What is "middle fantasy"?

[Quickleaf]

I've heard Greyhawk and the Song of Ice and Fire described as "middle fantasy" settings. As best as I can tell that means there's political intrigue with a backdrop of uncommon supernatural elements & things like monsters and magic items are rare.

Is that right? How would you describe "middle fantasy"? Or is it just a hybrid bastard of low and high fantasy traits?

 

[Morrus]

I guess people mean it to be somewhere between high and low fantasy.

Low fantasy is traditionally defined as a realistic, logical world in which supernatural elements are rare. High fantasy is one where supernatural elements are part of the general makeup of the world.

I sometimes have trouble pegging things on the scale; LotR is traditionally considered high fantasy, but Forgotten Realms is far further along that scale. Maybe it was recalibrated? You could then call FR high fantasy, and LotR middle fantasy, perhaps.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Depends on where you put the left and right ends of the scale. Is it based on the prevalence of magic, or some other fantastical element?

I'd personally consider Greyhawk to be high fantasy, if not as high as FR. Middle Earth is low fantasy in comparison to both -- if magic and access to it is the scale used. I might put Conan on the "low fantasy" end of the spectrum in this case, perhaps lower than Middle Earth, which might make LotR "middle fantasy".

 

[Yora]

While there is some pretty good consensus what people mean by High Fantasy, the only really defining characteristic of the term Low Fantasy is "Not High Fantasy". It can be all kinds of things, it's not really a clear spectrum on a specific scale.

Though I would consider Lord of the Rings as the defining example of High Fantasy, and not even on that everyone agrees.

 

[Dungeoneer]

I've heard Greyhawk and the Song of Ice and Fire described as "middle fantasy" settings. As best as I can tell that means there's political intrigue with a backdrop of uncommon supernatural elements & things like monsters and magic items are rare.

Is that right? How would you describe "middle fantasy"? Or is it just a hybrid bastard of low and high fantasy traits?

I haven't heard the term before, and I read a fair amount of fantasy.

'High fantasy' to me means a 'Tolkien-esque' story. But I think that's just a convenient label for that genre of fantasy. I don't think that there really exists a continuum where we could sort every fantasy story into 'low', 'middle' or 'high'. There is far too much variation within the genre to pigeonhole it like that.

 

[Umbran]

Low fantasy is traditionally defined as a realistic, logical world in which supernatural elements are rare. High fantasy is one where supernatural elements are part of the general makeup of the world.

I think, when you're discussing in formal literary terms, amount of magic isn't quite the difference.

High Fantasy takes place in something that is explicitly not our world - in high fantasy, the real (aka "primary") world does not exist (Like Discworld), the secondary world is entered through a portal from the primary (Chronicles of Narnia), or exists as a delineated but secret separate subset of the primary (like Harry Potter). The separation is usually (but not always) done because the rules and/or history of the secondary world vary enormously from the primary's, so they clearly cannot mix. The plots of high fantasy stories tend to be epic in scope (why else make up a whole world, except to explore the whole thing and put it in danger?).

LotR is troublesome, in that Tolkien adamantly maintained that his story took place in the primary world, in the distant past. But, it is divergent enough from the real world, that most folks today call it High Fantasy. FR is clearly high fantasy.

Low fantasy takes place in the primary world, or something that arguably could be the primary, with a few supernatural elements added in (like, say Conan). The plots tend to be less epic in scope, because it is hard to imagine putting the real world at risk with something that normally has no impact on the world. The inclusion of the supernatural in the primary world usually ends up with comedic or horrific effect, as the purpose is to juxtapose the magical reality with the primary reality, and when you clash reason with unreason, comedy or horror are the usual results. That horror, and the limitation on the characters who must operate under primary-world rules tends to lead to a "gritty" result.

"The Green Mile" (by Stephen King) and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" are low fantasy.

"Middle fantasy" is not a term I'm familiar with. I would expect it to have been coined by folks who felt that the difference between high and low was in the amount of magic and epic scope alone, so that something in between would be the middle.

 

[Alzrius]

I largely agree with Umbran in that setting tends to be a strong factor, though magic is also a prominent one, in determining how high on the "scale" of fantasy something is.

