer to the class you're talking about... most fantasy games trace their roots back to D&D, which traces its back to Middle-earth. Tolkein's elves are indeed the grandparents of elves found throughout fantasy gaming. What I'm objecting to is the fact that you say someone who uses the word "elf" took their ideas from Tolkein. Not so! And if you mention "Santa Claus elves", I'm going to renounce my assumption that you're an intelligent human being... and not because little tiny craftsmen don't belong exclusively to Santa. My point is that Tolkien's elves weren't invented by Tolkien. They're every bit as much traditional as Santa's little helpers. When you use elves or dwarves or dragons or vampires in a fantasy game, you are NOT "stealing" one person's idea... you're using an idea that is universal, that belongs to everyone and no one. I use elves in a lot of my work. The magical powers of the elf character in LexyQuest were inspired by a Neil Gaiman character called Cluracan, who was named after a traditional elf that haunts wine cellars. The elf character in World of Lexy Quest, which is decidedly the most generic game I've made (that's the point of the game), is pretty much straight up D&D, and thus harks back to Tolkein. In my writing, I explore all sorts of roots: Celtic and German mythology, obviously, but also Russian, Egyptian, Japanese... the elf is like the vampire. You can find it everywhere, if you only know where to look. | |
You're right, but when you go into a fantasy world and you discover that there's a race called elves, do you think that it must be a race of short people? No, you'd think they must be elves, whatever your impresson of elves is.
If you went into a fantasy world and saw "Indocrases" would you think, these must be elves? No, you'd probably need to find out what they are from some kind of documentation. Calling them something besides elves, if they're not meant to be elves, is the first step to breaking someone's image of them as elves when that's not what they are, even if they happen to resemble in one way or another, prehaps having similar physical traits or being forest dwellers. If I created a world and had a race that lived in the forest, build homes in trees, lived forever, and called them "Elves", what do you think they are? Elves? Well guess what, they're not! If I call them "Lerians", do you still see elves? What if I called them "Lizardmen", do you still see elves? The name does make a difference. If you don't relate them to anything to begin with, then the person learning about that race is less inclined to clump them together with what they're familiar with, and consider it something new. | |
Celtic and German mythology, obviously, but also Russian, Egyptian, Japanese... the elf is like the vampire. You can find it everywhere, if you only know where to look. I'm familiar with the European elf folk-lore varieties, but I'm curious about ones outside of Europe. I know it's not necessarily implied by your statement, but do you have any information, specifically on Japanese elves (or elfs.. whatever)? I know a fair amount about Japanese culture and mythology, but I can't think of anything that resembles an elf. The majority of their creatures tend to be more monstrous (Oni, and Kappa come to mind here). If you've got a webpage or two about it, I'm interested. -AbyssDragon | |
GateGuardian wrote:
Frankly, I thought I could have a conversation here without being insulted because of my views. Looks like I was wrong. Don't worry about it. It has nothing to do with you. Some people have certain conversational/argumentational habits, and this constant rating of someone's intelligence level is one of them. On another forum there is a guy who must place all responses in the context of "the Libertarian view"... When someone has this kind of habit, you either learn to overlook it or to not get into debates with them. | |
If I created a world and had a race that lived in the forest, build homes in trees, lived forever, and called them "Elves", what do you think they are? Elves? Well guess what, they're not! If I call them "Lerians", do you still see elves? What if I called them "Lizardmen", do you still see elves? The name does make a difference. That's not how the human mind works. People might simply find different things to clump them together with, but they will clump them. If you try and make them as completely alien as possible, you can minimize the clumping, but do you know what would happen then? No one would have any idea what you were talking about! That's very difficult to do, however; usually, after a certain point, if people cannot find anything familiar to categorize something as, they'll categorize it as being basically "alien" and expect basically "alien" traits to be attached to it. People internalize knowledge by associating it with preexisting knowledge, whether they're conciously aware of it or not, and there's no way to get around that. I don't see why it's so important to get around it in the first place--what's the advantage in having a world that has no meaning to anyone without extensive study? | |