old oldschool fatasy? A gap in the market, or a forgotten relic?

[nic-e]

I was walking through the woods the other day. the sun was shining, birds were chirping, the blue bells and snowdrops covered the forest floor in a sea of colour. and you know what i thought as i stood among the stillness and beauty of nature?
"WHERE THE F*CK ARE ALL MY KNIGHTS?!"

You see, I like a certain kind of fantasy. Not to the exclusion of all others, But it hold a special place in my heart , as i'm sure it will for many here. This kind of fantasy is that very particular brand of European romantic fantasy. It's the fantasy of the pre raphelites, of the arts and craft movement, of victorian medivalism and gothic revivial.

It is what i would call "Classic" fantasy, best described as knights in shining armour, fiery dragons and English castles. Of peaceful woodland full of enchantment and Arthurian mysticism.
It's the fantasy of the round table, of the grail knights and saint George , a curious anachronistic fantasy that blends the ancient, the roman, and the dark ages , pours them all into a suit of late medieval armour and says "TADA! LOOK AT MY SIGILS!"

But as i walked through the woods thinking of the best woodland fight scenes from John boormans Exclaibur, I became more and more  confused about why this type of fantasy seemed oddly under represented at the gaming table.

I wondered perhaps if tokienesque fantasy had such an impact on the tabletop gaming world that it represents a sort of year zero for many fantasy gamers? I thought perhaps that this type of fairly tale fantasy is simply too simple for many, or too old fashioned? Did warhammer make such a perfect pastiche of these well worn tropes that to return to them in earnest would seem at best uninformed and at worst cynical?
But I can't shake the feeling that there is an odd gap in the market for victorian style medival fantasy.

I'm very curious to know what others think.Is there a draught of old fashioned fantasy in gaming? are there any glaring reasons? Surely if these stories and images were enough to inspire the minds of Beardsley , Blake and Morris, They can inspire us? Are are we forever doomed to exist in a world of in depth world building and moral ambiguity?

[Pictors Studio]

I wonder if some of it isn't the influence of historical games on some of those themes and stories.  If the idea of Arthur as a typical medieval knight doesn't quite square with the reality of the sub-Roman war chief and that puts people off in some way.

I think one area you might find what you are looking for is the Thunderbolt Mountain Arthurian Range, now no long in production.  It really caught the spirit of what you are looking for and was a well thought out and sculpted range.  I have a lot of them painted and I'm glad I got them when I did although I have never actually played a game with them.

I plan to it just might be a while before I can get myself to come up with something to do it.

I don't know if it works at all with what you are thinking but there is the range of figures from Eureka representing the Bosch art that could fit with some of what you want.  No ambiguity to the evil there.

Ironically I think GW has moved away from the ambiguity in their fantasy line making a more stark contrast between good and evil that ever existed before, not that there aren't some grey areas. 

[nic-e]

I wonder if some of it isn't the influence of historical games on some of those themes and stories.  If the idea of Arthur as a typical medieval knight doesn't quite square with the reality of the sub-Roman war chief and that puts people off in some way.

I did think this. that perhaps the "low" fantasy style of traditional victorian style fantasy would drive away many fantasy players and would be off putting to historical players.

The thunderbolt mountain range was wonderful. Luckily there are quite a few gems in the dark sword miniatures line.

[Patrice]

Thanks for this.

I think I've always felt the same feeling; but also (worse?) I took part in the first LARPs (live action role-playing games, running around in the woods fighting NPCs monsters) which happened in France in the mid and late 1980s... It was a very new thing then...

...and since this time, when I walk in a wooden area I feel frustrated to think that there are no Orcish characters in ambush waiting for me. I really miss them.
(Um, I could take part in some new LARP games if I wish... but it's not that I want to play; I just miss the feeling of these creatures waiting in ambush all around in the woods).

[nicknorthstar]

I'd say it out of fashion.

Tolkien is part of the reason, which leads to D&D & Warhammer of course.

Some other factors? One is the moving Arthur to the Dark Ages. Many gamers love King Arthur (me included) but we've all read too much about his historical 'reality' and prefer him in that Sub Roman period, with added elements of the legend.

