How Owning a House Became Part of Fantasy
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 พ.ย. 2024
- I've seen it all over: owning a home seems to be more and more tied with certain kinds of escapist fantasy. How has this happened? Why has this happened? And is it a new thing in fantasy media?
Let's discuss.
#worldbuilding #home #fantasy #cosygames #cosyfantasy
![[MV] A leap of faith...ความเชื่อใจครั้งสุดท้าย (From "Petrichor the series")](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/U1piZH2CNXA/mqdefault.jpg)
Every time I hear "I've been Tom," I have to ask... Who does this man become when he's not Tom? Is he Harry when he's not recording?
"You're a Tom, Harry!"
Probably. I suppose depending on the context, he could be a Tom, a Harry, or a... well, I hope not.
@@gavinmcgraw Nah, he's too careful about being nice for that last one. Even when trying to suggest an idea is stupid, he seems to just look for a better one instead of saying how bad the first idea often is.
I imagine that the hectic and stressful nature of the modern world leads people to look for more comfortable and relaxed stories, which may also help to explain the rise in cosy fantasy.
Iyashikei
I've needed a cleanse from the news cycle multiple times just to keep from feeling like I'm hallucinating
Having an abundance of good food used to be a huge focus of many interpretations of the afterlife, such as Valhalla.....because people in those days were plagued by food insecurity. Now with the advent of Walmart, the idea of the afterlife being filled with endless food has faded from the public consciousness.
It's the same for houses. People don't have homes of their own anymore, so the idea of owning a home is treated as something of a fantasy.
Lol a more modern interpretation of the afterlife is closer to living in a gated community 🧐💰🏡
Owning a house? Yep thats fantasy 😂
I'm 38. I'm disabled and reliant on welfare systems. I have thousands in debt thanks to Covid and the cost of living crisis. Unless I win some kind of lottery (which won't happen as I don't play the lottery), I will never own a house.
How do you feel when able bodied 21 year olds complain about this as if the world owes them a deed?
@@SicFromTheKush
Pal, I don't know why you're assuming they'd want other people to also be deprived of a basic necessity (shelter) if they can't "afford it". The lack of access to shelter is the problem not who lacks access (to clarify I mean renting is not stable in any way. You're basically forced to pay whatever the going rate is for a home and, if you can't, welp onto the streets with you then so many people end up becoming deprived of shelter)
@@SicFromTheKush
i feel that maybe they should get to own a fucking house. yeah for free. nothing you can say will change my mind because you have no evidence for anything you think or feel or say or believe
@@SicFromTheKushIt's not a zero sum game. Both the disabled 38 year old and the able bodied 21 year old deserve housing. Everyone does, along with clean water and food. Modern society produces enough to make this a reality. It's a distribution issue.
@@TheReedsofEnki deserving housing is not the same as deserving ownership
The "prisoner/slave to ruler of everything" story is pretty old. The last story in Genesis is of Joseph, sold into Egypt as a slave, who eventually becomes the pharoah's chief advisor. He even has at least two miniature versions of this story play out on his way to being Pharoah's favorite, as he becomes the favorite servant in Pottiphar's house and then the prisoner in charge of the prison after the whole thing with Pottiphar's wife.
@@Treebohr a very good point, which I didn't consider. I did think there was something incorrect about that particular statement while I was editing, but couldn't form a concrete example. Thanks!
@Grungeon_Master I do think stories of that kind have been much rarer until recently. They're the hopeful stories of the oppressed, and as more people have come to feel oppressed (for any reason, whether right or wrong), those stories have gained popularity.
It is not only Home OWnership that has become an escapism dream. Having your own small business, being your own boss as you labour for 18 hours a day to scrape together enough coin to survivie and expand your little shop, has become a desired fantasy as well. Some fiction even presents being an employee, having a stable 9-5 job with job security and some semblence of a chance to fair promotions, as escapism.
I think there's also a sense that having a home grounds a character in reality to a degree.
Like, to use perhaps a pejorative stereotype, the Murder-Hobo character in a TTRPG world who seemingly exists purely to facilitate violence while being permanently detached from everything around them -- that's something that someone looking for a narrative-rich gaming experience might balk at while in those death-heavy old-school games was more of a practical outlook. Having tangible roots within the game world increases investment therein, and the underlying strategy of many a modern game is maximizing investment with whatever mechanic the developers can reasonably fit into it.
if anything since older ttrpgs often had home building mechanics built in (usually as a late game mechanic and reward ie your wizard saved up dungeon loot to build a tower) and modern ones do not, I'd argue that it's the modern ttrpgs in mechanical terms that are less rooted in permament homes
@@RynewulfThey were mid-game mechanics. Some of the classes started getting strongholds and followers as early as 7th level.
all of the classes had strongholds and followers by 12 level.
