Right now, it’s the farthest thing from what I want to be doing, but…
It seems to be what everyone wants the most. Why? Are we really that stuck on Dungeons & Dragons? Is it because other genres of TTRPGs hit closer to home in terms of our reality?
I’m asking these questions to try to find the optimal campaign setting for my entry in the Basic RolePlaying Design Contest. Yes, I’m still very much geeking out over this. But it’s also valuable research for any kind of game design. I’m trying to gauge demand for certain genres.
Why does it have to be fantasy?
To be clear, I like the genre. Shadowdark RPG will be one of my favorites until they bury me. Fantasy is great escapism. It’s a familiar genre for the hundreds upon thousands of us who started with D&D. It doesn’t matter the edition. It’s the bread and butter of the more popular Actual Play series such as Critical Role or Dimension 20.
I’m not trying to be negative toward the genre or any Actual Play series. (Mad respect for Critical Role right now.) I would like to point out that I think the genre is getting out of hand in places. We’ve taken the game out of the dungeon and into a magical high school where coffee shop barista is a viable character class. We’re just going well beyond smash-the-monster, grab-the-goodies style of gameplay.
Everyone, and I mean almost every major company, seems like they’re doing a fantasy game (or have been doing one for ages.) Why would I want to dive into that pool and try to swim? There’s everything from the Meg (D&D,) to sharks (Troll Lord, Kobold, Paizo,) to fish, all the way down to the minnows. There is literally no way to jump in there and really stand out. Cripes, even Chaosium has their own entries in the fantasy category (Pendragon and Runequest.)
Here’s a partial list of the fantasy games coming between now and 2026:
- Dungeons & Dragons 5E 2024 Edition (or whatever they’re calling it.)
- Pathfinder 2E Remastered
- Tales of the Valiant
- Daggerheart
- MCDM (or whatever they’re calling it.)
- Dragonbane
- Dragon Slayer
- Adventurer, Conqueror, King 2
- Zweihander
- Vagabond
- Stormlight Archive (Brian Sanderson)
- Diablo (Based on Diablo 4)
- Final Fantasy
- Others that I probably won’t remember.
That’s not even mentioning Role Master, Castles & Crusades, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Old School Essentials, Chivalry & Sorcery and probably a hundred more. Let’s not forget Shadowdark RPG. I love Kelsey and that game too much to give up my other bread and butter. Everything I know about marketing (I’m a PR/Reporting guy, so…) tells me I should not do high fantasy as a TTRPG genre if I want it to sell.
Someone will probably say, “Go where the money is.”
I’ll counter it with my own hyperbole of “You have to spend money to make money.”
IFF I could jump into this thing with a massive suite of unique, hand drawn art that fit my world concept, along with a full staff of creative and intelligent writers, layout artists, and printer- yeah. I’ll do a fantasy game. I also don’t have an advertising and marketing department here in the Game Box.
I have, uh… me. I have ME! I mean, yay but that narrows my options.
Wizards of the Coast would probably hate me if I were in charge of D&D. Completely new worlds, new tropes, new everything. There would be “regular” D&D and that campaign setting they’d never seen before. I would have old and new staffers alike in tears. But let’s put a pin in that discussion for another day. (The day of cats and dogs living together. Mass hysteria.)
If competing with Dungeons & Dragons is off the table, then what am I going to do?
I’m glad you asked because I’m looking at all of the other genres as a completely blank slate right now. What about mixing fantasy and some other genre? There’s historical fantasy (Euww to me, but somebody might like it.) There’s space fantasy. (Like that Space Opera with the guys and the laser swords, Muppets…what was it called again.) Then we start getting obscure or more obscure.
FASA did an amazing job of mixing Elf game with other genres. They had Shadowrun, which was cyberpunk horror. They had Earthdawn which was horror fantasy. The only thing they didn’t mix magical elves into was MechWarrior, not that we didn’t try that on our own.
I remember a line from one of the Marvel movies being a quote about technology being so advanced as to appear as magic. I really wanted to see a Red Skull Tesseract plot, but I digress. Star Trek is another franchise that has technology so advanced that it duplicates spell effects. Kirk might have used that to scare some locals once or twice. So, maybe space fantasy. (Do not mention Spelljammer around me.)
Pondering non-fantasy genres for a moment.
Obviously I’m not submitting a BRP horror game to Chaosium. I’m not going to compete with the great and powerful Cthulhu no matter what I do. It’s not even their only horror game. Yeesh.
They’ve already done some work with 7th Sea which was my favorite Alderac Entertainment game alongside Legend of the Five Rings. I am so want to do my own take on samurai or Asian fantasy, but again I can’t afford art, staff, or cultural/sensitivity consultants. But with 7th Sea, I should probably take pirates off the table.
I’m not really a big historicals guy. I like some WW2 games, but I tend to spiral toward making it Weird War 2, like they did with Dust and Deadlands. That’s about as historical as I really get.
Chaosium actually did/does a superhero game. I had forgotten completely about Superworld. It’s a great game, but again I don’t want to try to hand Chaosium a BRP game that overlaps with their own material.
Fantasy + What?
I’ve backed three Kickstarters for fantasy mecha games, so that’s not happening. It’s a pretty niche genre, even in terms of anime. I like My Vision of Escafloune and some similar anime, but it’s right up there with Revolutionary Girl Utena and Sakura Wars in terms of the number of American TTRPG fans it touches. (Utena did have an RPG, btw.)
Fantasy flows seamlessly into steampunk as a genre and there are a couple of those campaigns in various iterations throughout my notes over the years. My biggest concern here is again niche genre, lack of art budget, and general reception by the public. It’s kind of another fantasy game, yet not. We’ll list steampunk fantasy under maybe.
Is Mork Borg considered post-apocalyptic fantasy? Post-apocalyptic is not high on my list of preferred genres already, probably from too many years of Gamma World and Rifts gameplay. Rifts also left me never wanting to blur too many genres together ever again. There’s also art to consider with that, too.
I pitched a couple of modern fantasy ideas to Evil Genius Games last year for their Urban Arcana contest that were rejected. This idea of modern fantasy is pretty niche, but it combines the oomph of the high fantasy TTRPG surge with the convenience of a modern TTRPG. Obviously one would need to be careful of treading on already established IP such as Highlander or the aforementioned Urban Arcana. The only drawback to modern, cyberpunk, and onward genre games is the prevalence of firearms, and most fantasy fans believe guns are generally pretty “icky.” That, and who needs bullets when you have magic?
My ponderance of genres shall continue today as I brainstorm.
Ideally, I could create a whole new genre of TTRPGs or at least a new take on an old one. There’s gotta be something out there that hasn’t been done (to death) yet. The only question is putting together a viable pitch and making it market worthy.
The very few people who know me very well will tell you I tend to overthink things a great deal. However, the BRP Design Challenge deserves a lot of thought and even more effort. I want my entry (or entries if I do two) to be incredible. I would love to make BRP the go-to game system the same way Powered by the Apocalypse/Blades in the Dark have become. Or again since the BRP: Universal Game Engine isn’t new.
Thanks for being here today. More tomorrow. This discussion is somewhat ironic given I just started reading Daggerheart today. I appreciate you. Take care and embrace the things that bring you the most joy.
Also, if you have any suggestions, I can be reached by email via JeffsGameBox@gmail.com
Jeff's Game Box 