Hello,

First of all, I don't intend this thread to be a criticism of anyone's conduct in our RPs at all. I merely wish to (at least hopefully) have a frank discussion and dispel a concern of mine. It seems to me that, with the rapid rise of Game of Thrones, said series has eclipsed perhaps even Tolkien's works, to become the lens through which we identify fantasy.

More and more I see "political RPs" (which I love, being a member of two) springing up, which talk of chaotic and divided realms each consisting of many...Proud and Long Established Houses vying for control of a central Throne. In these RPs we have characters filling roles similar to those essential to Game of Thrones' make-up - dastardly advisors on a small council, Knights, disgraced Lords, Bastards, Dynasties...all of these things which might seem to be essential in any fantasy universe, but in reality, while always present to a degree in Fuedal-Fantasy, are features exaggerated and emphasised by GRRM to both show his passion for War-of-the-Roses History and to make his series unique.

To me (my opinion is just that, so feel free to debate me as to what TES is), TES is first and fore-most a High Fantasy series. While Low-Fantasy lends itself to human stories examining human nature, High-Fantasy, especially with MK's concepts of the World Being the Dream of a God, Apotheosis and Hubris (Dwemer), Free Will and so on, lends itself to big philosophical questions.

These core concepts, to me, are never fully addressed in TES. I've never seen any RPs concerning, say, the Dwemer and Kagrenac, or the Chimer exodus, or Alessia freeing humans from slavery, or religions of Tamriel, Creation myths and so on - these things make the TESverse unique to me, and we simply have not seen them in recent times.

So, and I stress again, this is a discussion - nobody should feel guilty, this merely concerns how we identify fantasy, not people's writing skill and originality, What is High Fantasy to you? Why do you want to participate in TES community Creations?. Discuss.

I feel the need to mention that Bethesda actually used the term "low fantasy" to describe Skyrim pre-release. In fact I think that's the first time I ever even heard the term.

I think the central issue here is that it's much easier to make roleplays based on the down-to-earth aspects of TES. Not just politics or what have you, but a lot of the typical adventurey stuff. Both have the scope to also include deeper lore, but it's much much much easier for a group of people to get together and write about the doings of lords or adventurers, generals, mercenaries, vampires, and so on than it is to try and find a way to bring the Godhead, the Dwemer and massive overarching themes like hubris and free will. Roleplaying is a (generally quite casual) collaborative writing game and it's quite hard for a dozen collaborators to create a coherent exploration of the hubris of the Dwemer or the relevance of free will within the dream of a god. These things can I suppose be driven at and pushed into place by careful GMing, but it isn't really comparable to a whole bunch of people sitting down to create their characters and write about their adventures/schemes/lives.

There are/have been roleplays aiming to get some of the lorey stuff in there. The short-lived Spiros and the Mananauts may have been a pirate adventure, but it was a pirate adventure steered by the collapse of White Gold, an Elder Scroll and a dimension-crossing pirate ship. I planned to start an adventure roleplay focused on oblivion exploration of a sort a little more esoteric than that to which the Champion of Cyrodiil was accustomed, drawing on a body of out-of-game lore as a major part of its "canon". But you know, I am a terrible organiser and GM.

I'm not sure if those are what you mean or not, but my point is RPs can and do explore the lore beyond the political and whatnot. But it is really hard to make an RP that really tackles the kind of things that make the lore really special because they are hard to write about in a casual, collaborative manner.

Tell ya what though, if I'm not derailing the thread: it's my summer holiday now and I'd be more than happy to see ideas for a higher fantasy TES RP.

That is quite concerning.

Don't my get me wrong, there's absolutely no reason as to why low-fantasy concepts like dynasties and ancient kingdoms (although,perhaps people could lay off the House Mottos and the "Sers") - and larger topics like Tamriellic Religion can't co-exist. My problem is that when we don't try to maintain that balence.

