No.

“Magic” is one of the worst blights inflicted on fantasy in the modern era, right next to anime and video games. It’s a series of codified “fuck yous” to the DMs and authorial intent alike. Any stupid shit your player wants to do they justify with “magic.” Any unrealistic character shit or stupid weapons (fucking SCYTHES) has them whining for magic. They beg for speshul snowflake races, talking animals, and stupid monsters on the pretense of “magic.” And on the flipside, fantasy with actual artistry and historical research put in has them gets shit on as “boring.”

I am sick and tired of coddled Millennials expecting that their actions should have no consequences and that they should have a pointy hatted fucker there to throw bombs at all the bad guys and heal their booboos, and being convinced that if they DIE and LOSE THE GAME that they don’t have to really really lose because ~its magic~!

I tried introducing my players to this cool historical fantasy campaign I wanted to run last weekend so they could bring their characters this weekend, and they immediately started the usual shit.

>”I want my character to be an elf!”
There are no elves. There are only humans.
>”I want to be a ninja!”
There are no ninjas in Europe.
>”Yeah but there might be!”

It never fucking stops. Now I have to find a whole new group because every shitty ass player nowadays is brainwashed into thinking everything should be like World of Warcraft. Nobody expected to read about a half-demon-half-angel-dual-scythe wielding sparkefairy in Lord of the Rings. It should not be acceptable today either.

There is a MASSIVE gulf nowadays between real fantasy and the unrealistic anime tripe being thrown around, and it’s getting harder and harder to find people who aren’t blinded by the sparkleys and are receptive to intelligently planned and researched settettings/plots. They think they’re entitled to be superheroes instead of part of something bigger.