What does 'low' vs 'high' fantasy mean?

[OgreBattle]

There doesn't seem to be any solid consensus on the meaning of these words. Like say Warhammer Fantasy ratcatching is pretty low powered, but that's also a planet with demon gods giving people tentacles and mystic kungfu elves riding dragons to war.

[PhoneLobster]

There are actual long standing definitions of high and low fantasy which no two bit fantasy RPG developer professional or amateur who ever thought to utter the words themselves seems to know are a god damn actual thing they might reasonably choose to adhere to in their terminology.

Alternatively most people don't know the proper definitions and just assume that anything with "elves and dragons and magic and shit" is high fantasy, and they aren't far wrong.

While for some reason every RPG designer and his dog (professional or amateur) seems to think that they CAN defy both literary definitions of High/Low fantasy AND still have "elves and dragons and magic and shit" and just call themselves "low fantasy" because they think they can wanky grim dark up their setting or game play a bit. And they ARE pretty far wrong.

[hyzmarca]

There doesn't seem to be any solid consensus on the meaning of these words. Like say Warhammer Fantasy ratcatching is pretty low powered, but that's also a planet with demon gods giving people tentacles and mystic kungfu elves riding dragons to war.

The definition is pretty solid.

High fantasy happens in fantastical alternate realities or epic histories that might as well be alternate realities. Low fantasy happens in the real world, or alternate settings that are close enough to the real world to be basically recognizable.

Basically, if there's a map at the front of your book and the characters casually talk about wizards as if that's a reasonable thing to be concerned about, then it's high fantasy. If the book does not have a map in the front and most people assume that Gandalf is just a skilled con artist, then it's low fantasy.

[virgil]

While for some reason every RPG designer and his dog (professional or amateur) seems to think that they CAN defy both literary definitions of High/Low fantasy AND still have "elves and dragons and magic and shit" and just call themselves "low fantasy" because they think they can wanky grim dark up their setting or game play a bit. And they ARE pretty far wrong.

Yeah, because how dare language have jargon. Do you get pissed at scientists for using the word theory differently? Are you like Paizo, advocating for the elimination of the use of 'gish' to mean fighter/mage because it's supposed to be some kind of vague sex act or noise?

[Chamomile]

I can't accept a definition where Shadowrun is low fantasy.

[Stahlseele]

Fuck no, Shadowrun is VERY high fantasy.
The only thing where shadowrun is not on the high fantasy path is that most magical items simply do not work for people without magic of their own.
No magical Spur +2 for your 0,01Essence Cybermonster.
In DnD and other high fantasy settings, you do not need to be a mage to use the enchanted greatsword of +2 ogre decapitation.
Or the one ring of invisibility/planeshiftwalking.

Hell, in many regards, shadowrun is more high fantasy than LOTR ...
Simply because of the abundance of available magic "people" around.

[Judging__Eagle]

As far as I've been able to tell; the breakdown is something like:

"Low fantasy" = Magic is ubiquitous, but capped.
Everyone is a mage, but powerful mages are rare enough to be kings.

e.g.
Piers Anthony's Xanth novels.

"Low magic" = Magic is occulted, but uncapped.
Anyone could become a powerful wizard, but almost no one knows how to.

e.g. Our Earth is about as close to "low magic" as it gets. The Pope is rumored to be a wizard; tarot-readers can perform rituals to become werewolves.

"High fantasy" = Magic is occulted, and capped.
No one can become a powerful wizard, unless of the correct genetics/background.

E.g. Lord of the Rings, Warhammer is here tbh. Ancient artifacts of great power, not everyday commodities;

"High magic" = Magic is both ubiquitous, and the uncapped.
Anyone can be a powerful wizard, you go to school for it.

e.g. D&D; and most fantasy RPGs are here.

[Ancient History]

If you want to get very technical about it, low fantasy in a literary sense means a world which is our world, but with fantastic elements - so Harry Potter, Shadowrun, the Cthulhu Mythos, etc., while high fantasy is a completely fictional world with fantasy elements - The Lord of the Rings, A Song of Ice and Fire, most Dungeons & Dragons settings, etc.

The thing about "high" and "low" is that it refers to the scale of the worldbuilding - not the relative level of magic in a given setting. A floating city about New York City is still low fantasy by that definition; a kid detective in Fantasy Village #1 that can cast cantrips is technically high fantasy. But most folks think about it a bit like they do D&D levels - they associate "low fantasy" with "low levels of magic"/"less fantastical elements" and "high fantasy" with "high levels of magic"/"more fantastical elements."

