Settings from an Englilsh Student

Just want to throw out a couple generic, widely used structures. See if anything strikes anyone's fancy, gets any ideas rolling. Just a couple bits about styles of fantasy, stuff I thought fit in with what some people were saying at the meeting (ie. 'where magic is not all powerful' / 'doesnt break realism').

High Fantasy: is very dichotomistic. Black/white, good/evil, all/that. Examples include Lord of the Rings & Star Wars. Protagonist is clearly the good guy, posed against the seemingly unstoppable bad guys, and the whole world is at stake.

Low Fantasy: is based more heavily in reality, usually in setting only. This would include things like books about spiritual warfare (angels and demons fighting all around us) and some argue CS Lewis's stuff about Narnia.

Magical Realism: not necessarily based around a realistic setting, but the magical aspects are less surreal than others. Never suspends disbelief through the sheer power of the magic, such as Babylon 5 technomages who are written off as using technology to achieve the effects of magic.

Surrealist: just how it sounds, but may be ideal if you want to do a silly/funny/bizzarro game, or just want to do all your asset creation on an acid trip.

It's easy enough to encroach on mythic fantasy as well (a la Hercules or God of War), Quest fantasy (single objective at any cost; Holy Grail)... there are all kinds of subgenres and arguably mixable types of fantasy.

But getting an idea of whether people like High, Low, Realistic, or whatever else, can help provide a framework for further ideas, too. It's how I've been taught to think, so it helps me to go through that kind of thing. Maybe I'm alone there, but... *shrugs*

June 16th Agenda Ideas

"What's on the agenda?" -- Bill

Anyone have anything specific they'd like to address?
Just to get ideas rolling, given that we have a relatively strict time limit for the meeting, what's top priority to get sorted out?

* What tools/engine will be used? (eg, UDK; this decision and the next point heavily influence each other)
* What is the final goal/product/vision? (broadly speaking: fps/rts, dramatic/funny, quantity/quality, commercial/not, mod/stand-alone, whatever)
* Do we want to identify group members' roles? (I don't really think this is important right now, but ideas are ideas; might be more helpful just to identify if there's a skill gap we need to fill with an external resource)
* Vaguely schedule another meeting?
* Decide if Blogger/Skype/Something could be used to replace or supplement further meetings?


*shrugs*
Those are the biggest points I'm keen to have sorted out, just to narrow the focus a bit and decide how to move forward.

Whatcha think?