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Mr. Mask
2015-03-04, 10:03 PM
It has come up a few times, but I'm not sure it has been the explicit subject of the discussion. To get straight to the point, let's discuss how you can, and the challenges of, mixing fantasy with other genres.

If you wanted to add fantasy elements to a western, how would you go about it? Replace the real life groups with traditional fantasy groups? Look up American folklore of the time and build off that? Go completely wild with the concept so the setting is in Alpha Centauri where the wild west is a crash site of ex-rebels against the star tyrants? Trigun? Or, perhaps a mixture of the above, blending the elements you like?


It does seem like if I want to do something like a high fantasy sea campaign, western, or 1920s mafia game, I need to turn to GURPS or combine some obscure D20 sources. Or homebrew some elements for something closer to the setting, like a naval RPG.

It can be tricky to add overt fantasy elements to some of these settings, without it coming across poorly. Mermaids to a sea campaign, that's easy. But how do you fit the Ikhali, the descendants of Atlantis who claim they are descended from mermaids, and their flying gaseous beasts? Alternatively, how do you fit in elves? The first one has so much character, it will take a lot of work to work out their impact on the world, and to keep them within the theme. The second one so vague until you define it with no precedented place in the setting, it will take a lot of work to get them in without it being, "They're the Dutch, except they're elves." And removing the alien nature of a fantasy race so they're just a stand-in for an already interesting culture within the setting, sort of ruins the point.

dream
2015-03-04, 10:17 PM
It's difficult to have an honest & open discussion about anything unless there's clear terminology.

Define what you mean by "Fantasy". "Western"?

"Alpha Centauri"? "Trigun"? It's hard to contribute when there's references that everyone isn't familiar with. Could you include links or footnotes with those references, please?

There's many references to mixing elements, without a purpose for the mixing. What's the goal of mixing elements? What are you trying to achieve? You seem to be mixing in your own preferences and opinions, while asking others to agree? Or counter?

I'd like to contribute, but the OP needs clarification.

Mr. Mask
2015-03-04, 10:32 PM
Sorry, I'll explain those terms.

Fantasy: I thought I gave a reasonable definition. Stuff like folklore, magic, elves, superstitions like mermaids, fictional cultures and peoples with fictional technologies, a setting where those things are real. So, this gives a few angles you could cover. From 1920s gangsters with elves, to 1920s gangsters with nightmare monsters killing people in their sleep, to 1920s gangsters with supernatural elements based off the superstitions of the time.

Western: Meant like the Wild West, Clint Eastwood, etc..

Alpha Centauri: The star system.

Trigun: A relatively well known anime, with a post-apocalyptic western theme.


Well, the OP was more to give some of my thoughts and broadly frame the discussion. I outlined some of the problems you run into combining fantasy with other genres. The idea was to discuss mixing Fantasy with Other genres, which includes aspects of discussing why you would do it, how, the challenges to be overcome, personal experiences with attempting it, etc..

Maglubiyet
2015-03-04, 10:55 PM
This is an incredibly open-ended question, especially since the boundaries of most genres are poorly defined. Pretty much every campaign I've ever run -- fantasy, scifi, historic, modern, horror -- has mixed elements from the others.

You can do all of the examples you listed...and more. Are you fishing for a specific mixture?

Mr. Mask
2015-03-04, 11:11 PM
Well, to give an example, I've seen a few times in the context of high fantasy westerns, the idea of replacing Native Americans with elves, Germans with gnomes, etc.. That never sat right with me, it felt like a cheap re-skinning. So, I was wondering if other forum members felt similarly about those sorts of settings, and what they thought would be a good way to mix them. At the same time, I'd be open to other discussion related to mixing fantasy elements into other genres, like the opinion that high fantasy simply can't mesh with a western, and instead what kind of folklore and superstition would fit best to be realized (Windigos and such). I do wonder how well high fantasy melds with other genres.

Thrathgnar
2015-03-04, 11:32 PM
I feel like you could throw elements today and develop an odd but fascinating world. I would just take the structures of a world and mix things in.

