Fairy Tales

[alex_greene]

A news article I discovered this morning revealed that a collection of five hundred new fairy tales has been dug up in Germany, where they had been locked away and hidden from the entire Twentieth Century.

I posted a link to the Guardian article in my LJ blog, including the copied text from one of the tales, The Turnip Princess.

My LiveJournal Post

The unpolished fairy tale included in my blog post, reproduced from a separate Guardian article also linked to, sounds exactly like a shamanic journey.

It also manages, somehow, to put a lot of Legend musings to shame - where you have a setting where Common Magic is, well, common, you'll have situations turning up in your game which will sound eerily like The Turnip Princess. Things happen, there are spells, but if you pull out a rusty nail you break the spell - or the kiss of an innocent breaks the curse - or a brave man who overcomes a curse of blindness can win the heart of his One True Love.

A lot of the time, the game probably is about just CAs and combat styles, and strike ranks and damage bonuses and movement and rolling initiative ... but if you take away the emphasis on combat and wargaming, ENC and armour and weapon reach and how many Manipulation factors you can cram into your spell's Range without it being at the expense of Targets or Magnitude ...

... you get Prince Goldenhair, and the Turnip Bride, and the Woodsman who conveniently arrives in time to despatch the Big Bad Wolf and save Little Red Riding Hood.

You get innocence, and perfidy, and generosity rewarded, and malice equally rewarded. You get stories where characters can stumble across a shepherd who has been turned into one of his flock by a passing sorceress to teach him a lesson about compassion, fleeing for his life from a wolf - the sorceress in disguise, or maybe she also happens to be a werewolf.

You get waifs and strays, and talking pigs, and doorways in trees that lead to Tir na Nog, and invitations to dance by the Queen of Faerie which you must refuse politely, and wicked ambitious Kings using sorcery to enslave his nation of hapless servitors, and walls around the Kingdom made of thorns a mile deep, and Princesses most fair that will always smell vaguely of turnip.

You get Legends.

Something we all should strive for when running our tales.

 

[Loz]

One of the pieces of advice to GMs we're giving in RQ6 is to look beyond the traditional fantasy genres and tropes. Return to the Norse Sagas, Greek Epics and European Fairytales. In here you'll find a great deal more variety, creativity, darkness and magic than in any of the three/six/ten series doorstop fantasy novels.

Don't ignore myths and legends. They're the real basis for fantasy.

 

[alex_greene]

Exactly.

 

[rust]

I will certainly love all of these rediscovered fairy tales, because what
I have seen of them so far looks very authentic, not bowdlerized into
Disney stories like almost all editions of the Grimm fairy tales. The ori-
ginal old fairy tales have all the elements of the very best fantasy no-
vels (and often inspired them, from Tolkien to Anderson), and many of
the less known fairy tales and legends would be excellent stuff for any
fantasy campaign. For example, there is the tale of Kullervo from the
Finnish Kalevala that was borrowed by Tolkien, and which I intend to
use for a most grim campaign one day:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kullervo

 

[rust]

By the way, the Kalevala is also great if you need magic items
and their history:

Conjuring a storm-wind with his magical song, Väinämöinen blows Ilmarinen away to Pohjola.
Once there, Ilmarinen is approached by the toothless hag, Louhi, and her daughter, the Maiden of Pohjola, and having seen the maiden's beauty, consents to build a Sampo. For three days, he sought a place to build a great forge. In that forge he placed metals and started working, tending the magic fire with help of the slaves of Pohjola.
On the first day, Ilmarinen looked down into the flames and saw that the metal had taken the form of a crossbow with a golden arch, a copper shaft and quarrel-tips of silver. But the bow had an evil spirit, asking for a new victim each day, and so Ilmarinen broke it and cast the pieces back into the fire.
On the second day, there came a metal ship from the fire, with ribs of gold and copper oars. Though beautiful to behold, it too was evil at heart, being too eager to rush towards battle, and so, Ilmarinen broke the magic boat apart and cast back the pieces once more.
On the third day, a metal cow emerged, with golden horns and the sun and the stars on its brow. But alas, it was ill-tempered, and so the magical heifer was broken into pieces and melted down.
On the fourth day, a golden plow is pulled from the forge, with a golden plowshare, a copper beam and silver handles. But it too is flawed, plowing up planted fields and furrowing meadows. In despair, Ilmarinen destroys his creation once more.
Angered at his lack of success, Ilmarinen conjures the four winds to fan the flames. The winds blow for three days, until finally, the Sampo is born, taking the shape of a magic mill that produces grain, salt and gold. Pleased with his creation at last, Ilmarinen presents it to Louhi, who promptly locks it in a vault deep underground.
Returning triumphant to the Maiden of Pohjola, Ilmarinen bids her to become his wife. To his dismay, she refuses to leave her native land, forcing him to return home alone and dejected.

