A forum for discussing and organizing recreational softball and baseball games and leagues in the greater Halifax area.
My health potions are green and poisons are red
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> "There are no 'rules' for fantasy" Wrong. To write *good* Fantasy (of SciFi), you have to go through a process called "World Building" where you lay down the rules of your world. Properly done, the amount of World Building exceeds the actual works by far. It is absolutely necessary to create a core of inner logic to the story. You are not bound by the rules of our world, yes, but you are bound by the rule of consistency. If you violate those, you automatically write crap Fantasy (or SciFi). Funny, though, that e.g. many literature teachers / professors don't even *know* about the idea of World Building.A clearer way to phrase it might be "there are no rules for the *genre* of fantasy". An individual world needs self-contained rules, yes, but just because Tolkien's Dwarves have beards regardless of gender doesn't mean that *your* Dwarves need to be the same.
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Nah this one is easy. If it's green and _sparkly,_ it's a good thing. If it's green and _bubbly,_ it's a bad thing.
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> "There are no 'rules' for fantasy" Wrong. To write *good* Fantasy (of SciFi), you have to go through a process called "World Building" where you lay down the rules of your world. Properly done, the amount of World Building exceeds the actual works by far. It is absolutely necessary to create a core of inner logic to the story. You are not bound by the rules of our world, yes, but you are bound by the rule of consistency. If you violate those, you automatically write crap Fantasy (or SciFi). Funny, though, that e.g. many literature teachers / professors don't even *know* about the idea of World Building.
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If they don't taste like peppermint, I'm sending them back.
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Rules for fantasy *writers*. For a post centered on reading, the actual comprehension of what is being said in this thread is poor.
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> "There are no 'rules' for fantasy" Wrong. To write *good* Fantasy (of SciFi), you have to go through a process called "World Building" where you lay down the rules of your world. Properly done, the amount of World Building exceeds the actual works by far. It is absolutely necessary to create a core of inner logic to the story. You are not bound by the rules of our world, yes, but you are bound by the rule of consistency. If you violate those, you automatically write crap Fantasy (or SciFi). Funny, though, that e.g. many literature teachers / professors don't even *know* about the idea of World Building.Also the important rule here is everything not explained to be different is assumed to be the same as our understanding of the real world.
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I feel like any decent adventure would develop a system. I hear blind people will fold their paper money a certain way so they can differentiate between the different values...
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Also the important rule here is everything not explained to be different is assumed to be the same as our understanding of the real world.
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> "There are no 'rules' for fantasy" Wrong. To write *good* Fantasy (of SciFi), you have to go through a process called "World Building" where you lay down the rules of your world. Properly done, the amount of World Building exceeds the actual works by far. It is absolutely necessary to create a core of inner logic to the story. You are not bound by the rules of our world, yes, but you are bound by the rule of consistency. If you violate those, you automatically write crap Fantasy (or SciFi). Funny, though, that e.g. many literature teachers / professors don't even *know* about the idea of World Building.> To write good Fantasy (of SciFi), you have to go through a process called “World Building” I think this is more implying that you don't have to work from the same framework for every fantasy world. Not everything has to be set in Medieval Times with Crusader-Era social sensibilities. The menagerie of mythical creatures isn't a prerequisite or delimiter (dragons / unicorns / etc are not a requirement nor are robots / cthulhoid horrors / woolly mammoths disallowed). You need internal consistency (to a degree) but you aren't forced to adhere / omit any genre trope. I would say, at an absolute bare minimum, you need some kind of fantastical or supernatural element to make it "Fantasy" as opposed to "Historical Fiction" or "Science Fiction" some other category of fictional prose. Although, the genre of "Magical Realism" does make even that distinction a bit fuzzy. > many literature teachers / professors don’t even know about the idea of World Building You don't necessary need to go through the whole work of World Building if you're just banging out a short story or novella. Even serial writers don't necessarily bother going deep on the background material until they feel the need to expand the scope of the setting. A story that takes place entirely in a single house over the course of a long weekend doesn't need the kind of scaffolding that a Long Walk to Mordor requires.
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Why should your fantasy game be limited by something like "health". Whether you die should be based on vibes.> Why should your fantasy game be limited by something like “health”. One way of escalating drama and tension is by injuring a main character. The scene in Terminator 2, where Sarah Connor has to knock the T-1000 into the blast furnace with consecutive shotgun blasts, isn't nearly as cool without her doing it with a wound in her arm. Frodo collapsing from exhaustion gives us the incredible moment of Samwise shouldering him and carrying the guy, ring and all, up the slope of Mt. Doom. And particularly for folks invested in the coolness of their characters, some conflicts are much more fun when the outcome isn't anything either storyteller or player could have anticipated. A totally unexpected David v Goliath moment, where a scrawny guy fells a giant with a lucky shot, will be the kind of story people talk about for years.
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I feel like any decent adventure would develop a system. I hear blind people will fold their paper money a certain way so they can differentiate between the different values...Most countries have varying sizes and tactile features to distinguish denominations.
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A clearer way to phrase it might be "there are no rules for the *genre* of fantasy". An individual world needs self-contained rules, yes, but just because Tolkien's Dwarves have beards regardless of gender doesn't mean that *your* Dwarves need to be the same.
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> To write good Fantasy (of SciFi), you have to go through a process called “World Building” I think this is more implying that you don't have to work from the same framework for every fantasy world. Not everything has to be set in Medieval Times with Crusader-Era social sensibilities. The menagerie of mythical creatures isn't a prerequisite or delimiter (dragons / unicorns / etc are not a requirement nor are robots / cthulhoid horrors / woolly mammoths disallowed). You need internal consistency (to a degree) but you aren't forced to adhere / omit any genre trope. I would say, at an absolute bare minimum, you need some kind of fantastical or supernatural element to make it "Fantasy" as opposed to "Historical Fiction" or "Science Fiction" some other category of fictional prose. Although, the genre of "Magical Realism" does make even that distinction a bit fuzzy. > many literature teachers / professors don’t even know about the idea of World Building You don't necessary need to go through the whole work of World Building if you're just banging out a short story or novella. Even serial writers don't necessarily bother going deep on the background material until they feel the need to expand the scope of the setting. A story that takes place entirely in a single house over the course of a long weekend doesn't need the kind of scaffolding that a Long Walk to Mordor requires.George Lucas is the perfect example what happens when you don't do world building. The Star Wars universe is basically just retcons stacked onto other retcons. And I am a firm believer that even short stories in a fantasy or SciFi setting don't work without at least a certain amount of world building. The number of fantasy and SciFi stories where the author thought they could get away without thinking their world through and which ended up badly is amazingly high.