Also, just wondering, is your name a tower of god reference?

Maglubiyet
2015-03-04, 11:58 PM
Hmm, well as far as Western/Fantasy crossovers there was an RPG called Deadlands which mixed magic and the Old West. And there was a comic series Jonah Hex that did sort of the same thing. No elves or anything.

Stylistically, I think you could easily do it by building your world based on the elements that make a western a western:

The setting would be in a frontier area. It doesn't necessarily have to be on the high plains, though it could be. The people who are there are seeking a new life, trying to win their fortune, or fleeing from the more civilized areas. The land is full of wealth -- mineral resources, good pasture and crop land -- waiting for those with enough determination and grit to pull it out by sweat and hard work. And and there are those who want to prey on them through intimidation and force.

The government is a far-away entity and the law has to be administered by the people themselves. The seat of culture is also far away -- quality goods, news, and fashion make their way to the frontier slowly. Population density is low, with a few small towns and several remote solitary homesteaders. Travel between settlements is slow, taking days. People are self sufficient and proud. There are also natives (who don't have to be elves) with a radically different culture and worldview, some of whom work with the newcomers to the land, some who resent them, some who just want to be left alone.

None of this says that they have to ride horses, wear cowboy hats, and carry six-shooters.

Arbane
2015-03-05, 05:04 AM
1920s Gangsters and fantasy, you say? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baccano!)

The thing is, fantasy doesn't have to be Elfs-Dwarfs-Orcs and wizards and knights in armor. All it means is that there's something fantastic going on. Could be gangsters with an immortality serum, could be Cowboys and Indians and Zombies, could be a space-opera with psychic powers and laser swords. You don't need to crowbar in the entire Monster Manual, when just finding out that some of the rats in the city can talk and are willing to make a deal could be enough of a plot-hook to start a game.

arcane_asp
2015-03-05, 05:09 AM
It's not a setting we played more than a few sessions, but years ago we tried a Fantasy / Noir setting.

We tried to give it a real cynical tone and called on all the noire tropes such as hard boiled detectives, always night cities, femme fatales and everybody smoking at all times. Largely inspired by the Thraxas series of books which the group was enjoying at the time.

Elf & Dwarf factions in the city took on a real mafia vibe, and the group got caught up in their investigation, trying to play one side against the other. It had a strong atmosphere but didn't run beyond a few sessions as we all got tired of noir style after a while. Best as a short run of game sessions perhaps?

Jay R
2015-03-05, 11:21 AM
One of the best ways is to start in one genre, and then switch, as a plot twist for the players. I played in an American West game once. We had a few western style adventures, and then found the same passage to Barsoom that John Carter had found.

Some day I want to run a Fantasy Hero games that starts as a game of Champions. Each player is a low-level 31st century super-hero with low power. (I'm thinking 150 to 200 points.) They get on a ship bound for Earth, hoping to join the Legion of Super-Heroes. But the ship goes through a space warp, and they crash on a planet where magic works and science doesn't. Therefore none of their high-tech gear works. (One of the advantages of using the Legion is that all Legion members have real powers, not powered suits or utility belts.)

LibraryOgre
2015-03-05, 11:55 AM
You take the approach of anyone presented with a square peg that needs to go into a round hole... you bash them with a hammer until they fit, accepting that you're going to do damage to the peg, the hole, or the hammer before everything fits together.

You might go with a space western, and call it a Firefly, Star Wars or Star Trek game. You might inject a bit of magic into a more standard old west setting and call it The Wyld West or Deadlands. You might reskin EVERYTHING and just play D&D with elves and orcs standing in for "good" and "bad" Indians. They're all ways you can explore western themes in a fantasy setting.

A lot depends on what you want to include, and how married you are to the Old West, rather than the feel of a Western.

Yora
2015-03-05, 11:56 AM
I really want to do classic Sword & Sorcery with a coating of Noir. The Witcher goes there, but I think it could be taken much farther than that.