@@choczynski oh ok i got my levels mixed up- its even more true then, older versions of D&D had home bases from mid levels and modern ones dont at all
It makes sense. After all, having tangible roots in the real world also increases investment.
I am SO CLOSE to having this reality. SO FRIGGING CLOSE!
Wetroom or death! No more standing in the bathtub to shower!!!!
"You will own, NOTHING, and be HAPPY"---Some dude who is still living somehow.
This feels more like a call back to the earlier days of gaming. Like original dungeons & dragons through 3.5 all had rules for building homes/strongholds. usually starting somewhere between 7th level and 12th level.
MMOs (ultima online) as early as 1997 had home building systems in them.
So I wouldn't say this is exactly a new phenomenon, but it is interesting to explorer why it fell out of favor and now there is demand for it again.
I take issue with several of these points. First, home ownership isn’t actually all that common for fantasy heroes. Picaresque nomads are at least as common; Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser have no permanent home in Lankhmar, Conan treads the earth beneath his sandaled feet, Drizzt do’Urden is an exile without home address, and the Innfellows of Dragonlance have to rent rooms in the Inn of the Last Home. The classic adventurers of fairy tales are often young middle or lower class men who have left or been turned out of their parents’ homes to “seek their fortunes.” As you mentioned in a previous video, English-language fantasy owes a lot to the Western genre, including the mysterious stranger who rides into town, fights injustice, and then rides on. (And men like Wild Bill Hickok, Wyatt Earp or Doc Holliday really did cover vast distances and switch from job to job without settling down in one place, albeit without fearlessly confronting the oppressors of widows and orphans).
Second, D&D featured options for high-level characters to build some kind of fortress base from its very earliest 1970s iterations, even when Gary Gygax grew up in small-town Wisconsin where home ownership was perfectly normal. (Home ownership has always been far more difficult for urbanites than rural people). The inspiration for the fortress rules was probably the Western again: the story of people building new homes in lands previously “wild” and unsettled, any previous inhabitants being represented as peaceful nomads at best or monsters at worst.
yeah, original dnd had rules for players owning property at level 10, i think, but how many pepl actualy played it that way? doesn't seem very exiting pretending to manage thieves guild when you have others at the table playing into managing their own castle/temple/wizard's tower or whatever and you don't have videogame graphics to actually show you all those pretty curtains and furniture you bought for it. i mean, at that point why not just play freakin monopoly
@@haroldshea3282 None of my 1st edition characters ever lived long enough to build a fortress, but I think the general idea was that it would become mainly a place to rest and recuperate between expeditions, a kickoff place for adventures where supplicants would come to seek the PCs' help, and occasionally a magnet for attack by Big Bads. Cozy domesticity was possible, but not the main idea of the game designers.
In Cyberpunk 2077, you don't own, you rent, which I find so funny
I mean it is cyberpunk...
Irl I can't even rent in the area I've grown up in. In FFXIV I have a house and a cottage right next door to each other, and a private island I don't use!
The housing lotto has not been kind to me 😅 But at least I have an apartment I don't have to pay rent for and now can decorate my island
The video title works even without the context.
I didn't know there was an actual name for Cozy Fantasy. I've always described it as "Fantasy stories without big overarching plots. Where people just... live, in a magical world." It's something I adore, and honestly I've gone through a lot of trash isekai just because I could find it fairly easy there.
Now I know where I'm finding the next 50 books for my read list.
To be honest, the thing I enjoy the most about housing isn't to make my ideal house or to organize stuff, it's to have an "HQ" with a functionality, preferably a specialized one.
Let it be farming resources, crafting, etc all while being safe and secure is just one of my favourite things
Classic staples of the fantasy genre that are impossible for most people in the real world.
1. Casting magic spells.
2. Slaying monsters and megalomaniacal villains.
3. Exploring lost ruins.
4. Owning your own living space.
5. Choosing your next workplace objective/task and controlling your own schedule.
It's crazy how the back half of the list is simply stuff that has been stolen from people by the ravages of capitalism.
Yeah, fuck corpos, I wanna go explore mayan pyramids!
You misspelled greed.
dude, it's not just the back half of the list, IT'S EVERYTHING
@@mjcsandboxgames4021 Greed is a feature of capitalism
It might be N.2 that allows 4 and 5
Wow, this was deep. I love your videos so much it was a little depressing but it's definitely something Worth thinking about. I'm always amazed at the death of your Societal critiques and how you match them so seamlessly into a primarily gaming channel. Once again Nicely done!
