Clichéa, Land of Cliché Worldbuilds

[Thorn Darkblade]

So, I came across this little gem on imgur:<p><a href="<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_2015_05/CxXBkNP.jpg.6ad9f949df55e664b442d93f2525fc20.jpg" class="ipsAttachLink ipsAttachLink_image"><img data-fileid="52243" src="<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_2015_05/CxXBkNP.jpg.6ad9f949df55e664b442d93f2525fc20.jpg" class="ipsImage ipsImage_thumbnailed" alt=""></a></p>


....and a thought occurred to me.


I've played in this world. Too many times. World of Warcraft, Elder Scrolls, Lord of the Rings. Several D&D worlds. Heck, even the 'original' worlds I'm building for some of my campaigns, and my LARP.


So, the question- Why do so many fantasy genres draw from these tropes? Is it because of the Tolkien origin most of us are drawing from in one way or another? Is it just common desire to have these story elements, in one way or another, present? I'm curious on your thoughts and opinions on this.

 

[Cirno]

Tropes aren't necessarily a bad thing. Certain associations (with mountains, with forests) come with the culture being used as the basis for the world. These places help to give players or readers an idea of the setting at a glance. They give a starting point which can then be explored and/or subverted if politics or the underpinnings of the world come into play. If they're just meant to be a backdrop, then they do their job.


I do like and appreciate when game masters or writers do research and pull in ideas from other cultures (ancient Mesoamerican and Andean ones are my favourite) or logically fashion new ones.


For an extreme example, we a have a four-winged flying race with arms and legs. How's this affect their living spaces? Do they even have doors. or a ground floor? Do they have a caste structure where deformed ones with fewer wings are regulated to the bottom? Do they arrange structures vertically or horizontally and what does it reflect on their society? Slap in bonus from other field of interest. Like hey, most other creatures on the planet exhibit an eight-limbed structure because evolution. Everything is spiders!

 

[Thorn Darkblade]

For an extreme example, we a have a four-winged flying race with arms and legs. How's this affect their living spaces? Do they even have doors. or a ground floor? Do they have a caste structure where deformed ones with fewer wings are regulated to the bottom? Do they arrange structures vertically or horizontally and what does it reflect on their society? Slap in bonus from other field of interest. Like hey, most other creatures on the planet exhibit an eight-limbed structure because evolution. Everything is spiders!

I had the same thought process in a scifi game I did...alien ruins, built in hollow ziggurat structures, the center was empty though, with rooms built on the inside walls vertically, with landing patios, due to the race being winged.

 

[Cirno]

[QUOTE="Thorn Darkblade]I had the same thought process in a scifi game I did...alien ruins, built in hollow ziggurat structures, the center was empty though, with rooms built on the inside walls vertically, with landing patios, due to the race being winged.

[/QUOTE]
Oh wow. That sounds pretty cool. What was the reasoning for the ziggurat shape?


I keep looking at the map's geographic features, particularly forest, mountain, and ocean. I think these are easy settings to transform to fit any mood. Places shaped by human or mortal hands are trickier because people tend separate what is familiar and what is other based on their own real-world experiences. So more work is involved to frame mundane/fantastic things in exotic/familiar terms.

 

[JayTee]

Tolkien.


The answer always stems back to Tolkien.


For better or worse, he basically defined western fantasy literature, the fact that he also drew significantly on western mythology only further cements this, as it effectively made it so that anything that drew on old folk tales or mythologies relating to europe will inevitably be similar in some way to his own writings simply because they draw upon the same source material.

 

[Blumenkranz]

Fantasy is a stale genre. What's supposed to be a generic catch-all term for anything that's not set in our universe (either past or future) has become a synonym of "medieval Europe with wizards, dragons, elves and other fantasy races", and honestly, I blame Tolkien for it.


For some reason, the Middle-earth became the go-to fantasy reference. Perhaps it is that, for us westerners, it feels alien yet familiar, perhaps because it is based on European culture or simply because we grew up reading the fantasy books that talk about the same things over and over.


Maybe it is that it sells more, maybe it is that it's a fairly solid formula many writers don't see a reason to change. I don't know, but if we haven't changed it is because it's been proved to work time after time.


But I still prefer more alien worlds. A setting based on Hindu legends would be pretty fucking neato, for example, but we haven't seen much of those for whatever reason. Perhaps it is that our writers are more familiar with western fantasy and can't be arsed to investigate other cultures (which makes sense, since it is a hard, long and tiring task), but the most alien we have been able to go so far is with Asian mythos.


Still, what I would really want to see are some completely alien worlds, not based in anything in specific. Something so surreal it could put Dalí to shame, with just enough traces of reality and humanity to understand what the hell is going on.


It's some really hard work, but you can make some cool stories this way. I wonder why not many writers try to do this for their novels.

 

[Olive Tome]

Yeah they are overused. But I believe it is over used for a reason. Something that does not work and no one liked would never get overused. I as well get bored of these worlds and would love to see some changed, but I will not roll my eyes and point it out if someone builds a roleplay around it.