Bring the fantasy to "fantasy" theme = more original lore

[hannobal]

Most "Fantasy" themed games are not very "fantastic" at all, mostly ripping off D&D, which was ripping off Tolkien, who was mostly mixing Norse, Finnish, English and whatnot mythology.
Unfortunately this applies to Crawl too, there are the same orcs, elves, dwarves, trolls, ogres, kobolds and et cetera as in every "fantasy" game.
Now in some cases this is useful of course, as Orcs and Elves are familiar and recognizable for everyone.
Especially if it's about camp-humour or parody making fun about the cliches.

"Fantasy" is supposed to be about imagination, something that does not exist in real world and no-one has ever even thought about to be possible.
Good fantasy should drop your jaw, seeing Lady of Pain first time in Planescape Torment comes to my mind as an example of this.

So i challenge the devs to bring more original lore to Crawl.
There are already good examples of this, like Ashenzari, Jiyva, Tengus, Felids and Octopodes being quite original in the genre.

I suppose such changes would have to be introduced slowly.
Just as example Orcs and Dwarves could be renamed, given some background lore and some kind of original flavors added.

Like Orcs = Urzi, human-pig hybrid creatures living on the hills, who worship their god Beogh. They have been in war with Dvers (aka former Dwarves) for millennias.
The Dver have affinity with earth (like now). This Urzi like to torch things, including Dver villages.
HIgh Elves could renamed too, given affinity with nature and have Fedhas as god of choice for their priests.

Note that this was just an example sketched in 5 minutes before coffee break.
Just renaming species is not enough though, as they would need more background lore and possible some changes to affinities or abilities to be more original.
And definitely the adding of originality should not be done as in my example. But it should give some idea of what level of changes would be needed.

Note that the point of this post is to not bitch about Crawl, i enjoy it very much, even with Orcs and Elves
But there are possibilities to raise the bar even further.

edit: Looks like i posted to wrong forum instead of game design discussion. Could this be moved?

[Klown]

I'm all for unique species being added, lava orcs/djinni/gargoyles are potentially making their way into 0.13.
Not sure about cleansing the game of more generic species though.

[dpeg]

hannobal: I don't care much about "fantasy" but I dislike the tropes myself, too. On the other hand, I am a sucker for classical mythology and for history, and this is why you have deep dwarves and ziggurats in the game. By the way, especially regarding dwarves your suggestion is not valid: MD was the stereotypical Tolkien and D&D dwarf, and DD is distinctly not. I was inspired by the original Norse mythos (truth to be told, all of dwarves, elves, kobolds, sprites etc. were invented by people as ghost-like things...).

[Utis]

It should be noted, though, that some of the thematic fantasy elements are implicit in the game mechanics. Orcs, for example, are not your typical standard fantasy fare, but obviously a caste of religious warriors, disciplined and pious (high invocation). Rather crawl's Klingons than Tolkienesque orcs.

[BlackSheep]

Simply changing the names of species may satisfy some desire for uniqueness, but the classical labels make it easier for people to connect with the game, and quicker to get past those tropes into the heart of the game itself, which is sufficiently different (to me) from anything else with a "fantasy" theme or an "RPG" model.

[1010011010]

Crawl has a great mix of recognisable lore and creative new elements, which I think is the best way to approach it since one of the best thing about crawl is that it is very transparent and intuitive. New players can recognise what elves and dwarfs generally are, renaming or changing the flavour would only hinder this with no gain to the game play.

[nicolae]

In my opinion, there is one area where Crawl does not have sufficient original fantasy: more spells should be named after wizards. Invent more wizards, and then name spells after them!

[hannobal]

I was thinking more about this yesterday, and maybe it's good to have some familiar lore (including some races) to make newbies feel more at home, like others have said in the posts above.
After all it's a dungeon crawl with simple graphics, where focus is more on game mechanics and action instead of immersion.