I prefer the 80s approach to homes in D&D: As soon as you have saved up enough gold to buy a house you can have one (once you buy it) -- later on they can have a castle, tower, or fortress. Then, in my current campaign, I assumed the PCs were starting in their home town and had some kind of (small) house from the beginning; it simplifies so much for them to have a base of operation to spend their down between sessions time in.
i would also point out that the "western" idea of having your own home is fairly new, throughout most of history and in many places currently having your own "home" is more often adding to the family building or complex, than it is going off and getting your own home. and if you think about it practically it makes more sense in a lot of ways; shared spaces take up less space, its not a whole lot harder to cook four loafs of bread than one or 5lbs of meat than 0.5, and humans are by in large social beings
The other fantasy that seems linked to it (although it never really appealed to me) is having a family. Games like Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley, and even Skyrim, facilitate getting married and having kids, something that's becoming increasingly less practical. Hell, in Fable, you could even be a bigamist and support multiple families. That's the real power fantasy.
Bigamy as a power fantasy? Get real.
Do you know what the penalty is for bigamy?
Having two mothers-in-law.
While I agree with a lot of your points, I think it's also important to not that the whole "at fifth level you get a keep or other fortification" thing is SUPER old in D&D. It's been around since houses were affordable but fell out of fashion for a while
the REAL fantasy
I’m disabled and living in a Red state: I’ve been fighting for disability for over 5 years and have been homeless on and off. Skyrim and D&D is the closest I’ll ever get to owning a home or land. It’s the closest I can come to be planting something in the ground. To buying anything most months. It’s all fantasy.
😮 the people in fantasy games may not get mad if you enter their house because they only live there and don't actually own it... crazy...
Im sorry, the background light is superdistracting
That was not what I was expecting today, but I enjoyed this video. Using your platform to discuss an issue reflected in our literature. Take care!
Meanwhile in the TTRPG SLA Industries, everyone starts with a terrible run down rat infested apartment that they need to make rent on every month in their job as a gig economy hired killer. You can tell which RPG was designed by a bunch of lads in Scotland who lived through the Thatcher years and their aftermath.
Minecraft- You didn't say minecraft! THE house builing game!
I'd also mention Vintage Story, much less known but much cozier imo. Pretty similar games, but their differences aren't hard to see.
"even inhospitable environments like being stranded on a deserted island, surviving the aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse... all of these have systems that allow you to build up your own home or base" except Capitalism 🤣😂🙂😐😕😟😭😭😭
"it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism"
I appreciate the depth you went into explaining your perspectives.
I'm going to offer a different conclusion, based mostly on the same facts.
Home ownership IS escapist fantasy, in the same way that adventuring itself is escapist fantasy.
Also in the same way, it isn't out of reach except that we don't reach.
Take a primitive human, and ask him to wander across unmapped wilderness and struggle to survive every single day... and he'll be confused, because he has no option but to do that.
Take a medieval human, and ask him to do the same... he'll have to think on it a little, but the risks aren't entirely different from his daily life still and he may consider it no big deal.
Take an early industrial human, and ask him the same thing... his life is still hard and dangerous, but in very different ways and he no longer has most of the skills necessary to survive in the wild.
Take a modern human, and ask him the same thing... and he'll be confused, because he has no practical skills at all and lives in complete safety.
Adventuring isn't out of reach. It's simply a set of choices that few people are willing to make.
Likewise, home ownership is available for just about anyone who is will to live in the type of "austerity" that would have been considered normal just a couple generations ago.
It's not out of reach. We just don't reach.
So the fantasy, whether in games or literature, is the ability to reap a simulated reward for a simulated risk. Whether it's dangerous adventures, financial success, social status, or a cozy home... fantasy is just a packaged word that represents a reward we want, but not enough to achieve.
Home Ownership ius not new to 5th Edition, it has been part of D&D since AD&D 2nd Edition. Starting level 9, you are deemed/expected to be famous and powerful enough to have followers and can gain Title to manage and build a fortress, keep, temple or similar.
New grungeon master video!
if anything since older ttrpgs often had home building mechanics built in (usually as a mid game mechanic and reward ie your wizard saved up dungeon loot to build a tower) and modern D&D does not at all, I'd argue that it's the modern ttrpgs in mechanical terms that are less rooted in permament homes.
And honestly indie rpgs and supplements with bases and factions don't count, the average player hasn't even heard of MCDM or Mausritter or Blades In The Dark.
