the original final fantasy was inspired by dragon quest, which in turn was inspired by CRPGs like wizardry and ultima (click through, btw, if you want to read a really interesting set of reviews of almost the entire final fantasy series)
socksmakepeoplesexy.net/index.php?a=ff
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CRPGs like wizardry and ultima were in turn inspired by dungeons & dragons and tolkien (which was also an influence on D&D). probably nearly every single video game's conception of magic traces back to D&D if i had to guess
newyorker.com/culture/cultur
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D&D grew mechanically out of medieval miniature wargaming (combat!) and narratively out of fantasy as a genre. tolkien was a big influence but more pulpy stuff also seems to have been important. not familiar with most of these authors but the lovecraft makes sense
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picking the first guy to double-click on. oh shit, conan the barbarian! "mixing elements of fantasy, horror, and mythology"
conan the barbarian, of course, also has a strong combat orientation. funny that everything i know about him is through parodies
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E.
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this bit is super interesting: robert e. howard grew up in texas and was exposed to a lot of violence growing up and "grew up a lover of all contests of violent, masculine struggle." conan the barbarian was born in the heart of a texan. it all makes sense now
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gonna refocus on D&D and gary gygax b/c i think there's an interesting way D&D serves as a "memetic bottleneck" here. little gary was into LARPing, pulp fiction, and wargames. idk anything about pulp fiction or wargames. let's click on wargames first
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Gyga
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wargaming was invented in prussia and used for military training; attracted attention b/c they beat france in a war in 1870
h.g. wells "developed codified rules for playing with toy soldiers, which he published in a book titled Little Wars." adorable!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wargame#W
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wow wait okay the full title of the book was
"Little Wars: a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books"
bruh now it's less adorable c'mon
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Wa
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ok now pulp fiction. this bit seems important: "During the economic hardships of the Great Depression, pulps provided affordable content to the masses, and were one of the primary forms of entertainment, along with film and radio."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_maga
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this is starting to feel like a huge topic. here's an incomplete diagram of the influences we've traced so far. i am still mostly drawn to understanding the D&D bottleneck, as the place where pop magic switches tracks from stories to games
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there's something you kill about the nature of magic by forcing it to fit mechanically into a game, tabletop or video or otherwise. the way it's usually done magic becomes something dead you control, rather than something alive you have a relationship to
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One way to get at the distinction: is magic something you use (LH), or is it something you relate to (RH)? In Young Wizards (RH), magic often uses the heroes. It has intentionality, and also a moral component. Compare to e.g. Harry Potter, esp. HPMoR (very LH).
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surprisingly rowling's conception of magic in harry potter is also mostly "dead," with the exception of whatever harry's mom did to protect him from voldemort, despite the fact that rowling's influences were very literary / mythological; no games, no pulp
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Pot
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in harry potter a spell is a lever you pull to make a fixed thing happen in the world. you don't have to talk to any spirits or gods. spells can't backfire due to a lack of faith or weakness of heart. where did this come from? did magic work this way in narnia? i'm not familiar
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i'm not sure how to track influences for harry potter b/c rowling has apparently said "I haven't got the faintest idea where my ideas come from" so these are guesses even on her part. but sword in the stone makes sense: harry = arthur pendragon, dumbledore = merlin
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narnia also makes sense - king's cross and platform 9 3/4 and the wardrobe, yes, yes, naturally. all of rowling's influences seem very like... prim and proper, it's an interesting contrast to the pulpy stuff we were looking at earlier. extremely british
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tracing narnia's influences feels like a big project so i'm gonna stop here for now. here's the updated influence diagram, still leaving out a bunch of stuff for readability
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whoa hmm very interesting thread in the QTs
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so here we come to the roots of our fantasy literature, a reaction to the increasing total control of efficient rational disenchanted bureaucratic administration
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Kind of reminded of brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-fir, where the author recounts being in a panel on magic in fantasy and holding it self-evident that magic has to have rules, only to be surprised by every other panelist disagreeing with him.
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He makes an interesting point that the more the author wants to use magic for solving problems in the story, the more mechanistic and understandable it has to be - because otherwise it comes across as a deus ex machina. But that easily robs it of some of its, well, magic.
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