Urban Fantasy

[drcpunk]

Saturday, Beth and I paid a visit to the Compleat Strategist, always a dangerous idea. I picked up fifth edition Ars Magica. I really hadn't intended to, but Atlas is doing a special time sale of the book for $25. I wish I'd realized this five minutes earlier. There was a guy who wanted to buy a roleplaying game. He knew what they were, and I think he'd played them, but he wanted to buy one. Something complete, and it was okay if it was a complicated system, but, well, money was an issue. He liked the look of Call of Cthulhu, but not the price. I told him a softcover would be out soon. But his current budget was, well, $20. Okay, maybe he could stretch it 5-10 dollars. Ouch. Well, there was World of Darkness, the core book of the new system, and he was interested in it, but he decided not to buy it.

I managed, barely, to resist the new Werewolf game, but grabbed Blue Rose, which I'd been waiting for since GenCon, and Dreaming Cities, Tri Stat's Urban Fantasy DX game.

I think Tri Stat is the first to consider Urban Fantasy as a genre for RPG purposes. I don't mean it's the first Urban Fantasy game -- far from it -- or, necessarily, the best. It's just the first I've seen that discusses in detail the range of the genre qua genre, with an eye to the crunchy bits as well as to the emotional tone.

That said, there are certainly a lot of crunchy bits. And I'm not sure about the definition of Urban Fantasy. It seems overly broad. Actually, I think the problem may be a lack of borders, a failure to identify what Urban Fantasy is not. Without that, one runs the risk of stretching a definition to the point of meaninglessness. Hm, come to think of it, I don't know if I saw an actual "This is the definition of the term". I'll have to re-read the first few pages. I'm on all of page 15 or so.

The authors consider a lot of things urban fantasy. De Lint is the locus, just as Tolkien is the locus of the fuzzy set of fantasy. (See Brian Attebury's Strategies of Fantasy.) That's reasonable. He's not the best, but he's the locus, and at his best, he's pretty darn good.

Also on their list, mixing both books and games:

Perdido Street Station. Okay, yes, gotta grant that one, though it does give the term "Urban Fantasy" quite the workout.

The Amber books. Hm. Okay, stretching a point, but it feels right.

Alice in Wonderland and Alice through the Looking Glass. Huh?

The novels of Charles Williams. Right on.

The Chronicles of Narnia. Say what? Parts of Magician's Nephew, maybe, but not the rest.

Call of Cthulhu 1st and 6th edition. I'm not sure. And why only list those two editions? And if you do consider this Urban Fantasy, why not Feng Shui?

Kult. For some reason, I see this as far more Urban Fantasy than CoC.

Comments

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

Ipretty much agree with you on each call re urban fantasy or not. Did the list mention Fritz Leiber? It tends to dark fantasy, but his work is for me a major progenitor of urban fantasy. Ramsey Campbell, ditto.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Leiber -- mm, nope, not there. But yes, Our Lady of Darkness and Conjure Wife what you had in mind?

Campbell, nope. I haven't read much of his work, only a bunch of the stories in Cold Print, and I most enjoyed the title story. Are these representative of his work?

[strangeden.livejournal.com]

Hey, we went to the strategist on Saturday as well..pity we missed you. :)

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

We were there, um, about 4, 4:30 or so, then headed to Sarge's, as I had an egg cream craving, then hopped a train to the Brooklyn Bridge and walked across.

[strangeden.livejournal.com]

We stopped in around 2PM between panels at the WHC. Bought a truckload of wargame figures and crap. :)

[avram]

When I say “urban fantasy” I’m thinking of secret history fantasies (in other words, set in the real world, but with magical goings-on behind the scenes) set in the latter half of the 20th century (or, now, early 21st). Mostly it’s Charles de Lint, Bull’s War for the Oaks (that’s about as central as de Lint’s stuff), Brust’s & Lindholm’s Gypsy, Lindholm’s Wizard of the Pigeons, stuff like that. There’s usually music involved.

In my mind, urban fantasy is not set in a separate, invetned world, so Perdido Street Station is out, though it sure as hell is fantastic and urban. Miéville’s King Rat, on the other hand, is way in.

I only read a little Charles Williams, not even a full book, but his stuff didn’t strike me as very urban. Same with Narnia, on both counts. And the Alice books. Also, all written too early.

Amber’s too wide-ranging to be urban fantasy. Urban fantasy has to be mostly set in one particular city, and give you a feel for it.

CoC and Kult are horror, which is a different genre.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Like I said, I'll grant the Williams if we're going for general subject matter, but if we're going for the genre when it became a genre, you've got a point.

Yes, the Bull is on the list, and yes, it is a locus. Gypsy isn't, nor is the Lindholm, and that really should be. Powers is, but only Last Call and Declare.

I understand why you disqualified Perdido Street Station and the Amber books, but both have the right feel, and I can see why, from the point of view of an RPG, one might pull them in. Ditto for Kult, because it does have serious city ties.

That said, yes, horror is its own genre. Of course, there's overlap, and there's this new thing called Dark Fantasy, which seems to mean something like "Almost Horror, but people who like Fantasy and don't necessarily like Horror like it." And yes, it's an interesting question whether anything can be called Urban Fantasy if it was written before the accepted start of the genre.

[avram]

Talking it over with J and M, I realized that the essence of urban fantasy is the author saying “Here’s a bunch of cool stuff about my home town. Oh, and there are secret elves.”

An RPG like this ought to take an expansive approach to its source material, but I think it’d be neat if an urban fantasy book coached the GM on creating scenarios and plot elements based on his local real-world setting. Does the book do this?

I think Dark Fantasy is “I want to write horror, but fantasy is what’s selling now.”

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Well, yes. I should type up my notes on the Urban Fantasy panel from Arisia -- I think the one before last. The panelists thought it was dead as a genre, which depressed me until I realized they meant the pre-packaged stuff, not the broader range. But part of some valid definitions is that the author is self consciously writing Urban Fantasy, set in the author's home town, with elves and such.

I'm in the Crunchy Bits part of the RPG now. I'll let you know if it coaches GMs through using their local settings, but I think that's one area where White Wolf may have made more of an attempt to do that than GOO.

I think you're wrong about Dark Fantasy, because I think there is a difference in flavor, but check with folks who know more about the borders between DF and horror, like, say, nellorat.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Well, as David Hartwell confirmed, you were quite correct about the definition of Dark Fantasy. Do you recall his definition of Urban Fantasy? The only part I remember is that a work of Urban Fantasy must be engage with other works in the genre.

[simreeve.livejournal.com]

I agree with the first paragraph of your definition, but might be a bit more flexible about invented settings.