So its definitely come up in modern fantasy fiction, but if anything its left not joined the mainstream ttrpg space
i hate that light in the background, turn it down if you can please.
Agreed
I enjoy all of The Grungeon Master videos 🎉🎉😂
Thanks for taking the time and effort to pronounce Aotearoa right! its a tricky language if you havent grown up with it. Love your work as always. Nga mihi e hoa!
Boarding Schools used to make sense. Ask any parent, and they'll tell you that, if he or she could, send their awful teenaged spawn somewhere else for a few years, they'd do it. Alas, the price of education is also unreasonable.
I find it interesting that Dungeons and Dragons is moving towards a system of home ownership. Many of the published adventures have moved at a pace and scale that makes owning or maintaining property difficult.
Although as someone who has failed to maintain an apartment and needed to move back in with my mother, home ownership is a fantasy I often have. So adding a home to my fantasy games is an appealing prospect.
When skyrim first came out, (No updates at that time. You could not even swing your sord from horseback.) my first character was a strong independant nord woman who went to whiterun to be a bandit. I took over the fort near there, and just dumped all my crap on the ground. Later in the game the empire moves into that fort which used to be filled with bandits, then my stuff, then empire soldiers, then my stuff, and dead empire soldiers. This was all before any DLC was out.
Good times.
It is, in the end, a fantasy. Until very recently, I technically still owned the home of my pre-industrial ancestors. It was in a quiet village, surrounded by fertile land.
Nothing was stopping me from just going there and living out my stardew valley dreams.
That village is deserted. This kind of life sucks. There is a reason everyone ran away to spend a lifetime paying city rent.
I mean, I also own an apartment in the city, but that's an unrelated flex. The village home was torn apart by artillery a few weeks ago, so it all kinda cancels out. Maybe?
The entire building a home I feel are really well done in Werewolf the Forsaken and Mage the awakening. Probably Werewolf most of all though. There's also the ship in spelljammer and space ttrpgs.
Not just owning a house. Despite my investments, I don't ever expect to retire either
I know it is not really important to the topic, but I'd argue that while aotearoa was certainly the last major-major landmass to be settled, places like Reunion who are today home to more than a million people should also be counted as "major" imo and were only settled centuries later.
I agree with your point broadly but the idea that this is being driven by economic forces is somewhat undercut by the fact that there's been stronghold building rules in every single version of Dungeons & Dragons since the 70s. The original Blackmoor campaign was a base building campaign. The fact that it took ten years for stronghold rules to appear in fifth edition D&D is an anomaly.
The only housing I "own" is virtual, most notably (in the sense that I can't just cheat for it for every new playthrough) in Wizard101, Pirate101, and LOTRO, the last of which has maintenance costs that force me to reinstall at least twice a year (realistically I wind up playing approx 3 times a year) to play for a few weeks to get enough gold to refill the weekly maintenance charges (I actually spent something like $20 to get a deluxe house in the Lonely Mountain which has a 1g per week maintenance, if I didn't have that one the other house is only 50s a week which can be refilled within a few days at most)
I would contend that the home has gone from a place of work to a place of refuge and now, with the intensifying drive to monetise every aspect of life into a 'side hustle' or an extension of grind culture or turned into content and influencer fodder, that not only the home, but literally everywhere, has been reterritorialised as a place of work.
In the next edition, food, drinking water and breathable air are going to be unlocked at around level 10.
Ya, I’d be just like you all had I not joined the army, they paid for my bs and ms degree va loan guaranteed have bought 5 houses with it, oh and medical so i can peace out at any time.
Anarchists have a lot to say about property, specifically I think it is important to make a distinction between private, and personal property. Anarchists are against private property, but like personal property, because personal property is actually utilized to increase the quality of life for those with immediate or reasonable access to it. Private property is essentially an investment designed to exploit the needs of those who actually use it. Landlords aren't inevitable, because not all property is private. Landlords are entitled thieves of would-be regular homeowners.
Even though it's not a "fantasy" game, I used to love playing the SIMS, but since my hope of owning a house is kinda gone, I just can't play those games anymore, it's too painful somehow :S
The lack of mention of Ultima Online at the beginning, the OG MMORPG, originally based on D&D, with an in-world home ownership system is appalling!
Through work and sweat I am the housed one
Great video, very interesting! :)
Very well said and also depressing. I'm exposing my dnd group to this 😊
Well a fantasy needs to be a consolation, if you want something completely impossible then by escaping into fantasy it will only depress you, but people go to fantasy because deep down they have the hope that it could somehow become real, somehow they could have their own home.
this is a really good video
I cast lessened interest rate! Then I use my class feature to gain resistance against zoning law enforcements of CR 6 and below
It’s not depressing. It makes me for one feel heard.
not to worry, living in southern california in 2024, homeowning is still a fantasy!