 

[hanszurcher]

I have a strong preference for modern myths/tales. Not particularly fond of the old epics myself. I've always felt that fantasy is often staid and conventional precisely because it is so backwards looking. I'm not saying that old legends don't have a place, I loved EC Comics macabre interpretations of Grimm's Fairy Tales. But I'd chose the works of Tanith Lee, Jack Vance and Roger Zelazny on the way to that proverbial deserted island any day.

Although, I do have an upcoming Ars Magica campaign set in the Rhine Tribunal...

 

[alex_greene]

Those authors would not have had a start in their careers had it not been for standing on the shoulders of giants.

And perhaps, while they were up there, catching dragons in a butterfly net ...

 

[hanszurcher]

Those authors would not have had a start in their careers had it not been for standing on the shoulders of giants ...

Objects In Rear View Mirror May Appear Larger Than They Are.

 

[soltakss]

Personally, I think that Fairy Tales hide a lot of myths and are perfect for scenario and HeroQuest ideas and have used them for years.

500 new Fairy Tales can only be a good thing.

 

[Prime_Evil]

One of the pieces of advice to GMs we're giving in RQ6 is to look beyond the traditional fantasy genres and tropes. Return to the Norse Sagas, Greek Epics and European Fairytales. In here you'll find a great deal more variety, creativity, darkness and magic than in any of the three/six/ten series doorstop fantasy novels.

Don't ignore myths and legends. They're the real basis for fantasy.

That's a very smart move. Although I have a deep love for traditional fantasy fiction, the best fantasy authors draw upon the primary source material in one way or another. I much prefer fantasy works such as Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword that are rooted in genuine medieval literature to the bland trilogies that the publishing industry churns out these days. Unfortunately, fantasy has become a distinct publishing category and it has become increasingly difficult to get anything published that doesn't follow the epic fantasy model. The fantasy genre as a whole has become increasingly self-referential over the past twenty years.

When I started gaming, most players had an interest in the literary sources of the game. This not only included the works of familiar fantasy authors such as Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, and J.R.R. Tolkien, but also the primary ancient and medieval sources - I can remember devouring Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, Njáls saga, and a (fairly bad) translation of the Illiad at the age of 13 or 14. Beowulf was a revelation to me and I developed a love of Old English poetry that has never faded. But it seems that many of gamers who have joined the hobby since the mid 1990s are more familiar with the fantasy tropes of fantasy through video games and movies than the original works. I don't know that there is much that can be done about this, but it still saddens me whenever I see a fantsy roleplaying game that doesn't include a recommended reading list. Maybe I'm just getting old....

(Incidentally, I prefer historical novels to a lot of the stuff that passes for fantasy these days. My personal list of inspirational reading would definitely include authors such as Mary Renault, Rosemary Sutcliffe, Henry Treece, Bernard Cornwell, Ellis Peters, Elizabeth Chadwick, Lindsey Davis, and Conn Iggulden...)

 

[Prime_Evil]

Personally, I think that Fairy Tales hide a lot of myths and are perfect for scenario and HeroQuest ideas and have used them for years.

500 new Fairy Tales can only be a good thing.

Are you familiar with the Aarne–Thompson index of fairy tale motifs? This was an attempt to list and classify the common tropes found in fairy tales made at the beginning of the 20th century. Although there are many criticisms of the classification scheme adopted by the index, it is a gold mine for GMs looking for inspiration. For example, consider the motif of the giant whose heart has been removed from his body and who cannot be slain until it is found and destroyed - there's a very cool adventure idea right there for any GM who wants to pick it up and run with it!

 

[soltakss]

Are you familiar with the Aarne–Thompson index of fairy tale motifs? This was an attempt to list and classify the common tropes found in fairy tales made at the beginning of the 20th century. Although there are many criticisms of the classification scheme adopted by the index, it is a gold mine for GMs looking for inspiration.

I've not heard of that one. Most classifications that I have seen have missed the point a bit.

It does look interesting, though.