I've been glad to see that new content added during the last two years has been quite original and innovative.
So could be the best way to keep going forward like that and leave old races as they are.

Deep dwarves really are more original than the hill dwarves of the past.
It's also great that even the exotic races are valid choices, not just gimmicks.

[Grimm]

People rip on D&D's unoriginality a lot but there was some crazy ass stuff in there. Fiend Folio anyone? Crawl's mix of stock and original stuff is close to the original eclectic spirit of D&D.

[wizzzargh]

People rip on D&D's unoriginality a lot but there was some crazy ass stuff in there. Fiend Folio anyone? Crawl's mix of stock and original stuff is close to the original eclectic spirit of D&D.

"Any character who enters melee with an Eclectic Spirit will be rigorously elocuted about the good ol' days of D&D for 2d4+1 rounds, forcing a Save vs. Sleep."

[TeshiAlair]

Out of curiosity, is there an official dev position on dungeon decorations? I feel that some of the regular dungeon layouts are already evocative of certain concepts (for instance, the small cross shaped one reminds me of a great hall, whereas the big circle reminds me of a coliseum) and I think it would be interesting to add a little fluff to them to make them stand out thematically more. (color the walls differently in the "great hall" and have them say "a tapestry of foo" when examined, or randomly spawn skeletons on the ground in the coliseum).

[Salasann]

I'm not sure that Crawl needs more original lore or, really, if it needs lore at all. Supposing that we added the backstory concerning renamed orcs and dwarves, where would players learn about it? On the wiki? There doesn't seem to be much room in the game to carry that information. Also, Tengu are creatures out of Japanese mythology and, correspondingly, many versions of them appear in a lot of fantasy works.

At least for me, the appeal of crawl is entirely mechanically focused and it delivers a very clean but deep experience in that regard. Using "orc", "elf" and "dwarf" allows the game to carry a lot of information to the players in a single word, lowering the barrier of entry for new players. In a sense, this is exactly what tropes are for.

I'm not against the inclusion of more lore, or even the alteration of existing lore, on principle, but I don't see the need for it, and I also don't think the game has enough vehicles to carry lore.

[Hawklord]

I see what hannobal is getting at but I agree with the subsequent posters' opinions. For me Crawl is more about enjoyment and game mechanics - the themes and names are to an extent not so important. Creating a whole new mythos might be nice for a new game, but to chop and change an established game is in my view unnecessary. As mentioned above, standard fantasy fare and terminology makes for an easier game to get into for newer players and of course does not tamper with what long standing players are used to. I agree that new introductions (which happens with each new release) are nice and make for more interest and are most welcome.

As for the view that most fantasy themes are derived from D&D and Tolkien, quite - however how does one define 'Fantasy'? One could argue that somewhere along the line the likes of "Ashenzari, Jiyva, Tengus, Felids and Octopodes being quite original in the genre" are derived from other sources of fantasy or 'Science Fantasy/Fiction'. Lovecraft springs to mind...

[nicolae]

Out of curiosity, is there an official dev position on dungeon decorations? I feel that some of the regular dungeon layouts are already evocative of certain concepts (for instance, the small cross shaped one reminds me of a great hall, whereas the big circle reminds me of a coliseum) and I think it would be interesting to add a little fluff to them to make them stand out thematically more. (color the walls differently in the "great hall" and have them say "a tapestry of foo" when examined, or randomly spawn skeletons on the ground in the coliseum).

You mean, is there an official dev position on dungeon vaults...?

Renaming dungeon features (like rock walls to "tapestry of foo") just for cosmetic effects is sometimes frowned upon but it's not hard to make a vault that's just a giant hall with recolored walls and some dead things lying around.

[ontoclasm]

With regards to changing colors and features and so on, the official position is "use sparingly." When everyone's special, no one will be.

[BlackSheep]

You can do a lot with a little. There are several vaults that convey a "story" with clever arrangement of monsters, corpses and items.

