Wrong. To write good Fantasy (of SciFi), you have to go through a process called "World Building" where you lay down the rules of your world. Properly done, the amount of World Building exceeds the actual works by far. It is absolutely necessary to create a core of inner logic to the story. You are not bound by the rules of our world, yes, but you are bound by the rule of consistency. If you violate those, you automatically write crap Fantasy (or SciFi).
Funny, though, that e.g. many literature teachers / professors don't even know about the idea of World Building.
Crap fantasy is still fantasy.
Had a great time coming up with bad fantasy stories in my childhood when I knew nothing about good writing. Art is what you make it.
A clearer way to phrase it might be "there are no rules for the genre of fantasy". An individual world needs self-contained rules, yes, but just because Tolkien's Dwarves have beards regardless of gender doesn't mean that your Dwarves need to be the same.
Exactly. You demonstrate to me that a goblin is a house sized red avian, I won't love that thats the word you used unless you give me a reason, but once thats done you better not use that word to describe a little green hominid.
To write good Fantasy (of SciFi), you have to go through a process called “World Building”
I think this is more implying that you don't have to work from the same framework for every fantasy world. Not everything has to be set in Arthurian Medieval Times with Crusader-Era social sensibilities. The menagerie of mythical creatures isn't a prerequisite or delimiter (dragons / unicorns / etc are not a requirement nor are robots / cthulhoid horrors / woolly mammoths disallowed). You need internal consistency (to a degree) but you aren't forced to adhere / omit any genre trope.
I would say, at an absolute bare minimum, you need some kind of fantastical or supernatural element to make it "Fantasy" as opposed to "Historical Fiction" or "Science Fiction" or some other category of fictional prose. Although, the genre of "Magical Realism" does make even that distinction a bit fuzzy.
many literature teachers / professors don’t even know about the idea of World Building
You don't necessary need to go through the whole work of World Building if you're just banging out a short story or novella. Even serial writers don't necessarily bother going deep on the background material until they feel the need to expand the scope of the setting. I mean, look at the Star Wars setting. George Lucas didn't have Jabba the Hutt defined as a big slug monster until the third movie. In the original film, there was a cut scene in which Han confronts Jabba, who was just a be-feathered chubby gangster.
If you're just spitballing or cranking out bits of fiction in brief, World Building can be superfluous. A story that takes place entirely in a single house over the course of a long weekend doesn't need the kind of scaffolding that a Long Walk to Mordor requires.
George Lucas is the perfect example what happens when you don't do world building. The Star Wars universe is basically just retcons stacked onto other retcons.
And I am a firm believer that even short stories in a fantasy or SciFi setting don't work without at least a certain amount of world building.
The number of fantasy and SciFi stories where the author thought they could get away without thinking their world through and which ended up badly is amazingly high.
Honestly the only colour I don't feel uncertain about is orange, that's always bad.
Also on the topic of health potions, a great piece of advice I once heard was that if your players are in a foreign land, remove health potions. Give them health biscuits and watch them reconcile with God.
FFXIV the stack markers are close to orange... and long time ago it had Bard having a fire circle that damaged enemies but not allies, yet the tanks thought it was bad and would drag enemies out of it. Probably why they removed that one.
The old TSR/SSI game Unlimited Adventures had randomized potion colors. It's also how I learned that khaki is not pronounced 'kahiki' when trying to explain what was going on to someone (I knew khakis as a type of trouser not a color).
Why should your fantasy game be limited by something like “health”.
One way of escalating drama and tension is by injuring a main character. The scene in Terminator 2, where Sarah Connor has to knock the T-1000 into the blast furnace with consecutive shotgun blasts, isn't nearly as cool without her doing it with a wound in her arm. Frodo collapsing from exhaustion gives us the incredible moment of Samwise shouldering him and carrying the guy, ring and all, up the slope of Mt. Doom. Tinkerbell fading away after hearing "I don't believe in fairies" is what gets the audience on their feet applauding her by the end of the third act.
And particularly for folks invested in the coolness of their characters, some conflicts are much more fun when the outcome isn't anything either storyteller or player could have anticipated. A totally unexpected David v Goliath moment, where a scrawny guy fells a giant with a lucky shot, will be the kind of story people talk about for years - whether David or Goliath or both are PCs.
I color code all my info. (..) Green means go, so I know to go ahead and shut up about it. Orange, means orange you glad you didn’t bring it up. Most colors mean don’t say it.
I hate dragons. Controversial take but like just come up with some other mystical creatures! have some fun with it! if rather interact with a pink unicorn plushie than fight another dragon
Overlord the anime has a whole arc about the protagonist using his immense power and influence to have people start research on how to turn blue potions red.
I love the possibility of having a red/green colorblind character and having to roll to hopefully pick the right potion when they both health potion and poison in their bag.
I feel like any decent adventurer would develop a system. I hear blind people will fold their paper money a certain way so they can differentiate between the different values...
In Overwatch, healing is consistently represented by the color yellow. Mercy's beam, Ana's darts, Moira's piss, Soldier's healyboo, etc. Making Lucio's speed aura yellow and healing aura green would be visually confusing
Not sure if this is more or less of a problem for people wtih red-green colorblindness.
On the one hand, it's harder to differentiate at all. On the other hand, it kind of removes that established expectation and keeps you in the habit of adapting.