A brief look online and a fantasy setting is still the most popular for tabletop role playing games. By brief, I really mean brief so have no stats to back anything up. (This is my preferred method of research.) However, I do not doubt that this is the case. All other settings carry baggage and limitations that stymie play and/or are not attractive to players. I want to think this is not the case, but off course it is. A fantasy setting is just more, in short, I believe, psychologically open. Oh, and just to be clear, by fantasy setting I refer to the dragons, knights, and evil beasts of the premodern (?) world.
Yeah, this came up on my youtube feed. So... yeah.
TTRPGs serve the purpose, in my opinion, the same purpose as does any form of myth making through its variety of mediums, whether story telling or theater. However, as befits the metamodern world, this myth making is atomized and more individualized or local, decentralized if you will. Actually this just got more interesting to me. Welcome to stream of consciousness beginning in 3, 2, and 1.
So fantasy settings are the choice because they are unhindered by and unbound to the real world. These are places that only exist in the mind and though there may be some striking similarities to the real world, these are but nonce and serve only to anchor the fantasy in place and have no relation to the events (for the most part) of the game. Myth making, or the processes of giving life meaning/order/context outside of eating, procreating, and dying, occurs in the unreal dream state of our subconscious.
I mean, where else could it occur. The real world is simple - minus taxes.
The closer one comes to the real world, the process of myth making becomes increasingly more.... restricted. I think restricted might be the right word. In any respect, the myth making becomes ever more grounded in the reality we experience in everyday life. This limits and restricts the power of the imagination and agency of the player.
Think of the vampire. Why is it the vampire is now a highly sexualized/asexual semi-predatory good/bad guy with a conscious and teenage angst yet Dracula or tradition vampires (from the old world) are not. This is because the modern vampire (by that I mean vampires in a modern setting) are more attached to a real world and in the real world, Dracula has less 'space to exist' so to speak. Yet in the past, Dracula gets more space. This is because the past is a wide open space upon which anyone can place anything and the further back one goes, the more space for the imagination exists.
Ever wonder why most fantasy setting are in the past and are often set in a prepast? This is because, like our subconscious, it is infinite in space and literally anything can be imprinted on it. The great heroes of myth are always somewhere in the past and the further away in the past myth pinpoints its existence, the ore powerful it can become.
An in the past, there are no guns and cars and computers, there are only chthonian forces pit against humankind with the barest of human inventions - at least compared to the modern world. One can literally make everything up from scratch if one goes far back enough. And that's what gamers do.
Why? Well, those who play ttrpgs (specifically ttrpgs), whether they like it or not, are involved in myth making. It is a decentralized myth making. A bottom-up rather than top down creation of stories that help to define both themselves and their world. Ever wonder why gamers talk about their favorite characters or gaming events so excitedly and with such deep engagement? This is because those characters or events are defining myths.
So, uh, i need some coffee and better get to work.
1 comment:
I enjoyed the post! As I read this, I wondered what space the modern Superhero stories fall in. In reality, super-heroes are just retelling the same God vs Gods stories of ancient times and placed in a modern setting, so I suppose it isn't anything new.
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