[XuaXua]

Only rules are no all caps or blink tags.

[IronJelly]

I'm not sure why this needs to be said, but it seems like it does:

Fantasy the Genre != Fantasy the word in the dictionary.

As a genre, Fantasy is somewhat defined (and admittedly broader than just Tolkien and D&D), and going against the expectations and tropes of the genre changes the genre. You could replace the word Fantasy in the genre with any other word, and the arguement that it's not imaginative falls apart. If the genre were Steampunk, and the game were EXACTLY the same in all gameplay and content, simply with words and names fitting the Steampunk Genre, you wouldn't feel as you do about this.

Original lore is good in small amounts where it doesn't break immersion. If the lore is completely different, it's no longer Fantasy as a genre. If it's really your fantasy to see a game done this way, there are some great roguelikes out there with very custom and unique Intellectual Property. I love Gearhead Arena, for example, which has it's own unique style and story. There aren't dragons or trolls or orcs or other staples of the Fantasy Genre, because the genre is Steampunk (or maybe Futurepunk. not sure how i'd classify it). It's imaginative. It's unique. It's a fantasy. Fantasy (the genre) can be imaginative too, but imagination is hardly the definition of the genre itself, as you seem to think. Certain things simply should be how they are.

[dpeg]

I like storytelling a lot, and I think Crawl is a great tool for it but there are -- in my opinion -- two ways how not to go about it: first, no walls of text (compare Nethack's creation blurb screen at game start); second, no purely thematic changes of tiles, glyphs or monsters.

Examples of storytelling that I like: Slime and whatever it was before, also including the slime god; the orcs, their society and religion; the orb, heavily protected and when all else fails, even the pan lords chime in. You see, in neither of these cases there is an explicite story, but there are enough pieces that players can feel these are parts of a larger picture. On a smaller level, many uniques have a story, pieces of which they may tell via speech lines.

Of course, all of this takes a backseat behind gameplay and interface.

[Utis]

Yes, the implicit storytelling is something that I think crawl does very, very well. I'm not so convinced, though, that storytelling really does (or should take) a backseat behind game mechanics. Rather, I think that crawl has a particular way of combining game mechanics with storytelling that I, personally, prefer to many other ways. The thing is: Make a thought experiment: Without storytelling at all, it would be a game of balancing arbitrary numbers and positioning arbitrary ASCII characters on a computer screen. It's not, it's a game of dungeon exploration and survival.

[dpeg]

Utis: You will witness that virtually everything added in the last years cares about flavour. I just name three random examples: Yiuf, Cheibriados, wizlabs. It is true that old and new features should be thematically linked and while DCSS sadly has sacrificed some flavour to balance or interface (I am thinking of the spears of berserkers, the portal altars of Nemelex worshippers, the colouring of toadstools, for example), many gameplay improvements did add flavour -- think of the many new and revamped uniques, or branches like Abyss, Orc, Shoals, or new and revamped gods like Elyvilon, Fedhas etc.

What I meant above is this: gameplay is crucial, flavour is cheap.

Basically, awesome gameplay ideas (e.g. interesting new monsters) are hard to come up with; finding theme for a gameplay concept is much easier. That nonewithstanding, it's of course also true that many good gameplay ideas are actually inspired by flavour -- these two are nowhere mutually exclusive.

[One-Eyed Jack]

Without storytelling at all, it would be a game of balancing arbitrary numbers and positioning arbitrary ASCII characters on a computer screen. It's not, it's a game of dungeon exploration and survival.

You don't need to have hp bars and kobolds for a game to be about survival

[dpeg]

OEJ: This must be pre-Restoration period, right?

[One-Eyed Jack]

I got that image off of google image search but I remember one above tengen being a famous tesuji in a fairly old game so probably

[Grimm]

looks like the Vaults welcoming party

[shock]

That image is the famous "ear-reddening move" by Shusaku in 1846.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ear_reddening_game
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF3MmTlK5WY