I personally look at it as being measured on three axes:

The X-axis is the prevalence of magic. This covers how often you run into magic/fantastic elements, as well as how much people believe in them/are knowledgeable about them. If magic is rare, hidden, and not widely believed in, then there's a low mark here. If it's fairly well-known, and you can find a spellcaster as easily as you can look someone up in the phone book, then there's a high mark here.

The Y-axis is the power of magic. This is how strong the fantastic elements of the setting (which is really what "magic" is shorthand for) are in terms of their ability to accomplish things. Lord of the Rings gets a low mark here, because nobody is tossing out cure spells willy-nilly, dragons are exceptionally rare, and magic items are legendary lost treasures with names and histories. By contrast, the Forgotten Realms has a high mark, since magic can quite literally move mountains, dragons and demons and beholders are everywhere, and there are artifacts that can banish gods and freeze the entire planet.

The Z-axis measures the setting, in terms of its connection to Earth. The closer the setting gets to Earth (both in actuality and resemblance), the lower the score here, and vice versa. That sounds odd, since this tends to be thought of as binary - either something is set on Earth of it isn't - but fantasy is broad enough that this is more of a continuum. As the past is (sometimes quite literally, in fantasy) a different country, the scale here measures not just the connection to Earth, but also to contemporary Earth (though medieval Europe is such a standard now that it barely moves the proverbial needle if it's set there).

For example, as Umbran mentioned, the Conan stories get a low mark here, since they're set on what's explicitly Earth in the past, with the place names being different but not unrecognizeable. Harry Potter, by contrast, gets an even lower score, since it's set on modern-day Earth - common place-names abound - and has its goings-on simply hidden out of sight in small towns and castles. By contrast, Star Wars has a very high mark here, since it's not even set within the same galaxy.

The higher the marks, the closer something is to "high" fantasy, and vice versa. Of course, this leads to odd places when some axes have a high mark and others a low one, but that's more of a problem with the terminology than with the scales.

 

[Yora]

High Fantasy takes place in something that is explicitly not our world - in high fantasy, the real (aka "primary") world does not exist (Like Discworld), the secondary world is entered through a portal from the primary (Chronicles of Narnia), or exists as a delineated but secret separate subset of the primary (like Harry Potter).

That's the second, and completely different use of the terms.

I usually find it more useful to speak of Epic Fantasy, which Lord of the Rings, Dragonlance, or Record of Lodoss War clearly are (and I think Wheel of Time as well); and Heroic Fantasy, which is stuff like Conan, Dark Elf, or the Witcher.
The difference here is between stories about clashes between Good and Evil for the Fate of the World, and stories about wandering individuals trying to get by in life.

 

[Cadence]

Googling around in prep for taking part in this thread turned up https://www.worldswithoutend.com/resources_sub-genres.asp and http://bestfantasybooks.com/fantasy-genre.php , which seemed somewhat informative.

 

[amerigoV]

I guess people mean it to be somewhere between high and low fantasy.

Low fantasy is traditionally defined as a realistic, logical world in which supernatural elements are rare. High fantasy is one where supernatural elements are part of the general makeup of the world.

I sometimes have trouble pegging things on the scale; LotR is traditionally considered high fantasy, but Forgotten Realms is far further along that scale. Maybe it was recalibrated? You could then call FR high fantasy, and LotR middle fantasy, perhaps.

I agree with this (and the person that called LoTR Epic Fantasy). FR changed the scale dramatically. For example, I seriously doubt old Butterbur had a +1 longsword laying around to give them hobbits if they would just go fetch Nob from the stables like an L1 FR module would. (an exaggeration I know, but it does seem like an inordinately high number of farmers and innkeepers have a magic items lying around the house just waiting for an adventurer to come along in FR).

For me, Greyhawk kinda fits that middle ground only because my formative years associated with GH was 1e. Our group tended to play in the L1-10 range under that system, and not tons of "level appropriate" magic items (well, there was that one incident with Hammer of Thunderbolts in a random treasure pile, but the DM x'd out a lot of treasure tables after that... ). I would be curious if those that started playing D&D under 3rd edition would have the same view.