Day 22 – Do you prefer high fantasy or low fantasy?
I love heroic fantasy and have read a loads of books in that genre: LOTR, Elric, Conan, Shannara, Thomas Covenant, Song of Ice & Fire, and so on. My favourites though are the Lyonesse Series by Jack Vance, and the Chronicles of Morgaine by C. J. Cherryh.
The books I enjoy the most though seem to have a common theme – magic is powerful, but scarce. And this resonates with me – if magic is capable of reshaping the world, destroying armies and the like, when powerful wizards fight each other, it would be like unrestricted Nuclear War.
Because of this, I tended to avoid Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance or Greyhawk settings because the magic is too freely available. I prefer a world that the players can predict with reasonable accuracy, with its own internal logic.
My Rift World setting is one such example of this. Magic is new to the Earth and so it’s study is only just beginning, wizards are uncommon and powerful ones are not to be found. That’s not to say that super-powerful wizards won’t exist – they just haven’t learned enough about the magical arts yet.
So, low fantasy for me.
…
With Orcs.