While I don't disagree with your analysis generally, I thought the 5.5e Bastion system was a throwback to the swiftly dropped early design of D&D where your characters were expected to become less and less involved in adventuring and more nad more involved in managing their feudal estates that they acquired via looting goblins as they levelled up rather than a response to modern trends in video games.
But, I'd also add that while there is definitely something to be said about the way home ownership is becoming increasingly out of reach for a growing sector of society as capitalism accelerates wealth division back to what it used to be, people enjoy using games as a form of expression, some people just make Goblin decks in MTG because they like Goblins rather than because of anything meta about them, or make a deck designed to represent their favourite song, in just the same way that people spend multiple hours in a good character creator in a video game or weeks decorating their home in Animal Crossing to make it just right for the theme they're going for, waiting to get just the right corner unit while maintaining the areas they want weed free and the areas they want to have neat gardens in, and you see similar areas of play introduce into games that lack home ownership - Pokemon Gen 3's Secret Base mechanic (which, granted, is tapping into a fantasy a lot of children have - a space of their own that they can deck out however they like that isn't accessible by adults); Splatoon 3's lockers (which is a reality of customization that a lot of high school kids have if they want it, S3 just removes the practical considerations of 'it also needs to hold school books between classes'), and so forth, so I don't think this trend is purely related to the collapse of the middle class. And for online 'keep giving us money' games, hacking into that form of fun is an easy way of keeping the monetization train going, even if it doesn't really feed into the core loop of the game (...The lockers in Splatoon 3 don't do anything mechanically - Although also Splatoon 3's post purchase monetization strategy is a single bit of single player DLC in the form of a roguelike mode)
This is a sad state of fantasy, when reality has become the desired ....
The American Dream is alive and well. You just need 3,000,000 plus.
Loisten...
In fantasy you can amass fantastic wealth. Can you amass fantastic wealth in real life? If you have the opportunity, maybe.
In fantasy you can save the princess from the tower and win her hand. Can you save the princess from the tower and win her hand in real life? If you have the opportunity, maybe.
In fantasy you can slay a dragon. Can you slay a dragon in real life? If you have the opportunity, maybe.
So too with home ownership. If you have the opportunity, maybe.
Owning a house is achievable for anybody who isnt severely physically disabled.
You might decide its not worth it, and you may not be able to live in a major city, but its not even hard
16:35 the hero of a folk tale being "off the people" was unreasonable?
Really?!
Robin Hood? Little red riding hood?
Just to name the first two from the top of my head.
Also Alibaba and i could make a long list of such heroes without any title to their name.
Fallout 4 is not the greatest game in the series, but god damn it’s the only place I can build my home and workshop from the ground up. I’ve logged 4000 hours for that reason alone.
Lmao i actually own my home on 5 acres and i paid it off in 9yrs.
Now for fantasy games i buy titles or earn them settle businesses main one is a chain of vinyards and breweries spread over forgotten realms major cities. I have 9 major characters that r6n the chain.
22:43 "Currency is often tied to material value in these worlds. Or, at the very least, if they are using paper money, it's more like the paper money used in eleventh century China."
Not everyone here is a history nerd who wouls immediately understand what you're talking about.
Would you please elaborate? What is special or different to Eleventh century China's paper money to modern paper money, that fantasy paper money also has?
Dragons? Sure
Magic? Why not
Home Ownership? Unrealistic
Whole lotta yappin in this one
Saw that title and went "Oh my god, that's so true!"
Deep thresholds
Has eating meat already become a part of fantasy?
man…
I will never
I am 51 and own two homes. I bought my first house at 33. I have been self employed most of my life. If you want to own a house, figure out how to make enough money to buy a house. I bought my first one, in a bad neighborhood with money from mowing yards.
Its no shock that the violent randian power fantasy that is modern fantasy would place no consequences murder and magic powers alongside home ownership. Having your own castle goes perfectly alongside literally having a higher level than the NPCs.
16:33 Ever read Grimm's Fairytales?
18:20 Ever heard of Conan?
This is such poorly researched and cherry-picked crap. Honestly, this is basically spreading misinformation.
Grimm's fairytales were more often horror than heroic fantasy, which is what he is talking about.
Conan is from a nomadic people, called out in the video as not what he is talking about.
Joan of Arc strikes me as a more solid counterexample, or Aladdin, or David, or Grigori Rasputin?
Solution vote for Trump! Under Joe Price of home ownership went up nearly 50,000 to 120,00