LibraryOgre
2015-03-05, 12:19 PM
I really want to do classic Sword & Sorcery with a coating of Noir. The Witcher goes there, but I think it could be taken much farther than that.

Read Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos series; Jhereg is pretty strong in that tradition, and Yendi is pretty good, as is Jhegaala (just from the noir standpoint; I love the whole series).

BeerMug Paladin
2015-03-05, 02:33 PM
I don't really know if this applies, but my own fantasy setting is more or less a place where every region in the setting is easily defined by describing a mixture of generic D&D fantasy with another genre. This wound up being an accident for the most part as a quirk of my design concept. Here's a few brief descriptions of some regions' aesthetic.

Utopian scifi/fantasy
Western/fantasy
Dystopian scifi/fantasy
Superhero/fantasy
Horror/fantasy
Pirate adventure/fantasy

There's also a light and dark fantasy region each, more or less played straight. I realized this was an apt description for the setting when I considered what type of story I think would work best if it were focused on predominantly one region in the world. These are the conclusions I reached.

The thing is, fantasy (and genres in general) is a very broad concept that can cover a lot of ground. What elements are the focus of the story generally matters more than any finer details of what actually exists within the setting at large. So I think a lot of this mixing would be set by choice of tone and characters more than anything else.

The utopia/dystopia thing is meant to be a partial subversion. It's meant to be a more shades of grey setting, so the utopia/dystopia divide is more descriptive of a law/chaos divide than any descriptive term for the actual quality of life within the region. (It also impacts what sort of characters would be most interesting for a focus of a story in that part of this world. Think about what kind of characters and story elements would exist for Star Trek fanfiction for the utopia part and Borderlands fanfiction for the dystopia part. Someone working within the system/someone working outside it.)

Also, despite the length I've gone into on this, I don't expect this to strike anyone as particularly interesting or clever. I just kind of wanted to express the idea that genre is a loose enough term that it doesn't really describe a setting. It also covers how that setting is handled. That's because genre is a broad term that embodies not only elements of settings, but a wide variety of character archetypes and themes as well.

veti
2015-03-05, 03:08 PM
The Wild West exists within a world where science and technology are firmly established and making great strides. Injecting too much fantasy, too overtly, would mean you have to rewrite the whole world, not just this bit of it.

I'd take the western setting, and simply tweak it so that the sorts of magic that worked, were the sorts that lots of people in the 19th century still believed in. Spiritualism was huge - conjuring spirits to answer questions (in western traditions), or grant powers (in Native American traditions) would be very popular. The sorts of magic that could move an army across a desert in a day, or conceal it from enemy scouts - those could happen. Blessings and curses would be effective. Just possibly, there might be people who could take six bullets to the chest and laugh as they popped back out, or reanimate the dead as shambling zombies, but those would be the very top end of the power spectrum.

Call of Cthulhu would be not a bad fit.

Jay R
2015-03-06, 09:23 AM
I'd love to play in a mix of fantasy and musketeer-era intrigue, like Pierre Pevel's book, The Cardinal's Blades.

Mr. Mask
2015-03-06, 03:50 PM
I'd be interested in a story or game about WW2 pilots, worrying about gremlins and other supernatural hazards.

Jay R
2015-03-06, 07:56 PM
I'd be interested in a story or game about WW2 pilots, worrying about gremlins and other supernatural hazards.

Love it! That's beautiful. One of the best new ideas for a game I've heard in a while.

I'm not knowledgeable enough to run such a game, but I am certainly knowledgeable enough to respect the concept and want to play.

And if I played, I would try hard to arrange once to come in on a wing and a prayer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IcIjKtQrWc).

Mr. Mask
2015-03-06, 08:13 PM
Well, it'd be a little tricky. I can't think of much folklore to pilots aside from the gremlins. You can work out some stuff to that theme, like have the Red Baron as more or less a ghost pirate ship, who can strike without warning to devastating effect. You could also look at sailor folklore for some inspiration on storms and wins, as those still effect pilots. You could potentially even have the airforce base start to get haunted, with all the dozens upon dozens of poor RAF boys who don't know they're dead yet.

