Thursday, June 23, 2011

Less Squamous Frog Gods and More Faerie Queens Please

Just a short rant

I love Sword and Sorcery and cut my teeth on much of appendix N. That being said the hobby, old school especially has become so infatuated with Weird Fantasy that its sucked much of the juices out of it.

And yes sure there are some very cool original materials out there , not the point. It seems like our social decay (and yes US society at least is in fact desperately sick) has entered into a sick feedback loop.

These days I'd be hard pressed to to see a supplement that speaks of wonder, awe, terror and anything on the comprehensible, normal human scale. Instead our angst feeds us a steady diet of ancient moldering forgotten ruins and enough Lovecraft inspired material that it borders on pastiche.

When we don't get that we get more 70's style material that was seemingly influenced by way too many hallucinogens.

Well I think its time for a change and for us to look our other roots, the Hobbit, Grimm's Faerie Tales, Kathryn Briggs, Myths , Folklore, Ivanhoe, Horror. stories of swashbuckling daring do and even more modern things like Labyrinth, Stardust, Pan's Labyrinth. Legend ....

So yeah less squamous frog gods and more faerie queens please

4 comments:

  1. I agree completely. I am overfed on Terrible Incomprehensible Gods From Beyond Space and Time. Hell, even Pathfinder has stats for shoggoths and Hounds of Tindalos in the monster books.

    I mean, I still like that kind of stuff, mind you, but I agree.... we could use a different flavor for awhile.

    Hmm....Grimm's Faerie Tales... yes, I think that would do nicely!

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  2. There's a lot of room in fanatasy-land but it does seem folks are often talking themselves into small corners with adventures and campaign concepts.

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  3. I agree, I think the problem comes down to the fact that people think of our own fairy tale world as too cute and whimsical. I blame the Victorians for this.
    The notion that anything that came from the Celtic Warriors, Vikings, Germanic Tribes, and similar groups was sugary is silly.
    The Fairy Queen cast down armies in Irish Mythology.

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  4. Do you accept blog posts? I'm a folklorist who has been doing research on Eurasian fairies and I'd be interested in writing about some of the personalities and motivations of different types of fairies and the historical way people acted towards them.

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