[Harshax]

I think AH's definition is close but sort of missing the mark. Traveler would be High Fantasy and maybe that's true to some degree. Personally I think the element that defines low or high fantasy deals more with the reason for conflict and how those conflicts get resolved. The more frequently a game or story leans towards reasons or powers beyond the ken of man, whether they're blue or pointy eared, you're entering the realm of high fantasy.

I'm just riffing here, but LoTR seems like high fantasy because it has orcs and mind controlling rings but it's actually low fantasy become the story is tightly focused around morality and destroying avarice. That's overly simplistic, but you could reskin LoTR and not lose anything in the translation. His Dark Materials is a good example.

[Tronty]

Thank you guys for answering OP's question as I have been wondering the same!

low and high that's when after you use something (such as Soma):D

[Judging__Eagle]

I was original under the impression that "low/high" in terms of fantasy implied how high up/down the powerscale do people within the setting have access to magic. Where low fantasy implies everyone does (and thus magic is available "low" in the social classes of the setting), and high fantasy implies almost no one does (& therefore those who can are "high" in the social class of the setting).

Seeing it in terms of worldbuilding effort makes more sense.

While low/high magic relates more to the amount of magic overall within the setting.

I guess by those definitions, I've been a fan of low fantasy, high magic; without realizing it this whole time.

[Occluded Sun]

Wikipedia's definition:

Low fantasy stories are set either in the real world or a fictional but rational world, and are contrasted with high fantasy stories, which take place in a completely fictional fantasy world setting with its own set of rules and physical laws.

The terms are frequently used to indicate the degree to which the 'rules' of the world are known and events must make sense to the reader. If the limits of 'magic' are rational - explicitly specified and logical - that's usually considered low fantasy. If the rules of 'magic' are occulted, mysterious, and nonrational, it's high.

Tolkien's works are high fantasy because the rules by which the things we call 'magic' operate are unknown and unknowable to such beings as ourselves. The Dresden Files are low fantasy because, while much about magic is ultimately a mystery, there are explicit rules about how it works that the author needs to find clever ways to exploit.

Or to put it another way: the farther fantasy is from science fiction, the 'higher' it is. There isn't really a clear and rigid division between very inventive science fiction and very realistic fantasy.

[Whipstitch]

Yeah, because how dare language have jargon. Do you get pissed at scientists for using the word theory differently? Are you like Paizo, advocating for the elimination of the use of 'gish' to mean fighter/mage because it's supposed to be some kind of vague sex act or noise?

I don't think that's entirely fair. We live in a world where people really do write fiction based on games and vice versa so it really can be confusing when people appropriate existing jargon from one then redefine it and apply it to the other.

Anyway, Hyzmarca largely has the right of it. In literary circles the dividing line between between low and high fantasy was traditionally a matter of setting and had virtually nothing to do with morality. If the setting is or has a separate reality where things run by their own rules then you're dealing with high fantasy regardless of how powerful the magic is relative to D&D wizards. Likewise if you write a story where Ohio is completely normal until a magical cat enters the picture then you're dealing with low fantasy whether the cat is particularly naughty or nice, weak or powerful. It's a simple enough concept and neatly encapsulates one of the biggest differences between stories like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Black Company but obviously there's all sorts of potential differences and similarities that the terms simply don't address at all. This leads to a situation where people ignorant of the terms come to their own conclusions on what the labels are supposed to mean, a source of great confusion given that books in the same high/low category can be wildly different from each other. Another big source of confusion is the fact that many escapist or allegorical works openly deal with the concept of a normal person from our reality entering into a world that is in all other ways a high fantasy setting. In the end such works end up getting called high fantasy more often than not, but personally I see little point in trying to "properly" categorize shit like Harry Potter or the Chronicles of Narnia because such works really are just cases of authors willfully staking out the territory between high and low.

[Dogbert]

Like say Warhammer Fantasy ratcatching is pretty low powered, but that's also a planet with demon gods giving people tentacles and mystic kungfu elves riding dragons to war.

Lovecraft's tales have Cthulhu and great old ones, and that doesn't make them "high fantasy."

High fantasy requieres a wide-spread prescence of the fantastic (as opposed to wide-spread superstition and fear of the horrific things that go bump in the nigh).

In high fantasy, magic and the fantastic may or may not be common, but it is natural (as opposed to be considered unnatural and greeted with fear, torches, and pitchforks).

I can't accept a definition where Shadowrun is low fantasy.

Are elves part of metahumanity? Can they apply for jobs and health insurance? If the answer is "yes", then it falls within the "high" side of the spectrum (even if Shadowrun is a "Cyberdungeonpunk", genre-wise at least).

[Lokamayadon]

I don't think having nonhuman sapients species means a setting is high fantasy.