I also think many historical gamers are not as 'dry' as they once were, and add mythic/ legendary elements to their historical armies. I'm thinking about gamers I know playing Lion Rampant, and adding arthurian etc elements to their Medieval forces for that game.

A last reason I'd give is that the sources are very much out of vogue. I wonder how many readers here have read Blake and Morris? We've so much choice these days, picking up these Victorian books is last thing on peoples mind. I've read Morris and others, and to be honest I didn't really like it, but gave it the respect due as the source of so much of what we enjoy today.

[Sir Barnaby Hammond-Rye]

The armour in the early scenes of Excalibur was much much nicer than the shiny silver junk at the end. Just saying.

(I understand why things were that way in the film, I just never liked it.)

[Sir Barnaby Hammond-Rye]

But anyway, medieval fantasy has been done to death.

[Patrice]

But anyway, medieval fantasy has been done to death.

Yes... and medieval historical too. ...Not to mention some other historical periods, Napoleonic etc.

And we can still play in these contexts.

[nic-e]

But anyway, medieval fantasy has been done to death.

It has, but as far as i can see, never this particular style. Perhaps what I'm getting at is a tone rather than an aesthetic, And maybe trying to capture the wistful atmosphere of 19th century romanticism in dice and stats is an exercise in madness. (then again, I once made a ruleset for depicting entropy and played it with soil game pieces, so gaming with folly is sort of my version of BDSM.)

but i do agree with you on excalibur. The armour at the start of the film os so stylised and cool, and then the rest of the film they all look like uncomfortable tin foil robots.The fact that they NEVER take their armour off is hilarious once you realise it!

[Hobgoblin]

A few thoughts on this:

1.) There was a huge amount of this sort of fantasy in OD&D: knights challenging passers-by, castles, monstrous mounts for fighters that would be right at home in The Faerie Queen or Orlando Furioso (The Matter of France is very much the same sort of old-school fantasy), etc. And that's been picked up in the "old-school renaissance" - check out the PDF in this link. So I'd say that a lot of it has been subsumed by the sort of generic fantasy mishmash that D&D spawned.

2.)That feeds into the look of a great many miniatures. Think of how many plate-armoured fighters have shields. That, I think, is a trope of exactly the sort of fantasy you're talking about - because it was ahistorical from the start. So knights in full fifteenth-century plate fight with swords and shields (rather than keeping two hands free for their poleaxe or whatever as their historical equivalents did). So there's plenty of the Arthurian look out there on the tabletop.

3.) Some great RPGs get right into this sort of thing: Pendragon, most obviously, but also Dragon Warriors (still in print, with its extremely Arthurian starter scenario: I ran it last year for my kids and their friends, and it's terrific).

Have you seen Dan Mersey's Song of Arthur and Merlin? It's one of the best iterations of Song of Blades and Heroes and encompasses three Arthurian settings - historical, Welsh legend and high medieval. It has rules for jousting and the Questing Beast in its bestiary!

[DivisMal]

I have this same feeling and consider this lack of minis really strange.

When I grew up, Excalibur was still one of the very few watchable Fantasy movies and my room included Aarthurian wall decorations, of course in that slightly kitschy medieval setting. I still like the style and wonder why it has become so rare.

But apart from Tolkien and D&D, there’s also Warhammer with its iconic Landsknecht style (at least in the early editions) and especially the lack of people daring to produce original minis that’s to blame.

When I look at the majority of miniature lines you can see the impact of trends or major themes that are produced very well. And most of these still cling to GW hoping for Warhammer players to buy them - this is much stronger with SciFi/40k, but it does exist also in Fantasy: see Gamezone, Mantic, Avatars of War etc. Etc.

There has been a Renaissance of older tropes, e.g. Conanesque minis,which I definitely like, but Warhammer and especially its comical derivate World of Warcraft still strongly influence the production of minis.

So why no kitschy Arthurian minis? I’d guess there would definitely be a market, but many players have forgotten to look on the knight per se as cool? Maybe we need a dam-breaker that will cause a cascade of such minis once one successful line is established?

I for myself hope that the Joan of Arc KS will help here once it’s been out.