I was perhaps a little too strongly worded in my OP. What I was getting at is few of us seem to...look through the lens of TES' lore when it comes to shaping a character's beliefs and actions. I was having a discussion in OPAP about that very thing - about how the religions of Tamriel could affect politics in a way that might make our RP a little more...TES-y - I tried to argue for a polygamy and people being glad for bastards due to Dibella's status as a Divine. This doesn't darastically affect formula - it's still accessible to an outsider, but if we challenge the accepted fantasy rules it might make a reader pause and say 'Hey - this is quite interesting. I can see a character here!'

Another tenet of the lore I find that could be used to affect character on a small scale is, say, I a mage or intelectual. CHIM and the lack of it provides an iteresting identity crisis - and questioning of free will. A character learning about CHIM may become seriously disheartened or dismayed, and a RP with several such characters (Dwemer), could be a really interesting debate, even if some RPers aren't aware of the overall...for lack of a better word...itelligence to the writing.

Granted, you can't do an RP about the Dreamsleeve of Godhead or Dwemer dissaperance - there's no character there at all. I just worry we all take a few fantasy rules (often GOT based) as granted, and don't think through the lens of the TESverse.

This is a great discussion, TTN; kudos for creating a topic on this.

However, I want to raise a possible counterpoint: that TES has never truly been High Fantasy. The background lore may be more high fantasy than low, but in practice, in most of the actual games, TES has tended to low fantasy. With the exception of Morrowind, which delved into those aspects of the lore because of characters like Vivec and Yagrum Bagarn, the series has been focused mostly on human (not meaning to discount the elven and beast races, because I'm kind of including them under human) struggles - in Daggerfall (to the best of my knowledge) you deal primarily with political intrigue; Cyrodiil, even though you're fighting a Daedric god, he fades into the background as you deal with nobles and knights; in Skyrim, the dragon threat is combined with a Civil War.

Of course, I'm a bit biased, because I've always preferred low fantasy. Even when I was a kid, before I had ever heard of A Song of Ice and Fire and my only fantasy exposure was Lord of the Rings, I always preferred the grittier parts of the story (the human drama, the war scenes) to the parts that dealt with the elves or the ring. Just on a personal level, I find it far more interesting to write about human wars than it is to write about achieving CHIM or any of the other metaphysical background lore of TES (especially because so much of that part of the series seems to come only from MK).

I do agree with you that the GoT influence has taken over a bit too much of our view on TES (especially because I helped usher that in when I became a fan of ASoIaF) and could do with some beating back. But at the same time, I think that the influence of it helps make RPs that are fundamentally grounded in a less "gamey" world - i.e. worlds where things are not as … sanitized … as the world of the games - easier to understand and jump into.

I know I kind of rambled here, but I hope some of what I said made sense.

Thank you, and you didn't ramble (even if you did, you won't be the last one in this thread)

I think the reason we differ as to whether it's High or Low Fantasy is how we view the...legitimacy of the games. Basically, while I know this is a tad unfair to the BGS developers, I kind of score how seriously I should take a game's story as canon based on to what degree it's derivative. For instance, while Daggerfall is your usually DandD*** tripe, it does redeem itself in the fact that I thought it had a good story which drew in the beginnings of a unique universe - for instance the Underking is quite a tragic figure considering how Tiber Septim treated him, and the Numidium is...well...a poster child for the TES-Lore really devoted fan. On the other hand, whilst Skyrim benefits from being at the recent end of two decades of lore development, and the Civil War doe a great job of, as I've been asking for, framing a low-fantasy plot it a unique TES setting (The Thalmor/Talos set up is excellent) its poor story and poor use of lore (Alduin is a generic as they could have made him, frankly) drag it down again. Oblivion is just pure rubbish.

What I'm trying to say with this is, although the games have redeeming qualities, I get the impression that the BGS writers, like us, see too much through the lens of their favourite fantasy series. The only truly not derivative lore is MKs, and therefore I put it above the lore's portrayal in games in my own person 'head-canon' (in fact, MK's work is enough to ignite some of its own rip-offs).

