High Fantasy

[benjamin_russell]

According to the related Wikipedia article, high fantasy differs from low fantasy in being set in a fictional world with rules that differ from those of the real world.

In other words, a high fantasy setting frees the creator to set whatever rules might be interesting without being constrained by the petty rules of reality; viz.:

"High fantasy is set in an alternative, fictional ('secondary') world, rather than the 'real' or 'primary' world. This secondary world is usually internally consistent, but its rules differ from those of the primary world. By contrast, low fantasy is characterized by being set in the primary or real world, or a rational and familiar fictional world with the inclusion of magical elements.

"The romances of William Morris, such as The Well at the World's End, set in an imaginary medieval world, are sometimes regarded as the first examples of high fantasy. The works of J. R. R. Tolkien — especially The Lord of the Rings — are regarded as archetypal works of high fantasy. Stephen R. Donaldson's The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant is another example of a high fantasy series."

[Spaces have been added before and after the em-dashes in the above cited text in order to allow italicization of one of the above works of fiction.]

The two aspects of high fantasy that make it fun are as follows:

1) It is completely useless because it is completely unrelated to reality, and therefore it is completely fun, because of the well-known rule that utility value and enjoyment value are inversely related; and

2) It frees the imagination of the creator and the reader/player from being bound by the laws of physics, and instead only requires logical consistency. This allows for very strange and unusual phenomena and for potentially strange new rules of logic. In particular, it allows the creator and the reader/player to role-play roles that would be impossible in reality. For example, a poet with mathematics phobia can become an arrogant professor of pure mathematics and computer science, or a physically frail NEET can become a fierce samurai or monk. Now that is fun.