Subverting Clichés in World Building: Don't Be Afraid!
By ahoodedfigure 5 Comments
(Since typing seems to go only slightly slower than normal, I'll still ramble now and again, at least. And the video page is strangely less hard to navigate than the information pages, except for them getting rid of the sift-through-types-of-videos-while-you're-watching-another-video function, which I miss. )
A Little of the Ol' Rope-a-Trope
When compared to GB, this Dragon Age promotional site is the worse slog as far as old steam-driven bessie here is concerned, but the reason I bring it up is it's the starting point for a little chat about fantasy worlds (and world building in general). I'm the kind of person who doesn't equate the word "fantasy" with dwarves and elves necessarily; I'm as likely to include stuff written by Harlan Ellison, and quite a bit of what's called science fiction by some, in the category fantasy and not think twice about it. I like fantasy to be just that, an exploration of concepts without worrying so much about following the laws of physics. It's the dream logic that makes stories still interesting to us, even after we've achieved so much with technology.
If I must experience something with dwarves and elves, I enjoy it if there's at least a new spin on an old cliché. Once in a while, popular games will have the wherewithal to manage this; I can't help but cackle with glee when I hear about the latest attempt by the Blizzard crew to break with convention in World of Warcraft, for example. And from what I've gathered from the six profiles on the Dragon Age site above, it seems they're trying something new with the way Elves and Dwarves are depicted. I'll leave it up to you to explore for yourself, or we can chat about in the comment section if you like. The profiles on that site are good examples, from what I've seen so far, of a creative take on time-worn tropes.
What bothers me is the strange fear that a lot of people have for changing things up, and I guess that's the focus of this entry. I like to play pen and paper RPGs once in a while, and the reticence there is probably felt more strongly there than in computer gaming, but there are some similarities. There, people will refuse to buy your product if you mess with elves or dwarves or magic too much. They want their fantasy to follow a narrow, predictable path. Any new stuff will come from political backstabbing, betrayals, and the like. To me that all sounds like the sort of dynamicism you'd find in a potboiler novel, not an attempt at something new and interesting, but some folks are dead set against innovation.
I have a friend who has been running a pen-and-paper game on and off for longer than many of the Giant Bomb users have been alive, back to the first days of Dungeons and Dragons when everything was practically cut and pasted from the world of J.R.R. Tolkien. Over the years, DnD has gone through some changes, branched out into what I, and the dude who runs those games, think is interesting territory. Settings like Spelljammer, which has strange craft powered by mages which float from crystal sphere to crystal sphere in the aether, Dark Sun, which has a brutal desert world forsaken by the gods and run by corrupt kings, and Planescape, the setting that inspired arguably one of the best CRPGs in gaming history (or at least people still look back at that game fondly whenever the subject comes up). I've provided some links to the games they inspired, but I'm still talking about pen-and-paper for a moment. My friend and I were wowed by these new settings, and when we met many years later we reminisced about these neat settings and the clichés they dumped wholesale overboard.
But guess which setting remains, which setting is the favorite, after all these years? The tried and dried Forgotten Realms, which at times doesn't even bother to hide the fact that they're just putting a fantasy patina over what is really ancient Japan or medieval Europe, with ethereal elves, crafting-and-mining dwarves which seem a crossbreed of Klingons and flagrantly stereotypical Scottish Highlanders, and the usual gang of stupid peasants and stuffy nobles you'd normally find at an exceptionally embarrassing ren faire.
If anyone takes me to task for making cheap shots there, I'll just say that was the exasperation talking.
My buddy tried over many years to introduce his own worlds, and many others, including those above and stuff like Eberron, into new campaigns. The players would entertain his desires for a little while, then somehow scuttle the game and go back to Forgotten Realms again. Expand this a bit, and this is what goes on during flame wars when people fiddle with an old formula. In some of my previous entries I've mentioned a couple of examples, like the Forge Town in Heroes of Might and Magic. People really want game designers to toe the line, and some put more energy into stopping the plans of these designers than they put into arguably more important areas of their lives.
I realize why pandering is so popular: it's immediately accessible. Most people who are into fantasy RPGs know the clichés and can immediately build upon them, notice characters who defy the stereotypes, know how a character will act and why, and act accordingly. And gamers are often a lot who are quick to condemn change; We're all trying to repeat that time we had when we were young, that fun space game we played, that great race where we just barely got first place. We want our new console to do the same stuff, only better. We make these demands on game creators and, just like my poor game master friend, they're itching to try something new, but are stuck doing the same damned thing over and over.
It wears creators down, and waters down what they do. I'm betting most of the creators out there who are worth their salt want to go crazy with creativity, trying all kinds of mind-blowing weirdness that would be fine company for the likes of Noby Noby Boy and other genre busters, and even in the more predictable realm of 1st person shooters and computer role-playing games, people might make environments that would be a blast to explore, showing us stuff that simply COULDN'T exist in real life no matter how you tweaked the physics engine. But they're afraid of pissing us off, basically, no matter how sound the gameplay mechanics might be.
So when I see Dragon Age (or even Arcanum, or Gladius) trying something new, even with the same old same old, I get a bit excited. I wonder if maybe THIS will be accessible just enough to slip by people's defenses enough to surprise them. I can't speak for the quality of Dragon Age, and sometimes some experiments of the past would have benefited from a couple more years of development, but I think when designers at least have the guts to change things up a bit they deserve some extra attention, especially when it comes to the stodgy genre that is "fantasy."