Secondly, while I agree GOT is an good springboard, I feel we ought to be careful encouraging that practice. Since RPs are collaborative, the mob rules. If enough RPers are new to TES and use a more familiar universe to set the scene, then the RP effectively becomes that familiar universe, with a name change. I really think the only way to avoid this is for the creators of the big political RPs to set up a...TES handbook, if you will. (In fact, if we could compile one, we could get it pinned) It could explain the key features of TES (The Divines, Beliefs, Fuedalism, Prophecy, The Empire, Magic etc.) in a clear manner (unlike MK), comparing it and pointing of the difference so between GOT and LOTR as one goes along. (Anyone want to collaborate?)'

Like I say, grittiness and human stories are fine. I just want to make sure we tell these human stories in a way...perhaps...only TES can?



***(I say D&D, I've never played. I tend to be quite self conscious about my nerdiness, enough to avoid showing it off in public too much - thank God they changed the name of this section to 'Community Creations' because if anyone I know saw my phone with a Fan Fiction tab open...my god...the shame...the explainations! (now that's a rambling master class)).

I think this is really unfair to the many people who do great work at BSG. While we may use MK's name(/initials...) as a byword for "unique", "weird", or "deep" lore he is not the sole author of TES' good lore. Also I would argue pretty much everything is "derivative". MK didn't grow up in a white cell before doing his writing, and the influences and inspirations for his work have been discussed at length. I'm generally with you but while Oblivion-bashing is fine and good, pretending all TES lore is either MK or fan fiction is plain ol' wrong.

While any endeavour aimed at sharing the lorve is to be commended, I don't know how achievable it is. Many have attempted to accumulate some kind of TES lore overview and I think it just can't be done. To put it one way - if we created such a document, it would not be a roleplayer's utility, it would be one of the most impressive works of TES lore scholarship in a long while. The best way, maybe even the only way, to learn the lore is just to roll up your sleeves and get into it. Anyway, the creators of big (political and other) RPs are typically not new to TES or to TES lore. They usually know their stuff and have done their homework. A principle I fully endorse and recommend is for GMs to include a little "reading list" in the signup - just a collection of texts that they will be riffing off of and consider to be essential to understanding the lore at play in the RP.

That last line in the quote I think is spot on, and the very purpose of having a cool setting like TES in the first place.

Amen to that!

Anyway, I think that the handbook thing, while certainly a great idea, might not be the best to try to apply to all big political RPs. Half of the appeal of big RPs (to me at least) is getting to create your own lore, because so little of it is actually fleshed out (like, for instance, Northpoint is literally nothing but the name in Bethesda's official lore, and now that's half the reason I love OPaP, because Northpoint is my baby). I feel like making a handbook would be a bit … dogmatic … and might dissuade new people from creating (or perhaps even joining) RPs at all. Even more so if a lot of those ideas lean towards the foreignness of MK's lore.

Yeah - I was too strongly worded. What I mean is, MK's influences tend to be based in Idealist Philosophy, Wierd Eastern regions and so on, whereas BGS have much more literary or film influences. That's not to say there isn't a lot he didn't create to be found, that's also excellent, especially in Skyrim (Skyrim's premise, IMHO, is a perfect example of combing Broken-Scale's preference of Low-Fantasy human stories with a noticeable TES spin (Thalmor, Emperor's Daedric Pact, Talos worship - top-notch)) - they just need to crank up the Wierd to eleven on certain lore-references.

As to your second point - I mean simply a guide to say how to do a Fuedal RP. It would explain how a character in Fuedal TES may have been brought up. It could explain the Gods of various regions, the Cognatic succession Laws, and the implications of Relgion on everyday life. It might also provide useful links to history, and mention briefly any sticking points between provinces. Hopefully my meaning is clearer.