[DivisMal]

Thinking again about it, I’d like to add the lack of medial attention a medieval Arthur gets. Heck even that damn Guy Ritchie movie (oh why did he have to make it that bad?) didn’t show us Arthus how I at least remeber him from my childhood days as in the Prince Valiant comics and the movie Knights of the Round Table!

[Cubs]

You ever play Pendragon RPG? That's very much jousting, Vikings, high-fantasy type fun in an 'Arthurian' setting. One of my characters even jousted Lancelot and unhorsed him through some outrageous rolling!

[Daeothar]

Although I've never wondered about this before, now that you mention it, I can see it too.

I grew up pretty much on a (self imposed) diet of (fantastical) books with knights in shining armour, damsels in distress, the whole thing. As a lad, I wanted to be a knight, and I read everything I could get my hands on, lamenting the fact I was basically born 600 years too late.

Things I read were Ivanhoe, Arthurian tales, The Lion of Flanders (Conscience), a Dutch short series called 'Jonker Willem' (Squire William; I must have read and re-read it at least a dozen times), but also comics such as Vandersteen's Red Knight series, and basically everything I could get my hands on that contained knights, castles and adventures.

And growing up in the seventies and eighties, most of the books and comics available were (still?) heavily influenced by the romantic late nineteenth century. I only read Tolkien when I was exposed to his books in my first year of highschool, although had I known about them, I would probably have devoured his books much sooner

So most of the stuff I was exposed to was (heavily) romantisized medieval adventure. It didn't have that many fantasy elements to it, exceptions notwithstanding, but my image of the medieval period was heavily coloured by these tales.

And when I got to the actual fantasy stuff, I overlaid the images from my youth onto it. It was sort of difficult to adapt to the more gritty kind of fantasy later on because of that; in my mind's eye, the medieval world existed out of flowery meadows and dense forests, castles with many towers on steep hills, kings in full plate, with crowns on their helmets, and many banners snapping in the wind.

It was an altogether pleasant place to roam around in, and evildoers were vanquished with just enough effort to not make it look like a walk in the park. When a thunderstorm approaches, there will always be a hay filled barn to take shelter in nearby. And afterwards, when it's too dark to continue, the barn's owner will recognise the protagonists and will share the ample roasted duck over his kitchen fire and provide them with a place to sleep for the night.

A child's fantasy really (but the romantic period, when you get down to it, was exactly that), and only when I grew older, and started to appreciate the comforts of indoor plumbing, refridgerators and central heating that I stopped wishing I lived in such a world

But the image endured well into my RPG games, which actually were set in the same vein. I'm talking about a very simply D&D 1st ed clone/competitor from Germany called 'Eye of the Master'in Dutch (the original German title translates in English as 'The Black Eye', which doesn't quite sound as heroic ). Its imagery merged really well with the romantic baseline from my youth, and I think these have had a lasting influence on how I see fantasy.

I'd like to think I've grown out of it, but when being honest, even though experience, reasoning and knowledge have had their tempering effect, when I get right down to it, at the core, I still see fantasy like this.

And even though it's true that the present day currents in fantasy have moved away from the romantic, in my mind's eye, I always seem to flesh out the worlds I read or game fantasy in (whether that being RPG, computer game or miniature game) in such a way that it shoehorns the game's setting into my childhood's idea of what a fantasy world should look like.

So WHFB for instance, still feels like the fantasy of my youth, simply because my mind blends both together. Imagery is not at all important; it's the feeling that counts, and that, you have to fill in by yourself.

Which is not to say I don't appreciate the more down to earth, darker and grittier type of fantasy nowadays, it's just that my baseline will always remain firmly rooted in the romantic. And in that respect, romantic fantasy is not dead to me, as all fantasy fits in there, in some way...

[DivisMal]

You ever play Pendragon RPG? That's very much jousting, Vikings, high-fantasy type fun in an 'Arthurian' setting. One of my characters even jousted Lancelot and unhorsed him through some outrageous rolling!

Pendragon was always on my wish-list, but I never found a group willing to play it and therefore didn't buy the book in my roleplaying days. It's definitely a very niche product already back in the 90s. There was also AD&D's Birthright setting if I remember correctly that was mimicking Arthur.