Those seem like cool concepts, but coming up with more would require some research. Otherwise you'll resort to zombie pilots or something, and that's just weird.

Ashtagon
2015-03-07, 01:46 AM
Alpha Centauri: The star system.

Not a reference to the computer game (which later got GURPS-ified)? It's pretty much space colonists after the fall with a dash of transhumanism.


Trigun: A relatively well known anime, with a post-apocalyptic western theme.

I was really disappointed when I realised that you had misspelled The Trigan Empire. It's a kind of Roman Empire styled planetary romance. Planetary romance being of course the original fantasy and sci-fi mashup.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trigan_Empire

Mr. Mask
2015-03-07, 03:05 AM
I knew about the video game, but not the comic. It looks pretty interesting.

Jay R
2015-03-07, 10:16 AM
For an example of successful mixing of genres:

Thor is mythology. Iron Man and the Hulk are science fiction. Captain America is a30s/40s pulp hero. Black Widow is from the spy genre. But the Avengers successfully mixes them together.

Similarly, Superman is science fiction, Wonder Woman is mythology, and Batman is pulp-era two-fisted detective. Yet the Justice League works well together.

Knaight
2015-03-07, 10:43 AM
Well, it'd be a little tricky. I can't think of much folklore to pilots aside from the gremlins. You can work out some stuff to that theme, like have the Red Baron as more or less a ghost pirate ship, who can strike without warning to devastating effect. You could also look at sailor folklore for some inspiration on storms and wins, as those still effect pilots. You could potentially even have the airforce base start to get haunted, with all the dozens upon dozens of poor RAF boys who don't know they're dead yet.

I've actually used something fairly similar, which involved drawing heavily from ghost stories, and injecting a side of more modern fantasy for the conflicts. The pitch for the game involved the term "Wyverns and biplanes", and it worked pretty well.

TeChameleon
2015-03-08, 04:40 AM
Noir fantasy?

Paging Mr. Dresden, paging Mr. Dresden, would Mr. Harry Dresden (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TheDresdenFiles) come to the desk (courtesy warning: TVTropes link)?

Seriously, though, the Dresden Files fits that to a 'T', and it conveniently already has an RPG book in the FATE: Core system. Admittedly, the setting is a bit more modern than most noir, but it has a powerfully noir flavour nevertheless.

As far as injecting high fantasy into another genre, you basically have three routes to go- one where the Masquerade is heavily enforced, so that the average person hasn't a clue about magic, and history is allowed to proceed more or less like it did in our world, or else you write an alternate history. The latter tends to be pretty heavy going unless you're a fairly serious student of history, and even then it tends to be a labour of love that takes a long while to complete. The last choice is to create a world from scratch, which is also a lot of work, but at least you don't need to worry quite so much about, say, silk imports by the British East India company and how they affected the economy of the Low Countries, or whatever.

All that being said, you can adapt just about any genre to include fantasy elements= the Mistborne series, for example, started out because Branden Sandersen wanted to do a high-fantasy heist novel, a la Ocean's Eleven.

GungHo
2015-03-09, 10:17 AM
The Wild West exists within a world where science and technology are firmly established and making great strides. Injecting too much fantasy, too overtly, would mean you have to rewrite the whole world, not just this bit of it.

I'd take the western setting, and simply tweak it so that the sorts of magic that worked, were the sorts that lots of people in the 19th century still believed in. Spiritualism was huge - conjuring spirits to answer questions (in western traditions), or grant powers (in Native American traditions) would be very popular. The sorts of magic that could move an army across a desert in a day, or conceal it from enemy scouts - those could happen. Blessings and curses would be effective. Just possibly, there might be people who could take six bullets to the chest and laugh as they popped back out, or reanimate the dead as shambling zombies, but those would be the very top end of the power spectrum.
Card tricks and legit tarot readings as well, along with fighting things like the wendigo or raven-men.

I've also done conquistadors vs jaguar men and blood priests.