Typical high fantasy frequently loses its appeal. Castles, swords,
dragons, and magic can become tiring. It is vital for authors to push beyond the genre’s boundaries and reach a point
where a work becomes genre-defying. That can be said for works of any
genre, not just high fantasy.
Tropes have their uses, of course.
Perhaps it’s important for players to immediately understand how a
monster or trap functions. The strange can come later. The point is to
ensure there is something that surprises or, at the least, keeps
everyone intrigued in the shared world.
For an example of high fantasy needing a push, we turn to Japan. The long-running Dragon Quest series of video games is an institution in its home country. In contrast, the games remain perpetually less-popular outside of Japan. One reason may be the relatively vanilla approach to the genre that can be found in the mainline titles in the series. I played the Japanese language version of Dragon Quest IX, for instance, and was surprised to discover how safe and cliché the fantasy elements were. My Japanese is nowhere near fluent, so it’s certainly possible that I missed some subtle humor in the game’s dialogue. Yet the game seemed to lack the charm of the English localization of Dragon Quest Heroes.
To be fair to the series, it’s important to remember that the medieval European high fantasy that we are so used to remains a lesser-known genre for Japanese people. Dragon Quest can afford to play it safe because the genre already has unique appeal to its target audience. It doesn’t hurt that the series has a massive fan-base as well. When it is brought over to a western market, on the other hand, there needs to be a greater effort to punch up the translation and prevent it from coming off as overly dry.
Returning the world of tabletop gaming, perhaps it’s sufficient to take a break from one genre and spend time in another for a while. That may be why so many of the early modules blended different genres together, like high fantasy and sci-fi.
If the imagined world doesn’t instill a sense of wonder and excitement, what else can be done to help?