RPT Genres and Examples

[Gumblackwood]

I've been wanting to make a lasting contribution to this board, so I thought putting together a somewhat large list of genres that I feel would fit into our Roleplaying Thread system. This is by no means a complete list, but it may help with setting-specific skills and discussion. I'm working off of Wikipedia mostly, and there's clearly a lot of overlap in settings, but I'm going to try to boil it down to settings (and examples) that might work with our current individual-character style RPT.

Fantasy first.

Fantasy - Defined as any setting where magic and the supernatural, rather than just science and technology, is present, no matter how limited. Fantasy is internally consistent, meaning that while impossible in a real setting, magic obeys certain laws. These laws may be apparent or not and depend on the setting. Fantasy frequently draws upon a coherent mythology, be it ancient mythology, fairy tales, folklore, or even pantheons made up wholly by the author. Any of these mythologies may be present in some form in any of the following genres.

Fantasy Genres:
High Fantasy (Lord of the Rings) - High stakes, good versus evil fantasy with a moral imperitive. Characters have a clear goal, working towards defeat of some great powerful force. A high fantasy setting may exist within or connected to a real world setting, but is separate, parallel and has little tangible effect on the real world.

Heroic Fantasy (Most Fantasy MMO and D20 settings) - A combination of High Fantasy with more frequent "Sword and Sorcery" encounters. Characters are likely to have the assistance of magic items, encounter supernatural forces and fight with or against magic to eventually discover and counter some major threat.

Low Fantasy (Conan the Barbarian) - Fantasy that is clearly not akin to high fantasy. Magic and things like supernatural creatures may be extremely rare or have a cynical aspect to their appearance. Characters are frequently ordinary people.

Dark Fantasy (The Cthulhu Mythos) - Often a form of high fantasy that includes distinct horror overtones. It may be a horror story in a distinct fantasy world, or it may be horror derived from a distinctly supernatural force intruding on the real world.

Contemporary Fantasy (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) - A setting wherein magic intrudes into the real world, completely out of sight of the consensus population. This is often the setting where reclusive fantasy races exist, vampires, werewolves and the like, in some fantasy underground. Characters may or may not combat hidden menaces with magic powers, dividing this category into high or low fantasy as well. Urban fantasy is a subset of contemporary fantasy with the setting confined to a recognizable city.

Alternate History (Hellgate: London) - A setting wherein magic has intruded on the real world to such an extent that the general population knows it exists. This may be a setting wherein magic has always existed alongside mankind but has clear connections to the technological and social timeline of the real world, or it may be a setting wherein some historical event has brought magic into a world that existed without it.

Historical Fantasy (Arthurian stories) - A setting like contemporary fantasy or alternate history that takes place in a non-modern historical period, such as the middle ages.

Bangsian Fantasy (Dante's Inferno) - Fantasy setting taking place in some form of afterlife.

Comic Fantasy (Any Discworld story) - Settings which bring some parody to any fantasy setting.

Phew, and I still have Science Fiction, Combination, and Real World to go.

[Gumblackwood]

Science Fiction - Defined as settings wherein nonexistant science, technologies or societal structures create an alternate or postulative reality. The underlying alternatives presented, (the "What ifs"), could come from anything from sound theory to wild imagination. Themes and appearance can vary wildly and can introduce characters and situations that would appear fantastical, but are explained via some scientific origin rather than by magic. There's also a some difference between emphasis on science. Hard science fiction settings focus on new technology and its consequences; all alternatives are plausible or even already in some usage and all science and technology used is as accurate as possible, following physical, mathmatical and other principles. Soft science fiction focuses on human interaction, either on the individual level or on society as a whole, and technological alternatives may be farfetched or extremely unlikely and often unexplained.

Science Fiction genres:

Alternate History (The Man in the High Castle) - A setting wherein one or more human historical events differed from the real timeline and development continues or continued in that alternate historical track. While it's possible to have a setting with that departure as its only difference from a real world RPT, it's also well within the boundaries of this setting that alternate histories may be fashioned by time travel interference, and some settings may involve characters acting as "paratime patrols", enforcing continuity in alternate timelines.

Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic (Fallout) - Setting in which some major catastrophe has shattered civilization, dealing with the immediate consequences or later. Characters may be trying to rebuild society or just survive. Frequently, in a post-apocalyptic setting the world has forgotten or mythologized the pre-apocalyptic world and technology may have been lost, decidedly shunned, or only exist in small batches, leaving an agrarian or pseudo-medieval society.

Mundane Science Fiction - Future setting that cuts out most of the most far-reaching imaginative science and technology, leaving just humankind, our planet and what we do with it.

Space Opera (Ender's Game) - Future Science Fiction setting featuring romantic adventure, larger-than-life characters, alien encounters, exotic locations, complex civilizations, and remotely plausible technology. Characters are thrown into an adventure against a major threat, much like high fantasy. Many alien races are humanlike in both appearance and character, communication is easy, and main characters don't need much characterization or history.

Sword and Planet (Bourroughs' Mars series) - Comparable tone to sword and sorcery. Interplanetary travel is common and immediate survival or exploration on exotic planets is the main focus. Frequently combined with planetary romance, the exploration of human interaction under adverse planetary conditions, meaning that it is usually soft science fiction.

Heroic Science Fiction (Star Trek) - A combination of Space Opera and Sword and Planet.

Military Science Fiction (Starship Troopers) - Future Setting wherein most of the characters are military soldiers or officers acting in some major conflict using weapons and technology of a moderately or greatly futuristic grade against some enemy, often aliens or dictatorship.

Spy-Fi (Metal Gear) - Espionage setting employing implausable science and technology gadgets above real world espionage techniques.

[Gumblackwood]

sorry in advance if I don't get to more of these in the next week or so, I've got finals to think about.