[Whipstitch]

Shadowrun is essentially a high fantasy setting that uses an alternate timeline, low mana cycles and the Space Needle to occasionally masquerade as a low fantasy. The geography is the same but just about everything else that would be canon both in our world and in Shadowrun is shit happened in the past.

[Username17]

I think AH's definition is close but sort of missing the mark.

I think that AncientHistory is a legit award winning literature historian and when tells you what a word means in he context of literature theory you should probably just accept that and work it into your worldview.

In this case, he is 100% right. If you ask Tor Books or any other book publisher what they mean when they say something is low fantasy or high fantasy you will get the literature definition that AH described: a book is low fantasy if it takes place in our world with fantasy elements added and it's high fantasy if it takes place in a made-up world. And thus "dual world" fantasy like The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe remains hard to define in those terms.

Meanwhile, RPGs generally don't use the term in that way, possibly because every RPG is by definition a shared world writing exercise for which questions of world authorship are necessarily vague in their answers. When a role playing game describes itself as high or low fantasy, they are talking about how ubiquitous fantastic feeling elements are. Technically all nations in Westeros are made up and thus they are fantasy by a literature definition, but they are mostly intended to feel like basic War of the Roses era Earth stuff. And thus from an RPG standpoint, incorporating those kinds of fantasy elements is still "low fantasy" because it is not intended to "feel like" a fantastic element.

It's also incredibly important to note that "ubiquitous fantasy elements" does not necessarily mean "high powered magic." Indeed, many stories that have few magical things have magical things that are very powerful. By contrast, when magical elements are very common they usually are heavily codified and basically "technology by another name." When people say "high fantasy" or "high magic" they often immediately assume "high powered" but that's usually not the case. High magic has rules and low magic pretty much doesn't, which means that the tangible effects on the story of magic in "low fantasy" are usually bigger than they are in high fantasy.

-Username17

[Jason]

If you want to get very technical about it, low fantasy in a literary sense means a world which is our world, but with fantastic elements - so Harry Potter, Shadowrun, the Cthulhu Mythos, etc., while high fantasy is a completely fictional world with fantasy elements - The Lord of the Rings, A Song of Ice and Fire, most Dungeons & Dragons settings, etc.

That's intersting. I was under the Impression it referred to the "normality" of Magic in the fictional world, whereas worlds where Magic was "unusual" were reffered to as "low fantasy" and worlds where magic was "normal" (even if rare) would be referred to as "high fantasy".

Did that Change or was I just wrong?

[Username17]

If you want to get very technical about it, low fantasy in a literary sense means a world which is our world, but with fantastic elements - so Harry Potter, Shadowrun, the Cthulhu Mythos, etc., while high fantasy is a completely fictional world with fantasy elements - The Lord of the Rings, A Song of Ice and Fire, most Dungeons & Dragons settings, etc.

That's intersting. I was under the Impression it referred to the "normality" of Magic in the fictional world, whereas worlds where Magic was "unusual" were reffered to as "low fantasy" and worlds where magic was "normal" (even if rare) would be referred to as "high fantasy".

Did that Change or was I just wrong?

You were just wrong. Possibly you were thinking of "high magic" versus "low magic." A setting which is high magic has magic that is normalized in the world and a a setting which is low magic has magic that is mysterious and does whatever the plot requires.

-Username17

[Jason]

You were just wrong. Possibly you were thinking of "high magic" versus "low magic." A setting which is high magic has magic that is normalized in the world and a a setting which is low magic has magic that is mysterious and does whatever the plot requires.

-Username17

That sounds about right, thanks for Clearing that up!

[Judging__Eagle]

Or to put it another way: the farther fantasy is from science fiction, the 'higher' it is. There isn't really a clear and rigid division between very inventive science fiction and very realistic fantasy.

I think the genre you're looking for is science fantasy.

It's the most common blurring between science & fantasy, and taps into the original stories of awe & wonder that are teh basis of human myth, as well as SF & Fantasy stories. Science Fantasy includes: A Princess of Mars (& the Sword & Planet genre); Dying Earth (and most of Jack Vance's picaresque narratives). As well as the bulk of comic book SF, from 2000 AD & Heavy Metal, to Asterix, Tintin, & Thorgal; as well as the majority of Marvel & DC generally falls into some flavour of Science Fantasy. There's super scientists in the setting; but also beings from other dimensions that are your world's largest threats, and world-changing magical objects also exist.

Societies that shouldn't be logistically possible (Judge Dredd, Star Wars); occult creatures with mundane limitations (Universal Horror monsters, Dune); in a setting that assumes it is occurs on a parallel Earth to our own.

History of Science Fiction
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